Book Reviews

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Book Review: “Magi” by Daniel L Gilbert

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Even after all the other magi have left for a feast, Ramates continues hunting the elusive white leopard. But his hunt is interrupted when he sees a new star, shining in the Virgin’s bosom.

Ramates is overjoyed at the chance to finally make a name for himself as a stargazer and rushes to the temple to make an official sighting–only to find the prized white leopard already dead along his way, shot by another man’s arrow.

Thus begins Daniel Gilbert’s tale of the magistenes search for Shoshia–the deliverer foretold by the cult of Belteshazzar.

Magi is rich with cultural and historical details of the Parthian (Persian) religious and political world–and of how the Parthians interacted with Rome. The reader will learn historically accurate information about how the Parthians buried their dead versus how the Romans did, how crucifixions were carried out and why, how kings were anointed in ancient Persia, and how caravans traveled through the ancient world.

I loved this aspect of Magi.

Other parts were less exciting.

The author sounds like a scholar (which he is). He gives careful attention to historical details, but his attention to the craft of writing fiction is rather less impressive.

The author gives each character a name (including the guy who opens the door at the inn), and expects that the reader will remember every name and the position of the individual (even if the only way he figures into the story is that he opened a door.) This makes it difficult to keep the characters straight–and even more difficult to figure out what people or interactions are truly important to the story. Further more, the point of view jumps from one character to another willy-nilly making it hard to figure out whose head you’re inside at any given time.

I could tell that the author had a grand scheme of developing the main character Ramates throughout the book. Ramates is eager for fame, even willing to take fame that does not belong to him. He must learn humility as he travels to pay tribute to the newborn king. All this is good. I think it’s a brilliant idea, but the author falls short of producing a natural transformation. Instead of experiencing Ramates’ soul and watching his transformation, we remain outside, noting clinically that apparently a transformation has occurred.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this book. A lot. But it was for the cultural details, not for the character development or writing style.

Rating:3 Stars
Category:Historical Fiction
Synopsis:After discovering a new star, Ramates must learn humility as he travels to pay tribute to the long-prophesied deliverer.
Recommendation: If you enjoy reading about historical and cultural details, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’re looking for a story to pull you in and a character to identify with, this probably isn’t going to cut it.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “What Would Your Character Do?” by Maisel and Maisel

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I’m sure I’m not the only avid reader who has an idea rolling around in their head for a book they intend to write someday.

As is befitting a catholic reader such as myself, I have a whole raft of ideas for dozens of very different books.

Several are novels. One, I think, has the potential to actually be a decently interesting novel.

Of course, everyone has a novel idea in their head. The knack is getting it into print.

Which is why I try to snatch time here and there (these days, it’s rare) to bang out a few hundred words on this one novel that seems to show the most promise.

The problem is, while I’ve got an interesting-ish plot, I discovered not too far in that I really didn’t have a character. At least, not a character who wasn’t me.

Which is where you’ve found me out. Most of my plots start with me trying on a different life and playing “dress-up” in my imagination.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this until you try turning it into a novel. Face it, a novel with me as the heroine is just not a good idea.

Which is where Eric Maisel and Ann Maisel’s What Would Your Character Do? comes in.

In this imaginative writing helps book, the authors set up thirty different scenarios for you to plop your character (or characters) into. Then, they have a little quiz (a la women’s magazine personality quizzes) for you to answer about your character’s response to the scenario. The quiz includes an “interpretation” that explores what your character’s responses might say about what kind of a person they are. Next, the authors give some open-ended “what if” questions for you to answer to explore your character’s response to that or similar circumstances.

I completed just one scenario (and didn’t even dig too deeply into the open-eneded “what ifs”)–and already I feel like I know my character much better than I did before. My heroine is shaping into a real live person who isn’t me. And best of all, I’m back to writing (slowly, though-very, very slowly.)

Unlike many books on writing, which I find either distract from writing the story you really want to tell or get you focused on literary analysis instead of writing, this book is actually a useful tool for the writer of fiction (actually, I can see how it might be handy for the memoirist as well…)

I’m putting this on my Amazon wish list and will be periodically checking it out of my library until I finally get around to purchasing it. It’s really that good.

Rating:5 Stars
Category:Writing Reference
Synopsis:“What if” scenarios to plop your characters into
Recommendation: A marvelous writing reference that actually furthers your story. Huzzah for that!

