EFR REVIEWS

  It's just shy of "Football & Turkey Day", my readers, so let's chat about some football memoirs I've "tackled" recently (I'll just show myself out on that one...) Strength of a Champion : Finding Faith & Fortune Through Adversity by O.J. Brigance, with Peter Schrager. Foreword by Ray Lewis As the Baltimore Ravens made their improbable march to victory in Super Bowl XLVII, they turned to their senior advisor of player development, O.J. Brigance, for inspiration each and every Sunday.  Following a stellar twelve-year career as a linebacker, including a Super Bowl win with Baltimore in 2000, O.J.Juice Brigance joined the Ravens front office. But in 2007, O.J. was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as Lou Gehrig's disease and told he had only three to five years to live. As a player, he'd battled hundreds of injuries and setbacks. None of them prepared him to face ALS.  With faith and determination in his heart and ...

GOOD MAN One look at our cultural moment and it's easy to tell that men and their identities are in crisis. Though lost and fractured, men face the pressure to be perfect. Our reactionary society is quick to condemn and slow to forgive, leaving men more confused than ever about how to live and who to be. Yet in Scripture, we continually find God choosing to work in and through flawed, imperfect, and broken individuals. Men who had massive character flaws and significant moral failings, but who also shared one important characteristic: the desire to follow the call of their Creator.  With engaging personal stories and insight into biblical truths, Nathan Clarkson declares to today's man that he is more than what the culture is telling him he is--angry, selfish, predatory, violent, and bored. Instead, still on the journey himself, Nathan calls today's man to find his identity in the One who created him on purpose, for a purpose, and encourages him to live an honest, authentic...

For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite work nemesis and beet farmer. Viewers of  The Office  fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. Rainn founded a website and media company, SoulPancake, that eventually became a bestselling book of the same name. He also started a hilarious Twitter feed (sample tweet: “I'm not on Facebook” is the new “I don't even own a TV”) that now has more than four million followers.   Now, he's ready to tell his own story and explain how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. He explains how he grew up “bone-numbingly nerdy before there was even a modicum of cool attached to the word.”  The Bassoon King  chronicles his journey from nerd to drama geek (“the highest rung on the vast, pimply ladder of high school losers”), his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures and insight...

    The Bible tells the story of God meeting real people in a real time and place, yet we rarely take the time to wonder,  Why there?  Maybe we have a hard time even picturing where  there  is. To begin to fully understand the Bible, we must understand the geographical settings of Scripture and how each place participates in the biblical story.  With its colorful maps,  The Basic Bible Atlas  helps us link geography to Bible study so we can understand how place impacted events in the Bible. From Eden to Egypt, from the promised land to Persia, from Bethlehem to the New Jerusalem,  The Basic Bible Atlas  is a fascinating guide to the land of the Bible.  ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ Dr. John Beck, a theology professor for over twenty-five years, inspired by not only his studies but also his many treks across the Middle East, developed the Basic Bible Atlas as a tool to enhance bible studies for readers around the world. Beck explores and maps out m...

Okay, so today we're looking at a trilogy of Christian self-help style memoirs by Alexandra Kuykendall, plus a bonus, unrelated memoir about her unique upbringing!  works of A. Kuykendall Starting with the ... what do we call these... the "Loving My... " series? (not sure if the set has an official, collective name) #1 Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What's Right In Front of Me ★ ★ ★1/2 Author Alexandra Kuykendall is a writer who has also spent nearly a decade working for  MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) International . In her newest book, a memoir of sorts, she relates the things she learned about her family and herself while carrying out a life experiment in which she spent 9 months making more of an effort to love the life she has rather than the pie-in-the-sky ideal she thought she wanted and was missing out on. As a mother of four -- the youngest 3 years old, the oldest entering middle grade -- with an insane daily schedu...