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I read this book for a class, and I enjoyed it very much! I feel that this book can be extremely beneficial for introducing the idea of properly interacting cross-culturally. Cultural intelligence is a wonderful idea that is defined as “reaching across the chasm of cultural difference in ways that are loving and respectful.” It is the idea that through the right preparation, an individual would be able to respectfully interact with people from any and all cultures. I think the idea, while nice, is a bit unrealistic as individual cultures can have very specific things to know in order to properly show respect. Despite this criticism, I very much enjoyed the book and I think it really did have some great lessons. The book is well paced and very well written, it is probably the most engaging book I have ever had to read for a class. It also connects the points to Christianity well but not too much so only christians can enjoy the book. It explains the importance and idea of cultural intelligence in a very easy to comprehend way. Livermore does a great job of making the work he has done for a long time as an expert on cultural intelligence understandable for all readers. He defines culture, empathy, language, and more in very insightful ways and does a great job of relating them to different examples. He even uses a wide amount of examples from his own life to get messages across. He even includes old (often ignorant) journal entries of his, and his vulnerability with showing his growth makes a great point that anyone can learn. I really appreciated this book’s wordings of things and his ability to connect with the reader. While it mostly focuses on race and ethnicity in regards to culture and societal experience, it also touches on gender and sexuality in ways that I was not expecting from a christian book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is planning on traveling or to someone who often interacts with diverse groups in order to increase their “cultural intelligence.”As someone who has spent time in different countries, I feel that the book is very beneficial to Americans traveling abroad. It seems to be written mostly for white American christians, but I think this makes sense as we are often the ones lacking in cultural knowledge and are a part of the majority race. I actually would love for the majority of white christians to read this, as so often they ignore the true teachings of the Bible. My only other criticism is that it is a bit simple, and some points seem obvious, but once again I understand the reasoning behind this as it can be read by anyone. I will definitely be passing this book on to my parents, I know that as ignorant white republican christians they could learn a lot from it haha! This was a good book and a fun read, and I feel that I learned a lot from it!

As a graduate student at Pepperdine University, this book was one of two primary texts we used in a class called Multiethnic Ministry and Cross-Cultural Missions. The author, David A. Livermore (PhD, Michigan State University) has his background in missions and youth ministry. He knows firsthand the failures that he and other White Christians have made when attempting to minister to people of other cultures and ethnicities. Livermore cringingly recounts some of these failures as warnings to heed and motivators to do better. He does an excellent job of laying out the structural theories and ideas to correct inappropriate assumptions made by dominant group members of the Church, in order to point us all towards a path of greater cultural intelligence. Cultural Intelligence, or “CQ,” as Livermore defines it, is a metaframework that measures and explains one’s ability to reach across the chasm of cultural difference in ways that are loving and respectful. Livermore presents the path toward cultivating and growing in CQ by focusing on love, understanding/knowledge, interpretation, and perseverance/behavior. Livermore excels at presenting a framework for CQ growth that can be applied in any multiethnic or cross-cultural ministry setting. He focuses on key differences between the belief and thought patterns of people of various different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Understanding these differences greatly informs the reader of what to be aware of in a given cross-cultural situation, and how to keep one’s own assumptions from creating a barrier between them and the person of a different culture--or as Livermore says, “the Other.” This is another primary concept in the book. “The Other” is anyone different from oneself as a result of a different cultural context. Rather than assume “color blindness,” homogeneity, or that “we’re all pretty much the same,” Livermore encourages the reader to truly identify when another person is “Other” than them, and to engage in the process of embracing, understanding, and loving that person and their Otherness. However, one of the major pitfalls Livermore seems to fall into, is perhaps an excessive veneration of the Other, and an excessive critique of the dominant culture, this being, in the World--the West, in the West--the U.S, and in the U.S.--Whites. His main audience is indeed dominant group Church members, but sometimes he confusingly conflates those descriptors when they should be specified. For instance, when he refers to an American having trouble doing mission work in an African or Middle Eastern country, it’s not entirely clear whether the barrier is their Americanness or perhaps their Whiteness. This, combined with a sometimes overly generous openness to non-dominant group “Other” cultures, sometimes leads to a lack in identifying any virtues of Western culture, and inattentional blindness to some vices of Other cultures. Overall though, I would describe this book as useful and enlightening, with minimal flaws, making it an excellent read for anyone looking to better understand the Other in their personal life, their society, their business/organization, and especially in their church.