The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

Cook, Darwyn. Richard Stark’s The Hunter. San Diego: IDW, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-60010-493-0

Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced hardboiled thief Parker in a series of novels in the 1960s. The novels have been adapted to film, but Darwyn Cook’s comic book adaption is the first authorized to use the name Parker.



Parker is not a gentleman thief, which is an oxymoron anyway. He is probably a sociopath. At the least, he has no regard for human life, property, law or much of anything else. He is as heartless and hardboiled as they come.

In The Hunter, Parker is on a cross-country mission of revenge. He narrowly escaped being killed, at the hand of his beautiful but week-willed wife, in a double-cross after a job to rob gunrunners. He cut was to e $90,000. He walked from California to Chicago and killed his way through a gaggle of gangsters to claims his cut and drive away with a price on his head.

Parker is horrible, but he is interesting and The Hunter is full of action. It’s understandable how the character became popular.

In this adaption, one can enjoy both a classic hardboiled story and the art of Cook. Cook is one of the greatest hardboiled illustrators in comics. His drawing conveys the sensibility of this type of story. In this book, he makes the bold choice of using just two colors, which conveys a sense of the graphic design of the ‘60s. The style is both simplified like a cartoon and complex, carefully designed, even painterly.

Many comic adaptations are not very good, just abridgements with colored drawings, but this book delivers. Cook tells the story with art and words. His drawings don’t just illustrate events; they convey the action information about the characters. There is a long sequence at the beginning of the book that that tells the reader a lot about Parker without words or even showing his face until the end, like a shot from a movie. Even the opening page, with just a few words and a composition reminiscent of Will Eisner, shows a lot about what kind of man is Parker.

Darwyn Cook also wrote Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

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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Just Say Thanks! by R. T. Kendall

Kendall, R. T.  Just Say Thanks!  Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2005.

I have written before that it is my opinion that gratitude is essential to happiness.  Our first duty is gratitude to God.  As R. T. Kendall puts it in Just Say Thanks!, “When God grants us sovereign mercy, it ought to make us exceedingly grateful.”

Though it is an obligation to be grateful to God, Kendall notes that God takes notice when we express thanks.  The Bible records many expressions of people’s gratitude to God.  It may be a duty that could be beneath notice, but it seems that God delights in those who do it far beyond  what a mere duty would imply.

The first thing Christians should be thankful for is our salvation.  We should be constantly praising God for all He did for us in and by Jesus Christ to atone for our sins, to implement His mercy and to reconcile us to Himself.  God’s grace is fundamental to the Christian life, both to bring is unto it and to help us live it, and because that grace is a constant presence we should be constantly grateful.

Kendall even discusses a doctrine of gratitude, which is often called sanctification.  Christians refer to two parts of our salvation.  First is justification, in which our sins are forgiven and the righteousness of Christ is imparted to us.  We are made right with God through Christ.  The second part is sanctification, in which we are transformed over time so that we increasingly act right and become more the kind of people we are supposed to be.  Kendall describes sanctification as a process of gratitude.  If we are grateful for what God has done for us, we will act like it by praising Him, sharing the good news what He  has done, loving Him and showing love to people because He loves them, obeying Him and doing what is right.

One of the things I thing is important about gratitude that is discussed by Kendall is that it puts things in perspective, especially when times are tough.  We shouldn’t wait until everything seems good to be thankful.  We should always be acknowledging kindnesses, mercies, answer, help and other good things; we experience them even in the midst of trouble.  In addition, Kendall wrote, “Every trial has a built-in time scale.  It will end!  God will see to it.”  We can be grateful that better times are ahead, and for Christians the trials of this age will seem very brief in comparison to eternity in God’s blessing.

Unfortunately, gratitude does not come naturally to us.  It is something we must learn.  We must intentionally remember the good God and others have done for us.  We need to rehearse the benefits that have come our way and do it often.  When we forget, we easily become ungrateful, and I think unhappy as well.

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

365 Thank Yous by John Kralik

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

Gratitude by Melody Beattie

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

Thanks! by Robert A. Emmons

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I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna

McKenna, Paul. I Can Make You Thin. New York: Sterling, 2009.

This is not a diet. Paul McKenna believes they don’t work, so he won’t be recommending one for you. He won’t even be taking much of your time. He says you can read I Can Make You Thin in two hours, and that’s about right.

McKenna dislikes diets because they tell you what to eat and not eat and are prescriptive in other ways, in addition to them just not working. People have trouble with their weight because they’ve become disconnected from their bodies and their natural senses of hunger and satiety. Diets perpetuate this disconnection, so they don’t have lasting results.

