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

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

In a previous job, I worked in the field of industrial safety.  This is partly a matter of regulation, so there was often great concern about the rules. Though it was necessary to follow the rules, I also wanted to people to think. If they were going to be safe in reality, they needed to be aware, use their imagination, solve problems and ask for help.

I found a parallel to this in P. M. Forni’s approach to civility. As he put it in Choosing Civility, “Consideration is imagination in a moral track.”

In the early chapters Forni considers the notion of civility and how it relates to courtesy, politeness and manners. He wrote, “Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect and consideration into the fabric of this awareness. Civility is a form of goodness; it is gracious goodness.” Civility is the art of living well with others.

The second part of the book includes brief chapters on the rules of civility. In some cases, Forni prescribes some behavior, but in mostly this is an exploration of how awareness, respect and consideration of others can practiced in various ways.

I think a few of these worth highlighting. The first of Forni’s rules is to be attentive. Your attention is one of the most important and valuable things you can give to someone. Paying attention to others is the starting point of showing respect and acting in kindness.

Related to attention is listening. Careful listening is a skill. When practiced well, it can build understanding and rapport between people. It requires focus, generosity, responsiveness, restraint and cooperation.

I think Forni’s admonition to avoid complaining is especially worthy. We have legitimate concerns that we should speak up about, but often complaints are just a way to drag people into a negative outlook or some minor problem that is not theirs.

“’Nice’ is something that must be built, something that doesn’t simply happen or come to us out of the blue but instead requires work," P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility

P. M. Forni also wrote The Thinking Life.

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

A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

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

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Forni, P. M. Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together is the fourth volume of a six-volume work by Bryan Lee O’Malley. In reviewing other volumes of the series, I’ve mentioned that the story is a pilgrimage. In this volume, things start moving.

Nothing signals a figurative move like an actual move. Scott’s friend and bandmate, Kim, moves from her apartment into a house with some friends. One of these friends has sound editing equipment, so Scott’s band, Sex Bob-omb, moves from playing clubs to recording an album. Eventually, Scott is forced to move because the lease is up on the apartment he shares with Wallace.

The important moves in the series, though, are Scott’s stumbling from an extended adolescence toward adulthood. His internal challenges are represented by external challenges. In order to have a place to go when he leaves the apartment he shares with Wallace, he proposes to move in with Ramona. One can imagine how disastrous this might be in the state of their relationship at the start of the book; Scott must make an emotional move to Ramona and responsibility first.

This emotional move is achieved in several stages. Scott practices self-control by resisting the temptation for an easy, breezy summer fling with a woman he knew from school who has a crush on him. He takes on responsibility by getting his first job as a dishwasher at age 23.

His other conflicts are represented or resolved in combat. It wouldn’t be Scott Pilgrim without cool fight scenes. His relationship with Ramona is haunted by his not actually broken off relationship with Knives. Knives’ vengeful father hunts down and attacks Scott. In addition, another of Ramona’s evil exes arrives. It’s neat that he survives combat with Mr. Chau and defeats Roxie. The powerful actions he takes are to confess his love to Ramona, accept the baggage of her past, and treat Mr. Chau (an through him Knive’s) with respect.

Self-control, responsibility, love, acceptance, and respect are a decent set of virtues for a young man to practice. Scott is not perfect, but his journey isn’t to perfection, it’s to maturity.

Bryan Lee O’Malley also wrote

Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life 

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

Maus by Art Spiegelman 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Film)

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

O’Malley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. Portland, OR: Oni Press, 2007.

February Featured Book

The featured book for February is Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs.

Deal with It! by Paula White

White, Paula. Deal with It! Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

When Paula White says Deal with It! she doesn’t mean “suck it up.” In this book, she urges readers, particularly women, to acknowledge and confront their problems, that is, really deal with it. Fortunately, believers are not left to their own devices to overcome problems. God is ready and able to help His own.

Each chapter is built around a woman from the Bible and White’s view of her central problems. Some are well known names like Ruth, Esther, and Mary Magdalene . Some are not as well known: the Shunammite who welcomed Elisha into her home and Zelophehad’s daughters.



