More of a quickie tour than genuine travels among the world's most distinctiveand most religiously extremeJews. Eisenberg is a nonreligious, long-haired midwestern Jew. But the fluent Yiddish he learned from his grandmother gives him entrÇe among the bearded, black-coated ultra-Orthodox men and bewigged women whom he visits. But he squanders his opportunity to provide real insight into the various Hasidic sects portrayed here (each defined by its veneration for a particular rebbe, or spiritual leader): wealthy Vishnitzer diamond merchants in Antwerp; Bratslavers praying at the grave of their rebbe in the Ukraine; Lubavitchers running a glatt kosher meat business in Postville, Iowa. Eisenberg settles instead for brief encounters, amusing images (a young Hasid roller-blading around the slaughterhouse where he works), and cute writing (`` `How's that,' I ask tersely, like Sergeant Friday on Dragnet''). Not only is a Saturday afternoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, not enough time to learn why the Satmars are the most notorious Hasidic sect; our guide also repeats without substantiation charges against the Satmars that have contributed to tensions with their Latino neighbors. His naãvetÇ is equally visible in a discussion about Yeshiva University, in which he seems unaware of power struggles there between centrist and right-wing Orthodox. When he joins the Bratslavers on their annual pilgrimage to their rebbe's grave, we learn about how Hasidim are reviving Judaism in Eastern Europe, but not about the nature of the mystical bond that ties the Bratslavers to a man who died nearly two centuries ago. And the book's most poignant piece, a visit to the last two religious Jews in Dombrova, Poland, has nothing to do with Hasidim. ``Man, you've got to live here for three months, not as an observer but as a participant,'' says one hippie turned Hasid. If only Eisenberg had followed his advice.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-251222-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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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