Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind Review

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Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind ReviewDisorientation is specifically designed to help educate young Catholics on the threshold of leaving home for college and the "Wild West" (so to speak) of modern ideologies with which they will be bombarded upon entering the classrooms. The idea is that if they know what something is (progressivism, multiculturalism, hedonism, and so forth) then they can identify it up front and not fall prey to replacing solid Catholic teachings with skewed ideas. Fourteen essays by top Catholic writers explain and put into context these ideologies which so many people think are "just naturally the way things are." It is edited by John Zmirak so there is a reliable light touch with tongue firmly in cheek that permeates the book. (For the record, I think this is a good thing, especially if you are aiming at the college-bound.)
Let's face it. Chances are that your child has been exposed to these ideologies long before heading off for college. Most of those ideas are communicated through television, movies, and pals who they see every day. Talking about these things intelligently at home is the best way to make sure that everyone understands just why what the Church teaches is true and where those other ideas have skewed truth. If your kids are going to college, sure go ahead and get them a copy. But you don't have to wait that long. This book does a terrific job of helping us understand things from a proper point of view. Get a copy for yourself now. And one for the kids ... no time like the present when it comes to understanding how our culture thinks versus how the Church does.Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind Overview
Every year, thousands of young Catholics leave their homes for higher education at our nation s colleges and universities. Very few realize, however, that from orientation day onward, they will be indoctrinated with a vision of reality that is very different from the values their families hold dear. Sadly, many of our young people will fall prey to one or more of the dominant ideologies engrained in their college education, ideologies that can lead them away from the Church and, ultimately, their faith in God. Students who are not taught how to think critically or who lack the tools needed to sift through the logic of these positions are easily swayed by the smooth sophistry of the intellectual elite.

For this reason, fourteen of the top Catholic writers in America professors, priests, journalists, philosophers, and theologians have come together to dissect the trendy ideas that can lead young Catholics away from the Church. Disorientation is intellectual ammunition for every college student and parent, as it breaks down the history, analyzes the appeal, and debunks the empty promises of such wildly popular errors as:
Hedonism Relativism ProgressivismModernismScientismFundamentalismFeminismMulticulturalism...and more.
Edited by John Zmirak (author of The Bad Catholic s Guide to Good Living and editor of Choosing the Right College), this book is guaranteed to get college students thinking hard about what their professors are telling them and what they should really believe.


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Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney Review

