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
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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