by Arthur J. Magida ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 1996
Magida was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, but this biography adds little to our knowledge or understanding of this fiery, notorious man. Editorial director of Jewish Lights and a former editor at the Baltimore Jewish Times, Magida might not seem like the ideal biographer for a man who calls Jews ``bloodsuckers.'' But a lack of objectivity and fairness are not the flaws of this rather thin work. The problem is that, despite having obtained several personal interviews with Farrakhan—no mean accomplishment—Magida mostly rehashes the public record of the minister's activities, especially his growing conflicts with Jews during the 1980s and '90s. There are occasional insights, such as a clarification of Farrakhan's reference to Judaism as a ``dirty religion.'' Noting that ``Farrakhan's religious vocabulary was so peculiar, so idiosyncratic'' that it was virtually incomprehensible, Magida shows by other examples that the phrase refers to hypocrisy in religion, rather than the content of any particular faith. Farrakhan, nÇ Louis Eugene Walcott, was the son of a West Indian immigrant woman in Roxbury, Mass., who supported her children by working as a maid. We learn that the star pupil and gifted young violinist always had an innate sense of his ``chosenness'' as well as a gift for performance and a love of fame and adulation. But we don't learn what motivated the popular young calypso performer known as ``the Charmer'' to join NOI, nor do we get beyond his public statements on such heated topics as his relationship with Malcolm X, his split with NOI leader Elijah Muhammad's son and successor, and his dealings with other black leaders. In the end, though hardly exonerating Farrakhan's anti-Semitic rhetoric, Magida is perhaps too fair to this false prophet. He is certainly too far removed from the workings of NOI to give a full picture of a divisive and difficult figure.
Pub Date: July 3, 1996
ISBN: 0-465-06436-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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