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Diary of Pelly D” by L.J. Adlington

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Toni V is just another teen on the demolition crew, working his jackhammer. Day after day he tears up the ruins of City 5 to make way for the new city the general promises.

The rules and regulations say that everything that is found has to be reported. But when Toni V finds a water can with a diary inside, he defies the rules and regulations. He keeps and reads it: The Diary of Pelly D.

Pelly D lives in luxury in City 5. She’s rich, she’s pretty, and she leads the pack at school. Oh–and she has a holographic pool, which is pretty cool.

Pelly D is completely unconcerned about school work or about politics, or really about anything but her own pleasure and popularity–well, except for the little niggling doubts she has about the new gene stamping.

It’s an Atsumisi thing, this “Heritage Clan” thing. According to them, the world is divided into three groups: the haves and the have nots. The haves (Atsumisi and Mazzini) have the gene (even if it’s only turned “on” in the Atsumisi)–the have nots (the Galrezi) don’t.

It starts out innocently, people getting tattoos on their wrists to identify which gene clan they come from. But before long, Pelly D wonders if there might be discrimination on the planet (despite the colonials resolve to not even have a word for discrimination since they were so determined not to let any exist on their new planet.)

I’m not sure what to say about this book. The diary reads a little like Bridget Jones’ Diary (in other words, it’s awful). Reading Pelly D’s self-absorbed rants is painful. It’s a mercy that the author flashes back to Toni V every so often–he’s a breath of fresh air from the drama queen Pelly D.

At the same time, there’s something compelling about this novel. I can see how young adults might enjoy it. And–as far as young adult novels go, it’s relatively clean. There’s some allusions to making out and one not too descriptive sex scene. There’s a divorce that takes second stage to the real storyline. There’s some bullying, some definite rudeness. But it’s not like it’s celebrating deviant behavior.

And the ending. Oh, the ending.

I had to verbally process the entire plot with my little sister after I was done. It was that disturbing.

It was a good disturbing.

The kind that makes you think. The kind that makes you recall history, real events on Earth that resemble the events in the book. The kind that makes you question political correctness and what the world calls peace. The kind that makes you wonder how the evil in the heart of man can be eliminated.

The Diary of Pelly D is bad in that the diary itself is just the sort of thing you’d expect from a self-absorbed queen-of-the-brat-pack teen. The Diary of Pelly D is good in that the story sucks you in and gets you thinking (without you knowing that you’re thinking until you get to the awful, awful end.) It’s good in that the ideas it brings up stick with you, forcing you to grapple with reality.

I’m glad I read it. I’m not quite sure if I recommend it.

Rating:1 Star/5 Stars
Category:YA Dystopian Fiction
Synopsis:Toni V, a postapocalyptic teen, finds the diary of Pelly D–written before the war that ended the world as she knew it.
Recommendation: Decide for yourself. You can see how I had an awfully hard time even giving it stars–the one star is for the painfully insipid Pelly D’s diary writings, the five stars is for the completed effect of the novel.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

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Reading to Know - Book ClubIt seems whenever I told someone I was reading Tom Sawyer, they responded with the question “You’re re-reading it, right?”

It seemed inconceivable to all my friends that someone as fond of reading as I would have not read Tom Sawyer. But I had to respond that I honestly did not know whether I had read Tom Sawyer before.

I knew bits and pieces, recognized the names of Tom and Huck and Becky and Injun Joe. I knew the story about whitewashing the fence (of course) and vaguely recollected the island and the cave sequences. Maybe I’d read it before-or maybe I’d picked those details up from other reading I’d done.

Now, having read Tom Sawyer, I think I can confidently assert that before this last month, I had not read Tom Sawyer (except maybe in a highly abridged children’s version.)

Now that I have read Tom Sawyer, I can say that I enjoyed reading it (Thanks, Amy, for picking it for this month’s “Reading to Know Book Club“).

Twain’s descriptions of Sawyer’s childhood brought back fond memories of long hours spent outside with minimal supervision, of brothers and cousins digging pits to who-knows-where, of “adventurous” overnights that sometimes included fire and other times included water (and on the very rare occasion involved both.)

On the other hand, certain elements of Tom’s childhood bear no resemblance whatsoever to my own. I never uttered incantations or signed my name in blood. I never ran away from home or uncovered grave robbers. I never witnessed a murder (thank God!)

