A valuable contribution to the evaluation of our knowledge about Jesus by a noted bible scholar. Sanders (Religion/Duke Univ.) returns to the territory of his well-received Jesus and Judaism (not reviewed) to provide an overview of the history of study of the historical Jesus (as opposed to the Christ of faith). He doesn't advance any startling new claims about Jesus; nor does he assume the biographical stance that A.N. Wilson adopted in his Jesus: A Life (1992); but he does offer his own clear summary of what can be accurately said of Jesus of Nazareth. The so-called quest or search for the historical Jesus began in the late 18th century, in the wake of the Enlightenment, and later engaged Albert Schweitzer, among others. At first, scholars thought the real person was easily discoverable behind the mythic accounts of the Gospels. In the 20th century, it became fashionable, Sanders points out, to say that next to nothing could be known about the man. Sanders himself hews to a middle ground: While admitting the difficulties involved in uncovering the historical reality, he nevertheless claims that one can, with reasonable certainty, say quite a lot that is true about Jesus. Sanders presents an outline of Jesus' life and a discussion of his basic beliefs and teachings. He also traces what he discerns as the course of Jesus' ministry and the events leading up to his execution. He places Jesus in both the political setting of the backwater province of the Roman Empire (Judea was then ruled by a fairly independent Herod) and the Judaism of his time. His discussion of the miracles attributed to the man is set against a backdrop of acceptance of magic and miracles generally in the ancient world. Highly readable, this book will be of interest to scholars and accessible to general readers as well. (History Book Club main selection; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selections)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-713-99059-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
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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