What McKenna offers instead of a diet is four simple rules. In fact, he suggest that you may be able to get by with just one rule, and it has nothing to do with what you eat. In fact, the entire system is more about the way you eat that what you eat.

You don’t even have to memorize the rules. One of the back pages has a punch-out card with the rules on it so you can review them every time you eat or want to eat.

The book isn’t quite as short as just four rules. It includes some information to help you stay on track by dealing with cravings, emotional eating, self image and getting back on the system when you fall off.

Included with the book is a self-hypnosis CD. McKenna recommends using the CD to help change your self image and solidify the new habits you’ll be developing as you follow the four rules.



If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair

We are commanded to feel, not just think or decide

Throughout Scripture, we are commanded to feel, not just think or decide.  We are commanded to experience dozens of emotions, not just to perform acts of willpower.

-John Piper, The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Writing: Steal Characters

A lot of writing revolves around characters. For some writers, characters are central, and they’re drives, decisions, history, and idiosyncrasies move the story. A popular series character can be the jackpot for a writer, especially a genre writer.

Great characters are all around. How do you find them? Do as your predecessors in inventing great characters. Steal them.

I’m not suggesting that you actually steal characters. Nor am I suggesting that the writers I’ll be discussing stole their characters. It’s a matter of looking around in literature and life for real and fictional people then reworking them, consciously and unconsciously, into your own character.

Let me draw an illustration. Let’s take a popular character and see how other popular characters are in some way a reworking of it. These connections are my invention. I have not idea what the creators of these characters were thinking. I doubt most of them were thinking along these lines.

Let’s start with the Lone Ranger. Created by George W. Trendle (written by Fran Striker) in 1933 for the radio, the Lone Ranger saw success in several media, especially television. Before looking at the masked strangers successors, look at his predecessors. There were white-hatted cowboy heroes before the ranger. His contribution was the secret identity and the avoidance of lethal force. These heroes were white knights transformed for the gunpowder age. You might see those chevaliers as vaguely Christianized versions of mythological questers like Odysseus and Hercules.



Now imagine that the Lone Ranger is an antihero, his bullets are deadly lead and he uses a lot of them. You might picture something like Jonah Hex. John Albano and Tony DeZuniga created Hex in 1971. He is a scarred frontiersman who roams the West, not necessarily protecting the innocent, but collecting bounties or dealing deadly justice.

Maybe you like that the Lone Ranger avoids deadly force. Let’s keep that, but make him a pulp-era vigilante. That is what Trendle and Striker did in when they created the Green Hornet for the radio in 1936. They even made the Hornet a distant relative, though not a descendant, and imitator of the Ranger. The Hornet is darker, though. Instead of riding a white horse, he drives the Black Beauty. He sometimes pretends to be a criminal, but it is mainly to allow him to infiltrate gangs and break them apart from the inside. In spite of this, he avoids killing just as his predecessor did (I guess Seth Rogan didn’t notice that).

What if the Lone Ranger was a costumed superhero? He might be Batman, created by Bob Kane in 1939. Bruce Wayne’s identity isn’t hidden from the audience, but his costumed crusade against crime could have been modeled on the horseman. Batman writer Bill Finger gave Batman a code of ethics that would have made the Ranger proud. Not only did Batman eschew deadly force, he rarely used a gun at all. In appearance, at least, Batman resembles Zorro more than the Lone Ranger. (Batman comics tie him to Zorro, too. Several authors have depicted it as the move the Waynes had just seen when Bruce’s parents were killed by a criminal). Zorro himself might be taken as a Latin American spin on the Ranger, except he was created 14 years earlier by Johnston McCulley.

Not all of these ostensible progeny are as good as Batman. Put the Ranger in a talking car and you might end up with something like Knight Rider. Put Jonah Hex on a motorcycle in a futuristic megacity and you might get Judge Dredd. (The Judge Dredd comics weren’t bad, just not my cup of tea. The Sylvester Stallone movie was bad.)

The Lone Ranger is an archetypal hero, which is how we can so easily draw connections between him and characters that came before and after. It doesn’t denigrate Trendle and Striker to say they drew on archetypes, or even specific characters or people, in creating his own character. It’s a compliment that they created a character that was so popular, enduring, and inspiring to other writers.

Think of your own twist on the Lone Ranger archetype. You might have other characters you love that you could call on. Take your favorite romance heroine and put her in a completely different setting (Charlaine Harris put Sookie Stackhouse in a Louisiana full of vampires). You could put a detective in the far future (Isaac Asimov did in Caves of Steel). Bring a dragon into the atomic age (yeah, Godzilla). You could make a dragon a slave to the boilermakers in a steampunk fantasy—hey, maybe I’ll do that.