I think that before I started this book (and even into the first several chapters), I expected it to be merely a collection of anecdotes with little by way of a unifying story line. I’m glad that did not turn out to be the case–for if it had, I think I would have set down the book in disgust.

Tom is such an awful little creature. He never thinks of anyone except himself and his own pleasure. He is rude, mean, conniving, and thoughtless all at once. Yes, he may have rare moments of kindness (like when he took Becky Thatcher’s beating), but these are few and far between–and one can’t in good conscience say that his misdeeds were simply carelessness and that he had a good heart behind them. No, Tom is a selfish, horrid beast of a boy. He is amusing, but he is bad.

If I had merely been expected to laugh at and enjoy Tom’s antics, I’d have despaired. But Tom Sawyer does have more of a plot than that. Because of that plot, in which Tom Sawyer is scared into being rather a better boy than he would have otherwise been, the book is redeemable and the antics become enjoyable.

I’m definitely thinking I should be reading more Twain. He’s proven by Tom Sawyer that he’s capable of writing engaging fiction–although his apparent enjoyment of Tom’s wickedness makes me wonder if the author is always so morally ambivalent. I think I’m going to reserve judgment for now and wait until I’ve read some more.

Rating:3 Stars
Category:Juvenile Clasic
Synopsis:Tom is a rascally pre-teen who finds himself in over his head when he and a friend witness the murder of the town doctor.
Recommendation: Good story, but the moral ambiguity inclines me to not recommend it for the very young or morally suggestible. I’d read it with a middle-schooler, perhaps, but I’m not sure I’d suggest that they read it on their own.

Check out this Reading to Know Bookclub post to see what other readers are saying about this book.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Harvard Medical School Guide to Overcoming Thyroid Problems”

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Have you met your thyroid gland yet?

Your thyroid gland controls your metabolic rate–the rate at which your heart pumps, your food digests, your cells divide, and so on and so forth.

Much of the time, your thyroid’s an innocuous fellow, going about his business without drawing attention to himself. Problem is, every so often he gets his nose out of joint and instead of just announcing himself and getting the problem fixed, he mopes about, leaving his host (that’s you) mopey too (with no idea what the problem is or how to fix it.)

The Harvard Medical School Guide to Overcoming Thyroid Problems by Jeffrey R. Garber, MD, gives a psychology of this little guy–so you can understand when he might be feeling out of sorts.

I picked up this book from the library for a number of reasons:

  1. I have a thyroid condition
  2. Around half of my residents have a thyroid condition of some sort
  3. I’m reading every book in my library so I’d have to read it eventually

The first is a no-brainer. I’ve known I was at risk for a thyroid condition at least since my early teens. I have family history of them up the wazzoo (I’ve probably got more family with thyroid conditions than most people have family.) I’ve requested routine blood work to screen for hypothyroidism every year since I was 14 or so. Even so, my own hypothyroidism hid out as a stress-response for at least a couple of months before I got it treated. Amazingly, once I started treatment, I felt 100% better (or maybe even more.)

The second reason is interesting. Because the thyroid gland affects the body’s metabolic rate, it’s something that is always in the back of my mind when I’m assessing residents. If someone is barely eating but keeps on gaining weight, chances are I’m going to request thyroid labs. If someone is eating far more than I estimate they need and keeps losing weight, you better bet I’m going to request thyroid labs (since the alternative, cancer, is MUCH less pleasant.) I’m not always right when I guess that there might be an underlying thyroid issue–but I’ve been right often enough (and seen dramatic enough results in clinical outcomes and resident quality of life) that I’m going to keep on requesting thyroid screens when I see evidence that points that way.

But enough about my experience with thyroid issues. Let’s get to the book.

The layout of Overcoming Thyroid Problems is straightforward, first giving a simple description of the anatomy and physiology of the thyroid gland before moving through a collection of thyroid disorders from most common to least.

The reader will learn about a half dozen iterations of hypothyroidism, common and uncommon causes of hyperthyroidism, and a mess of information about thyroid lumps from benign to cancerous.

This is a pretty thorough book (excepting how it glossed over what exactly a “thyroid storm” consists of). You’ll learn about Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (most people who have it simply get the diagnosis “hypothyroid” and begin on thyroid hormone replacement therapy), Graves’ disease (did you know that both George H.W. and Barbara Bush had Graves’ disease?), multinodular goiter, and medullary thyroid cancer.

Truth be told, this book contains far more information than you or I would ever need.

