A wide-ranging, thought-provoking look at faith and the nature of reality.
A call for a broader, more compassionate version of spirituality.
Despite the fact that his nonfiction debut contains a vague chart of fundamentalist Christian vintage (with “God, Heaven, Angels” on the top, for instance, and “Demons, Hell, Satan” on the bottom), Markham delves into a far more ecumenical and broad-based spiritual schema. He characterizes God as “the mysterious, underlying source of all existence” and asserts that underneath the “blitz” of the modern world—exemplified by advertisements, politics, and the nonstop news cycle—there’s a deeper level of reality, a spiritual level to which everybody is connected, whether they realize it or not: “is it not reasonable to accept the possibility that reality has a dimension that is an impenetrable void inaccessible to sense and intellect?” he asks. This mysterious level, he says, can be a help to people during times of loss or despair: “knowingly or not, they draw upon a deep reservoir of spirit that enables them to comprehend their situation in a larger perspective.” Secular readers will naturally object to being implicated in such an explicitly religious worldview, but Markham’s clear, easygoing prose emphasizes that commonality is more important than doctrine: “Realizing that we’re all in this together on this speck of dust can help us have compassion for one another even when we disagree.” While referencing a wide array of sources, such as Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God and Crane Brinton’s The Shaping of Modern Thought, Markham effectively offers a path out of what he sees as social conditioning: “we must find a way to short-circuit business as usual,” he writes. Overall, he presents a liberal, inclusive reading of the Judeo-Christian tradition as a way forward, but readers of other faiths will also find plenty of substance in these pages.
A wide-ranging, thought-provoking look at faith and the nature of reality.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Shires Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