Eat That Cookie! by Liz Jazwiec

Jazwiec, Liz.  Eat That Cookie!  Gulf Breeze, FL: Fire Starter, 2009.

Liz Jazwiec is a former hospital emergency department director and current consultant and speaker.  In her book, Eat That Cookie!, she draws upon her experience in creating a positive workplace to show the benefits of positivity and how it can be created.

Jazwiec was a hardnosed nurse who didn’t have time for fluff.  Her job was hard.  Her hospital was in a rough and poor neighborhood.  Oh, and some people are just stupid.  She was skeptical of the positivity movement in her hospital and she only go on board because of the unsubtle threat of consequences if she didn’t.  Slapping on a smile and being nice to people wasn’t going to make things better.

Except it does.  Kindness, even if it is fake, makes people feel better.  Expressions of

gratitude grow goodwill.  Letting go of judgment also means letting go of a lot of frustration.  Fun and productivity can coexist, even thrive together.  Celebration is important; you need to recognize achievement if you want to keep getting it from people.

Each chapter touches on a subject related to positive workplaces and how it helps make workplaces more productive.  The book is full of examples, some from Jazwiec’s work as an emergency department director and some from clients or other hospitals.  The title come from the example of a hospital unit that instituted a weekly no negativity day, with smiley face cookies served to staff that day as a reminder.

Cookies may sound silly.  Sometimes the silliness is intentional.  It is a reminder, and remembering  and keeping people accountable is an important part of a positive workplace.  Positive workplaces are made and sustained through effort and consistent, reinforced behaviors.  Jazwiec is practical-minded in this regard.  Positive workplaces don’t just happen.

To that end, the book contains a lot of advice.  Leadership needs to provide accountability, fairness, and a focus on behavior.  Don’t overwhelm people with changes.  Institute three or four changes a year, and make sure you have a high level of compliance before introducing something new.

As a consultant to hospitals, Jazwiec focuses on them.  Almost any workplace could benefit from positivity in the same ways, though.  Her examples could easily be adapted to other organizations.

In fact, much of what Jazwiec writes about is simple.  As I often say, “If simple were easy, more things would be simple.”  A workplace won’t become more positive overnight just because you feed people smiley face cookies.  It takes time, clear expectations, accountability, consistency, and successive changes, especially if negativity is engrained.  Jazwiec’s little book may help you get started.

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

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Revved! by Harry Paul and Ross Reck

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This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions, but few of us keep them. There is less interest on the statistics of other goals, but it seems likely that resolutions are hard to keep whenever we make them. Self-help author and consultant M. J. Ryan would like to change that sorry state of affairs. Her book This Year I Will… has advice on how to turn goals into action and dreams into reality.

Ryan makes the important point that much of our behavior is habitual. We have repeated behaviors so many times that we unthinkingly return to them when we encounter the stimulus that triggers them. To complicate the matter, our behaviors fill a need or solve a problem. If they hadn’t they wouldn’t have become ingrained habits.

You don’t have to delve into you half-remembered childhood to change behavior, though. You just need to identify the underlying need or problem and find other means of dealing with them. Ideally, the new behaviors will also help you meet your goals instead of getting in the way.

I suppose I have made it sound easy.  It is not, and Ryan does not promise quick fixes. In fact, she warns her readers they will face internal resistance to change. There are parts of brain, power emotional parts that exert a lot of control over us, that see change as a threat and will not easily leave the familiar path. Ryan offers advice on how to handle this, and even how to get our emotional brain to help us instead of hinder our change.

The book is organized into short chapters. Ryan suggests you can go directly to the parts you need and return to the other parts later, or when they seem more useful. Instead of being a book you read through once, she wants This Year I Will… to be a reference you can return to when you need fresh ideas or a refresher on techniques you’ve used before.  Some of the subjects that stood out to me were

• concentrate on “what” instead of “why,”
• dealing with doubt,
• taking action,
• focusing on one or a few changes at a time,
• taking one step at a time (though sometimes we need a big goal to motivate us),
• track your progress (I’m a believer in this),
• have a Plan B (and C, and D…),
• tips for effective visualization,
• performance review, and
• remember to have fun.

There is more than that. The book is not a collection of unrelated mini-chapters. Though the book isn’t necessarily made to be read linearly, I found that later chapters tend to build on earlier ones. There is also a subtle shift from an almost wholly practical to a somewhat philosophical view. You’re not just doing a better job of setting and achieving goals. The goals you achieve and the habits you form shape and define your life.

