The Applause of Heaven

Not a huge fan of Lucado's style in this book. His overuse of folksy illustrations distracts rather than amplifies the already powerful and well-known passages he discusses. The analogies seem continually stretched in their relevance and tend to be questionable in accuracy. Often a story is told with little to no source and tends to end up being highly inaccurate, as is the case in the analogies involving the Taj Mahal, Henry Kissinger, and especially Charlemagne. He unnecessarily adds extra made-up details to passages, like what was going through a character's mind, making serious events appear somewhat comical. Some might appreciate his casual, folksy writing, but personally, it came across as shallow and detracted from the gravity of the Beatitudes.