Belongs alongside Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby's The Glory and the Power (1992) as a notable study of orthodoxy and its...
An informative history, previously published (1991) in France, of one of this century's more unexpected developments— the explosive popularity of religious orthodoxy.
Kepel, an authority on Islamic fundamentalism, surveys the outburst of conservatism in major Western religions, and the effects of this movement on the secular state. Contradicting earlier studies that depict orthodoxy as a simple ``no'' to modernism, Kepel paints a more complex portrait of adherents who are often young, well-educated technocrats. The new conservatism (of which only a fraction is fundamentalist) is, he argues, "evidence of a deep malaise in society.'' The harbingers came 15 years ago, with the rise of Israel's Likkud party in 1977, the election of John Paul II in 1978, and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Kepel traces the roots of the Islamic revolt to the pre-World War II Muslim Brotherhood, whose followers preached a total break with the secular state. Their influence can be seen in the Intifada, the Shi'ite revolution in Iran, and the Rushdie affair. Christian conservatism has two components: Catholic aspirations for the "re-Christianization of Europe,'' tied to the fall of Communism and John Paul II's pontificate; and Protestant evangelism, especially strong in America, which has given rise not only to televangelism but, more recently, to a proliferation of evangelical universities. In Judaism, the emphasis is on returning secular Jews to the orthodox fold, epitomized by the proselytizing of the Lubavitch Hasidim. Kepel points out that all these movements share a rejection of the "secular city,'' but that they disagree on alternatives, with Christian conservatives loyal to democracy but at least some of the Jewish and Islamic orthodox favoring theocracy.
Belongs alongside Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby's The Glory and the Power (1992) as a notable study of orthodoxy and its political ramifications.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-271-01313-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
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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