A readable if superficial analysis of the moral basis of east Asian society. Over the course of a generation, the nations of east Asia have become, to varying degrees, prosperous industrial societies. And a social miracle has accompanied the economic miracle, notes Reid (former Tokyo bureau chief for the Washington Post), namely, social stability. Nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all enjoy extremely low crime rates. Divorce is rare. Public education is superb; economic equality is more a fact than a goal. These societies work, and in comparison, ours doesn’t. Why? Reid holds east Asian values responsible. For the region’s people generally adhere to the tenets of Confucianism, and Confucianism preaches social harmony as an end in itself. Thus, to break or disregard social mores brings shame upon the self, one’s family, and one’s society. Reid writes knowingly about Confucian thought and shows, through sharply drawn anecdotes, how harmony is pursued and practiced on a daily basis in east Asia. Yet he doesn—t find Confucian moral values to differ all that much from those of the West and its Judeo-Christian tradition. The main difference, for Reid, lies in the fact that east Asian societies will go to extraordinary lengths to instill moral values in every member (and this, he claims, Americans don—t do, although they should). There are flaws in his logic, however. The author never questions, for instance, the psychic cost of socially mandated conformity, nor does he discuss the often highly unequal status of women in east Asia. And he doesn—t consider how differing social policies, rather than simply differing emphases on values, may account for east Asia’s success. Reid presents an interesting thesis but doesn—t quite convince. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-45624-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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 Yorker staff 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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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