Nevertheless, it’s a good book. Thyroid conditions (especially hypothyroidism) affect a huge proportion of the population–and often go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed. This book gives individuals the tools they need to assess their risk for a thyroid condition and the information they need to be an informed thyroid patient.

Because many of you (those of you without a diagnosed thyroid condition) are not likely to pick up this book, I’ll mention a few of the common symptoms of a hypothyroidism (the most common thyroid condition) here.

If you have some or several of the following symptoms, you may benefit from having your doctor check your thyroid:

  • Fatigue
  • Cold sensitivity (always feeling cold)
  • Loss of appetite
  • Slow pulse
  • Weight gain (even if you’re eating less than usual)
  • Depression
  • Dry skin and brittle fingernails
  • Hair loss
  • Constipation
  • Muscular and joint pain
  • High cholesterol
  • Carpal tunnel syndrome

A thyroid screen involves a simple blood test that measures the amount of “thyroid stimulating hormone” (TSH) in your blood. If the TSH is high (indicating hypothyroidism), the treatment is simple: thyroid hormone replacement therapy. Pop a pill each morning, Mr. Thyroid is happy, you are happy. No fancy diets to follow, no restrictions of any sort. Take a pill, feel better.

In my experience, it’s like magic. This is one “too good to be true” that actually is true. If you’ve got hypothyroidism, treatment can change your life.

This book is a great resource for individuals who have a thyroid condition or who are at risk for a thyroid condition. If you or a close relative (since thyroid issues do have a genetic component) has hypo- or hyperthyroidism, Graves’ disease, goiter, or thyroid nodules, you might want to pick up a copy of this book. You’ll find reliable information regarding signs and symptoms of thyroid conditions, screening and diagnostic tests, and treatment options.

Rating:3 Stars
Category:Medical Reference
Synopsis:An overview of thyroid conditions, with discussion of their symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment
Recommendation: A great reference for those who have a thyroid condition, have some of the symptoms suggestive of thyroid conditions, or who have a family history that puts them at risk for a thyroid condition. (Almost) everything you’d ever need to know about thyroid conditions. (The three stars are only because of it’s narrow appeal, not because of poor information.)

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Rest of Her Life” by Laura Moriarty

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Leigh arrives home from work one day, vaguely annoyed to find that the recycling can had been overturned and no one had bothered to pick it up. Then she walks into the living room, where her family waits. There was an accident, her husband informs her. Kara was driving. A girl is dead.

They’d tried to call Leigh, but she hadn’t answered. There wasn’t time to try again. He had to comfort their daughter.

The tragedy brings the strained relationship between mother and daughter into sharp relief. Kara turns to Gary, rebuffs Leigh’s attempts at sympathy.

The tragedy brings out the strained relationship between Gary and their precocious son. It tests Leigh and Gary’s marriage. It tests Leigh’s friendship with her best friend, with her community.

It makes Leigh wonder how she managed to get here–alienated from her daughter when she’d tried so hard to be a good mother, to give her daughter everything she hadn’t gotten from her own mother.

The Rest of Her Life is an introspective work, exploring Leigh’s past and present, digging into her thoughts about her marriage, her family, her friendships, her standing in the community.

This was a wonderful book with so many positive qualities that I find it hard to just give a general impression. There are so many things to like, so many things to mention.

I’ll begin with technicalities. I love that Leigh’s story is told in past-tense third person subjective. This point of view is an integral part of the story–and is a breath of fresh air after the spate of first person novels inundating the female marketplace.

The author has an M.A. in Creative Writing, but unlike many an academic artist, she doesn’t try too hard to be groundbreaking with her style. This is a book that follows the conventions of the English language, with capitalization and punctuation exactly where they should be, letting you get on with the story instead of worrying about misunderstanding meaning in the midst of the hodgepodge of “creative” effects.

And what a story it is. Moriarty demonstrates a keen insight into human relationships, teasing out the complexities of Leigh’s relationship with her daughter, her husband, her son, her best friend, her sister, her own mother, the mother of the dead girl.

In Leigh, we see a mother who tries hard to be the mother her mother never was–and who doesn’t understand why her daughter doesn’t appreciate that. We see a mother frustrated because she can’t seem to connect with her teenage daughter, a woman who learns to put aside herself in order to relate to her daughter.