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

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Ryan, M. J. This Year I Will…: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True. New York: MJF, 2006.

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Proverbs

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

Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings. Most are attributed to Solomon. A couple of chapters are attributed to Agur and Lemuel’s mother.



Though related proverbs are loosely grouped together, the book overall can seen disjointed. This is the partly the nature of a collection of sayings.

With the exception of a few longer, poetic sections, each proverb is a short saying, usually just a couple of lines. Often, the second line is a comparison or contrast to the first. A typical proverb may express essentially the same idea in two ways, or it may present opposite behaviors with their different results.

These sayings are intentionally short and often poetic because they are intended to be easy to remember. They are teaching tools.

What the proverbs teach are ethics. They encourage good behavior, righteousness, integrity, good character and wisdom. They discourage evil, injustice, deceit, bad character and foolishness.

The proverbs are founded on a religious understanding of the world. God exists and he has a plan for His creation. The world is a created order and understanding this order can lead to better decisions. God is just and ultimately sets everything right, even if it appears in the short-term that evil is rewarded and good has no effect.

Even though the proverbs have this religious outlook, they are not idealistic. Wisdom may begin with acknowledging God and His character, but it includes recognizing that our world is full of evil and corruption. Pitfalls abound with sexual immorality, strong drink, deceitful people, and corruption in business and government.

Living righteously in a corrupt world is not easy, and sometimes the advice on how to deal with evil and foolishness seems to conflict. While it is straightforward enough that we should never do what is evil, sometimes the proverbs advise to confront and sometime they advise to let things be. Sometimes the wisest thing is to turn tail and run.

This isn’t so much a matter of conflicting advice as recognition that wisdom isn’t a cookie-cutter approach to life. We learn wisdom over time as we mature. People are different and we learn to tailor our responses to them for the best effect. In addition, the wisest people are always learning, always seeking appropriate counsel, and always turning to God because they recognize they don’t know it all, haven’t seen it all and are far from perfect.

What I Read (7)

Date: January 23, 2006
Title: Don’t Grow Old—Grow Up! Author: Dorothy Carnegie
Thoughts: “The moment a man’s attention is center on service to others, he becomes more dynamic, more forceful and harder to resist” (quote from the book).

Date: January 30, 2006
Title: The Great Bridge
Author: David McCollough
Thoughts: A good book about a great accomplishment.

Date: February 26, 2006
Title: Positive Imaging Author: Norman Vincent Peale
Thoughts: The launch of Infra Consulting LC in March 2006 receives a huge, positive response from potential clients and the media. Within days I’m having consultations and negotiating contracts for grant writing and management consulting projects. I have a training session scheduled for April that is filling fast. (I didn’t launch my business until November 2006 and it didn’t go this smoothly.)

Date: March 13, 2006
Title: Change the Way You See Everything Author: Kathryn D. Cramer & Hank Wasiak
Thoughts: Connie and I have been talking about similar things for months. We just didn’t have the term ABT. Though Cramer & Wasiak suggest ABT is more than just positive thinking, it seems not far from Peale and Carnegie. Thinking isn’t magic, it leads to action.

Date: April 19, 2006
Title: Getting Started in Consulting
Author: Allen Weiss
Thoughts: I will be a successful consultant. I am attracting great clients to me and my business.

Date: May 11, 2006
Title: The Success Principles Author: Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer
Thoughts: I’m going to achieve all the good I can imagine now and even more.

Date: May 16, 2006
Title: Self-Love
Author: Robert H. Schuller
Thoughts: “Man is a dignity seeker” (quote from the book).

Date: June 26, 2006
Title: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Tested by Time Author: James L. Garlow
Thoughts: “I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private,” Socrates.

Other parts of What I Read
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6

God Wants You to Be Rich by Paul Zane Pilzer

Pilzer, Paul Zane. God Wants You to Be Rich. New York: Touchstone Faith, 1995.

Pilzer believes we can all have an abundance of what we need to live well. His belief is based on two concepts, one theological and the other technological.

The theological concept is that God is good. God is a generous creator who supplied all the materials we need and a wise parent who leads us to learn to use these resources.

The technological concept is that our inventiveness has and will continue to make more and better things available to us to meet our needs for less cost. We are able to use more of the resources we have and more efficiently use those resources that have long been available to us.

Based on these concepts, Pilzer imagines and economic theory based on abundance instead of scarcity. He calls this theory economic alchemy and lays out the principles and laws that define his viewpoint.

