The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

In The Language of God, physician and chemist Francis S. Collins considers the compatibility of science and religion. At the time this book was published (2006), Collins was head of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Since 2009, he has served as director of the National Institutes of Health.

Collins is a Christian, but he did not come to the faith until after starting his career in medicine and science. His interactions with patients drew him to consider the spiritual aspects of life. Through this God eventually drew Collins to Christ.

Collins is very much a supporter of science. He readily calls people of faith to task for damaging their own cause through ignorance of science or abandonment of reason. A true god won’t be damaged if we come to a better knowledge of his creation.

Science, however, is hardly able to answer all of humanity’s important questions. It isn’t designed to do that, and sometimes it simply cannot do it.

In exploring the issue, Collins considers several potential stands on religion. He finds atheism impossible to defend. His own former agnosticism was something he could hold to so long as he did not seriously delve into the questions of existence, human life and ethics. He argues that theism is the most reasonable belief, though it may take a few more steps to get from theism to Christianity.

He also gives some attention to the idea of how we can live peaceably with science and religion. He has plenty to find in history. The seeming antagonism between science and religion, which he attributes mostly to proponents of extreme views on both sides, is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically (and currently) many scientists were people of faith and the church was a supporter of scientific discovery. He finds model of harmony between science and religion going back to St. Augustine.

Collins addresses this book to both believers and nonbelievers. To both he argues that belief in God is rational, and that faith is complementary to science.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir Aczel

Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press, 2006.

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins takes the name of his book, Seduction of the Innocent, from the title of a notorious book by psychologist Frederic Wertham. The original was anti-comics propaganda that falsely linked comic book reading to juvenile delinquency. Collins’ novel is a pulpy crime story in which a stand-in for Wertham is murdered.

Fans of comics or pulp culture will find a lot to enjoy in this book. There are many ways to experience the frisson of recognition because many of the characters are based—to varying degrees—on real-life comic book artists, writers and publishers from the 1950s, when Wertham’s screed was published. Even the senate hearings headed by Estes Kefauver are featured in the course of the book.

The real Wertham was not murdered. Collins is careful not to make his stand-in too repulsive He acknowledges that Wertham did a lot of good work, even if his research tying comics to youth crime was bad.

The tone of the book is often silly, as you might expect from a tongue-in-cheek fictionalization of silver age comics publishing. It is still hardboiled, so there is plenty of sex and violence to go around.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

The Big Con by David W. Maurer

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner’s The Spirit by Darwin Cook

Collins, Max Allan. Seduction of the Innocent. London: Hard Case Crime, 2013.

Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

The body of a young woman, Elma Sands, was found in a well outside of Manhattan on the second day of 1800. A carpenter who boarded in her family’s house, some suggested he was her secret lover, was immediately accused. The case led to one of the first sensationalized, broadly followed murder trials in the young United States. Paul Collins recounts the events in Duel with the Devil.

The carpenter, Levi Weeks, might well have been convicted of the crime had he not had a legal dream team with the competence to show the weakness of the prosecution case and suggest an alternate explanation for Sand’s death. That is one of the interesting things about his trial. His defense team consisted of political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr along with their fellow Revolutionary War veteran Brockhurst Livingston.

The political and legal elite of New York state, and especially Manhattan, of those days was close knit and often resulted in odd combinations. Hamilton and Burr were both in debt to Weeks’ brother Ezra, a prominent builder, which may explain their participation.

Weeks was found not guilty after what was considered a very long trial for the time, mainly due to the great number of prosecution witnesses. Sands’ murder was never properly solved.

She was probably killed by another roomer in her house, Richard Croucher. He had fled England to escape the insane asylum after his behavior led him trouble and criminal charges. Shortly after Weeks’ trial, he was convicted of raping his 13-year old stepdaughter. He was released after three years on the agreement that he would leave the country. He went to Virginia instead, where he fleeced the merchants of Richmond. It appears he eventually made his way back to England, where he continued criminality led to his execution.

Hamilton and Burr famously faced declines. They dueled and Hamilton died from the wound he received. Their co-counsel fared better; Livingston went on to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weeks left Manhattan. We worked his way west and became a successful builder in Natchez.

