Nonetheless, this is a powerful book, suggesting how fragile both the human psyche and human decency may be.
A study of the historical and psychological origins and meanings of the Japanese cult Aum Shinriky?, by the noted psychiatrist and author Lifton.
On March 5, 1995, members of Aum, at the direction of their leader, Sh?k? Asahara, released the lethal gas sarin onto five Tokyo subway trains. Eleven died, 5,000 were injured. Lifton has written often on the evil extremes of human action – e.g., the Nazi Holocaust, Hiroshima (Hiroshima in America: 50 Years of Denial, 1995, etc.). Bringing his vast knowledge to bear on Aum, he finds much that is familiar, much that is unique. As with all cults, the members of Aum were fiercely dedicated to their leader, to the point of “collective megalomania”: an unquestioned belief in the limitless power of the self. Add to this a belief in poa, altruistic murder, so that the victim might move to a higher level of being, and all bounds of behavior are removed. Aum was fascinated with Armageddon. A final cleansing of the world, but uniquely Aum had weapons at its disposal to at least plan such a cleansing. This is the new terrorism to which the title alludes. Lifton examines how cult members became indoctrinated, yet he has larger questions. Why such a group in the first place? Why in Japan? Can it happen elsewhere? Reaching back to Japanese history, the author searches for motivation: similar cults, Japan’s failure to face its barbarous actions in WWII, the spiritual malaise of a rigid Japanese social system. Even Godzilla movies come into play. Beyond Aum, Lifton looks to the social situations that may lead to, and in fact have led to, similar cults in the US. Lifton is evocative and erudite as usual, yet the limits of his “psychohistorical” method remain. Understanding history through psychology suggests much and proves little. The history of Japan may have motivated Aum members, but precisely how – how history permeates the individual – remains unclear.
Nonetheless, this is a powerful book, suggesting how fragile both the human psyche and human decency may be.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5290-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 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.