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Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney ReviewWe welcome the arrival of this thick (over five hundred pages) collection of interviews with Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney conducted over the past decade by Dublin civil servant, poet and essayist Dennis O'Driscoll, who describes his interviewing role thus: "My own role here is that of prompter rather than interrogator -the book was in no sense envisaged to be a 'tell all' account of Seamus Healey's life. ( . . .Yet)The only stipulation made at the outset by the poet was that he would not engage in detailed analytical discussion of individual poems. ( . . .)This book does not pretend to be an authorized 'reader's guide' to Seamus Healey's poems as reference points. It offers a biographical context for the poems and a poetry-based account of the life. It reviews the life by re-viewing it from the perspective of Heaney's late sixties: a life which has itself been monitored - sometimes almost as closely as his books have been reviewed - by critics and
journalists (Introduction, pp. xi, xii)."
With those caveats this massive work goes on to explore freely all of the above and more.
If you wish a profound, technical, thematic examination of the earlier works of Heaney (up to 1998 and The Spirit Level) you do very well to read carefully the much briefer (not 200 small pages) work of the great critic and professor Helen Vendler in Seamus Heaney. In any case her work is the most accessible and kindest manner to approach this great Irish poet's opus; she truly and gently lies open the meaning and possibilities of his writing in a global manner limited only by the demands of the shortened space, much as she did with Heaney's forefather more fully in Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form as well as The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Here, as Irish poet O'Driscoll cautions, we may not find the poet's technical explication of the development of his writing, although this tangentially is inevitable. We find the life and the context granted by that life for this most transcendent yet deeply involved poet. That life in times of Troubles and of woe and of political and spiritual waste, of human waste, provides much which troubles the poet deeply in his search for a true expression of a deeper (transcendent) meaning, one which we may discover as well through careful reading of the work.
Stylistically this book is set up in a catechetical question and answer format reminiscent of that penultimate episode in Ulysses (Gabler Edition), another influence for Mr. Heaney. This might bring a smile to some readers' lips, or a compulsion to read; it is refreshing, and one feels the humility, the subtlety, the invisibility which O'Driscoll brings to his enormous task.
The chapters are arranged around the volumes of work; as cautioned above the discussion will be neither technical nor analytical of individual poems, but of the life which gave them fruition. In a way we may find this disingenuous as this life cannot be separate from this poetry; a close discussion of certain relevant lines and their significances is inevitable and unavoidable and very, very welcomed.
The Nobel Laureate and Irish Poet Seamus Heaney has been one of our greatest poets in English in this past half century; we do well to read him now as ever to understand where we come from and where we stand and to where we may be going: this is the service, the grace, the gift of any great and serious poet, and in particular the gifted, trained Heaney.
Let us start at the beginning to understand his life's work once more. The individual volumes are readily available here upon this broad amazon, but it might be more favorable to get the recollection of the early volumes in Poems, 1965-1975: Death of a Naturalist / Door Into the Dark / Wintering Out / North. In any case I urge you to collect all that you can of him, including the several recordings, and read or listen as carefully and deeply as possible, repeatedly, as lectio divina, and learn about our world more than any news broadcaster or commentator can holler at you. Heaney has thought most deeply about these things, and shares most clearly and succinctly Truth, generously, with us within the tradition of poetry in the English and Saxon and Irish tongues. Oddly we find not much discussion of his excellent translation (and recording) of Beowulf.
Read this book. A worthy Christmas gift!
Within the text, Heaney discusses the very phenomenon we find mentioned by O'Driscoll in the Introduction, that a meta-analysis of the poetry itself serves no one well. In discussing the "solemn" Station Island, Heaney comments: I didn't begin, as you know, by writing at the head of my page, 'Now I shall punish lyric.' After the poem was published, I was trying to characterize it from the outside - and doing so, I suppose, in order to give a new reader some orientation. There's a very earnest note to the thing, but I don't think I could have done it any other way. The literary critic in me might have fun with what eventually came out, but the poet in me just had to work through the material that was piled up in the middle of his road. Then if you'll excuse the expression, he lightened up and got a bit of lift-off in Sweeney Redividus' (p. 240)."
The best orientation a new reader might find lies within Vendler's study, although it is ten years too short. This present study adequately makes up the short fall and far more. Meet our greatest living poet, and study him very well.
Excellent, comprehensive bibliography, glossary, maps and chronology, etc., accompany these interviews, as one would expect from such a precisely academic work. Give it to one you love very deeply. Give it to yourself to grow in love and in wisdom, but read it!Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney Overview

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Until Lily: The First in a Trilogy (Volume 1) Review

