Month: September 2018

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Survival Guide for the Soul | Book Review

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Kurt Vonnegut included a philosophy joke in one of his novels. It looked like this: “To be is to do.” — Socrates “To do is to be.” — Jean-Paul Sartre “Do be do be do.” — Frank Sinatra I can’t vouch for Vonnegut’s take on Socrates or Sartre, but I will say this: Any person who can be as well as they do lives as well as Sinatra could sing. Ken Shigematsu opens Survival Guide for the Soul by distinguishing between doing and being. Drawing on an insight about Genesis 1–2 by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Shigematsu speaks of “Striving Adam” … Continue reading Survival Guide for the Soul | Book Review

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Think, Love, Succeed | Book Review

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Having heard good things about Dr. Caroline Leaf, I was prepared to be impressed by her new book, Think, Learn, Succeed. I was not, unfortunately. The book was like a stew gone bad, filled with ingredients that are tasty by themselves but not in combination with others. Here are the book’s ingredients I found tasty. First, the book is about “mental self-care,” about “a lifestyle of cognitive transformation that is both sustainable and organic.” As a middle-aged man, I certainly want my cognitive functions to remain sharp. Second, the book emphasizes changing one’s mindsets from negative to positive, developing an … Continue reading Think, Love, Succeed | Book Review

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Leadership in Turbulent Times | Book Review

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The best way to study leadership is to study leaders. How they exercised influence in their contexts provides examples of how we can do so in ours. For this reason, it is paramount for leaders to be well-versed in biography and history, the knowledge of people and their times. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times provides case studies of the leadership of four U.S. presidents at critical junctures in their administrations: Abraham Lincoln exemplifies transformational leadership as he expanded the North’s war aims from union to emancipation through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Theodore Roosevelt provides a model … Continue reading Leadership in Turbulent Times | Book Review

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Didn’t See It Coming | Book Review

georgepwood

Next year, I turn 50. I am neither the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed twentysomething I used to be, nor the worn-out old man yelling, “Get off my lawn!” that I sometimes fear becoming. Instead, I am in between. In between is a weird place to be. You’re neither where you started nor where you’re going. You’ve come a long way, but you’ve still got a long way to go. The journey has given you road-tested experience, but that experience has dulled your wariness of what’s just around the corner. So, when trouble strikes, you don’t see it coming. Carey Nieuwhof didn’t write … Continue reading Didn’t See It Coming | Book Review

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Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts | The Coddling of the American Mind

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In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt show that there is an analogy between the way many students on campus reason about current events and the distorted automatic thoughts identified by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). They go on to provide a list of those distorted thoughts, which I’m posting here: MIND READING: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” FORTUNE-TELLING: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get … Continue reading Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts | The Coddling of the American Mind

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The Coddling of the American Mind | Book Review

georgepwood

“This is a book about wisdom and its opposite,” write Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind. “It is a book about three psychological principles and about what happens to young people when parents and educators—acting with the best of intentions—implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles.” In my opinion, it is also a book every American concerned with the future of our nation’s public discourse and democratic culture should read. And yes, I am serious about that. The Coddling of the American Mind grew out of the increased support among college students for … Continue reading The Coddling of the American Mind | Book Review

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Sword and Scimitar | Book Review

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In his 1996 bestseller, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington argued “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world.” He went on to describe several civilizational cohorts, but a comment on Islam is germane here: “In the early 1990s, Muslims were engaged in more intergroup violence than were non-Muslims, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars were between Muslims and non-Muslims.” Then came his famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) conclusion: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so … Continue reading Sword and Scimitar | Book Review

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How to Create a Volunteer-Friendly Culture at Your Church | Influence Podcast

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God designed the Church to run on volunteer power. Every member of the congregation is a spiritually gifted individual, after all, called and empowered to do “the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12, ESV). And yet, many churches experience a chronic shortage of volunteers. What is the cause of this shortage, and what can pastors and other church leaders do about it? Those are the questions Influence magazine I talk about with Jill Fox in Episode 153 of the Influence Podcast. Fox is ministry initiatives and next gen pastor at Westwood Community Church in Excelsior, Minnesota, and co-author, with Leith Anderson, … Continue reading How to Create a Volunteer-Friendly Culture at Your Church | Influence Podcast

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Depth of Winter | Book Review

georgepwood

Depth of Winteris Craig Johnson’s fourteenth novel featuring lawman Walt Longmire, and to be honest, it is a disappointment. I say this with regret because I am a fan of the Longmire series, having read all thirteen previous novels as well as the two novellas and collection of short stories. My basic rule for fiction is whether it keeps me turning pages. On that account, the novel failed. I had to force myself to keep reading. This surprised me. The setup of the novel is good. At the end of The Western Star, Longmire’s archnemesis Tomas Bidarte had kidnapped Cady, … Continue reading Depth of Winter | Book Review

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To Heal the World? | Book Review

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Tikkun olamis Hebrew for “to heal the world.” It has become a popular catchphrase among leftwing American Jewish rabbis and social activists. According to them, it is an ancient teaching of Judaism, and therefore a religious foundation for their politics. The only problem is that it isn’t. At least that’s what Jonathan Neumann concludes in To Heal the World. He argues that tikkun olamprovides a religious covering for a political ideology that has been arrived at via nonreligious means. And that political ideology is “social justice.” Here’s how Neumann defines that political ideology: “Social justice is a political philosophy that … Continue reading To Heal the World? | Book Review