Talking animals effectively teach readers to move from despair to solutions.
A group of metaphorical creatures presents lessons about perseverance and mental strength in this guide.
In this follow-up to The Ant and the Elephant (2004), Poscente returns to the two animals who are his stand-ins for the conscious (ant) and subconscious (elephant) minds. Adir the Ant and Elgo the Elephant go everywhere together. Adir has learned how to make sure he and Elgo are working toward the same purpose in pursuit of excellence. Their idyllic existence is interrupted by an earthquake that destroys their home—and Adir’s extensive and highly leveraged real estate enterprise—and the two fall into despondency. After trying to rebuild as all their animal neighbors leave the area, Adir and Elgo eventually set out on a quest for a safe place to serve as a new home. With periodic advice from Brio the Owl, Adir and Elgo set goals for themselves, find a path through unfamiliar territory, and learn new ways to work together. They also face external challenges: Villains Chromia the Wolf and Valafar the Vulture see Adir and Elgo as potential prey. When Adir and Elgo’s conflicts aren’t driving them further from their goals, the predators are. By implementing Brio’s lessons (“Adir, criticism is like manure. It stinks but helps you grow”), Adir and Elgo are eventually able to triumph. In the introduction, Poscente writes that the book was inspired by his “own personal earthquake,” a confluence of bad financial decisions coupled with the falloff of his public speaking business during the recession of the late 2000s, which forced him to learn the lessons Adir and Elgo discover in the story. While the talking animal storyline may not appeal to all readers, it follows the successful path of earlier titles like Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? (1998) and Holden Rothgeber and John Kotter’s Our Iceberg Is Melting (2006) and does so equally well. Each chapter ends with a restatement of the pithy lessons taught by the tale, presented as an entry in Adir’s collection of notes to himself. The volume’s insights will be familiar to pop-psychology veterans, but the format is a smooth and persuasive way of concisely presenting them to new audiences.
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953295-71-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Matt Holt/BenBella
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In this highly learned yet accessible book, Robinson offers believers fresh insight into a well-studied text.
A deeply thoughtful exploration of the first book of the Bible.
In this illuminating work of biblical analysis, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Robinson, whose Gilead series contains a variety of Christian themes, takes readers on a dedicated layperson’s journey through the Book of Genesis. The author meanders delightfully through the text, ruminating on one tale after another while searching for themes and mining for universal truths. Robinson approaches Genesis with a reverence and level of faith uncommon to modern mainstream writers, yet she’s also equipped with the appropriate tools for cogent criticism. Throughout this luminous exegesis, which will appeal to all practicing Christians, the author discusses overarching themes in Genesis. First is the benevolence of God. Robinson points out that “to say that God is the good creator of a good creation” sets the God of Genesis in opposition to the gods of other ancient creation stories, who range from indifferent to evil. This goodness carries through the entirety of Genesis, demonstrated through grace. “Grace tempers judgment,” writes the author, noting that despite well-deserved instances of wrath or punishment, God relents time after time. Another overarching theme is the interplay between God’s providence and humanity’s independence. Across the Book of Genesis, otherwise ordinary people make decisions that will affect the future in significant ways, yet events are consistently steered by God’s omnipotence. For instance, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, and that action has reverberated throughout the history of all Jewish people. Robinson indirectly asks readers to consider where the line is between the actions of God and the actions of creation. “He chose to let us be,” she concludes, “to let time yield what it will—within the vast latitude granted by providence.”
In this highly learned yet accessible book, Robinson offers believers fresh insight into a well-studied text.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780374299408
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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
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