Monday Memes

Mailbox Monday is hosted this month by Passages to the Past and is where book bloggers gather to share what showed up in their mailboxes this week, whether those mailboxes received email or snail mail.

My snail mail box gave me:

Understanding Jesus: Cultural Insights into the Words and Deeds of Christ

Modern-day Christians often bring their own presuppositions and assumptions to the reading of the Bible, not realizing how deeply their understanding of Christ's life and teachings is affected by a 21st-century worldview. In UNDERSTANDING JESUS, author Joe Amaral delves deep into Jewish history, societal mores, and cultural traditions, closing the gap created by geographical distance and over two thousand years of history. Using a chronological approach to the life of Christ, he guides the reader through significant events such as Jesus' birth, baptism, and crucifixion, pointing out illuminating details that that the Western mind would normally miss.Amaral's premise is that to understand Jesus, we must understand the time and place in which he was born, the background from which he drew his illustrations, and the audience he spoke to. Throughout the book he explores specific terms, places, and events for their significance and shows how they add richness and meaning to the text. Topics include the connection between Jesus and John the Baptist, the annual Feasts and why they are important to modern Christianity, Jewish customs such as foot-washing, clean and unclean foods, paying tribute to political governments, and the significance of various miracles.

In UNDERSTANDING JESUS, Amaral draws back the curtain on a way of life that existed during the reign of the Caesars, and in doing so, reveals truths about the way we live more than two thousand years later, half a world away.

I got the following from NetGalley:

Mother Teresa, CEO: Unexpected Principles for Practical Leadership (Bk Business) This book details the leadership principles used by Mother Teresa in building one of the world’s largest and most successful organizations, with this as its central lesson: leaders must articulate a simple vision, and execute it with absolute practicality. Bose—who spent eight months working with Mother Teresa in 1992-3—and Faust have distilled Mother Teresa’s leadership style into nine essential principles. Each principle shows readers how to apply Mother Teresa’s wisdom in their lives and businesses.

Much has been written about Mother Teresa. She is an actual saint, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003, as well as the winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, This book is the first to view her in another light—as a pragmatic, realistic leader who over 47 years raised billions of dollars and helped millions of people. This often meant making tough decisions—such as accepting donations from people of questionable morals. This book has the principles that guided those decisions. These are universal principles that can help any leader working to keep an organization on course and on mission.

Then there were the free Kindle downloads:

It's Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  She asks what we read or reviewed this week and what we plan to read next week.

Read:
My Review
 (Review to be published in June)
 (Review to be published in May)

Reading:


Read earlier, reviewed this week:
 Review.

Up Next:
    or whatever catches my eye!