Achieve Anything in Just One Year by Jason Harvey

This is such a wonderful book. It reads like a calendar with an inspirational message for each day of the year. They range from inspirational messages to questions about our fears and hopes. Each day has a quote from someone of great accomplishment; J.K. Rowling, Dr. King, Franz Kafka, Woody Allen (“eighty percent of success is showing up”) and Oprah Winfrey (who else could inspire so many people?) to name a few.

Take for instance day #142. It begins with a quote from Washington Irving; great minds have purpose, others have wishes. The entry proceeds to question the reason why we wish. Are we fantasizing about things? What do we want them for? What purpose does it have? This makes sense, because if you want something, let’s say a well-paid job, then the chances are that you can accomplish it if you know exactly why you need it.

My only problem is that the book gets a wee bit repetitive after a while. Some of the entries could’ve consisted of stories about people who accomplished things. For instance, Ben & Jerry’s started out as just another ice cream parlor run by two guys with zero talent, and don’t tell me that’s not inspiring. If you want proof that success is an average person making above average effort (Colin Powell said that one) then look at Woody Allen. He made a lucrative career out of portraying himself as a talentless, ugly, awkward little guy, so damned smart that he can’t see how ignorant he is.

Now who wouldn’t be inspired by that?

Killing Jesus by Stephen Mansfield

Jesus came from the Galilee, and because of that, he was more rugged and independent than the people of Jerusalem. The Hellenized gentry and the priests (who were probably Hellenized too) didn’t like this bumpkin Rabbi from up north, nor did they like any Rabbi who had ideas of his own. But up in the north, Joshua Son of Joseph was out of reach!

Stephen Mansfield’s book is the most straightforward work on Jesus that I’ve read so far. I love the way he portrays the conflict between Jesus and the people of Jerusalem as a conflict between the simple (and often more religious) folks and the genteel urbane city people. He believes that the killing of Jesus was the work of corrupt priests, who were getting rich off of bribes, taxes, and kickbacks from the money-changers. They didn’t take kindly to Jesus showing up in the capital and chasing all the marketers out of the Temple grounds.

There are, however, some things that the author left out, and that is the origin of the Temple’s corruption. The Kohen Gadol (high priest) at the time was Ciaphas (from the Aramaic “Bar Kapha” meaning “son of a monkey”) and he was not the legitimate Kohen Gadol. The reason is that 140 years earlier, when the Macabees reconquered Jerusalem, they started tampering with the Kehunah, appointing men who had blood on their hands to oversee the Temple services. By the time Jesus was born, the Kehunah had been corrupt for years, and anyone could become a Kohen if they paid enough of a bribe. As for the Temple itself, was it the Lord’s beautiful house, or was it a monument to Herod’s megalomania? Some Jewish scholars today believe that the Temple was not holy at all. Herod was a murderer, and a murderer can’t be trusted to make anything sacred. Regardless of whether the Temple was truly sacred, or whether the Kohanim had a right to their jobs, one thing is clear. The faithful pilgrims who thronged to the Beit Hamikdash were nothing but profit.

Indeed, there was a conspiracy to kill Jesus. It wasn’t the work of Rome (why would they care?) nor the entire Jewish community. It was the work of the corrupt puppet clergy who sold out their people to the Romans. Any Rabbi will tell you that Jesus was innocent; he never claimed to be anything he wasn’t. As for Ciaphas, he had no right to question Jesus, because the Torah prohibits the Kohanim from getting involved in civil affairs, let alone sit on a court.

Today, the Temple courtyard still throngs with the faithful, who come to pray at the Western Wall (built by King Herod, no less.) Just like in the time of Jesus, there are lots of religious hucksters who offer blessings in exchange for money. There are probably money changers too. Only this time there’s no need to chase them out. The clergy aren’t getting any kickbacks.

Finding Family: My Search For Roots and the Secret of My DNA

Richard Hill’s autobiography reads like a thriller. He was born in 1940’s Michigan, adopted as an infant, and had to do some serious detective work to find his birth mother. His family and their friends only know a tad here and there, and since the adoptions in the old days were private, there was no record of his. A million leads later and he finds his half-brother, alive and well, who accepts him with no conditions. His birth mother is long dead, and it will be a while before he finds out who his father was.

Perhaps this book is a story about the USA in the 1940’s? Hill’s mother dropped out of school to marry at 16, had one child, then separated from her no-good husband. She got pregnant by another man, then left both her sons with a neighbor so she could party with low-life bums. But can you really blame her? This was 1944, and women had no rights. She got pregnant by a lousy guy (his sister calls him a “lousy brother and even worse husband”) and had no choice but to marry him. Unmarried mothers in those days were outcasts. It wasn’t like she could continue going to high school while pregnant, the principal would’ve just thrown her out. Birth control was hard to come by for an unmarried teenager (especially if you didn’t want to risk a beating by your parents) and abortions were dangerous. Maybe this woman had a right to want to go out and party like a 19 year old?

