A stubborn but unconvincing apologia for the author’s persistent belief that the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial shroud of Jesus. Wilson has penned two other defenses of the shroud (The Turin Shroud, 1978, and The Evidence of the Shroud, 1986), but both of those books were published before 1988, when scientists determined through radiocarbon dating that the shroud was made from 14th-century linen and so could not be Jesus— burial clothing. After a decade of reformulating his theory, Wilson is back, as vociferous as ever. This book is testimony not so much to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin but to the veracity of Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance: When presented with evidence that their beliefs are impossible or their predictions unrealizable, individuals will cling to their long-cherished convictions that much more tenaciously rather than relinquish them. Wilson just refuses to let this issue die, attempting instead to cast doubt on the scientific procedures that first declared the shroud to be spurious. Any imagination utilized in this book is reserved for the subject matter, not the writing style. Most chapters have rhetorical questions as titles: —Cunning Painting—or Genuine Gravecloth?— (Genuine.) Or: —Carbon Dating, Right or Wrong?— (Dead wrong.) Wilson is particularly interested in the imprint of Jesus on the shroud, which he claims is —a 2000-year old photograph of him as he lay in death.— Despite his own intense certitude, Wilson tries to be evenhanded, never openly excoriating those who hold other views. In the last chapter, he invites readers to examine their own hearts on the matter, and raises a far more interesting question than that of the shroud’s authenticity: Why should we care? The book is unlikely to persuade the skeptics Wilson is clearly trying to reach, but never fear; he will almost certainly write more on the subject. (illustrations)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85359-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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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