A brilliantly written, sobering investigation of a secret society within plain sight.
The life and times of a cult that was strange even as cults go.
Prolific journalist Stille examines the Sullivanians, offshoot followers of psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), “high-performing urban professionals—doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, successful artists and writers, professors—who went to normal jobs by day but returned in the evening to a very different and highly secretive world.” That world, encompassing some major cultural figures, embraced polygamy and polyamory and the group raising of children and abnegation of the nuclear family. Moreover, belonging to it required fealty to a psychologist named Saul Newton and a succession of his wives, one a “rather conventional young woman from a middle-class Jewish family” who tasted power and, by the account of some members, took a tyrannical turn. In the end, it was a sort of Ponzi scheme: “Therapists” unqualified to practice outside the cult took money from lesser “therapists,” and most of it wound up in the hands of the leaders. So it went from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, when some members, awakened by one injury or another, began to drift away. Stille’s onrushing, riveting narrative makes The Blithedale Romance seem like a children’s book by comparison. As Newton and company became worse and worse, he demanding sexual favors from every woman in the Sullivanian orbit, a quiet resistance grew. Surprisingly, children raised collectively and discouraged to seek the identity of their biological parents embarked on that search during adulthood, while a few of the erstwhile leaders came to accept that maybe their program was highly flawed. As with so many cults, the Orwellian principle that some animals are more equal than others shines through always. “Although it was in principle an egalitarian communist group,” Stille writes, “the Sullivanians were remarkably hierarchical, and everyone was aware where they stood at any given moment in the pecking order.”
A brilliantly written, sobering investigation of a secret society within plain sight.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780374600396
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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