An uneven book with a winsome, encouraging message that may resonate with readers who are new to the Christian life.
The founder of a Liberian ministry offers advice to help Christians achieve their destiny.
Kekula, who was educated in England, opens his debut inspirational work on an encouraging note: “You are a very significant individual created by God to accomplish a divine assignment.” The term “significant individual” is an important one, and he uses it repeatedly. He writes of common life challenges such as rejection, criticism, and fear. The book doesn’t dismiss negativity; instead, it discusses why negative things happen, how to stop them, and how to regain control in one’s life. The author makes a passionate argument that one should forgive criticism and release grudges; otherwise, he writes, one risks damaging one’s own spiritual and emotional health. He also warns parents that children who grow up with criticism may become insecure. In language that will be familiar to some religious readers, the book recommends speaking in tongues as a means of releasing God’s power, and Kekula asserts that Satan is behind any attacks that come one’s way: “When you realize that your real enemy is not your sister, brother, mother or father you will know how to handle persecutions and criticism more wisely,” he writes. He presents men and women in the Bible as examples of those who demonstrated qualities worth following today; for example, he praises Jesus’ mother, Mary, and her cousin, Elizabeth, as women who were careful about their associations. He also names the Old Testament’s Joseph as a man who refused to bow to social pressure. The book does have some issues that may keep readers from fully enjoying it. For example, nearly every paragraph has a header, which makes for choppy reading. Also, instead of calling someone who becomes a Christian a “brand new person,” he calls him or her a “new brand person.” Readers will generally be able to figure out the author’s intent, but a stronger edit might have prevented such errors.
An uneven book with a winsome, encouraging message that may resonate with readers who are new to the Christian life.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1465395375
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2015
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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