An interesting, approachable retelling of a well-established history.
A readable look at the rulers of the Jewish people, spanning more than a millennium.
Gelb presents a compilation of the lives of Jewish rulers from ancient King Saul to the puppet ruler Agrippa, who saw Jerusalem fall to the Romans. The book profiles the dozens of men and two women who ruled over Judah, Israel or some other manifestation of the Jewish nation through a vast period of history. Ancient Jewish history is both well-documented and highly engaging, and Gelb takes advantage of both characteristics in crafting a book based upon these rulers’ lives. Whether the stories are well-known, such as David or Solomon, or more obscure, such as tongue-twister monarchs Jehoahaz or Pekahiah, the material is rich, epic and certain to maintain interest. Gelb’s narrative style is highly readable and holds the reader’s attention. The author also provides worthwhile historical background throughout, especially at crucial junctures such as the move to captivity in Babylon and the Maccabean Revolt. Though an instructive read, this book is not necessarily a fresh addition to the overall body of work in Jewish history. Indeed, most of what Gelb includes is found either in the Hebrew scriptures, i.e., the Old Testament, or the Apocrypha. Gelb’s contribution is not so much providing original research or fresh interpretation, but instead making this history more approachable to the modern reader, regardless of prior knowledge of Jewish history. Though the book is a history of the leaders of God’s chosen people, in Gelb’s chronicle, God has little or no agency. When God communicates or acts, it is only “According to the Bible” or as “The Bible describes.” As such, Gelb’s account is rooted deeply in historical critical methods, and readers of established personal faith may find it off-putting to some degree.
An interesting, approachable retelling of a well-established history.Pub Date: July 31, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-46568-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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