A brilliant, personal take on the pernicious power of cults.
Breaking away.
When Dinavahi was an overachieving sophomore in high school, a friend in her math class took her own life. The tragedy was the latest in a series of incidents at Severna Park High, a Blue Ribbon school in Maryland with a suicide epidemic so severe that when Dinavahi was admitted to a psychological ward after her own suicide attempt, she ran into a classmate she presumes was there for the same reason. Dinavahi continued attempting to take her own life throughout her teens. Desperate to keep her daughter alive, Dinavahi’s mother took her to see a man named Bob Lyon, who ran the True Happiness Company (the names are pseudonyms). Although he was a former ophthalmologist with no background in psychology, Lyon diagnosed Dinavahi with borderline personality disorder and said that the only way for her to stop her self-destructive behavior was to speak to him daily. Over the course of the next decade, Lyon insidiously took over Dinavahi’s life, manipulating her into dropping out of college, getting married, and joining the Mormon church. It was not until Lyon molested Dinavahi that she found the courage to leave. “Sometimes conformity can be a protective mechanism,” she writes. “If everyone is heading in the same direction, you figure someone must know what they’re doing. They can’t all be wrong. But this overwhelming psychological pressure to conform kept me in True Happiness for so long, doubting my own instincts.” Dinavahi is a talented writer with a dark sense of humor. Her intensely vulnerable storytelling vividly illustrates the ways in which society preys on the insecurity of neurodiverse women and, in particular, neurodiverse women of color.
A brilliant, personal take on the pernicious power of cults.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593447659
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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