| The Screwtape Letters | 
 enlarge | List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $1.49
You Save: $11.46 (88%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $1.49
Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 369 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3629
Category: Book
Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: HarperOne
Studio: HarperOne
Manufacturer: HarperOne
Label: HarperOne
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0060652934
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.4
EAN: 9780060652937
ASIN: 0060652934
Publication Date: February 2001
Release Date: February 6, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this humorous and perceptive exchange between two devils, C. S. Lewis delves into moral questions about good vs. evil, temptation, repentance, and grace. Through this wonderful tale, the reader emerges with a better understanding of what it means to live a faithful life.
Amazon.com Review
Who among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shoulders or dogging our steps? C.S. Lewis dispels all doubts. In The Screwtape Letters, one of his bestselling works, we are made privy to the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God. Each letter is a masterpiece of reverse theology, giving the reader an inside look at the thinking and means of temptation. Tempters, according to Lewis, have two motives: the first is fear of punishment, the second a hunger to consume or dominate other beings. On the other hand, the goal of the Creator is to woo us unto himself or to transform us through his love from "tools into servants and servants into sons." It is the dichotomy between being consumed and subsumed completely into another's identity or being liberated to be utterly ourselves that Lewis explores with his razor-sharp insight and wit. The most brilliant feature of The Screwtape Letters may be likening hell to a bureaucracy in which "everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." We all understand bureaucracies, be it the Department of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, or one of our own making. So we each understand the temptations that slowly lure us into hell. If you've never read Lewis, The Screwtape Letters is a great place to start. And if you know Lewis, but haven't read this, you've missed one of his core writings. --Patricia Klein
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 364 more reviews...
 A theological satrical masterpiece, rich in consolation, and a number of belly laughs November 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I often say that almost all of my theology comes from reading "The Narnia Suite," which I read for the first time at the age of eight, and more than a dozen times thereafter. I was particularly taken with The Last Battle, in which some people are very surprised indeed to learn that those they thought wouldn't be admitted into Aslan's Land because they fought on "The Wrong Side" of the aforementioned last battle, were in fact instantly admitted because it was their intention and their heart which was judged.
When I was a little older, someone gave me a copy of "The Screwtape Letters," and I have read it probably a dozen or more times over the years as well. Brilliant, allegorical, hilarious in parts, and filled with gentle wisdom, it is a theological masterpiece. I recall the first time I the letter in which one devil brags that he will soon win his first soul for the devil because although the man continues to pray, he doesn't believe what he says any longer. The older, wiser devil releases a stream of invective and explains the younger devil is an idiot, because doesn't the know that "those are the prayers that God loves best!?" How relieved I felt, as a young person, that there was a possibility God might still embrace me, even with all my doubts. Just one of the many gifts Lewis's work offers to those of us searching for a deeper relationship with God.
Screwtape Letters November 1, 2008
An excellent book which shows how the "other side" thinks. Great writing! One of my favorites!
 Agree with Most Helpful Critical Review October 27, 2008
I was hoping this version could replace my paperback copy; however, without the C.S. Lewis preface to the 1961 edition it is incomplete.
Funny (and Serious) as Hell ! September 25, 2008
Like all Lewis' works, this book is full of insights into human life - into those aspects which are often too big and obvious for us to notice. These insights are given us directly from the enemy through the writings of a devil named Screwtape. He writes to his nephew (a novice tempter devil) about his nephew's "patient," a human struggling with faith, who is a representation of us. This book bettered my attitudes about people and life and faith by orders of magnitude! I recommend it to everyone!!
Enlightening read for committed (and thinking) Christians August 20, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I don't know how well this great book translates to agnostic readers, but for me it was a very enlightening and concrete way to understand what it means to try to be a good man in a world of temptation.
In keeping with the time period, I believe it was Winston Churchill who said "All evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing". In the Screwtape Letters the senior tempter, tells his apprentice, it is just as affective to get a man to stare into a fire until it turns to ash, as to get him to commit some great sin, because either keeps him from doing what he should. I wonder what Mr. Lewis would have thought of digital cable television? I am as guilty as anyone of staring at that box instead of doing good.
So here's the deal.
This is an excellent book for any believer from High School on up, that wants to be good and avoid evil.
But that's just me.
|
|
|
