For Protestants and other “Gentiles,” Mormon America is an invaluable primer; Latter-Day Saints will find the book a useful...
A thoroughly researched, impartial treatment of that homegrown American religion so shrouded in mystery and myth: Mormonism.
The Latter-Say Saints have been the subjects of a number of illuminating scholarly works, from Jan Shipps’ Mormonism to D. Michael Quinn’s The Mormon Hierarchy, but until now there has been no book of the same caliber for the general audience. An outgrowth of Richard Ostling and S.C. Gwynne’s 1997 Time magazine cover story, Mormon America is an accessible, evenhanded treatment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), which, according to sociologist Rodney Stark, will number well over 63 million faithful by 2080. Not themselves Mormons, the Ostlings bring a newcomer’s curiosity and a healthy respect for the LDS to their project. After a brief summary of the history of Mormonism, which was born in the late 1820s, the Ostlings investigate a number of hot-button issues, from polygamy (officially banned, but still practiced by a few renegade “Mormon fundamentalists,” who are excommunicated if church authorities discover their marital practices) to money ("If the LDS Church were a U.S. corporation, by revenues it would rank number 243 on the Fortune 500 list"), from LDS politicos (including presidential hopeful Orrin Hatch) to the Mormon doctrine of God (which is at odds with orthodox Christian teaching in matters such as deification, the LDS belief that a person can become a God). Mormon America deals with many topics that Americans have heard of but don't understand, explaining what Mormons mean when they talk about being “eternally sealed” in marriage, evaluating the Latter-Day Saints” famed system of tithing and welfare, explicating the relationship between Mormon ritual and Masonic rites, and investigating the special undergarments that some Mormons wear.
For Protestants and other “Gentiles,” Mormon America is an invaluable primer; Latter-Day Saints will find the book a useful refresher course.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-066371-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
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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