Andy Andrews

The Final Summit: A Quest to Find the One Principle That Will Save Humanity is a follow-up to The Traveler’s Gift. This is my first Andy Andrews book, so I started this book not knowing any background or what to expect. Andrews does a great job of filling the reader in on pertinent facts from The Traveler’s Gift, so it’s not necessary to read that book first, although I do wish I had just because I dislike reading books out of order. In The Final Summit, David Ponder is called to a meeting with other Travelers to discuss the future of mankind. Their task is to determine what people must do individually and collectively to stop the downward spiral of our civilization. The answer is one two-word phrase.

I liked this book for several reasons. First, I love historical fiction and the premise of this book pulls historical figures from different time periods and tells their stories. So, while the fiction is that they wouldn’t all be sitting around having conversations with each other, the facts of their lives are true. Andrews even pulled some of the dialogue from actual things that the famous characters said or wrote.

This book is full of wisdom, inspiration, and humor. Also, this book is an easy read. Having small children, I don’t get to relax around water, but I bet this book would be a good beach or pool read. However, I wouldn’t recommend reading it once and sticking it on a shelf. This is a book that you’ll want to reread from time to time. That’s saying a lot, because I keep few books on my personal shelf and I rarely reread books.

This is not a book just for Christians. I say that because it is not blatantly preachy and I think anyone with enough sense to embrace the wisdom in this book will enjoy it, whether the reader is a Christian or not.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mere)

Well, they’re all either of European or biblical extraction, although there are more accepting notes as well—“even if you don’t believe in God, he believes in you”, and a Union instead of an Alabama general: that’s just decency, really, but nobody has ever been happier for taking decency for granted—and one is from that most famous of oppressed peoples, the German-born Jews. It’s only a few people of course and all pretty famous, but I don’t mind it not including people that only I have heard of. Not all books are like that.

Of course, it is in some respects not quite written with me as the core audience in mind, although I do like “business” books and business fiction. Of course, it’s not too literary, and especially in the beginning can be a little sloppily put-together. That’s not quite what I mean, though. It’s just…. I don’t know, but a lot of the lessons are basically okay, such as: even though history and the collective level clearly exist, nobody has ever been empowered by blaming and claiming no power over their lives and their destinies. And plenty of men who are the core target demographic for this book ~do~ often blame people and life and claim that they have no agency over their lives—people don’t usually say it quite like that, but they do flip out like a burger sometimes, you know. Of course, the book does simplify life to some extent. But knowing who you are is basically more important than the details of “why you can’t win” and so on, and so I’d say it’s basically an okay book.

…. Some of the people I’m a little indifferent about, but Anne and President Abraham were great people, and Andy’s treatment of them is pretty good stuff too. Anne was on her best behavior with a stranger for five minutes, (the Solomon story about the whore-mothers was really Victorianized, you know), but it is fundamentally true that Anne did believe in choosing happiness, and that unhappiness is a sort of activity like listening to the radio, like saying the “beggar’s prayer” that there isn’t enough—and not enough to be grateful for. And it’s funny that Abraham’s speech was fundamentally about humility, not for some little nursemaid, but for wise men and leaders, functionaries: “We think that we’re doing the dead a favor by hallowing their graves, but they have done more by their actions than we can do by our words. It is rather for us the living to come here and be inspired, blessed, hallowed.” And forgiving yourself, and accepting your personal power to make the world a better place.

…. The study of business—the study of means, of action—is important, and so is the study of strange things. Both can be a sort of positivity. But I wonder if Andy spent too much time on that second kind of thing, you know—the imponderables, and didn’t quite bring it the business book back to business and doing, right. Sometimes even simple fiction becomes so “big”, plays such a big game. He plays such a big game, you know. It’s fine, but it’s really far more than was necessary, IMO. Or maybe it just needed more of a counter-weight; I don’t know.

…. Yeah; okay.… (mere)

Book title and author: How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Why The Truth Matters More Than You Think by Andy Andrews reviewed 8/24/24

Why I picked this book up: this short books title drew me in because of my interest in history.

Thoughts: Andrews urges readers to be “careful students” of the past, seeking accurate, factual accounts of events and decisions that illuminate choices we face now. By considering how the Nazi German regime was able to carry out over eleven million institutional killings between 1933 and 1945, Andrews advocates for an informed population that demands honesty and integrity from its leaders and from each other. How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Or, to be precise, 11,283,000 people. Andy Andrews believes that good answers come only from asking the right questions. Through the powerful, provocative question, “How do you kill eleven million people?”–the number of people killed by the Nazi German regime between 1933 and 1945–he explores a number of other questions relevant to our lives today: Does it matter that millions of ordinary citizens have checked out of participating in the decisions that shape the future of our country? Which is more dangerous: politicians with ill intent, or the too-trusting population that allows such people to lead them? How are we supposed to tell the difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”? How does the answer to this question affect not only our country but our families, our faith, and our values? What happens to a society in which truth is absent? Andrews issues a wake-up call: become informed, passionate citizens who demand honesty and integrity from our leaders, or suffer the consequences of our own ignorance and apathy. Furthermore, we can no longer measure a leader’s worth by the yardsticks provided by the left or the right. Instead, we must use an unchanging standard: the pure, unvarnished truth.

Why I finished this read: this book added other historically similar deaths and it ended quickly with 210 pages and refreshed my memory with the constitution, and other historical writings.

Stars rating: 3.5 of 5 stars, I found it rather dry to me… (mere)