by Shicreta Murray ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2014
A health and well-being guide with a Christian bent.
In her nonfiction debut, Murray lays a wide-ranging, sympathetic familiarity with the New Testament over a wide array of personal and societal ills. From relationship problems to workplace jealousies to drug and alcohol abuse to deep depression—the book opens with a careful disclaimer about how Murray’s exhortations don’t constitute actual medical advice—the guide firmly asserts that the cures of modern medicine can be aided by strong Christian faith. Murray writes with typical straightforward compassion (and occasional muddy thinking): “Let’s take a look in the mirror and really ask ourselves what is under our skin.” Using Scripture, she illustrates her contention that mankind’s original sin was in falling away from close partnership with God, and re-establishing that partnership is the first and most important step toward spiritual and even physical well-being. Even Christian readers who don’t share this evangelical outlook may be put off by the frequent, nonchalant references to seeing God in visions; similarly, sometimes the summaries of various health fields can be simplistic and misleading—e.g., “psychology teaches people that they are born as an addict, they can’t change, and once an addict always an addict.” But Murray’s sincere, inclusive belief is evident on every page, and she’s by no means sympathetic to the bad habits of her fellow contemporary Christians. She sees many of her fellow Christians as complacent and self-indulgent, too willing to redirect the blame for their own misdeeds: “[I]f we blame the devil for everything we do, that is a sure sign of our lack of belief in Christ.” In fact, the book’s strongest sections deal squarely not with illness or depression but with the central question of self-esteem. It’s in these concluding chapters that her frequent recourse to autobiography serves her best.
A pointed, unswervingly Christian guide to improving physical and mental health.
Pub Date: April 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0989796002
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Passion 4 Purpose Publications, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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