Though much of the writing is academically dry, this history is more provocative than readers may suspect.
A history of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, an institution that keeps most of its controversies behind closed doors.
Composer, performer and scholar Hicks (Music/Brigham Young Univ.; Henry Cowell, Bohemian, 2003, etc.) documents plenty of intrigue in the leadership, mission and repertoire of “America’s choir,” while acknowledging the considerable challenges of his endeavor: “The Tabernacle Choir is a close-knit family. And close-knit families often stiffen their ranks against outsiders. The current handbook of the Choir may not be shown to anyone who is not a member of the Choir. Choir members are not to write about the Choir in blogs. And they are required to secure permission from the Choir President before speaking to ‘the media.’ ” Yet music has been integral to the image of Mormonism practically since the beginning of the religion, through a 19th century when making a joyful noise in church was spiritually suspect to Protestant evangelicals. As the success of the choir “more than any other institution…domesticated the image of Mormonism,” offsetting the association with polygamy and other moral curiosities, it kept pace with the times by attracting a devoted following through radio, TV and a series of best-selling recordings that mixed the secular and the spiritual. By the 21st century, “the Tabernacle Choir sold out Denver’s Pepsi Stadium—fifteen thousand seats—three days before the Rolling Stones, another major brand name, sold just thirteen thousand seats in the same venue.” It also adapted to the high-tech spectacle that modern performance seemed to demand. Yet the hundreds of choir members remained unpaid and all but anonymous, serving as musical missionaries, and the institution become more closely associated with conservative political partisanship as it continued to struggle with what one leader called “the colored problem.”
Though much of the writing is academically dry, this history is more provocative than readers may suspect.Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-252-03908-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Illinois
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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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