Discovering a pope with a controversial past and a revolutionary style of leadership in the present, Vallely provides a...
An exhaustive look at the newest pope.
In a revised and expanded edition of Pope Francis: Untying the Knots (2013), Independent associate editor Vallely (editor: The New Politics: Catholic Social Teaching for the Twenty-First Century, 2013, etc.) delves deeper into the first two years of the Francis papacy, providing a meaty and useful guide to understanding the pontiff. In the early chapters, the author discusses Francis’ life in Argentina, including his highly controversial years as head of the Jesuit order in the region. Though Vallely is generally supportive of the pope, he does not equivocate from examining the divisive role he played in Argentina and the sometimes-injurious results of his leadership there. However, Vallely notes that Francis underwent a transformation during pastoral ministry to the poor in the early 1990s, changing his leadership style, priorities, and personality. From there, the author delves into the papacy, from Francis’ unexpected election to his efforts at reform of the Curia. Vallely uses access to high-placed clergy, journalists, and scholars to piece together a detailed survey of Francis’ first two years in his role. He places special emphasis on the pope’s efforts to clean up the Vatican bank, reforms for his circle and the Synod of Bishops, and his handling of sex abuse scandals. On a more personal note, Vallely looks at the pope’s penchant for unscripted and down-to-earth statements, which has caused misinterpretations by the press and turmoil among church officials. The author also examines the pope’s stances on women, homosexuals, divorced people, and other faiths. Vallely discovers the pope to be a difficult figure to label, but, he writes, “Francis is at the heart of a struggle for the soul of Catholicism, and his greatest allies are the ordinary Catholics in the pews.”
Discovering a pope with a controversial past and a revolutionary style of leadership in the present, Vallely provides a highly worthwhile resource for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63286-115-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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