The principles of economic alchemy rest transformational quality of technology. Technology defines supply because it determines the resources available to us. Advancement in technology depends on our ability to process information, which has greatly increased in recent decades. Economic growth is possible in those areas where better technology is available, but not widely used.

While Pilzer deals largely with supply, and how the supply of almost everything we need is expanded greatly and rapidly by technology, he also deals with demand. Human demand of goods and services is similarly unlimited. Unlimited demand is not a bad thing because we don’t just want more and more of what we have. We want better. Much of what we want now didn’t exist 50 years ago, and new technology will similarly change the demands of future decades.



Pilzer doesn’t throw out the old theories. He sees himself as harkening back to theories as old as the Bible and updating more recent theories with something economist couldn’t have foreseen a century ago, the rapid development of new technologies.

This isn’t just an abstract book of theoretical and alchemical obscurities. Pilzer presents the economic trends of the last century in terms of how they are explained by economic alchemy and how they are generally better for societal wealth than politicians and the media may have represented them.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

We may convince ourselves that we are decisive beings, making choices and reasoning our way through problems. Duke University researchers found that 40 percent of our daily activities are habits. Psychologist William James put it more starkly: “All of life, so far as its definite form, is but a mass of habits.” These are just a couple of the sources Charles Duhigg draws from in The Power of Habit.

Habit formation is built into the structure of our brain, as Duhigg describes in the early chapters of the book. It is a matter of efficiency. Thinking and deciding are demanding mental tasks. The brain gains efficiency through automation, chunking together even complex activities into routines we can perform with very little mental effort or attention.

The difficulty with this biological economy is that we form many habits without consciously choosing. Some of those habits may have negative consequences. This is the central point of the book. Habits can make or break us, so it is important to understand habits, how they are formed, and how they can be changed.

There is good news and bad news about habits. The bad news is that the encoding of habits in the brain seems to be permanent. The good news is that they can be overwritten with new, more powerful habits.

Duhigg breaks habits down into parts. A cue triggers the habit. We perform routine. Finally, that routine produces or acquires a reward. Eventually, we conflate the cue a reward, having a strong anticipation of the reward that creates a craving. This craving gives the habit its power. Changing habits involves inserting a new routine between the cue and reward that satisfies the craving (and hopefully producing a more positive result than the bad habit you’re hoping to change).

Changing a habit is difficult. Some habits can only change with much time, effort, and support. There is not one-size-fits-all approach to changing habits, but Duhigg presents a general framework.

·         -First, identify the routine you want to change.

·         -Next, experiment with rewards. By substituting different rewards, and tracking how you feel about it, you can isolate what you are really craving.

·         -Isolate the cue to see what is triggering the habit. Duhigg offers a simple handful of questions that can narrow down your search. Figure out what is happening just before you feel the craving.

·         -Finally, develop plan to implement a new routine that satisfies the craving. It will also be good to plan how you are going to handle the inevitable setbacks you’ll experience as you change your habits.

I was surprised by the moral stand on habits Duhigg took in the latter chapters of the book. He argues that if you know you have a habit that is dangerous or destructive, you have an obligation to do something about it. Fortunately, awareness of a habit puts you on the path to being able to do something about it. Unfortunately, that may be a rocky, uncomfortable, and difficult path.

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

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

No Excuses by Brian Tracy

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012.

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: Knopf, 2004.


Ellis organizes his biography of the first President of the United States along the lines of Henry Lee’s statement about the man, “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” though he breaks Washington’s life into a few more categories than that. He begins with Washington’s youth on the frontier and follows it through his vigorous retirement.

Ellis presents a man who does not rehearse his past, but seeks lessons from his experience. I’ll take a similar attitude in this review.

One of the things that stands out about Washington is his understanding of models and how to use them. As a youth, he looked up to the landed aristocracy that ruled Virginia and proceeded to become a man in much the same mode. As head of the Continental Army, he looked to Roman general Fabius Cunctator who won through retreat, preserving his army from battles he couldn’t win, even though Washington warred against his on adventurous nature to fight such a war. As a retiring general who could have received great political power from a grateful nation, he looked to Cicero, who retired to his farm when his duty was completed.

Washington also knew how to break with models and go his own way. He twice came out of retirement to lend his reputation to efforts to build an American nation, first to preside over the Constitutional Convention, second to serve as president under the new constitution.

