An American Type is a posthumous work by Henry Roth. Edited by The New Yorker magazine fiction editor Willing Davidson, An American Type is an autobiographical novel and a continuation of Roth's previous novels, a fact I failed to recognize before requesting a review copy. Set during the Great Depression, Roth's alter ego Ira is [...]
About: Ben Kimball
Website: http://benkimball.wordpress.com
Future integrative social worker, current MSW & MAHS student, energy healing practitioner (eclectic blend of Reiki, Healing Touch, & Therapeutic Touch along with guided imagery and spiritual tools like prayer & meditation)
Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy’s The Ethical Slut is the practical guide for someone who wants to engage in polyamory or open relationships. Easton and Hardy provide valuable practical advice on negotiating boundaries & agreements, practicing safe sex, and the importance of obtaining consent. Many polyamorous forms are explored in this book, along with [...]
Being the only non-Minnesotan in my family, I had to take a history course in college to learn about the state I moved to some sixteen years ago. So in 2004, my second course at Augsburg College was Bill Green's Minnesota History. Green, who recently stepped down after four years serving as Minneapolis' public school [...]
Digging through the self-help and psychology sections of Half-Price Books can be a tedious affair. I have found that Shambhala Publications rarely goes wrong with a book, and Miriam Greenspan's Healing Through the Dark Emotions is a gem. There are few psychological professionals that truly embrace a holistic healing approach, and Greenspan is a leader [...]
Whenever I read psychology books, I am wary of putting in the effort only to just waste my time. For every quality data-driven and well-argued psychology book, there are possibly ten other failures that pander to the latest psychological trend. Whether they fail from poor data analysis or simply rehash known issues, junk psychology books [...]
My tolerance for junk theology and philosophy is very low. Though I have seen many quality self-help books based on sound principles, there are just as many bogus get rich quick scams disguised as self-help. One need only Google prosperity gospel or law of attraction and you'll find the foundation of junk theology and philosophy. [...]
Though Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is not the razor blade & glue job offered by Thomas Jefferson in The Jefferson Bible, it does offer a fresh new look at the human-made Gospels that have shaped Christianity for a couple thousand years. Pullman decided to make Jesus Christ into two [...]
In the Land of Believers is the story of Gina Welch, a secular Jew who decided to go undercover as a Christian convert to figure out what makes evangelical Christians tick. She certainly picked a perfect place to conduct her amateur anthropological experiment: Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. She joined a [...]
In June of 2009, I reviewed Krista Tippett's Speaking of Faith and offered this criticism: “With all of the rapid motion between topics and ideas, I think Tippett herself was drowned out in the written conversation.” Unfortunately, this criticism was amplified in Tippett's new book, Einstein's God. What could have been a brilliant exposition of [...]
Admittedly, I am not the biggest Apostle Paul fan in the world, as I tend to hang out biblically in the Gospels more than the rest of the book. Though Paul's epistles are interesting in a historical sense, I believe Jesus' message and witness as revealed in the Gospels offer more spiritual and religious fruits [...]
Jaron Lanier's�You Are Not a Gadget is what many would call a manifesto on the current state of the Internet. A computer scientist and supposed father of virtual reality, Lanier uses this book to air his lamentations about how how the Internet has descended into a land of anonymous trolls, something which it wasn't really [...]
Despite my personal beliefs of spiritual openness and freedom, I never forget my native religious language of Christianity. I don't let that limit me spiritually, but I also don't exclude it from my worldview. Since I read many books about spirituality from many different faiths and traditions, I constantly have to check my natural Christian [...]
The Faith Instinct
{Non-Fiction: Nicholas Wade, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright, Sam Harris, Spirituality}
Religion evolution seems to be the latest trend in the world of intellectuals, seculars, and atheists trying to model religion into something logical. These new trendsetters, offering a softer, yet still intellectual examination of religion's roots and evolution over the ages, seem to have replaced the angry atheists led by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. [...]
36 Arguments for the Existence of God
{Fiction: loved it, Novel, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris}
For a variety of reasons, I do not usually venture off the nonfiction path. I think the main reason is the ease to which I can find books that interest me. It is much easier for me to walk into a bookstore and go straight for a topic rather than pour through the massive fiction [...]
Deepak Chopra's 2008 book The Third Jesus is an attempt to understand three distinct manifestations of this elusive person: the historical Jesus, the theological Jesus created by the church, & the spiritual Jesus available to those that can achieve what Chopra calls a God-consciousness. Using the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (trust me, [...]
