Greg Sheridan (1)

Greg Sheridan has loved Southeast Asia for a long time. But he had no idea of what he was letting himself in for when he decided to journey to the hidden depths of some of his favourite cities with his Malaysian-born wife Jessie and their three sons.From palaces to poverty, from high tech to high tradition, from mosque to market place, Greg Sheridan takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through six dramatic and compelling cities - Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hanoi, Saigon, Singapore and Hong Kong.

In Jakarta he finds himself in a disconcerting conversation with a Borneo face mask. He attends the only communist life drawing class in Hanoi and spends an evening under the stars with a Cantonese movie star in Hong Kong's Disco Bay. He also shares intimate conversations with the region's big men - Dr Mahathir of Malaysia, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, Abdurrahman Wahid in Jakarta - finds himself the guest of a friendly, if extreme, Islamic fundamentalist and spends one chilling morning with the leader of a terrorist group in Jakarta. From radical feminists to young politicians on the make, Greg Sheridan shows us an Asia that is disturbing, charming, intriguing and always surprising.

Told with wit, passion and humour Cities of the Hot Zone is a story about both the mysterious consolations of family and an enduring love of these incomparable cities.… (más)

Greg Sheridan is the foreign affairs journalist at The Australian. From the few pieces I have read I have the impression that he takes a conservative political line in his journalism and that his style can be heavy-handed.

Sheridan’s new book God is God for You was recommended, and for that reason alone I added it to my Kindle as holiday reading. I was pleasantly surprised in every way.

God is Good for You is certainly, as the sub-title says, a defence of Christianity. It is a well-argued, highly informed piece of apologetics. Sheridan’s voice is quiet, reasonable and forceful. He engages the so-called new atheists with strong evidence that belief is more reasonable than non-belief. He shows that many of the benefits of Western democracy come directly from Christianity, and he invites us to explore Christian responses to evil and suffering.
In Part 2, he interviews Christian politicians and national leaders from the major parties, and insists that many politicians are motivated by their faith. As one politician says, ‘You find more Christians in Parliament than in the general population.’ He explores new expressions of Christianity, including Pentecostal churches like Planetshakers in Melbourne and the counter-cultural movements of traditional and new monasticism.

He confesses himself surprised by the pervasive reach of the Focolare movement and interviews its Australian leader, Lucia Compostella. In Perth, he visits Providence City Church with its steady gaze on the new place of Christianity in Australian society – not persecuted, but a minority in exile from the old paradigm of Christendom.

He critiques the limited understandings of leadership in the mainline churches and their weak use of traditional and social media.

I was pleasantly surprised at the catholicity of Sheridan’s gaze across the whole church scene, and at the open tone of his writing. There were points of disagreement for me. While I agreed with his statement that Christian faith makes radical claims of transcendence, he made too easy an equation between transcendence and the supernatural, a concept I wanted him to at least qualify. However, points of disagreement were actually few.

This book could safely be offered to any thinking citizen, Christian or not, for its reasonableness, and to any optimistic Christian for its clear-eyed analysis of where we are in modern society and its remedies for the future.… (más)

Subtitle hyped. Overpromised, underdelivered.

Better titled as 'I love Tony Abbott & old white conservative men' or 'In defence of my fellow partisans' or 'I wish I was Jewish too'.

Greg loves to squeal about how much he loves words and writing and journalism, cool we get it, but it's underwhelming that he writes for 8th grade level. I was surprised I didn't need to reach for a dictionary to check a definition of a new word. I was expecting that when he mentioned how much he loved books and classic authors.

The only book he seems to really mention was 'Christopher Koch's 'A Year of Living Dangerously' (about journalists in Indonesia in the 1970s or 80s)

The anecdotes were a bit bland, and his bias comes through with attempts at revisionist history of accusations against his mates, mostly former-Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

He couldn't help but remind you how much he loves Israel and the Jews and how he thinks Palestinians and lefty students are terrorists.

A redemption would be a book on why Catholics must support Israel and the Jews, but then that would be pretty boring too. Not to mention incredibly biased. 1 star but given his honesty and candidness (defending the actions and personalities of his mates) most of the time I'll give it 2 stars.… (más)