If Bushite cheerleading mixed with sort-of-learned allusion is your bag, then this is for you.
A Civics 101 treatise on why we’re good and terrorists and their pals are bad.
Once upon a time, human societies—oh, say, Sparta—found it necessary to declare certain humans enemies, chase them down, and kill them, maybe enslaving their women and keeping their toys in the bargain. But then, over time, certain soft, pampered, and overindulgent societies came to discover that they had forgotten that, in Woody Allen’s resonant phrase, even paranoiacs have enemies. “They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy,” intones independent pundit Harris, whose recent articles in Policy Review prefigure this extended essay. “That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary.” Well, perhaps, except that recent presidents up to and including the much-despised Bill Clinton identified plenty of enemies for us to worry about, not least of them the Soviet Union. The notion that anyone really imagined that the world was a safe and flower-paved place is arguable enough, but Harris nonetheless likens us dumb, hapless latter-day Americans to the ancient Aztecs, who had no way of explaining what happened to them when old Cortez came along; just so, the awful sight of civilian airliners flying into tall buildings confronted us with a baffling enigma that put our language and thinking all out of whack. It makes your head hurt, after all, to imagine fighting a just war against people who don’t play by the rules. Harris offers, by way of a remedy for our confusion, a tour through the pages of Plato and the “gang ethos” of ancient Greece, a crash course in Roman ideas of patriotism and Hegelian logic, a discourse on al-Qaeda symbology and the virtues of the free market and, to boot, a few asides on the Imperial training in Frank Herbert’s Dune—all apparently meant to reassure readers that we are civilized and they are not, and that the US represents the last best hope of all who would be civilized in the future, “a practical design for the next stage of human history: a utopia that works.”
If Bushite cheerleading mixed with sort-of-learned allusion is your bag, then this is for you.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5749-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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