A well-researched and engrossing analysis of 21st-century human crises.
A debut nonfiction book surveys the paradoxical role of religion in both fostering and hampering global peace.
Trained as a pilot at Pakistan’s air force academy, Saeed dedicates this work to two secondary teachers “who helped me understand the spirit of my religion” and to a flight instructor who taught him that aviation checklists were “not meant to be followed blindly, but rather with conscious discernment and thoughtful judgment.” Reflecting on a lifetime of experience from his South Asian upbringing, his education at the University of Michigan (where he was elected president of the student government), and his multidecade career as a global businessman, the author is more than aware that religion often exacerbates the “unprecedented existential challenges” humanity confronts today. Nearly half of all Americans, for example, view Islamic extremists and White supremacist Christian nationalists as threats. Alternately, the book suggests, religion’s “innate power to heal” means that it is vital to long-term solutions. Drawing on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a “radical revolution of values,” the volume echoes the Christian leader’s warning against “the evil triplets” of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism. Central to the author’s thesis is that from the global to the individual level, religions and their institutions are intertwined with war, terrorism, and systemic corruption. With a firm command of global religions—from the three major Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Buddhism to Indigenous African and Native American traditions—Saeed breaks down theological barriers by emphasizing common elements that lie at the core of human spiritual expression. Impressively researched with 80 pages of bibliographic entries and endnotes, the book employs an interdisciplinary approach that includes a sophisticated analysis of geopolitics and philosophy, in particular the ways in which Thomas Hobbes’ theory of “war of everyone against everyone” drives today’s societal structures. At 407 pages, the volume, with its detailed analysis of myriad issues from multiple religious, geopolitical, and philosophical perspectives, makes for a sometimes dense read. This meticulousness is balanced by an accessible text that deftly incorporates sacred verses from world religions and is accompanied by a multipage glossary of key terms.
A well-researched and engrossing analysis of 21st-century human crises.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 9781611535013
Page Count: 407
Publisher: Torchflame Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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