A charismatic, thought-provoking look at millennial Christianity.
In this debut, a religious millennial offers a wakeup call to members of his demographic.
King, a pastor who was born in 1992 and raised in an American Baptist family, immediately stakes out his main theme in this brief, nonfiction debut. Millennials, he says, should not only seize opportunities and take more responsibility for their lives—they should also consider embracing Christianity as a way to help them do it. But although he has a serious purpose, he adopts a wry, jocular tone throughout this book. He opens by defining what a millennial is and warning that he won’t be offering a vague, “psycho-babble apologetic.” Instead, he says, he’ll be addressing some of the real problems and shortcomings of the “snowflakes” among members of his generation. He believes that millennials have been coddled by society, which he says has low expectations of them; this, in turn, has made millennials have low expectations for themselves. King goes on to deliver a fast-paced, engagingly written blend of frank assessments of millennial attitudes and specific calls to fellowship for millennial, fundamentalist Christians like himself. He offers a refutation of what he characterizes as millennials’ disdain for traditional rules and structure: “Rules do matter. Rules set a standard. Rules remind us of a right and a wrong way,” King writes. Other sections focus on checking what he sees as millennial influences on contemporary Christianity; for instance, he advocates firm structure and hierarchy in church services. He also addresses other alleged shortcomings of his generation—a lazy, derivative vocabulary; a proud ignorance of history; disdain for authority—in bracingly direct, and bracingly Christian terms. As a result, even some non-Christians may read this work for its moral clarity, while many Christians may nod their heads in agreement.
A charismatic, thought-provoking look at millennial Christianity.Pub Date: April 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2158-2
Page Count: 110
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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