Inspirational in all the right ways but a challenge to get through it all.
An overlong but vigorous gloss on the Dalai Lama’s famous remark, “My religion is kindness.”
Former geneticist and longtime Buddhist monk Ricard (Happiness, 2012, etc.) sets out to prove that true altruism exists, but he winds up exploring nearly the whole of human nature. His task is compounded by the Hobbesian mood of the age, when the individualistic mode is one of “irresponsible selfishness and rampant narcissism, to the detriment of the well-being of all.” However, altruism means many things to many people. Ricard generally agrees with researchers who hold that it is the motivation and not the “intensity” involved that counts: for it to matter, in other words, altruism is less the instinctual sacrifice of throwing oneself atop a hand grenade in a foxhole than the self-negation that comes, in one of the author’s examples, with abandoning a promising white-collar career in order to dig wells for impoverished villagers. One great virtue of this virtuous book is Ricard’s ability to poke holes in received wisdom. For example, he observes that while some abused children become abusers as adults, more often, they decide to “do the opposite of their parents when they have children.” Sometimes, the author is imprecise: cutting down on meat consumption won’t really “prevent 14% of deaths in the world,” since all of us die; perhaps he means death will be forestalled in that many cases. Elsewhere, Ricard ranges too far in quest of examples; his revisiting of the Holocaust-era extermination squads Christopher Browning writes about in Ordinary Men (1992) draws perhaps the wrong conclusion, for the opposite of that murder would not be guilty weeping but instead a policeman’s taking the place of a victim. Still, Ricard’s book, full of good behavior on the part of humans—and other animals—is of a piece with Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) in suggesting that we don’t have to be rotten.
Inspirational in all the right ways but a challenge to get through it all.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-20824-6
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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