As much as things have changed over thousands of years, people are still people, and the problems these women faced have parallels today. Through God’s help, the women in White’s example overcame bad histories, weak men, lifestyle changes, excessive demands, deep hurt, competition, poor reputations, disappointments, injustices, and overwhelming expectations.

God came through for these women. Of course, as with us, God did not always choose to act immediately or in the ways they might have wanted. However, they trusted Him and persevered faithfully. God will come through, but it is important how we think and act in the meantime. We are called to do what is right, obey proper authority, stand up for justice, and hold onto faith in God all the time, especially in tough times.

White’s style is much like speech. Since she is mainly a speaker and preacher, you might expect it. In some ways, the book reads like a collection of sermons, though the chapters are tightly linked by a central theme.

As in her preaching and other books, White draws on her personal experience. She presents herself as having been a messed up young woman who made many bad decisions, had a head full of bad ideas, and beset with hang-ups. If you’d lived her life, maybe you’d have fallen into the same errors. She’s not complaining, though. She uses these examples to show how God has turned things around for her, just as he did for the Biblical women she writes about.

That is the central issue of the book. Things don’t have to remain as they are. God has the power to change them. However, we must face our problems and deal with them. We can’t let ourselves be derailed by time or difficulties, but trusting and obeying God we can see our lives renewed into something even better than we might have imagined.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Acts
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Genesis
The Gospel of John
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Complaint Free Relationships by Will Bowen

Complaint Free Relationships is a follow-up to Will Bowen’s previous book, A Complaint Free World. The fundamental premise of the first book carries over to the second. Our thoughts create our lives. Our words are indicators of our thoughts. When we become aware of complaining, and the negative thinking it represents, we can choose to think more positively and gain happier results.

Bowen notes that one of the most common things people complain about is relationships. He focuses on the “relate” in relationship. To a great extent our relationships are the stories we tell ourselves about other people. When we complain about someone, aloud or in our minds, we are telling ourselves a story about that person’s behaviors of features that we dislike, and usually ascribe to them negative motivations and traits.

In addition, Bowen says people can pick up the negativity of our internal stories and will generally respond in kind. If you expect the worst of people, you’ll usually get it, and they’ll have a negative view of you, too.

You can reverse this by telling yourself a different story. Have compassion. Don’t leap to conclusions about someone’s motives or personality. Tell yourself a story that is compassionate, understanding, and positive. People will sense this as well, and will respond positively.

Of course, we can’t always change are minds with the snap of a finger. In some cases we must deal with truly difficult people. Sometime we are troubled by ingrained problems of our own.

Bowen offers advice for dealing with these tougher cases. We can understand our own, or others, motivations to complain and deal with them. We can take responsibility to see that our needs are met instead of complaining about our frustrations. Instead of venting our anger (it only makes us angrier), we can undertake to process our emotions. Many of these techniques can be adapted to improving the relationship we have without ourselves, which affects all our relationships.

Complaining is particularly damaging to relationships. Research sited by Bowen demonstrates that complaining is a major cause of the failure of relationships. You don’t have to live with bad relationships or watch them fall apart. If you’re willing to change your perspective and take on the challenges of personal growth, you can see you relationships improve, and even become sources of fun and joy.

Will Bowen also wrote A Complaint Free World. If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Stop Whining, Start Living by Dr. Laura

Bowen, Will. Complaint Free Relationships: How to Positively Transform Your Personal, and Love Relationships. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Bartlett, Allison Hoover. The Man Who Loved Books too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. New York: Riverhead, 2009.

I like books. You probably do, too. People like books for different reason. I, and many people I know, love reading. Others enjoy and appreciate books as pieces of history, as art, for associations with their authors or previous owners, as objects with various qualities.

Some people own books because of what the books they own say about them. John Gilkey is such a person. The down side of books is they can be expensive, especially fine are rare books that might burnish the image of their owners. Gilkey had a unique way of overcoming this obstacle. He stole books.


