An eye-opener that rings multiple alarms.
The story of the evangelical elite’s efforts to promote Christian ideals in U.S. domestic and international affairs.
Following his bestselling 2008 exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Harper’s and Rolling Stone contributing editor Sharlet provides an unsettling account of the present-day inner workings of this secretive underground of Christian activists in government—variously known as the Family and the Fellowship—and its flagship C Street townhouse in Washington, D.C., which offers lodging, meals and prayer meetings for conservative Christian members of Congress. Elected by citizens, participating officials “persuade themselves that they were, in fact, selected by God,” and promote anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro–free-market ideas. Shortly after publication of The Family, the C Street house won national media attention in connection with the extramarital affairs of three Republican politicians and Family members—Nevada Sen. John Ensign, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering. (Ensign and Pickering were living at C Street.) Drawing on interviews and archival material, Sharlet details the scandals and Family efforts to cover them up, then clears the murk surrounding the spiritual group enough to show how C Street brings politicians and business leaders together to “do right by God and each other” by shaping legislation and fostering ties with—and U.S. support for—repressive foreign regimes. In Uganda, for example, the Family has poured millions into advancing God-led government and anti-gay efforts. One member, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, has often traveled at public expense to meet with leaders in Nigeria and other African nations to advance what he calls “the political philosophy of Jesus.” Sharlet also explores the evangelical transformation of the armed services. Christian proselytizing pervades the military academies, and such groups as the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, modeled on Family principles, view the global war on terror as a spiritual battle in which soldiers in Iraq have been forced to pray to Jesus. Sometimes called the “Christian mafia,” the Family sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Washington event that has been attended by every sitting U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
An eye-opener that rings multiple alarms.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-09107-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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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