Brad's no. 5: Business Research Methods by Zikmund, Babin, Carr, & Griffin

And thus it begins... When I was asked to participate in this blog, I had every intention to be perpetually behind by three, four, maybe twelve weeks.  This was before I embarked down my MBA path. Know look at me. I knew heading back to school would take up a good portion of my reading budget; little did I know what a drain it would be.  It's not just the time factor, though that is a big consideration.  The main thing is the mental drain.  For instance, 600 pages of qualitative research tools, secondary data research in a digital age, sampling designs, F-Statistic manual calculations and -- everyone's favorite (including one J. Beiber if rumors are true) -- ANOVA for complex experimental designs, tends to drain one's mental capacity and drive to read.  So, all of this as a pitiful explanation to why I am not currently at my initial goal.  Though this does not explain why I have a back log of nine or ten books waiting to be reviewed.

Enough introduction, on to the book at hand.  I enjoyed it more than I expected.  Though specific to business, it also taught me a lot of general research principals that, oddly, have sunk into my brain despite a tendency to read a bit faster than my ability to fully comprehend.  I must add that the theme of beige, peach, orange and pink  soft-hues used to break up the monotony of black / white text and pictures was not very effective.  And that's that.

SARS (Subject Appropriate Ratings Scale): 3 out of 5 (Jebow, Bancroft, Lutz, Makowitz, & Zuzubuji, 1996)

Citations:

Jebow, Bancroft, Lutz, Makowitz, & Zuzubuji.  1996 Application of the statistical method in rating Business Research Methods for use in an inane blog post. Harcourt, Brace, Jovonovich. New              Brunswick, MA.

Brad's no. 4 - Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air by Beckwith & Koukl

Times change.  Society changes.  What was standard before is now stodgy and archaic.  Taboo is now cutting edge and I am left feeling torn between keeping my head out of the muck and being left in our culture's wake.  I am not that old and I already sometimes feel like a crotchety old man sitting on my front porch wondering why things have to change and just when things started to go wrong...was it when we let a Catholic become president?  I was blessed with a wonderfully conservative, two-parent, church-going, relatively sheltered, evangelical home (an increasingly quaint notion).  It might be that my upbringing shielded me from the ever changing world, or maybe it all did happen so fast.

Whatever the situation is, the principle of Truth has eroded.  In its place is a new notion and definition of truth; call it relativism, post-modernism, or political correctness, the choice is truly up to you.  Whatever the name, it is a new game with new rules. Those of us who cling to the existence of Absolute Truth (fast becoming another "quaint notion") need to be aware of how it is played lest we lose before we realize we were even playing.

Relativism:FFPiM-A is an excellent primer on the current mentality that is pervading our culture. Beckwith and Koukl do an excellent job of illustrating how this way of thinking developed and how it can be seen in (post)modern thinking.  Further, this is done in a way that strikes an effective balance of scholarly thought and accessibility.  I was most impressed by there ability to move beyond the impact of relativism in the scholarly world and show how it is affecting our daily societal interactions.  Though I enjoy such things, post-modern literary deconstructionism is not necessarily your typical water cooler hot-button topic.  If you balk and think that this is purely academic and does not apply to the typical person, read this book and you will see just how dangerous and widespread relativism truly is.

Adding to the practicality of this work is how Beckwith and Koukl provide practical arguments against relativistic thinking.  Though I thought this was a great addition, I also felt that this is where the book lacked a bit.  Most of their arguments were basically an application of your basic reductio ad absurdum argument.  While definitely appropriate, I also feel that more needs to be added.  Unfortunately, relativism seems to have inoculated us against such logical arguments to the point that even if made, it would paint the arguer as a just being arrogant and close minded.  I don't think that such arguing is wrong, I just think that it needs to be applied with a bit more finesse than how the authors presented it.

All in all, I highly recommend it to everyone in order to help navigate this strange world we are in, but not of.

