A biblical travelogue—and far funnier than your standard King James.
Esquire editor-at-large Jacobs, who read the entire 2002 Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All (2004), embarks on his second lofty exploit: a year of living the Bible “as literally as possible.”
Like David confronting Goliath, Jacobs stood before his ex-girlfriend’s Bible and pledged to spend the following 12 months (much of that time in New York City) exploring biblical literalism by living the good book as it was originally intended. The author attempted to follow many infamous biblical dictums—growing a beard (he does), eschewing menstruating women (he tries), accepting Creationism, keeping the Sabbath, praying three times a day, dancing before the Lord (and thus attending “the loudest, rowdiest, most drunken party of my life…with several hundred Hasidic men”), stoning blasphemers (a futile pebble toss at a pot-bellied, Sabbath-breaking Avis employee)—and learned in the process that living the Bible literally is baffling and often impossible. Rules like destroying idols and killing magicians, for example, are federally outlawed. Jacobs paid attention to both the Old and New Testaments, and received help from a board of spiritual advisors, “some conservative, some one four-letter word away from excommunication.” His efforts at this daunting task are impressive and often tremendously amusing—though rarely deep or scholarly. The author’s determination despite constant complications from his modern secular life (wife, job, family, NYC) underscores both the absurdity of his plight and its profundity. While debunking biblical literalism—with dinner party–ready scriptural quotes—Jacobs simultaneously finds his spirituality renewed. He discovers that “you can’t immerse yourself in religion for 12 months and emerge unaffected...I didn’t expect to fondle a pigeon egg…or find solace in prayer.”
A biblical travelogue—and far funnier than your standard King James.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9147-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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