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Until Lily: The First in a Trilogy (Volume 1) ReviewSome novels tempt you to want to live in a fantasy world, to keep the characters you have come to know and love alive. Women fall prey to romance novels, comparing their husband unfavorably to Prince Dashing, complaining when he doesn't read our mind like the Duke and sweep us off to a live of privilege and luxury. I wondered, then, why I was becoming so engrossed with a book about an acerbic old lady alone in a nursing home within the iron grip of the final stages of Parkinson's. It was the way author Sherry Boas described her adopted daughter Lily, I decided. Lily is a young woman with Down syndrome whom Bev had reluctantly agreed to raise when her sister Jen died of cancer after adopting her two siblings, and giving birth to Lily whose father she refused to disclose.
I never read a novel with a character with Down syndrome in it, and Ms Boas must have someone with Down syndrome in her life to write about her so vividly and with such appreciation of her childlike joy and limitless love.
But the compelling novels of the Lily Trilogy: Until Lily, Wherever Lily Goes, and Life Entwined with Lily had something more attracting me than merely an affinity for those with Down syndrome, something deeper. I read these books in an attempt to escape the sting of what I saw as my loved one's lack of appreciation for me. Entering into the world of a lonely old lady whose life was coming to an end, and then the lives of her adopted niece Terry and grandniece Beth in the subsequent books, I lost myself because of Ms Boas' exquisitely detailed characters were real, and I cared about what happened to them, whether Bev would die lonely and bitter, whether Terry would give up on her marriage with her handsome husband Jake who never picked up a tool around the house, whether Beth could open her broken heart and learn from Lily as her family did, that nothing matters in life more than giving and receiving love. I had to know what happened to them, and read these three books at a breathless pace, finding my heart unwillingly wrapped around another character while I was trying to find out what happened to another.
The characters in the Lily Trilogy are as real as your own family, and as flawed. Yet, there is a theme in these novels, a theme of redemption which starts faintly at first, as a thirty-something Lily walks her frail aunt down the nursing home corridors to patiently feed her meatloaf and mashed potatoes though she has long ago lost her sense of taste, Lily gives back the love Bev meted out to her her in tiny pinches, in unmeasured generosity she knows she doesn't deserve. But love changes Bev, and heals her. Not sweeping her away from the pain of losing control of her limbs, but helping her to see beyond this life, to an eternal love mirrored in the gentle touch of the soft hands of a young woman with Down syndrome.
The power of selfishness to destroy lives versus the power of self-giving love to restore hope is the overriding theme of this amazing story set in the future. Jarring as it was to see dates like 2066 written as dates in the past of the novel's characters, this is no science fiction book. It is a story about real people who resemble people around us, whose flaws hurt and whose love heals us, and the hope that turns despair into love though the power of innocence. The Lily Trilogy are the most Catholic of books in that that glory of the fullness of truth well lived and the devastating consequences of the Culture of Death are juxtaposed in stunning relief, and the novelist does very little preaching. The story tells it all, with profound relationships and moving symbolism.
These are the novels I want my daughters losing themselves in this summer. I want to sit outside with cups of tea in the summer twilight and talk about Lily, Beth, Pablo and Terry. Then, I want to pick up the books and visit them again. These books, after drawing me into their world, make me reflect on my own with appreciation and want to become the transformed Terry who sees the nobility in her husband she missed in 20 years as he moved across the country to care for her sister Lily. To make my home radiate with the joy of their renewed love. To take my precious nine year old daughter Christina in my arms and thank her for the joy she has brought to us, and not to fear what her adulthood will bring. Whether or not she lives independently, she, like Lily will be a blessing to whoever shares her life.
How many times can it be said that a novel makes you a more grateful, loving person who reenters life from the world of the novel to embrace the challenges which sent you running into the pages of the book in the first place?
Until Lily: The First in a Trilogy (Volume 1) OverviewBev Greeley could have never predicted that the burden she tried to cast off long ago would become her only source of joy in her final days. Until Lily is a moving book, rich in the universal struggles we all face, illuminated by Bev's contrite reflection on the life chosen for her -- a life filled with the strife, chaos, tragedy, laughter, deep meaning and redemption possible only when you hand yourself over to love. It's a tender and gritty story about the truths underlying the human condition and the inalienable value of every soul, even if it can do nothing more than love or be loved.

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Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism, With a New Preface Review

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Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism, With a New Preface ReviewRobert Dallek is an excellent historian, as seen in his work on FDR's foreign policy and his masterful accounts of LBJ. This book was an attempt to gauge Reagan's presidency in the midst of it. It has some wonderful insight on Reagan's use (and abuse) of political symbolism, but it needs to be updated with more than a new preface to stay fresh.Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism, With a New Preface Overview
Few American politicians have enjoyed greater popularity than Ronald Reagan. Humor, charm, good looks, an intuitive feel for national concerns, and an extraordinary ability to speak persuasively to millions of people were major assets. But his fundamental appeal went deeper: a blend of Catholic and Protestant, small-town boy and famous entertainer, Horatio Alger and P. T. Barnum, traditional moralist and media celebrity, Reagan spoke for old values in current accents.

Robert Dallek presents a sharply drawn, richly detailed portrait of the man and his politics--from his childhood years through the California governorship to the first years of the presidency. It is an essential guide for all observers of the presidential election of 2000, and a starting point for anyone wanting to discover what the Reagan experience really meant.


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