Another notable thing about Washington’s life is the balance he struck between ambition and virtue. Only an ambitious and opportunistic man could have accomplished what he did; he accumulated great wealth and power. However, he held on to power lightly and readily let it go, though he seemed a little more attached to wealth. His virtues restrained his ambitions.

Finally, Washington was a realist. He was certainly a man of high ideals, but he didn’t expect to see people and nations conform themselves to ideals. Just as he had to restrain himself from excesses, so did others. This is clearly where he differed from Thomas Jefferson and his Ant-Federalist faction; Washington didn’t believe in a naturally virtuous class of citizen who would naturally uphold republican values. People pursued their interests; that went double for nations.

Washington was the right man at the right time. His insight into models, ambition, virtue and realism were just what the nascent nation needed to rally it together and lead it through the rough patches that could have broken it to pieces.

New & Interesting Stuff Aug. 22, 2012

The great hindrance to worship is...that we are willing to settle for such pitiful pleasures

The notion that to desire our own good…is a bad thing...is no part of the Christian faith

Just Say Thanks! by R. T. Kendall

New & Interesting Stuff Aug. 10, 2012

We are commanded to feel, not just think or decide

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Eggerichs, Emerson. Love and Respect. Nashville: Integrity, 2004.

When I first heard about this book a few years ago, it was misrepresented a little. There was a lot of discussion about the concept that wives should give their husbands unconditional respect. This was a novel idea, which may be why it got most of the attention, and many women met it with confusion and suspicion.

The book has just as much to say to husbands, and it directs them to give unconditional love to their wives. In fact, as the title implies, love and respect go hand in hand.



The basic premise is that women value love and men value respect. This leads them to have very different perspectives. In a marriage, these differing perspectives can cause serious misunderstanding that spin out of control.

Eggerichs refers to this situation as the crazy cycle. Trying to get love from their husbands, women do things that seem disrespectful to men. Trying to get respect from their wives, men do things that seem unloving to their wives. Without live, wives react without respect. Without respect, husbands act without live. Unless one of the spouses steps up to try something different, this cycle accelerates, damaging the marriage.

That leads to the alternative, which Eggerichs calls the energizing cycle. A wife’s respect motivates her husband’s love. A husband’s love motivates his wife’s respect. I doesn’t matter which spouse starts, but someone has to start even though it can be difficult. Eggerichs' confidence that this will work is in his assumption that each spouse has good will. It not a spouse’s intent to be disrespectful or unloving, they’re just trying a misguided strategy to get the respect or love they desire. When one spouse makes the effort to treat the other respectfully or lovingly, the other will be won over and respond with love or respect. It is an application to marriage of Zig Ziglar’s axiom that you can get what you want by helping others get what they want. A couple that makes a concerted effort to treat each other this way can keep themselves energized and spend a lot less time on the crazy cycle.

In the life of a Christian, there is a relationship that is even more important than the marriage. Our relationship with God is the basis of the rewarded cycle. Regardless of how our spouse reacts, when we treat them with love and respect, we are being loving, respectful and obedient to God. God, who is looking to give eternal rewards to his children for good works, takes pleasure in this. (Eggerichs’ isn’t saying we earn salvation through any kind of good work because that is the free gift of God in Christ and something we could never get on our own merits.) This life of obedience can lead to a freedom, maturity and relationship with God that is joyful and valuable even for those who can draw their spouses onto the energizing cycle.

Most of the chapters are devoted to the energizing cycle and how wives can show respect to their husbands and husbands can show respect to their wives. Eggerichs uses helpful anagrams. Each of these chapters ends with a short list of practical ways to show love or respect to a spouse. The appendices also include ways to remind ourselves to be loving or respectful and to ask for the love or respect we need.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Journalist Erik Vance grew up in a Christian Science home. Though he no longer adheres to the religion, he believed that he experienced and heard many true stories of seemingly miraculous healing. The not miraculous, but still amazing source of these improvements in health may be in the brain. Vance recounts his search for answers in Suggestible You.

Our brains are hard at work predicting what will happen next; we are constantly expecting. What we perceive, and how our brain reacts is powerfully affected by expectation. Our expectations are shaped by suggestion. Though suggestion has many forms, at the heart of each is a story. It doesn’t have to be an actually true story; it just needs to be plausible and resonant.

One area where the power of suggestion is apparent is the placebo effect. Our bodies produce chemicals that can make us feel better, and sometimes it just takes a good suggestion to get it to do so. A placebo is such a suggestion. Placeboes contain no drugs that should be effective and can take many forms such as a pill, a shot, a fake surgery or even the presence of a professional who seems competent and caring. Placeboes work so well that on certain type of diseases that they are better that many treatments.

