A thoughtful book that should spark debate, with the author stressing that bringing a companion animal into one’s life is an...
Examination of the pros and cons of pet ownership from the standpoint of ethics.
Bioethicist Pierce (The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives, 2012, etc.) challenges pet lovers to recognize that animal ownership is definitely a dicey affair; no matter how well loved they are, our pets are essentially being held captives. Arguably, the dogs and cats we consider family may be happy to live with us and would not choose to be free, but for a caged bird or a goldfish in a bowl, the situation is less equivocal. Pierce notes that children are fascinated by animals while still infants, and their relationships with their pets can play an important positive part in their lives, deepening their ability to empathize with and take responsibility for others—with the proviso that they learn to treat them as companions with complex needs rather than merely objects for their entertainment. The author also reminds us that pet ownership is a big business. The pet industry encourages pet ownership, by shaping “a cultural narrative in which pet keeping is part of a normal and happy life,” in order to merchandise the sale of the animals as well as “cages, tanks, foods, toys, veterinary products,” and more. People are encouraged to bring animals into their homes without considering their responsibility to provide them with food, shelter, exercise, and play. Pierce points to the failure of many owners to provide access to adequate veterinary care and the existence of animal shelters filled to capacity with unwanted, abandoned animals. The author reminds us that the animals we love and treat as companions “are denied nearly all of their natural behaviors, not to mention their freedom.”
A thoughtful book that should spark debate, with the author stressing that bringing a companion animal into one’s life is an ethical commitment that should not to be taken lightly.Pub Date: May 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-226-20989-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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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