Writing entertainingly and casually, Robinson tells tales out of school that are guaranteed to tick off his fellow...
Water-bottle gossip mixes with big-picture philosophizing in this sharp memoir by a Republican Party stalwart—and onetime insider.
Robinson (Snapshots From Hell, 1994), one of the young conservatives who gave Dartmouth administrators fits in the early 1980s and went on to serve as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and George Bush, is as faithful a Republican as they come. He defends his choice of political persuasions on many grounds: his was, after all, the party of Lincoln, the party of federalism and industrial democracy, the party that he believes best honors the American desire to be left alone to grow rich, fat, and happy. That said, Robinson finds much for which to fault his partisans: "It is easy," he writes, "to find the Republican Party absurd. . . . At times I find myself imaging that the GOP represents the past, its members the last remnants of an America that was once overwhelmingly white and Protestant." Likening his passion for the GOP to a love affair with a slightly dangerous, slightly daft woman—perhaps a silly conceit, but one that works just fine for his purposes—Robinson writes openly of his fellow believers' hidebound sexist and racist tendencies ("The GOP has done almost nothing to appeal to African-Americans or single women, while its efforts to deal with the growing Hispanic population have so far proven perverse"), exposing major flaws of belief and practice on every page. But his gadfly criticism notwithstanding, Robinson argues that the GOP is in every respect preferable to the chief alternative, and he plumps for George W. Bush while acknowledging the attractiveness of John McCain (who, for the Republican Old Guard, appears to be more dangerous than any Democrat).
Writing entertainingly and casually, Robinson tells tales out of school that are guaranteed to tick off his fellow Republicans and delight their foes in this election year. But make no mistake, he's hanging on to his party card.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-446-52665-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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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