Actually, Mr. McLuhan is quite old-fashioned. He comes on as a harbinger of the new—his message is that it is necessary to adjust to the idea of change—but in 1840 de Tocqueville had already recognized that change was the primary constant of American life. In this book, McLuhan, a great synthesizer of intellectual data, uses the metaphor of war to explain the effects of technology (i.e., innovation, or change). From such simple truisms as "All human progress is a result of standing on the shoulders of our predecessors," he proceeds to the more sensational notion that "Every new technology necessitates a new war. . . . War is an accelerated program of education—compulsory education for the other party." On the other hand, he points out, as the leaders of both sides intensively study the habits, resources, and psychology of the enemy, "today war, as it were, has become the little red schoolhouse of the global village." Similarly, he sees "education as war" and "clothing as war"—the latter, particularly, is "an anti-environmental gesture." All of which is not greatly instructive to the reader, except perhaps as a rich but incoherent reading list (citations range from B. F. Skinner to the I. Ching, and Finnegans Wake, quoted liberally in the margins, is used as the leitmotif). Visually, the book is less interesting than The Medium is the Massage—Fiore uses the same conglomeration of graphic source material, but the arrangement is less inspired, and a trompe l'oeil is rarely as effective the second (or is it the third?) time round.
Pub Date: Sept. 3, 1968
ISBN: 1584230746
Page Count: 192
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
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
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
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