What amazes me the most is that Richard Hill traced his family without the help of the internet. In the 1980’s, his detective work had to be done by writing letters, patiently waiting for a response, visiting record offices, and chasing down people with no contact information. But the fact that the information was buried doesn’t surprise me at all. According to the author, adoptions were always private because of the stigma. Adopted kids were seen as second-rate, and the parents were afraid of their kids having that stigma (except for Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, and Josephine Baker.)

Fortunately, Hill’s discoveries don’t open huge cans of worms. Nowadays, adopted kids who go looking for their birth parents don’t often like what they find. Who wants to find out that their father is a serial killer serving 200 years for gory murders? Maybe the truth isn’t always the best thing.

Eat Healthy With the Brain Doctor’s Wife Cookbook

When I opened this book, the first thing I saw were the meatballs, and they looked great. That, in my biased opinion, follows the iron law of diets; if it doesn’t look good, taste good, smell good, nobody’s going to want to eat it and the diet won’t work!

Tana Amen’s cookbook is full of simple, healthy recipes that don’t require elaborate preparation and aren’t salty or fried. The burritos and rancheros in the breakfast menu are good, but I am not a fan of the smoothies. I’d rather have more recipes that let you retain the fiber, color, and taste of the fruit rather than something you’d drink. On the lunch menu, the seared ahi (a fish I’ve never heard of until now) and cucumber salad are tops, but I’m not sure about the coconut oil. Then again, you’re only searing the outside, so you’re not using so much oil that you’d clog your arteries.

I’ll give this cookbook high marks for sticking to the basics. She uses a lot of seafood and salts are kept low.

Shaping Language Policy in the USA

Scott Wible, a professor of English, has written a well-researched narrative on how US schools became tolerant of non-Anglophone speakers. I was not expecting any surprises, because I knew that no language other than English had ever been accepted in our public schools, at least not before the Civil Rights movement. If you came to school in the Southwest knowing only Spanish, or you were a Cajun in Louisiana who spoke Creole French, well too bad. It was “speak English or go home,” no accommodations were made. But at what point did this change? That is what Professor Wible tries to formulate.

The author goes back to the early 1970’s, when CUNY changed its entrance requirements to having only a high school diploma. Gone were the entrance exams and essays; all you needed now was to have graduated from high school. This led to a large number of freshman who could barely write. Now, instead of having scholars who were all ready to prove themselves, you have students who didn’t have a clue. Though not mentioned in the book, this was typical of New York City by the late 1960’s; industries were shutting down and with few job prospects, more working class Black youth opted for college. The problem was that students from working-class backgrounds hadn’t been prepared for college. They were prepared for more repetitive skill-based work-stenography and typing for girls, industrial trades for boys. They were not ready to read St. Thomas Aquinas! It’s a problem to this very day.

There’s a chapter in this book on how President Bush and the Defense Department wanted Arabic-speaking employees. An Israeli diplomat warned Bush that “you can’t win a war in Afghanistan unless you know the local language,” but who in the USA understands Pashtun and Urdu? Of the few Americans who speak it, how many want to join the army? Do you think an educated Pakistani-American with a good career will give it up for a US Marine salary? Not likely! Furthermore, despite Bush’s NCLB act, there’s been no increase in foreign language fluency. The average American kid only knows English, and he might not even know it well enough to go to college.

Perhaps the main problem is the lack of resources for educators here in the USA. Day care and preschool are notoriously lacking when compared to Europe, and that is where the children begin their education. The average six year old comes to 1^st Grade with no social skills or language skills, so teaching them to read is a double job.

Freedom From Your Inner Critic

We all know the story of the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. We all know of the ego-id-superego theory of Sigmund Freud. But in Dr. Jay Earley’s book Freedom From Your Inner Critic, he introduces us to another entity; the creature in us whose only goal is to criticize.

The book has solutions to low self-esteem and hypercritical self-assessment, broken down into manageable steps. He stresses getting to know the critic, and learning the critic’s goal. What does the critic want? What is it trying to protect you from? Has it accomplished anything? He further identifies seven types of inner critic, ranging from the taskmaster to the underminer.

The final chapters deal with the addiction to perfection, and the role of gender in self-criticism. At the end of the book is a glossary with the definitions of the terms used in this book.

Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought

Vern Sheridan Poythress has crafted a brilliant tome on how our belief in God stems from a need to understand nature. He uses as an example the story of Absalom, who led a rebellion against his father, King David of the Israelites. The question is, were Absalom's actions the result of need or greed? Was there a "clear and present" danger in his father being the king, or was Absalom tempted by the thought of ruling a nation? Logic will answer the question, because whatever Absalom was feeling, anyone else could feel in their life as well.

Another example he uses is the idea of the belief in God influencing subordination in Humans. He says that it is natural for some people to have kings who they bow to, and if they're accustomed to subordinating themselves to a God, then why not to a monarch. The question is, however, do peope have a logical need for a master? Some people (like the Bedouin of Arabia) prefer to have separate tribes, and they follow radical Islam. But do they really care that much abotu Islam? Would they accept a religious preacher who tells them they're wrong?

According to Dore Gold's book Hatred's Kingdom, the answer is probably no. If they have a logical need for independence, they're not going to hear otherwise from anyone, nto even their own clergy.