ARA Review by Fabio Barcelos of In It Together

[Fabio Barcelos]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, In It Together.]

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3 out of 5 stars

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An eloquent narrative, that ultimately did not work for me.

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes's "In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All " is a critique of the way we, human beings, see what is wrong with our way of thinking and the role in occupy in today’s society. One unfortunate problem that still very much plagues our modern world is the heart-breaking subject of child starvation/mortality as well as overall suffering. It also tries to explain the fundamental problems of empathy and kindness and its collaboration with love and our fundamental values of discipline and spiritual freedom as individuals.



Hughes's narration is straightforward, easy to understand and a breeze to navigate. Most of the times he uses a friendly and somewhat humorous tone to placate some of the more philosophical debates that have troubled scholars for ages, like what defines a person and her character, and what is the nature of man? He uses well-crafted analogies and an abundant array of rhetoric questions to bring a bit of light to these otherwise heavy topics of discussion, such as the war within us. Even going so far as to exemplify some, let’s call it, practical solutions to stop that war and find that peace and tranquility we all search in the end.



However, it is in trying to tie all this down, that for me, personally, the book began to turn on its head. For one, it goes overboard with the passing, as the author repeats himself immensely to the point where I find myself, reading and re-reading the same passages, written differently but conveying the same message over and over again. Hughes also gets a bit too friendly with certain expressions that can work once or twice, but not four or five times in the same page. And it was here, due to all this unnecessary wordiness and frequent contradictive statements where I would lose myself repeatedly, making me go over the same subject several times to try and properly understand what it was that he really intended to say. Safe to say, that a lot of the time I still could not completely get his logic. All of this made the reading of this book a bit tiresome, which is why I gave this book a 3 out of 5.

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