Collins’ book reads almost like a novel. It is interesting, quick-reading history.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Collins, Paul. Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery. New York: Crown, 2013.

450 Books Reviewed on Keenan's Book Reviews

I’ve posted reviews of 450 books on this blog. Here are links to the 50 most recent posts. Further down are links to more reviews.

First Time Reviews

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

Faith by Jimmy Carter

The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo

The Gentleman Scientists by Tom Schachtman

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Haggai

The Holy Bible

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

The Irresistible Introvert by Michaela Chung

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Malachi

Major Prophets

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Minor Prophets

Move by Rosabeth Moss Canter

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

Nearing Home by Billy Graham

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

100 Ways to Happiness by Timothy Sharp

Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte

Positive Words, Powerful Results by Hal Urban

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Reposition Yourself by T. D. Jakes

Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Road to the Sea by Florence Dorsey

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero

Zechariah

Zepheniah

First 25 Reviews

Reviews 26-50

Reviews 51-75

Reviews 76-100

Reviews 101-150

Reviews 151-200

Reviews 201-250

Reviews 250-300

Reviews 301-350

Reviews 351-400

Faith by Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter is well known for his Christian faith. Excepting a handful of famous pastors, Carter is one of the few Americans who is known as a Christian almost as much as he is known for other things; this is especially extraordinary for a former president.

Faith is the title and subject of his recent book. He addresses religious faith, but other types of faith are important to him as well.

For instance, each person need faith in himself to take action with hope to achieve positive results. We need faith in each other to live, work and trade together peaceably.

We even need some degree of faith in government. If we hope to achieve the ultimate purposes of government, justice, equality under the law and peace, we have to believe it can be done. Especially in a republic we need to believe we can achieve these goals through our institutions, laws and the people we elect to represent us.

“A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant, because our peple and our country want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.”-Jimmy Carter, Faith (quoting a speech he presented in 1978)

There are also personal goals that require faith. Justice and equality may be the highest goals we can expect from government, but we want more. If we also hope for love, humility, generosity and kindness, we need another kind of faith.

For many, including Carter, this is religious faith. We find in religion reasons to believe that things like love are real and worthy of pursuing, even if we don’t always get it right.

For Christians, this faith is founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the proof of God’s loving mercy and grace. It all starts with God, and we can hope to be better people through the empowerment of God and our grateful response to His love demonstrated in Jesus Christ. As Carter puts it, “It is not what we do for God that is important but what God does for us. Faith brings about good works, but doing good things does not result in faith."

For Carter, Jesus is worthy of consideration as an example of the ideal in human character. Being like Christ is being a better human being. As a Christian and Protestant, Carter believes he has a personal relationship with an ever-present Christ. The faith that underlies Carter’s career and achievements as a politician, philanthropist and peacemaker is that he does not walk alone, but he walks with a living Christ and with other believers who seek to follow Him and see His good will done in our time.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Faith of JFK edited by T. S. Settel

God and Ronald Reagan by Paul Kengor

Hebrews

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Carter, Jimmy. Faith: A Journey for All. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Mo Gawdat, an executive and software engineer at Google, has been curious about happiness for years. When his son died suddenly, he took inspiration from the happy young man he lost to get his thought together on the subject and produce Solve for Happy.

To Gawdat, happiness isn’t something we gain, it’s something we lose or bury. Happiness his how we would normally feel, what he calls our “default state,” but we let all manner of thoughts make us unhappy.

What buries our native happiness? It’s the suffering we experience when the events of our life do not meet expectations. Gawdat illustrates this in his book with a balance with the events on one side and expectations on the other.

Donte be quick to blame unhappiness on the events of life. Gawdat points the finger at expectations.

Our expectations are often out of touch with reality. We suffer under misperceptions, illusions, blind spots and lies we tell ourselves. Gawdat identifies 13 such issues and challenges them. As long as you cling to beliefs and biases that lead to false expectations, you’ll suffer.

Experiencing the greatest joy involves embracing the truth. Gawdat describes five things he believes to be true that lead to joy.

I’m reminded of The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. Dr. Peck calls for a devotion to truth. Like Gawdat, Peck believed that every life has some pain, but a lot of additional, unnecessary pain is caused when we refuse to deal with reality.