Bartlett seems reluctant to focus on Gilkey. It’s partly because she is reluctant to seem to glorify a criminal or give an outlet to a criminal who is intent on burnishing his image. It’s also because the true story has other interesting participants, especially bookseller Ken Sander who has taken upon himself to track down book thieves. She also seeks to understand the kind of compulsion that goes into collecting, especially when that compulsion drives someone to crime.

It’s a little scary how easily Gilkey accomplished fraud and theft. He took the opportunity to steal a little information, and then picked up the phone to use it to steal books. What is scarier is his capacity for self-justification. Self-justification is a common human activity, but Gilkey has mastered it such a degree that he seems to have almost no conscience. It may be good fortune that his fixation is books and the easy criminal, but not violent, way of acquiring them.

The book is weakest in this last respect. Bartlett didn’t seem to understand the collector’s drive much better at the end of the book than at the beginning. I didn’t. The Man Who Loved Books too Much works as a story about interesting or unusual people.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Leviticus

Leviticus. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Leviticus continues the story of the Israelite nation from Genesis and Exodus. God took the Israelites out of oppression in Egypt, as describe in Exodus, and preparing them to be a nation when He leads them into a new land. Characteristics of the Israelite nation were to be its religion and its government. Leviticus deals with the religious and civil laws that were mostly administered by the Levites, a clan that God set aside for His service. In particular, Aaron and his descendents, part of the clan of Levi, were set aside for the priestly duties that involved the closest proximity to God. Much of Leviticus deals with the religious ceremonies the Israelites were to observe, especially the role and conduct of the priests in these ceremonies. The priests served as intermediaries between God and His people. The priests were set apart for God and were to be treated as holy, as was everything set apart for God. The people made various types of offerings as an acknowledgment of their sinfulness and their debt to God, who accepted their sacrifices to atone for their sins. The death and blood of animals substituted for the loss of life that was the consequence of sin. In Christianity, the understanding is that these sacrifices foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is sufficient for the sins of all people in all times. Further, Jesus fulfills the priestly role of intermediary and advocate before God-the-Father. Because Jesus is God, He and His Father are one, Christians enjoy a direct relationship with God. Some of the chapters of Leviticus deal with moral and civil laws. These laws involve property, farming and husbandry, marriage, self-care, foreigners, protection of life, and other matters. We see embodied in these laws a principle that is emphasized throughout the Bible. Kindness to others and generosity to the needy are prized behaviors. God called the Israelites to love their neighbors. They were to pay workers promptly and not charge excessive interest on loans, even leave food in their fields for the poor to collect. They were to make gifts and loans to the poor. They were to care for widow and orphans, especially their relatives. An extraordinary requirement was that Israelites were to treat law-abiding foreigners who dwelt among them with the same love, respect, and protection of law as natives. As we see in the preceding books, God is active in Leviticus. Moses is God’s prophet and Aaron is His priest, but God is the motivating force and active agent. Leviticus, like the rest of the Bible, doesn’t depict man reaching out to God; it shows God reaching out to man. If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in Genesis The Gospels Exodus

Valentines Day Links

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, is arguably one of the first computer scientists in history. She wrote what some considered the first computer program about a century before any computer was built, especially anything we would recognize as computer. James Essinger presents a summary of her life, and particularly a defense of her accomplishments, in Ada’s Algorithm.

In any discussion relating to the Byrons, it’s easy to get distracted by Lovelace’s father. In addition to being a famous poet, he lived a high life (often on the money of others) and had many lovers. Lady Byron, who separated from Byron and preserved her family wealth from his extravagances, made sure their only daughter had minimal contact with him. Lovelace had an education in math and science very unlike other women of her time because Lady Byron hoped it might counterbalance any of the excesses the girl may have inherited from the wild Byrons.

Lovelace took to math quite well. In a later age, she might have become a professional mathematician. In her own 1800s, her tutors sometimes complained that she reached too far for a woman, and strove to grasp at realms of math that only men had the stamina to explore. Fortunately her mother, and later her husband, William, Lord King, Baron of Ockham (later elevated to Earl of Lovelace), did not let such foolishness restrain her mathematical education.