In Leigh and Gary’s marriage, we see a couple who works hard to stay married. We see misunderstandings, frustrations, and accusations–and a choice to keep at it despite all that. I loved that Gary and Leigh’s marriage is neither sensationally awful nor saccharinely good. It’s honest, a rare trait in novels depicting marriage.

I can identify a lot with Leigh, despite our many differences (Let me count the ways…I’m not married, not a mother, not middle aged, not a teacher, not secular, not a product of a broken home…) Leigh is something of a loner, holding herself aloof from many around her. She is compassionate, but often doesn’t know how to express her compassion. Should she write a note, go to the dead girl’s funeral, put her hand on her daughter’s knee in sympathy? She simultaneously enjoys and dreads the gossip her best friend shares with her. She wants to do everything right, has a vision of how her life should look–but finds herself acting and her life looking differently than she’d envisioned.

Leigh is a sympathetic character. Her relationships are real and complex–not just dramatic episodes but full of subtle expectations, longings, comfortability, and differences. Leigh grows, learns, develops through her experiences. The relationships grow through their experiences.

This is novel-craft at its finest.

Rating:5 Stars
Category:General Fiction
Synopsis:When Leigh’s daughter accidentally kills a pedestrian and turns to her dad instead of Leigh for sympathy, Leigh is forced into an introspective review of her relationships with her children, her husband, and her best friends.
Recommendation: Wow. This is a truly good book. I definitely recommend it.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “Busy Mom’s Guide to Family Nutrition” by Paul C. Reisser, M.D.

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I am not a busy mom. I am not interested in getting my family to eat healthy foods, in discovering which weight loss plan is right for me, in helping my overweight child, or in cutting through the hype–

Oh wait.

I am interested in cutting through the hype about health and nutrition. Which is why I agreed to review Tyndale’s Busy Mom’s Guide to Family Nutrition.

While I may not be the target audience of this book, as a Registered Dietitian with a keen interest in food and families, I do have some basis by which to evaluate this material.

Cover to Busy Mom's Guide to Family NutritionThe good news is that the majority of the information found within this book is accurate. “The Official Book of the Focus on the Family Physician’s Resource Council, USA” contains standard, low-hype information about food and nutrition. While there were a few unclear statements and a few answers that missed the main point, most of this book is scientifically sound.

The bad news is that, well, I just didn’t like this book.

First (and most frivolously), despite the promising glossy cover, this book was printed on that cheap acid-filled paper that disintegrates within a couple of years, making it far less than ideal as a reference work.

Second, the organization of this book made absolutely no sense. The book was written in a Q&A format in which questions were grouped under broad headings that made up chapters. So far, so good–except that the broad headings were often so vague as to give no information as to what could be found within, and the questions had no logical order to them.

An example: The first chapter was entitled “Nutritional Basics.” The first five questions answered under “Nutritional Basics”? “What is a nutrient?” “What are carbohydrates?” “Why do I sometimes seem to crave sugar?” “What is hypoglycemia–and do I have it?” and “What are the different sugars I might find at home?”

Yeah. Not quite sure what the editors were thinking on that one.

As a result, I don’t see how this book could really be useful as a reference, since the only way to know how to find the information you’re looking for is to read the book straight through. And while *I* might be willing to read it straight through, I think it’s silly to expect a “busy mom” to read a book of this sort straight through. The information is far from novel enough to compel great interest and the writing style and mode of delivery is nothing spectacular either.

Finally, while I am fully convinced that how we relate to food has spiritual implications, there’s nothing uniquely “Christian” about this book’s information–apart from a comment or two about blessing food before you eat it or the Hindu roots of yoga. I don’t see any reason why Focus on the Family needs to have a book about nutrition in the first place–and I especially don’t know why they need to have a book about nutrition if they’re only going to glance over anything spiritual related to nutrition.

This book clearly does not satisfy my desire for a well-written nutrition reference that takes into account the physiological, psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of food. I guess I’ll just have to write my own!

Rating:2 Stars
Category:Nutrition Reference
Synopsis:A factually correct but disorganized Q&A on a variety of nutrition topics.
Recommendation: Skip this one and stayed tuned for my book :-P

I received this book from Tyndale House in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “Only You, Sierra” by Robin Jones Gunn

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Anna got Starry Night by Robin Jones Gunn for Christmas one year–and the two of us were quickly hooked on the adventures of Christy Miller, Midwestern transplant to crazy California.

We *adored* Christy–reading each of those books over and over and over again. We were in love with Todd. We hated Rick. We cracked up over dead hamsters. We started shoebox P.O. Boxes for our future husbands.

