Inspiration for being open and open-minded to God’s signs and messages.
Miller shares her experiences with God and tragedy through her prophetic dreams about events that occurred in her life, including the deaths of her grandparents and, most notably, the untimely death of her young nephew Kiki. She explores the various ways her dreams portended these events and how she came to decipher and interpret the visions as well as how she made sense of the losses through the strength of her faith, and what she thinks these visions say about God’s presence in our lives. In clean, simple prose, Miller takes the reader through experiences at once heartbreaking and mysterious, including her daughter’s messages from Kiki and the messages Miller received from a co-worker’s deceased son. Miller, as well as her family and friends, seems to take these messages at face value, seldom doubting that they come from God, resulting in a bold portrait of faith that may be inspiring if not instructive. She focuses on receiving and embracing these messages rather than investigating them: “No matter what, we want to know why [bad things happen]. But it is not always for us to know why!” A few of the later chapters deal with more lighthearted or positive visions Miller has had, and though they provide a welcome respite from the tragedy that consumes much of the book, they are somewhat contextless and out of place. A lack of deep interpretation of Miller’s visions and messages might make the book difficult for some skeptical readers to access and relate to; those looking for an academic or theological explanation of God’s messages won’t find them here. However, readers facing similar experiences are certain to take heart and comfort, especially if they have lost a loved one.
Earnest, heartfelt and full of faith.
Pub Date: July 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490413273
Page Count: 198
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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