She was still quite young, only 17, when she met the much older Charles Babbage, inventor of the partly build Difference Engine and never built Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was a calculating machine that could be programmed using punch cards. Though it was a mechanical device, not an electronic computer, Babbage’s structure (processor, memory, input and output) is the same structure of modern computers. Not only did Babbage conceive of computers a century before one was built, he drew plans for substantially completing such a machine, though the manufacturing technology of the time could not have made the parts required.

Lovelace was a friend of Babbage for many years. In 1843, about 10 years after they met, Lovelace published a paper explaining the operation and capabilities of Babbage’s machine. She had an even larger vision of it than the inventor. He saw the Analytical Engine as a tool for performing complex calculations accurately. She saw that it could do more than mathematical calculations; it could manipulate any symbols in almost any way instructed, so it might “compose” music by manipulating notes according so some rules, or perform logical functions, or handle any other information that might be digitized. She foresaw that what we now call computer science would become a discipline distinct from math.

She thought the paper might be better received if it was unsigned, but at the encouragement of her husband she published it under her initials. It was quickly discovered that “A. A. L.” was a woman, and almost a quickly dismissed as irrelevant. It wasn’t until the 20^th Century, when people were actually building digital computers, that the work of Babbage and Lovelace received some respect. Though modern computers do not have a technological connection to the Analytical Engine that was never built, it certainly has a strong conceptual connection.

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

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Essinger, James. Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age. 2013. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2014.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

Malmont, Paul. The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

There is trouble in Chinatown. The war god that sets faction against faction in Asia stretches a tentacle across the world to stir plots and revenge in America. Heroes rise to meet this menace, very unlikely heroes: writers.

Malmont takes real life writers of pulp magazines, who he clearly regards with great respect and affection, and puts fictional versions of them in the middle of the kind of adventure they may have written. Some of these writers were legends in their time, but may be little know today. For instance, the main characters are Walter Gibson, who wrote The Shadow as Maxwell Grant, and Lester Dent, who penned Doc Savage as Kenneth Robeson. Other names may be more familiar to modern readers of genre fiction, especially L. Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein. H. P. Lovecraft plays a brief but pivotal role in a creepy way suited to his weird tales. Several lesser know pulp writers play lesser roles in the story.

I enjoyed these intrusions of biography into the wild fiction. I don’t think anyone would need to be a fan of pulps to enjoy the book. If someone enjoys adventure stories, he’ll probably enjoy this one. The characters sometimes discuss what might be real, if improbable, and what is pulp, a good yarn. Malmont puts the pulp first.

Malmont achieves the right balance of fact and fiction by throwing out the balance. It’s fiction first. The reality is informative and fun, but Malmont makes it work double duty. It is biography and history, but it also helps the reader connect to the characters and their world, which does much to serve the fictional story.

The best thing about the book is that it is fun. It’s a thriller that thrills. It’s a twisty tale that doesn’t try to throw the reader, but sweep them along.

Ephesians

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

Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus from prison. Some think this letter may have been a circular intended for several churches because of the lack of personal greetings that are common in Paul’s other epistles. His theme is far from imprisonment. He writes of liberty, unity, and harmony.

In other letter, the apostle to the Gentiles addresses the error of some Jewish converts that one must convert to Judaism and keep the law and traditions of that religion as part of converting to Christianity. Paul reiterates that the law can only condemn sinful people who don’t keep in every regard; we are dependent on the grace of God, executed in Christ, if we want to be rescued from death and live a new life that is pleasing to God. Freedom from the law is not a license to behave immorally; it’s a new way of living where we are governed by love instead of rules and the Holy Spirit living in us empowers us to do good instead of all the evil things that previously enslaved us.

Because all Christians are partakers of the same grace, both Jews and Gentiles, the church should be unified. It is God’s plan that we should be in relationship with our fellows in Christ, helping each other, working together, and loving one another. There may be a distinction in Jewish heritage and history, but all Christians have the same faith whatever their background.