SARS (Subject Appropriate Rating Scale):I give it a 4 out of Whatever Number you Deem is Appropriate

Brad's no. 3: Radical by David Platt

Radical is a powerful and convicting book that I recommend to all Christians lving in a wealthy nation.  Growing up in the church and attending Bible college, the teachings never shied away from the dangers of loving money.  Upon reflection, however, this was always done in the context of the wealth of our country.  What David Platt aims to do in Radical is shift the paradigm of our thinking to view our prosperity in light of the world's plight and -- most importantly -- in light of our earthly purpose for eternity.  Guilt is not the intended response.  Instead, it is a call to love Christ with reckless abandon.  To follow the model of Jesus by loving the world at our own expense.  The greatest dangers to Christianity are never external: persecution, want, suffering, and the like are shown to galvanize Christ followers, separate out the chaff, and provide a platform on which God's amazing grace and mercy can be lavished on his children.  Instead, Western Christianity celebrates our ease of life and thereby grows complacent with mediocrity.  Radical calls us to trust God and his promises, even when they seem dangerous or foolish by worldly standards.

The title of the book is not accurate from a Christian point of view.  The ideas that Platt brings to the table are merely the teachings of Scripture.  What is radical is the relief between the Biblical truths and the American Dream that has infiltrated Christian thinking.  The two cannot co-mingle just as the love of God and the love of mammon cannot.  The book is sometimes uncomfortable; Platt asks some tough questions.  However, it is apparent that he too has struggled or is struggling with answering the same questions.  Coming from a pastor who reached the religious apex -- pastor of a mega-church at a young age -- the power of this book is amplified.   Platt challenges --not without, but from within-- the extra-biblical presuppositions that the American church holds as "self-evident".  His book is ultimately the result and the reporting of a narrative: the story of how his church has changed due to this "radical" thinking.

Many might recoil at the book and claim that it is going too far or bordering on legalism.  I find such charges unfounded.  Granted, there were some difficult rhetorical questions, but they must be seen as just that: rehtoric.  They are a literary tool used to jostle our thinking free from its entrenchments and view the familiar Biblical truths in a fresh light.  He does not prescribe a rubric of specific actions to be taken in order to achieve holiness -- that would be legalistic.  The closest he gets to such things is sharing stories of how some of his congregation have applied the Biblical call to being "radical".  These are not measures we must strive for; rather, they are encouraging examples of what can be expected when we let go of the false security of comfort and wealth and embrace the promises of God in His mission for us on earth.

Ultimately, Platt is positing a simple truth: the greatest measure of what we truly cherish and believe is not found in what we say or think, but what we do.

Brad's #2: Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is among my favorite contemporary authors.  He has an uncanny ability to explore the depths of human frailty and depravity while still crafting a true piece of art that is to be awed and admired for its beauty.  Not many authors can paint such vivid portraits of humanity with so bleak a palette.  In this short yet powerful work, McCarthy paints with his bleakest palette. 

"Child of God defies, perhaps more forbiddingly than any other work in McCarthy's magisterial corpus, the fashionable impertinence which not infrequently inspires the facile elicitation of ideological structure from his text. Besides having, among living writers of the English language, the strongest claim to deferred mortality, McCarthy's most unassailable works -- Blood Meridian, Outer Dark, and Child of God -- are, for their predestined readers, a stringent and edifying disinfectant against the sterile prevailing trends of literary criticism." (From an Amazon.com review).

Such an effusively pedantic review is inappropriate for a book that is amazingly spartan in both words and plot.  Yet, I understand where the reviewer is coming from in trying to capture the essence of the story.  I started this review in January.  This story is difficult to explain; a mere description of the events would elicit wonder as to why one would read such a book and why such dark and pointless novel was even written.   However, such a description would fail to show how it deftly probes the darkness of the human soul while simultaneously providing a pointed critique of what happens when a society ignores its fringes.

It is the story of Lester Ballard; a man moving from the margins of society into outright abandon of all of the restraints that societal pressures and government create to hold back the horrors of mankind.  It is an utterly bleak and shocking book that brought me to the brink of not finishing it on multiple occasions.  However, McCarthy's skill managed to keep me unconfortably on this precipice for the entire length of the novel.  Mercifully, it was short. 

