A book that should be on every thinking person’s shelf—the perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of...
Pagden (Political Science and History/UCLA; Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West, 2008, etc.) demonstrates the breadth and depth of his knowledge and his impeccable research of the period we refer to as the Enlightenment.
Lest readers are daunted in trying to follow the deep thoughts of the great writers of the 18th century, the author gently explains each outlook, theory and proposal. This was the century of philosophy, but it was also the century when the science of man—i.e., social sciences—came into being. It was Gottfried Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds.” Seeking to define men and their relationships with nature, and especially with each other, led to this scientific revolution; it was an intellectual process, a philosophical project and a social movement. The figures of the period were a combination of skeptics, epicureans and stoics seeking to build a cosmopolitan world of diverse people with common interests. Pagden impressively illustrates the significant discussions that took place as these scientists, historians and other intellectuals tried to fathom man’s nature and subject dogma to reason. Many readers will wonder at what they would give to be present at Baron d’Holbach’s Paris dinner table with Hume, Diderot, Rousseau, D’Alembert and even Ben Franklin as they discussed religion and a nature-centered universe. These storied men of letters dutifully studied the ages of man in his journey from the beginnings of agriculture to the right of property and division of lands. Pagden serves as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide through this “particular intellectual and cultural movement.”
A book that should be on every thinking person’s shelf—the perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of Western civilization.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6068-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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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