An internationally renowned scholar shows that the Spanish Inquisition was originally the result of a long build-up of anti- Semitic racism for which the defense of Catholic orthodoxy was only a pretext. Within a few years of the 1391 pogroms in Spain, notes Netanyahu (The Marranos of Spain, not reviewed), conversions to Christianity reduced the country's Jewish community, the largest in the world, by nearly one third. Descendants of these converts, known as ``conversos'' (and pejoratively as Marranos, ``swine''), became a powerful elite; but following accusations that they were ``Judaizing,'' i.e., secretly observing Jewish rituals, the Inquisition was set up in 1480 to inquire into their Christian orthodoxy. Netanyahu confesses how his assumption that the conversos were Jewish martyrs was shattered when his reading revealed that they were bona fide Christians, bent on assimilation, who were regarded by other Jews as renegades and hated by their fellow Christians on account of their economic and political ascendancy. Beginning with an incisive overview of anti-Semitism in the pre-Christian world and in Christian Spain, Netanyahu shows how the Jews, as a defenseless alien minority, aligned themselves with the ruler and earned the hostility of the majority; and thus how, throughout the 15th century, the conversos were caught in a struggle between the king, their protector, and the rising power of the cities. We hear of the brilliant but unstable fortunes of the conversos under Juan II's chief minister, Alvaro de Luna, and how the ideologue Marcos Garc°a de Mora of Toledo developed a racial theory that was at odds with Church teaching and aimed at stopping the conversions. Netanyahu carefully analyzes the writings of conversos, such as Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (uncle of the notorious Inquisitor General), of their foes, and of allies, such as Alonso de Oropesa, General of the Hieronymite Order. Throughout, Netanyahu handles his vast material with confidence and sensitivity, not least when dealing with Church teaching. A vivid, magisterial resource for students of Spanish history and Jewish-Christian relations.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41065-1
Page Count: 1392
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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