And then we reached our teens–and skipped the teen spin-offs to jump directly into Gunn’s adult “Glenbrook” series.

Of course, I’d “met” Sierra Jensen with Christy when she went to Europe in A Promise is Forever–but I’d never actually read any of Sierra’s story until Waterbrook Multnomah offered a free Kindle edition of The Sierra Jensen Collection, Volume 1 containing Only You, Sierra, In Your Dreams and Don’t You Wish.

Only You, Sierra started out in familiar territory–Carnforth Hall in England, during the missions trip Sierra, Christy, Katie, Tracy, and Doug had ended up on together.

Sierra flies home from England–but home isn’t the same place she left. While she was on her trip, her family had moved in with their Granna Mae in Portland. Granna Mae has good days and bad days with her dementia–and Sierra’s family is there to help.

Even though the move had been planned in advance, Sierra finds herself struggling to catch up to her family, who has already settled in–and struggling to find her place in Portland, where her uniqueness isn’t quite so unique.

I devoured Only You, Sierra, reading it in two nights. It’s definitely Robin Jones Gunn, but it’s more realistic than Christy’s drama-filled existence. Unlike Christy, Sierra has no fairy-godmother-like rich aunt ready to introduce her into the high-life. Instead, Sierra has an older sister who she shares a room with, two little brothers, a loving but confused Granna Mae, two parents, and a crush she barely knows. As I said, much more realistic (at least, from my perspective.)

When I finished Only You, Sierra, I was gravely disappointed to find that I couldn’t access the second and third books on my Kindle edition. I realize that my copy was an ARC–and therefore may not be reflective of the final copy–but I worry that fellow Kindle Readers would find themselves getting only one book when they’re promised (and itching for) three.

I’m thinking these books would appeal most to the sort of reader I was when I first started reading the Christy Miller books–in my early adolescence. While I read those when I was ten or so, my guess is that these will probably appeal to the 12-14 crowd best.

For those worried that familiarity with the Christy Miller series is necessary for understanding these books, I think you’ll find that isn’t the case. I’ve framed my review around my childhood memories of Christy–but she certainly isn’t necessary for reading or enjoying the Sierra Jensen series.

Rating:4 Stars
Category:Teen Girls Series Fiction
Synopsis:Sierra struggles to find her place in a new community while wishing she were in SoCal with her “European friends”.
Recommendation: Good, clean, engaging–and not too drama filled–fiction for teenage girls. If you’ve got girls around 12-14 years old, these would be a good option. (Definitely a better option that the “Princess Diaries” franchise or “Gossip Girls”.)

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “Demonic” by Ann Coulter

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“She’s crazy!” my friend proclaimed from the front of the vehicle when I mentioned that I had just finished listening to Ann Coulter’s Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America via the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle.

I’ll admit that this is a common reaction to Coulter–and one that I’m inclined to agree with.

I’m disappointed that this is the case, though, because her “crazy” often ends up masking that she’s also brilliant.

Coulter’s Demonic is typical of her books in that it is brash, liberal-bashing, and stuffed with well-researched connections between historical and modern events.

Coulter’s thesis is that “the Democratic Party is the party of the mob, irrespective of what the mob represents.” She argues that the Democrats gain power by encouraging mob behavior and then by manipulating said mob to their own means.

In the first part of Demonic, Coulter compares the behavior of modern day liberals to that of Gustave Le Bon’s description of a mob in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (published in 1896).

“All the characteristics of mob behavior set forth by Le Bon in 1895 are evident in modern liberalism–simplistic, extreme black-and-white thinking, fear of novelty, inability to follow logical arguments, acceptance of contradictory ideas, being transfixed by images, a religious worship of their leaders, and a blind hatred of their opponents.”

Coulter unpacks each of these characteristics, citing dozens of prominent examples for each accusation. To the accusation that all American politics is simply mob behavior, she offers conservative counterexamples (For example, the criticism that Ronald Reagan experienced from conservatives during his eight year presidency as a counterexample to political “idol” worship.)