The effectiveness of placeboes presents a problem for medical researchers. How do you sort out the effect of a treatment from the placebo effect? Modern medical research requires testing to show that a treatment is more effective that a placebo. In the United States, the law requiring such studies was introduced by Senator Estes Kefauver, who readers of this blog may know from his anti-comic book hearings.

There is also a nocebo effect, essentially the brains response to a suggestion that makes us sick. Noceboes are connected to fear, so they are in a sense supercharged in comparison to placeboes.

Vance looks into other ways suggestions can affection or brains, particularly hypnosis and false memories. Science provides some answers for how these things work. Placeboes seem to be tied to chemicals released by the brain, though there seem to be several at work and they may represent only a few of the ways placeboes my work in our incredibly complex brains. Hypnosis is not the same as placebo and its workings remain mysterious.

Suggesting affects us in ways outside of health. Marketers are particularly interested in our suggestibility. Our expectations can influence the way food tastes and our perceptions of value.

Vance finds hope in the still incomplete science of how expectation affects our health. Those who are susceptible to placebo or hypnosis (not necessarily the same people) may have a host of options for coaxing out the healing powers of their own bodies. Better understanding of how these things work may help us make better treatments for those who are less susceptible. He envisions a day when placeboes and hypnotism may be treatments medical professionals apply in much the way the use drugs or surgeries.

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

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Vance, Erik. Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2016.

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Maltz, Maxwell.  Creative Living for Today.  1967.  New York: Pocket Books, 1973.

Maxwell Maltz is known for his self-help books, especially Psycho-Cybernetics.  He got into the field because of observations he made as a plastic surgeon.  He found that the change in appearance he created brought about a transformation in some, freeing them to be happy, engaged people.  Others were just as depressed and disappointed after the surgery as before.  The difference, he decided, was self-image.

In Creative Living for Today, Maltz encourage people to have a positive, realistic self-image.  He says life should be lively: creative, interesting, engaging, adventurous.  For too many, life is dull, disconnected, and fearful.  We can choose which kind of life we lead, and it is largely a matter of how we think about ourselves.

Maltz intends the book to be practical inspiration for living the good life.  In it, he offers advice on how to practically improve your self-image and your life.

Goals are very important to Maltz. Large and small, long-term and daily, goals give us something to move toward.  Goals and self-image have an effect on each other.  To pursue a goal, we must be able to image we can achieve it.  Achieving challenging, realistic goals strengthens our self-image as people who can succeed.  In addition, activity and productivity is pleasurable in itself.  Endeavor to enjoy what you do.

Engagement is another major issue for the author.  To withdraw from life, and especially to isolate yourself from other people, is to separate yourself from pleasure.  Relationships with people are some of the greatest things we can enjoy.  Admittedly, life and relationships can be difficult, but that is something we all face.  Maltz argues that engagement is good, even necessary, and if we see ourselves as capable of living well and having good relationships even in the face of difficulties, which he says is true, then our self-image will help us live it.

Maltz doesn’t present a world where we can have perfection if we just think right.  Everybody gets hurt; we all have emotional scars.  Maturity is learning to accept this imperfect world and living creatively in it.  We must occasionally create some mental space for ourselves to be refreshed so we can engage life with energy, learn to forgive ourselves and others, and constantly tend our self-image.

Maltz illustrates his points with many stories.  Most of these come from his own life, sometimes his dealings with patients, but often drawing on other experiences.

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

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

The Velveteen Principles by Toni Raiten-D’Antonio

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Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott’s little book on prayer, Help, Thanks, Wow, is not a theological work, it is a personal essay.  Of course, there is theology.  Lamott suggests prayer is important whatever your conception of god, be it something from a formal religion or just a notion of something bigger than ourselves.  Even an atheist can pray.  Prayer is communication for our hearts to something else, something greater.

As the title suggest, she considers three prayers particularly important.  The first is, “Help.”  Praying “Help” is a way to admit we don’t have the answers or power to solve a problem.  We let go and trust that something bigger has good answers and power to achieve good results, even if it is not exactly what we want.  I see in this prayer not just a reaching out for aid, but a practice of humility.  It is amazing how near we can find God to be when we are humble.

I have written elsewhere that I consider gratitude to be essential to a happy life.  Lamott’s second prayer is, “Thanks.”  It is an important courtesy to thank those who help us, and if you seem to receive mysterious, improbable help from strangers, or no human agent at all, maybe a prayer of thanks would be in order.  Lamott suggests that we pray our thanks even when we don’t get what we want.  We should be thankful things were not worse.  We should be thankful that things are somehow okay even though we didn’t get what we want, even though something bad happened.  Gratitude is a path to peace and character.