Grace and unity in the church should be characterized by harmonious relationships. Paul addresses how Christians related to each other and in this letter he specifically addresses marriage, family, and work relationships. In relationships, Christ is our model. The way he treats us, he held nothing back and even suffered a painful, humiliating death to rescue us, should inform the way we treat others, especially those who are under our authority or vulnerable because the don’t have the protectors in life that others may have. As we love others we should also respect others, especially those God has put in our lives for our provision, protection, and upbringing.

In a nutshell, the message of Ephesians is let love rule. This is the broken, partial, conditional, imperfect love that typifies human relationships. It is the perfect, pure love of God, love we can hardly understand. It is love we firs receive from God. God living in us makes us able to share this love with others. Paul doesn’t directly refer to Jesus’ statement that the brotherhood of believers would be recognized by their love for each other, but the notion runs through the letter.



Paul also wrote
First Corinthians
Galatians (216)
Romans
Second Corinthians

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

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

HeLa is an immortal human cell line. It is immortal in the sense that the cells will live and grow in culture indefinitely. Since it was first cultured in 1951, the cell line has been an important part of medical research. It was used to develop vaccines for polio and HPV (Human Papilloma Virus). It has been used to study cancer, HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), other diseases and drugs to treat them. HeLa cells have made medical science as we know it possible.

These cells came from a real person. Her name was Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor, black woman who went to Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment of what turned out to be cancer. The cells were taken from a tumor by a doctor who was treating her.

Cancer took the life of Henrietta Lacks, but her immortality in the form of the cell line has caused a lot of pain and distress for her descendants. Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta, her family, the HeLa cells and their legacy in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

It is a bit unusual in a book of biography or scientific history to write in the first person, but is the approach taken by Skloot. In order to emphasize the humanity of Henrietta, she tells a personal story of her research and the relationship she develops with the Lacks family, especially Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah.

This is important. It’s easy to get swept up in all the incredible results that have been produced from developing and testing with the HeLa cell line. It is harder to look at the individual lives on people, especially when those people are treated with little respect by the scientists and physicians who are benefiting from the cells taken from her mother.

These men saw little if anything wrong in what they did by taking the cells and growing them. They were doing what was legal at the time (and still legal) and in keeping with the ethical standards of the time. There is still much debate over the ethics of using human tissues in research. Though there are standards related to samples taken from humans, the only legally binding ones relate to federally-funded research. Issues of informed consent, ownership, and commercialization are still being worked out. If you’re a corpse, the law is fairly clear. If you’re a participant in a research study, legal and ethical standards assure some level of informed consent. If tissues are taken from a living patient for purposes of diagnosis or treatment, what can happen to those tissues is up for grabs.

I think this is a book worth reading. HeLa is an interesting scientific story. The ethical issues related to research using human tissues deserves more attention that it gets. I think the most important thing to remember is that the things we do affect human beings. Science, law and philosophy can become so abstract they are nearly pointless if we lose sight of how the things we say and do, individually and as a society, affect the lives of real people.

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

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown, 2010.

200 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews

First Time Reviews

365 Thank Yous by John Kralik
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Acts
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Batman created by Bob Kane

Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil
The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski
Exodus
Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall
God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson
The Gospel of John

The Gospels
Have a New You by Friday by Kevin Leman
Histories and Fallacies by Carl R. Trueman
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

How to Write & Present Technical Information by Charles H. Sides
How to Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
In the Beginning by Alister McGrath
Jonah Hex created by John Albano and Tone DeZuniga

Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
King James Bible
Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnet
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Numbers
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
Paperboy by Henry Petroski
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel
Romans
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu
Thanks! by Robert A. Emmons
True Blood by Charlaine Harris
The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw
Vital Friends by Tom Rath

Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone
War Against the Weak by Edwin Black
Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick
Writing for Comics with Peter David
Zorro created by Johnston McCulley

Additional and Expanded Reviews

The Holy Bible
Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Tomie de Paola

Continuation of list of 200 books reviewed

First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100
Reviews 101-150

The Introvert's Way by Sophia Dembling

Introverts are coming out of their shells, but in their own way. This isn’t to say they are becoming more introverted. Instead they are demand that the traits they bring are valued. We are not simply “not extroverted.”