I think there is a lot to be said for Gawdat’s overall concept. I can see in myself and others a lot of pain and disappointment that has its roots in false expectations, refusal to deal with reality and the avoidance of the hard (but rewarding) work of living and growing as a person. I don’t agree with every detail of Gawdat’s book, but don’t think you have to in order to gain useful insights from it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Self Love by Robert H. Schuller

Gawdat, Mo. Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy. New York: North Star Way, 2017.

Esther

Esther is one of the most famous people from the Old Testament. The story of her life, as told in the Biblical book bearing her name, has been adapted to the stage and film. Joan Collins played her in Esther and the King (1960); Tiffany Dupont played her in One Night with the King (2006) based on the novel by Tommy Tenney. In 2013, Jen Lilley played the role in The Book of Esther.

It is easy to see why the book has captured the interest of storytellers in several media. It has court intrigues, romance, poetic justice, a beauty pageant, culture clashes, political and religious oppression, just to name a few elements a storyteller or reader of almost any persuasion might latch onto. You can bring many viewpoints to this book and carry many interpretations from it, though the book also provides its own interpretation.

Esther takes place during the reign of the Persian King Ahasuerus (generally identified as Xerxes I). He puts aside his wife, Queen Vashti, and his princes arrange an elaborate campaign to find a replacement. Esther is forcibly recruited into the competition. Esther is a Jewish woman, a ward of her relative Mordecai, who serves in Ahasuerus’ court. He secretly advises her, her humility and kindness win her favor in with the head caretaker of the harem, and her beauty wins the king. Meanwhile, Haman, a high official who has come to hate Mordecai, hatches a plan to destroy the Jewish people through the empire. Esther risks her life to appeal to the king and thwart Haman’s plan. This summary hardly does justice to the story, though even in the Bible the style is plain.

These events are the genesis of the Jewish festival of Purim. This is where the internal interpretation of the book comes in. Esther is celebrated for her courage to act. In addition to that, the hand of God, who is barely mentioned in the book, is seen throughout the events. He puts someone in place to rescue the Jewish captives from their enemies. He elevates Esther and Mordecai to give them protection while they are under the rule of foreigners. Though the people were threatened with genocide, God used the situation to preserve them and possibly even set up their eventual return to their homeland.

The historical books of the Bible are generally written in a plain, narrative style, though it occasionally records songs or other literary forms. Esther stands out in that it is almost novelistic. The conflict escalates to a climax followed by a brief denouement. This makes it a very engaging book.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Deal with It! by Paula White

Second Kings

Esther. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

New & Interesting Stuff June 10, 2017

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

Energy, Transportation, Water & Missouri News

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Minor Prophets

New & Interesting Stuff April 29, 2017

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Novelist Henry James seems like an unlikely partner to fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Dan Simmons pairs them in his novel The Fifth Heart. James provides Holmes with access to the inner circle of American politics, where Holmes investigates the death of Clover Adams, wife of historian Henry Adams. Together, they thwart an attempt to assassinate President Grover Cleveland at the opening of the Chicago Columbian Exhibition.

In some ways, Simmons draws from the weakest of genre writing, such as the fortunate happenstance of James and Holmes meeting on the bank of the Seine, where the story begins. Simmons writing in this style is not weak, though. He also writes in more literary style, though not a densely written as James’ novels, and uses the likes of upper-class dinner parties to explore social customs and mores.

One of the ways Simmons creates a deep sense of the setting is by constantly dropping names. Many of the characters in the book, or their real counterparts, were famous or well-connected in their day and actually knew each other, such as Adams, the Hays, James, and Samuel Clemens. They also knew, or knew about, a lot of other famous or well-connected people, so the discussion of all these names seems natural. I started jotting down the names, and I recorded more than 100 (some are listed below). Some were fictional (like Hercule Poirot), but many were real people.

On the whole, the novel is a good adventure full of interesting characters. Simmons goes a little deep into philosophy in a consideration of what it means to be a real person, or the potential reality of fictional people (Holmes suspects he may be fictional). The book can be enjoyed without sweating that point.