In the second part of Demonic, Coulter argues that Liberal mob behavior has its roots in the lawless French Revolution–a revolution about as foreign to the American Revolution as you can get (despite modern attempts to compare them). In this second section, Coulter devotes less time to insulting modern liberals and focuses on the history of the respective revolutions–leaving the reader to draw parallels with modern times as she contrasts the French Revolution’s godless mobs and the American Revolutionaries’ objections which, only as a last resort (and with careful advance planning by a thoughtful assembly), resulted in violent war. Interestingly, Coulter describes how the Founding Fathers were of a split opinion regarding the original Boston Tea Party–with some arguing that it was too close to mob behavior while others argued that it was not mob-like because it had been carefully planned only after lawful attempts at protest had been exhausted. Apparent in all the Founding Fathers’ discussion of the Tea Party was their inherent distaste for mob behavior.

Which leads to the third part of Demonic, in which Coulter describes the tendency of liberals to instigate, abet, and defend violent mobs. Coulter gives the college campus protests of the sixties, civil rights mobs (both on the pro- and anti- civil rights sides), and the Central Park rape case as examples of the above. She also works through a number of media accusations of violent behavior from conservatives, finding that in most cases the accusations were overblown (or the violent individuals and groups were not conservatives after all.)

Finally, Coulter attempts a psychoanalysis of liberal mobs, asking “Why would anyone be a liberal?” She answers her own question by saying that liberals 1) have a thirst for popularity, 2) ignore the history of the French Revolution and therefore commit its same mistakes, and 3) hate traditional morality and are willing to do anything to overthrow it. Coulter ends by trying (not entirely successfully) to explain her cryptic title, explaining that Satan is the father of the mob.

Can you see the “crazy” even in just my description of Demonic? Coulter has a determined animosity towards liberals and makes no attempt to hide it. She isn’t going to “play nice” or “soften the blow” with meaningless affirmations. She says it exactly as she sees it.

Unfortunately (I think), this animus is likely to make most people dismiss the connections Coulter has made between historical and current events. I think her readers are likely to either agree with her animosity and be confirmed in their biases against liberals and liberalism or they are going to disagree with her animosity and take offense–most on either side missing the historical warning against mob-like behavior.

For my part, I like to think that I’m a more discriminating reader–able to glean valuable insight that will help me to combat mob behavior wherever it is found (on the left or the right or anywhere else) without adopting Coulter’s abrasive attitude towards the Left.

And I pray, that by God’s grace, I would recognize that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

While I fully support strong action against unlawful mob behavior, my war is not against the mob. While I am a committed conservative, my war is not against liberals. My war is spiritual, not physical.

I have a different strategy than political machinations, than legal cases, than military action. My strategy is to fasten truth as a belt around my waist, to let righteousness guard my chest, to prepare my feet to share the gospel of peace, to trust God to deflect the devil’s arrows, to let salvation be a crown on my head, and to fight with God’s word to advance the gospel of Christ (Eph 6:13-20).

I will love my enemies–not in the sense that I will capitulate to a mob’s demands–but in the sense that I will sacrifice in order that they can know salvation in Christ. How can I do any less when my Savior responded to the truly evil mob (including myself) who demanded His death by offering His life to the Father as a ransom for the mob’s sin?

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Language of God” by Francis Collins

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Do science and faith conflict? Does being a scientist preclude being a believer? Can you be a Christian and a Darwinian evolutionist at the same time?

These are the questions Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, seeks to answer in his book The Language of God.

The book starts with Collins’ personal testimony from atheism to belief (his testimony involves C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and, more specifically, Lewis’s moral argument for God). In the second chapter, Collins addresses some common rationalist arguments against belief.

Having answered some fundamental objections, Collins jumps into his argument for the compatibility of science and faith. He begins with Big Bang cosmology, a hard science which (I feel) offers compelling evidence for the God of the Bible. Collins’ argument here is straightforward and rather common (among Bible-believing Big-Bang theorists). The Big Bang insists that the universe had a beginning and therefore it needs a beginner; the anthropic principle shows that the universe is finely-tuned as though it were built with man in mind.

So far, I’m in complete agreement with Collins. The moral argument for God is a good and rational argument. Science and faith are compatible. The Big Bang testifies loudly of the God of the Bible. The anthropic principle indicates the personal nature of the Creator.

And then Collins loses me.

Because what comes next is an argument for the compatibility of Darwinian evolution and historic Christianity.

In short order, Collins debunks the argument from design (er…tries his best to debunk), derides the “God of the gaps”, and discounts the Cambrian explosion as a challenge to Darwinian evolution. But really, Collins’ argument boils down to this statement he makes in the middle of chapter 4:

“No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution to explain the marvelous complexity and diversity of life. In fact, the relatedness of all species through the mechanism of evolution is such a profound foundation for the understanding of all biology that it is difficult to imagine how one would study life without it.”

