Dallas-based preacher Jakes's breakout book, Woman, Thou Art Loosed
, established his unique brand of self-help literature saturated with biblical stories. In this new book, bound for bestsellerdoom, he turns his attention to "a man's relationships," using the many-sided King David as his starting point. Jakes is by no means the first writer to troll David's story for insights into masculinity, but he brings an inimitable combination of street smarts and worldly panache to the task. He also draws on the stories of countless men who have come to him for advice on coping with success and failure, sex and love, and relating to their fathers and sons. His recollections of his own struggles, especially a moving section about the death of his father when Jakes was 16, balance his religious, ambitious prose with an uncommon transparency. The quality of the writing falters in the second half, as Jakes expounds rather conventionally on the arenas of power, money and sex—the "PMS" he says can sabotage a marriage. Indeed, unmarried men may find this book off-putting, so strong is Jakes's assumption that family is the center of masculine identity. But his distinctly unmacho vision of fatherhood, friendship and lifelong marital romance will be appreciated by men who embrace his call to be "men in motion, trying to move toward what God wants us to be." (July 15)