The final prayer is, “Wow.”  It is an expression of wonder and awe.  Sometimes we experience something that blows us away: the beauty of nature and art, the love of others, the changes we see in ourselves, and other wonders.  Wow is a great prayer because it shows we can still sense and appreciate the amazing things around us.

As I mentioned, the book is personal.  It is not a detailed autobiography.  She tells enough of a story to illustrate a point, often that life sucks sometimes, and moves on.  The book has a very informal, conversational tone.  Lamott doesn’t come across as someone making an argument for the importance of prayer, she is simply talking about something that is important to her and explaining why she finds in meaningful.

Lamott, Anne.  Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.  New York: Riverhead, 2012.

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Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck

According to Heather McCloskey Beck, you were meant for a unique life of creativity and meaning. Many of us are pushed away from that life for various reasons and become disappointed and dissatisfied. In her book Take the Leap, Beck describes a path for reconnecting to your calling.

The first and last parts of the book are pretty woo-woo (to borrow a term from Jen Sincero). I admit I mostly skimmed these sections and I think other readers can without missing much of the meat of the book. The middle section contains advice and practices for getting back in touch with your calling, the creative meaningful life you’re meant to enjoy.

The key practice is to set aside 15 minutes a day to do something you enjoy—make no exceptions.  Beck suggests some exercises you can do to get some ideas if you feel at a loss for what this might be. I suspect that your first guess doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do it 15 minutes a day for a month, taking time to reflect on it as Beck suggests, and you’ll learn things that help you get closer on the next round.

The book contains several other practices to support your new path. Beck recommends using affirmations to counteract the negative messages you’ve picked up and open yourself to the possibility of a deeply meaningful life. Her book includes several suggestions for meditation. Many of us have too much stuff and do too many things;  we need to reduce the clutter, say no, and set boundaries in our relationships. Good health is important, too.

I was surprised to find that I’m already using some of Beck’s suggestions. I’ve read many self-help books, so I should have learned something.

One of the suggestions I’m just starting to practicing is the intentional reflection on the connection between how I feel and what I do. This also includes reflecting on how I feel when I don’t do things. This is a method for discovering your calling because when you do things associated with your calling it will tend to produce feelings of flow, peace, excitement and passion. When you’re not doing things you love, you miss them. (This type of reflection reminds me of the metacognition discussed by Ulrich Boser in Learn Better, which is important for learning.)

Beck, Heather McCloskey. Take the Leap: Do What You Love 15 Minutes a Day and Create the Life of Your Dreams. San Francisco: Conari Press, 2013.

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

Bayard, Pierre. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.

Regarding talking about books you haven’t read, Pierre Bayard might echo the Nike slogan, “Just do it.” Books are so much a part of a larger culture, so quickly forgotten and so interpreted through the internal experiences of readers that having read one brings little advantage to discussing it.

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read has three major parts, possibly an accidental homage to the lessons of a composition class. Bayard considers the issue of reading and non-reading (and how hard it is to tell one from the other), the social context of talking about non-read books and offers a new model for discussing books.

Reading is largely a matter of non-reading. We can’t possibly read every book there is, so the choice to read some is necessarily a choice to not read others, and a cultured person may choose to not read any of them. We may read every page or skim, and skimming may be a better way to understand a book as a whole. Even when we read a book, we immediately start to forget it. We hear about books we haven’t read.

This puts us in the position of talking about books we haven’t read (at all, or just skimmed, or forgot) whenever we discuss books. Bayard describes several such social situations, throughout building a case that what we really end up discussing is virtual book, made up of our own internal conceptions of the book and its place in the common library of our culture (including other books we probably haven’t read). He argues that we can’t exactly discuss a book because of all the factors of non-reading. Instead, a book becomes a pretext for discussion, a mental place for building common ground for communication (or so completely devoid of common understanding that people end up talking to themselves in exchanges with others).

In light of all of this, Bayard recommends laying aside the grade school shame of non-reading and discussing books anyway. He carries this pretty far, arguing that books are not fixed and we invent books out of our non-reading rather that discuss the books themselves. Discussions about books are really means of discovering and expressing ourselves.

Bayard can make our interactions with books seem so abstract and subjective that it may truly be best to not read them at all. Since he is a literature professor and an author, he probably doesn’t want people to actually go that far. His point is to get away from a narrow view of books and reading that limits the way people talk about them and move toward more creative and cultured engagement.