A well-paced, if unevenly executed, guide that offers straightforward fundamentalist Christian ideas.
Lake finds self-help advice in the teachings of the Bible in this debut work.
Life is full of difficulties, notes the author—even for Christians who’ve put their faith in God: “We are not promised an easy life because we are believers,” he writes in the first chapter of this spiritual guide, adding that “Sometimes the negative events of life can discourage us. Sometimes our own minds become our worst enemies.” Even so, God has armed Christians with the Bible, he asserts, which contains many useful principles to help stave off uncertainty and fear. After offering a quick, six-page summary of the Old and New Testaments, Lake describes how one may employ their principles to lead a more “meaningful life.” He demonstrates this by telling the story of a man named John—a nominal Christian who doesn’t take the Bible literally and who’s generally unsure about many aspects of life. As John explores religion—largely through trial and error—he eventually discovers what Lake earlier calls the “unchangeable truth of the Word” and finds fulfillment in the love of God. Along the way, the author addresses theological issues (such as what grace is, and why it’s important), existential concerns (the purpose of life, the nature of choice), and practical ideas regarding marriage and higher education, among other topics. Lake’s prose is clear and plainspoken, and the book moves along at a pleasant pace as he mixes his spiritual ideas with the warm language of the self-help genre: “A truly successful life requires focus and determination. Life is a game of focus. Sin breaks focus. The many distractions of life in this world break focus.” The author’s worldview is quite conservative, however, which may limit his potential readership; for example, he doesn’t believe in evolution, condemns extramarital sex, and is critical of “much of what is routinely acceptable on television and in the movies.” Also, his unsubtle allegory involving John, his tendency to describe Christianity in terms of war, and his frequent mentions of Satan give some of his advice a prickliness that makes it less persuasive.
A well-paced, if unevenly executed, guide that offers straightforward fundamentalist Christian ideas.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-973649-97-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2019
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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