Strengths Based Marriage by Jimmy Evans

Better relationship

   Each one of us has a bundle of strengths that we carry into our marriages. Knowing these straights will help you better to know yourself and your spouse. We all have twenty-four but the top five are the ones we should get most acquainted with. Your strengths will not match hers and this is where the fun begins.

   And the battles steam from this fact also.

   The book is written by two people who can help you understand yourself and your spouse in the strength area you bring into the relationship.

   Jimmy Evans has a television program he does with his wife concerning marriage. Allan Kelsey brings the certification for Gallup Strengths and therefore relates as a couch. They both try to break new ground in helping the reader understand where the strengths are and how they can be used in marriage.

   Each chapter concludes with a short questionnaire to help you think about what was covered.

   Don’t be one of those marriages that break up.

   The whole thesis is based on the results you can get when you take the Gallup’s Strengths finder 2.0 assessment. The details of how to get the assessment is listed at the end of the book as well as the place you can go to see a group of  seminars on Marriage Today held by Jimmy Evans and his wife.

   I recommend this book for marriage counselors. It is not very useful for premarital sessions.

   Booklook Bloggers. Com sent me this book gratis in order to review it. There were no handles attached to it. All conclusions are those of the reviewer.

Shaken by Tim Tebow

  

  What is it like to be at one time a NFL winner and then to find yourself no longer on the team?  Just where is your identity to be found? In what you are or who you can influence?

  Tebow  doesn’t use this as a memoir, I am sure there is lots to say about his time spend as a quarterback for the Denver Broncos and the New York Jets, but he chooses to relate how God allowed experiences in his life were used  to bring hope, faith, and love to those around him. 

  Using his years as a football champion as a springboard to his outreach on the SEC network he shows just what can be done with a person willing to allow change to happen. It starts with an experience with Jesus Christ. He is the change agent who will establish your identity.

  I felt his book was a bit difficult to follow in transitions It may be because Tebow uses his football background as the hook to try to put his points across. This may be because I am not a sports fan and may have missed the reasoning. That is not to say that you, the reader, may not understand it better.

  Tebow uses words well and has a solid message.

  This book was sent to me gratis by BloggingforBooks.com for the purpose of reviewing. This is published by Waterbrook, an imprint of Crown Publishing group, a division of Penguin Random House.

Crisis of Character by Gary J. Byrne

   Will the truth ever get out of what went on during the Clinton presidency? As for legacy, time will tell what was left. But there will be lots of details for future biographers to glean the facts from. But one thing is sure, people don’t charge. The past is a true indicator of the future.

   Having been a Secret Service uniformed officer serving under the Clinton’s, Gary J. Byrne ought to be able to properly inform us of what Hillary would have been as a President -- if elected in 2016.

   The Hillary we saw during the election period is not the Hillary we would have in the White House, Byrne states. He observes she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office.

   He saw her volcanic, impulsive, and treating her secret service detail as furniture. He saw her cold yet able to play warm when it came to acceptance by crowds. But she was able to switch when crowds and cameras depart.

   She was always able to, pardon the phrase, turn shit into gold.

   Why would Byrne write another book about the Clintons? Don’t we have enough?

   The reason is, we should know what we would have gotten in another Clinton Presidency. We need to be warned about what we would have had. We would have had someone who, like her husband, Bill, doesn’t play by the rules, making them up to suit the event.  By looking at Bill’s years and Hillary’s part in them we should see a good picture of what could be with her in power.

   You can know a person by what he or she does. Hillary has a record. We need to pay attention to her actions.

   Byrne worked close to both the Clintons. He observed them as he had to protect them.

Bill Clinton was pure Teflon when it came to scandals. Byrne says President Clinton could charm a rock. Yet at the same time he treated those who were protecting him as dirt.

   “He never apologized to us,” Byrne says about the Monica Lewinsky affair. “”He never apologized for putting us in that position….Not only did he never apologized for costing the taxpayers, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, his staff, his constituents, or anyone for putting them through the ringer.

   “He wanted us to believe he was sorry for embarrassing his family, Chelsea and Hillary.”   

   Hillary in her small way is carrying on the Clinton Tradition. Her style is to deny and push the blame on to others. An example is her phrasing her opposition as “the right wing conspiracy”, if there is such a group.

   Mostly this book is about how the Clinton’s operated during their years in the White House It is all here, the scandals, the denials. The pressure this put upon the staff around them.

    Hillary has, according to Byrne a “just get it done” leadership style. Which means that she doesn’t care how a thing works. She uses plausible deniability when faced with problems. Just remember her email and her statement that it was private email-- as if anything in cyberspace is private.

   It seems to run in the family.

   I feel this book should be placed alongside the other books covering the Clintons.

   It is published by Hachette Book Group, Inc and is eighteen chapters long with an afterword.  The price is around $27.00

The Great Good Thing by Andrew Klavan

    Andrew Klavan is a name known in the literary world in the realm of crime fiction. He is prolific and best known for True Crime among many other works. His work uses at least one character who is a Christian in a major role.

    He did not start out life with that viewpoint. In fact he was not even interested in that area.

His childhood was far from what we would see as religious. His parents were only Jewish in name and agnostic even atheist in practice.

    His early childhood was spent in his mind in stories he made up. No one really knew. Education wise he was able to bluff his way through school. He never read the required books assigned but was able to bluff his way to good grades.

    He had Christian influences as he grew from childhood to adolescence. He knew about the Bible but it was just a book to him that contained great plot ideas.

    But he was intellectual and had to read through the book for himself.  

    This is a memoir that starts at age sixty when he is being baptized than backtracks to carry the story forward from birth to the baptism. It has great fiction technique. You can see he has great command of language. It is an easy read.

    This book was sent to me free from booklookbloggers.com for the purpose of review. I recommend this as a book to be shared with seekers. It is a good evangelistic tool.

True Faith and Allegiance by Alberto R. Gonzales

Every once in a while a memoir is written that informs people about a time in history that needs to be remembered and understood correctly.

Such is a time Gonzales spent as the first Hispanic US Attorney General and counsel to President George W. Bush. This memoir covers the years 2000 to 2007.

The story, being autobiographical as well as apologetic forms a good piece of source material for a future author who will research the period of 9/11 and after.

It took a strong man to guide the President through the things history threw at him; such things as terrorism, Al Qaeda, government surveillance, and Supreme Court nominations.

All the players are here. All the senators, the officials, the bit players-they are brought on stage and play their part in the struggle Gonzales faced as a friend of Bush.

It may have been different if there wasn’t these struggles brought on by life, but Gonzales was victorious in the end. It was his faith in God and his loyalty to authority that helped him.

 I found this book to be truthful sharing successes and failures without apology. I would recommend this for all history classes.

I received this book gratis from Booklookbloggers.com for the purpose of review. At no time was I required to like it.