An ambitious but overlong history.
With his wife, dye expert Sterman delivers a history of a blue dye mentioned in ancient texts but only recently recreated in the modern era.
The Stermans trace the history of tekhelet, a blue dye derived from the glands of certain types of snails that they describe as the “sacred, rarest blue.” The Talmud and other texts of Judaism mention tekhelet; the Book of Numbers in the Bible, for example, requires Jewish people to tie a tekhelet-dyed thread to the corners of their clothing. Tradition specifically dictated that the tekhelet had to be “sky blue,” write the authors, and the use of other blue dyes, such as indigo, was prohibited. But tekhelet was expensive, difficult to make and even illegal during the era of the Roman Empire. As a result, the tradition waned, and many details of the tekhelet-making process were lost for hundreds of years. The Stermans delve into Jewish history, showing how doctrinal skirmishes erupted over the use of the dye and how figures such as the first chief rabbi of Israel and other researchers explored tekhelet’s mysteries. The authors also recount their efforts to mass-produce authentic tekhelet-dyed strings, with the authors traveling to far-off places to collect the snails required. While their dedication is admirable and their research comprehensive, the prose simply isn’t engaging enough to bring an entire book about an obscure blue dye to life. The latter sections, especially, which include technical descriptions of snails’ physical processes and multiple molecular diagrams, may be tough going for casual readers. That said, the book may hold some appeal for aficionados of either religious history or the study of mollusks—surely one of the few books for which that may be said.
An ambitious but overlong history.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7627-8222-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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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