In a sense, all the characters in the book are fictional, even if they are based on real people. The Holmes of this novel describes the symptoms that indicate he may be fiction, such as the fog he experiences between adventures, and the James of this novel experiences the same thing. Of course, many of us experience arriving home from work and having almost no recollection of driving, so some fogginess may be a natural part of memories and the way we form them (or don’t form them).

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Simmons, Dan. The Fifth Heart. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Henry Adams

Marian (Clover) Hooper Adams

Irene Adler [fictional]

Alexander Agassiz

William Waldorf Astor

Henry Ward Beecher

John Bonfield

Paul Bourget

William G. Brock

Daniel Hudson Burnam

James Donald Cameron

Walter Camp

Enrico Caruso

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Frances Folsom Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

Willkie Collins

Edward Compton

Stephen Crane

Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith Cumming

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

Montague Druitt (suspected of being Jack the Ripper)

Andrew L. Drummond

Edmund Gosse

H. Rider Haggard

Carter Henry Harrison

Adelbert “Del” Hay

Clara Hay

Helen Julia Hay

John Hay

Sven Anders Hedin

Mycroft Holmes [fictional character]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Sherlock Holmes [fictional character]

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Edward Hooper

William Dean Howells

Victoria Woodhull

Henry Irving

Henry James

Francis Scott Key

Phillip Barton Key

Clarence King

Rudyard Kipling

Peter Kropotkin

Fritz Krupp

Louis Jean-Baptist Lepine

Henry Cabot Lodge

Robert McClaughry

George McClellan

Charles Macready

Errico Maltesta

William Melville

Sebastian Moran [fictional character]

James Nolan Moriarty [fictional character]

Richard Monckton Milnes

Carl Gottfried Neumann

Charles H. Pearson

Hercule Poirot [fictional character]

Henry Rathbone

Elisee Reclus

Henrietta Reubell

Henry Hobson Richardson

Edmund Rice

Elizabeth Robins

William Rockhill

Theodore Roosevelt

John Singer Sargent

Rudolph Schnaubelt

Heinrich Schliemann

William Seward

Daniel Sickles

Teresa Bagioli Sickles

Ainsworth Rand Spofford

Edwin Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Adlai E. Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Benjamin Tayloe

Annie Royle Taylor

Minnie Temple

Emile Jean-Horace Vernet

Carl Aver von Welsbach

A. B. Walkley

Fanny White

Garnet Wolseley

Constance Fenimore Woolson

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Myers, Walter Dean.  Just Write: Here’s How!  New York: Collins, 2012.

Walter Dean Myers is an author of mostly of books for children and young adults.  That is the primary audience for Just Write: Here’s How!

Myers makes no bones about it.  Writing is hard work.  Myers, and he believes most other successful writers, has a process that helps he prepare for, write, and complete books.  A writer needs to love the process of writing if he hopes to complete books and have them be of good quality.

Having said that, Just Write is not a highly technical book.  Myers’ process if fairly straightforward.  He uses a simple outline to get started (actually two: one for fiction and one for nonfiction).  He fleshes these out into more detailed outlines.

Preparation is important to Meyers.  Partly this is the hard work of putting together a good outline and developing an understanding of your main character.  He also advocates plenty of research.  Writers, especially when they are young, write about things they haven’t experienced personally, and research will serve both as a personal education and a source of authenticity for the book.

Don’t skimp on preparation and don’t shy away for rewriting.  Myers considers rewriting important.  He welcomes input from his editor that will make his books better.

Many examples come from Myers’ experience.  He especially draws upon his unexpectedly pleasant success co-writing Kick with Ross Workman, a teenager at the time they collaborated.  The process of working on Kick and other books provides illustrations for the points he makes.  He holds up Workman as an example of someone with the attitude, work ethic, an especially interest in the process of writing that leads to success as a writer.  Workman had the diligence and humility to learn, deal with feedback, and follow his book through to the end.

Workman also experienced the kind of crisis of confidence that Myers thinks is typical.  A young writer will need to face this crisis and find the courage to continue and improve his work.

Myers’ style in this book is informal, conversational and direct.  It is also personal.  He writes about how he came to be a writer and how it has affected his life.  He writes with a purpose, and that broader purpose to connect to and help kids has led him to speak to kids in trouble both to understand and to encourage them.  Though written for youth, it may be a good place to start for budding writers of any age.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

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