Joel Osteen’s book Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, offers an outline for a higher level of existence in the here and now. Osteen is the young, enthusiastic pastor of the diverse, Houston-based Lakewood Church, which has more than 30,000 members, and his inspirational television program is viewed in 100 million households worldwide. Clearly, Osteen’s outline for a life of health, abundance and victory comes from a Christian perspective. He believes that while God wants to help us, we must do our part to allow God to promote us, to increase us, to give us more. The seven steps he describes are a means to opening that path. Like Ford, he encourages us to dream big and move beyond the mundane. Osteen recognizes that life can throw everything from disappointment to disaster at us, but his outlook remains optimistic. Our human tendency, he writes, is to want everything easily. But without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. Without the resistance of air, an eagle can’t soar. Linda Stankard continues to be her own work in progress.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