In telling the tale, McCarthy often employed a disjointed structure in which a chapter would drop you in the aftermath of one of Ballard's heinous acts, providing no context to understand what happened.   It would then be followed by a chapter that flashed back to provide the setup to the act and the act itself.  In a way, it is a perverse take on the serial killer novel.  By utilizing the disjointed structure and showing the acts from the perspective of the serial killer, McCarthy eschews manipulating the build up of tension and sucks any entertainment value  from the story; by approaching it this way he implicitly scolds the reader for the pulpy enjoyment that may have been experienced had the story been told in the traditional thriller fashion.

I cannot recommend this book.  It is extremely dark and downright revolting in the subjects that it covers.  However, I must make it clear that this book is not to be categorized among the modern movement that revel in shock and depravity as a gimmick -- McCarthy is not Chuck Palahniuk.  Rather, it is a deft exploration into the depravity that the human being is capable of apart from regeneration through Christ, just a bit to accurate to warrant reading.

Brad's #1: Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut

Well this is my first book of the year, my first book read on my new Kindle, my first post for the blog, and also my first foray into Vonnegut.  I refer to him simply as Vonnegut in order to buy some whit of credibility with any scholarly types who might read this.  Though, my admitting this is my first of his works read surely undermines my efforts.  Well apparently my attempt at creating something of meaning ended up being a foolish illusion...much like John, the protagonist of the tale.

Let me start with a brief summary of the story.  John, an aspiring author, is seeking to write a book about America's reactions on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  This leads him to begin investigating the life of the late Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the primary minds behind the atomic bomb.  The book however, ends up being the MacGuffin (albeit a symbolically relevant one)  that introduces John to Hoenikker's three children: Newton is a genius midget; Angela is emotionally cold whose only catharsis to lifes traumas is furiously playing the violin; Franklin is socially awkward,  fascinated with miniature models and disappears after high school only to resurface as the second-in-command to a dictator of the small Caribbean Island  of San Lorenzo that recently began advertising itself as a travel destination for American Tourists.

Naturally, John travels to San Lorenzo and soon encounters Bokononism, the dominant yet illegal religion whose teachings are admittedly lies and whose scriptures (quoted throughout the book) are simple, pithy rhymes set to a quasi reggae rhyme scheme.  Oh, and I almost forgot that the Hoenikker children each possess a sliver of Ice 9, there father's final invention that, when it touches water, will instantly and catastrophically cause it and all moisture in the vicinity to freeze solid.

Despite what you must be thinking, such a silly premise does actually create a wonderful forum for Vonnegut's acerbic wit and pointed satire.  It is important to be aware of Vonnegut's extremely difficult childhood which had him growing up in during the Depression, experiencing his mother committing suicide as well as witnessing the fire bombing of Dresden and other WWII atrocities.  This childhood resulted in a man who, though cynical of most everything, seems to express his cynicism in an optimistic and wryly humorous fashion.

Cat's Cradle takes aim at and succeeds at skewering pretty much every tenet of modern American existence: religion, science, technology, politics, family, and love.  Through this deconstruction of the American life, Cat's Cradle firmly establishes its modern day relevance despite being written almost half a decade prior to Post-Modernism gaining the grip it has on our culture.  Vonnegut, maybe sensing he was ahead of the populous, plainly provided his thesis in the page between the dedication and the table of contents:

Nothing in this book is true.

"Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."

* Harmless untruths

Though I disagree with the conclusions fundamentally, I do appreciate them.  For, sadly, without knowing the true God, he is making the proper conclusions.  He pierces the veil that many who don the moniker "Christian" in this country so easily use to cover their eyes from the truth: apart from knowing God through Jesus, this world is an absurd, meaningless mess, survivable only through (self-aware or not) placating lies. In the case of Vonnegut, funny, funny lies.

-B.S.-