A philosophically ambitious but unfocused and shopworn discussion of religious faith.
A personal reflection about the relevance of the concept of God.
Harry (The Delicate Illusion, 1999, etc.) was raised as a Christian Scientist and now attends a Presbyterian church with his wife, but he has long wrestled with a nagging skepticism that precluded either simple belief or a leap of faith. However, he distinguishes between the literal belief in the God of the Christian Church and the profound utility of that idea for mankind. From a strictly rational perspective, he asserts, the conception of God is simply beyond demonstration, and it’s not based on philosophical deliberation, as the church’s authority simply rests on the revealed word of Scripture. However, whether the idea of God is objectively tenable or not, he asserts, it still collectively promises things of considerable value: it provides people with a sense of security amid chaos, perfection in a world that screams for correction, and the hope of immortality as a consolation for our eventual death. That idea, though, must be presented in a way that’s personal enough that mankind can forge a connection with it. The author explores the ways in which the figure of Jesus Christ fulfills this function, as a bridge between the human and the divine. He also explores the difficulty that the church has in remaining relevant in a world that, through breakneck progress and evolution, struggles to believe in supernatural myth. Harry intrepidly confronts the deepest and most historically recalcitrant questions and impressively attempts to balance a skeptical epistemology with a profound respect for the significance of religion. In focusing on the subjective prominence of the idea of God, as opposed to metaphysical confirmation of God’s existence, the author even manages to make this study germane to atheists: “The idea of God does not mean one necessarily automatically believes in the god of the idea, only that one is aware of it. Even atheists are, by necessity, aware of the god of the idea.” The downside of this maneuver is that he simply dismisses attempts to make such an idea more rationally acceptable, and he largely abandons any serious discussion of the relation between faith and reason. Furthermore, the work as a whole is frustratingly incondite, and much of is so meandering that it reads like a succession of footnotes without a primary text. There is a great display of broad erudition—the author mentions Plato, Voltaire, and St. Augustine, to name a very small sample—but he eschews a serious, sustained discussion of any of them, using them as little more than name-dropping fodder. Harry raises all the right questions, but the answers he provides are neither unfamiliar nor particularly provocative. Finally, he never adequately addresses a fundamental problem with his overall approach: how does the idea of God, if accepted only as myth, provide any of the comforts that he claims? In other words, what reassurances can be delivered by a fictional contrivance that’s acknowledged as such?
A philosophically ambitious but unfocused and shopworn discussion of religious faith.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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