Blogger Sophia Dembling is part of this wave of outspoken introverts. She writes about living as an introvert in a culture that values extroversion, and how to become more comfortable with it, in The Introvert’s Way.

Personality is a complex subject. Introversion is one of five personality traits that seem to remain consistent over a person’s lifetime.

Actually, extroversion is the trait that is measured. A typical test defines introversion as a lack of extroversion. Dembling calls this into question. She sees introversion as a way of interacting with external and internal stimulus that is different from extroversion. It is not better or worse and it certainly is not an absence of a personality trait.

Dembling is not shy about taking on extroversion bias in psychology and research. For instance, she wrote about research that showed extroverts to be happier. Even introverts who acted extroverted seemed happier. She found that psychologists have a three pronged definition of happiness, but the researchers used only one. The signs of happiness in this prong are practically synonymous with traits of extroversion. No wonder extroverts seemed happier. Introverts are often happy in their own way.

Much of the book is a discussion of the introverted experience. It can be tough to be introverted in a culture that values extroversion (not all do). How do you deal with well-meaning friends who try to get you to have fun when you’re already perfectly contented? How do you manage your energy, especially when things that get others psyched leave you drained?

Dembling offers advice on these issues. Her core advice is to accept your introversion. You are different and that is fine. You can create a space for you to be you. You can teach you friends to respect who you are just as you have respected their extroversion.

Introverts who begin to embrace who they are can seem like angry turtles at first. However, we are not inclined to disturb our peace with resentment; we move on to living a life we like with a little gentle forcefulness.

I previously wrote about this book in another post.

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

The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron

The Irresistible Introvert by Michaela Chung

Quiet by Susan Cain

Dembling, Sophia. The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. New York: Perigee, 2012.

Lost Connections by Hari Johnson

Depression and anxiety are growing problems in the West. The model of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is breaking down, and antidepressants are ineffective. (I’m not suggesting you should stop taking antidepressants. Even if they are not working out for you, discuss it with your physician first.) Where do we turn to find relief?

 Johann Hari considers this problem in his book Lost Connections. Hari was a long-time sufferer of depression and taker of ever-increasing doses of antidepressants. He was happy with the model that depression was a chemical imbalance that was beyond his control and a pill could fix it. The problem was that a pill didn’t fix it; he was still depressed.

 First, it isn’t all in your head—or even in your chemistry. Though there is a physiological, and even hereditary, aspect to depression that can make some more susceptible, depression is triggered by our experience and social environments. Depression is a symptom of problems in your life. To Hari, depression is essentially a social disease and it requires social treatments.

 Though Hari does not claim to have completely uncovered the causes of depression, he outlines several that are supported by research. He describes them all as types of disconnection.

 For example, many are disconnected from meaningful work. They have no sense of control over their work. There is no connection between effort and reward, and the work can be humiliating drudgery. In addition, work has become much less secure; many have no idea if they’ll have work next week or even tomorrow.

 Related to this is disconnection from status. Research of primates suggests that depression is an expression of low status intended to protect apes from the abuse of their neighbors. In highly stratified cultures, like the United States, stress is higher than in cultures with more status equality. Low status people are under constant stress, and high status people experience extreme stress when their status is challenged.

 Most of all, we are disconnected from other people. We are less likely than ever to belong to a church, club, civic group, professional organization, sports league or similar structure of getting together with other face-to-face, bonding over common interests and building relationships. Neighborhoods are no longer communities; they’re just clusters of homes.

 Though it is more challenging than taking a pill, the solution to depression is to reconnect in those areas where we have become disconnected. It is especially important to reconnect to other people. If you want to feel better, do something to make someone else’s life better.

 The difficulty is that it is hard to get better on your own. Fortunately, if you’re willing to take a step, there are things you can do. On the bigger scale, we need cultural reform that supports personal relationships, meaningful values, meaningful work, empathy, hope and time in natural settings. There is no money to be made in prescribing a community garden, a book club or a job where one is treated with respect, so the money will probably continue to pour into drugs (whether they work or not), until we demand—and start to create for ourselves—something better.

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

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

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

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Vital Friends by Tom Rath

 Hari, Johan. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.