Highly controversial, at times inflammatory—but worthy of attention and debate in a time of crisis.
A cri de guerre in which the noted scholar (Conspiracy, 1997, etc.) again urges that militant Islam is an enemy and must be treated as such.
The fundamentalist, ahistorical (but not anachronistic), and uncompromising face of Islam does not have much to do with the faith of Muhammad, writes Pipes. By far the great majority of Muslims reject the “Islamicist” program, which resembles fascism and communism more than any flavor of religion, and which, though cloaked in populist garb, is the ideological offspring of “money, education, and privilege”; though it rejects westernizing cultural tendencies, what Pipes brands “Islamicism” in fact is oddly reliant on the West, if only because the West provides a convenient bogeyman. Islamicist regimes, Pipes writes, are far more dangerous than are the “odd shipwrecks” of leftist regimes in the Arab world and, for this reason, must be combated at every turn. Pipes urges that the overarching goal of US foreign policy in the Islamic world be to prevent Islamicist parties such as Hezbollah and, for that matter, the Taliban from coming to power. Echoing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Pipes also urges that the West simply refuse to engage in dialogue, private or public, with any militant Islamic group, and that it shun any action that might be construed as giving in to or appeasing any Islamicist power or party. Although not all Muslims hate the West, Pipes allows, and although militant Muslims constitute perhaps only 10% of the Muslim population worldwide, he suggests that the US government keep a watchful eye on immigrant Muslims—for, though “American politicians from George W. Bush on down have tripped over themselves to affirm that the vast majority of Muslims living in the United States are just ordinary folks,” that population still harbors a significant body of people who despise America and intend it harm.
Highly controversial, at times inflammatory—but worthy of attention and debate in a time of crisis.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-393-05204-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