Collins unpacks his support for Darwinian evolution as he explains the genome and his work on the Human Genome Project. Collins refers to DNA as “the language of God”–“the DNA language by which God spoke life into being.” Honestly? I can’t say I disagree with him on that point. DNA is a marvelous thing, and it is the language that “tells” living things to carry out the functions of living. But then Collins tells us that most of God’s language is gobbledy-gook. He makes his case for evolution based on the similarities between the DNA of all living things (and the ability to create a phylogenetic tree) and on the prevalence of so-called “junk DNA” (DNA that has no known function.)

The difficulty I have with the “junk DNA” argument, in particular, is that, after deriding a “God of the gaps”, Collins now finds it completely reasonable to introduce an “evolution of the gaps”. We don’t know of functions for this DNA so it must be junk–and therefore must have come about by evolution rather than design. The evidence suggests otherwise. Unfortunately, many scientists who hold to this belief have abandoned the search for function in the “junk DNA”–but those who have continued to study junk DNA have found that there’s much less “junk” than they originally thought.

Part 3 of The Language of God turns again to science/faith conflict. Collins issues a warning by hailing back to Galileo–reminding believers that their interpretations have been wrong before, and that holding too tightly to a wrong interpretation can result in damage to the faith. Now he moves on to what he considers to be the four options in dealing with science faith issues: atheism and agnosticism (where science trumps faith), creationism (where faith trumps science), intelligent design (when science needs divine help), and “Biologos” (where science and faith are in harmony). “BioLogos”, of course, means theistic evolution.

This section was a mixed bag. I agreed with Collins’ point in the chapter on atheism. Science can not be used to discount the existence of God, especially since science cannot account for morality. I agreed with many (but not all) of Collins’ arguments against intelligent design, especially his argument that intelligent design does not offer a predictive (that is, testable) scientific model.

But Collins’ chapter on creationism seems to me to be setting up a straw man of sorts by focusing on Young Earth creationism. It is true that to hold that the universe is less than 10,000 years old means discounting the evidences of multiple branches of science (geology and cosmology primary ones, but analysis of prolific Chinese genealogies also suggests that humanity itself is older than Ussher’s date for creation.) But does this mean that the Genesis accounts are not to be taken literally and that Darwinian evolution should be accepted?

I don’t believe so. Collins completely ignores what I feel to be the most Biblically- and scientifically-faithful alternative: old earth creationism, particularly the (non-Darwinian) creation model set forth by Reasons to Believe. Reasons to Believe has a high view of Scripture AND a high view of science, believing both to be books written by God to display Himself.

The difference between Collins’ approach and RTB’s is marked. Collins says “Since the common interpretation of science and the common interpretation of Scripture are incompatible, the interpretation of Scripture must be wrong.” Unfortunately, Collins does not offer any alternative exegesis in support of theistic evolution. On the other hand, Reasons to Believe says “Since the common interpretation of science and the common interpretation of Scripture are incompatible, we must examine both carefully to ascertain what God is really speaking through the two books of general and special revelation.” Reasons to Believe offers a legitimate alternative exegesis of Genesis 1-2, as well as other creation accounts in Scripture–and offers a legitimate scientific model that has explanatory power for the observations Collins sees as irrefutable proofs of evolution.

Ultimately, I think that Collins is well-meaning in his writing and is a sincere believer in God–but I think he has more in common with a liberal branch of theology that discounts Scripture as truly inerrant than with historic Christianity (which has upheld a high view of Scripture). He made arguments for evolution, sure, ones that different individuals may find more or less convincing (I am less convinced). He made arguments for faith from outside the realm of science. But despite stating that science and faith are compatible, Collins failed to make any good arguments for how science and faith are compatible.

I’m glad I read The Language of God, and I’m thankful to Janet for drawing my attention to this book. Clearly, though, I was unconvinced by Collins’ arguments for theistic evolution (what he calls “BioLogos”).

Rating:3 Stars
Category:Science and Religion
Synopsis:The head of the Human Genome Project attempts to make a case for the compatibility of Christianity and science, particularly Darwinian evolution.
Recommendation: A thought-provoking book, but ultimately unconvincing. I recommend it for critical readers, not so much for those who aren’t able or willing to think critically as they read.