by Sandra Kay Cooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2019
A short, intriguing look at the spiritual and economic benefits of consistent religious giving.
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A debut autobiographical work champions tithing.
Cooper’s slim book begins humbly enough, with her recollection of getting her very first job—at a McDonald’s—working for a grand total of $48 a week. She was already conscientious with money, and when her mother urged her to consider tithing part of her paycheck to their church, a lifelong passion was born. She eventually developed an “Is God Worth a Dime?” fundraising template, complete with T-shirts, suitable for encouraging Christian youth groups to be mindful of their own giving. Cooper naturally grounds her thinking on the subject firmly in Scripture, citing familiar passages like this one from the Gospel of St. Luke: “Give and it will be given….For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” She emphasizes the doctrinal nature of the activity, noting that St. Paul “did not excuse anyone” from the duty of tithing—not seniors, not pastors, not large families, and not even children. “One of the key characteristics of a mature Christian is generous financial giving,” she asserts unequivocally. “Christian giving is not optional, but rather essential.” Yet the author also stresses that making provisions for tithing can also have purely practical purposes—that it can be “a blessing for people to learn about budgeting, debt elimination, and…financial freedom.” The point of giving, she writes, is to put God first at all times. Tithing, she insists, is a form of worship, a covenant between the faithful and God, although in clearly written passages, the book returns regularly to a presentation of pragmatic and useful financial advice. Cooper deftly encourages her readers to repair bad credit ratings and gradually achieve a debt-free life. Some parts of this work will strike many readers as uncomfortably close to the so-called “prosperity gospel” ministries that have been such a blight on the face of modern Christianity. But the author’s call to tithing saves itself from this kind of venality by marrying church donations to frugality and economic planning.
A short, intriguing look at the spiritual and economic benefits of consistent religious giving.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6355-8
Page Count: 108
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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