Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the...
A social psychologist explains how human groups or memes organize and operate, to the detriment and sometimes the benefit of civilization.
Minshall (The Jesus Book, 2012, etc.) describes memes as a “post personal force” that can aid society, but are often “the force behind all human tragedy.” The reason: once people join a meme, they yield their sense of morality to its amorality. Simply “Human Social Constructs,” memes form around a unifying idea or cause but then take on lives of their own. As with all living things, survival becomes paramount. More often destroyed from within rather than by external forces, memes may manufacture enemies to cement loyalty among followers. Minshall describes and dissects different types of memes, including nonprofit groups, government agencies, and corporations. The apparent leaders of memes, such as popes, presidents, and CEOs, seldom hold the real power. Bureaucrats, major stockholders, unions, or wealthy family dynasties typically call the shots. “The Cadre” or “enablers,” such as police and soldiers, enforce the social order, while “The Workers and Doers,” or producers, form the majority of members and accomplish most of the tasks. The lowest rungs include “Marginals,” such as youths and legal aliens, and “Outsiders,” including intruders, migrants, and illegal aliens, who are exploited as they try to gain a foothold. Although individuals may believe they can change the meme by rising to the top, it will either alter or expel them. Why not get rid of memes? Although they cause war and other havoc, memes also create the world’s positive things. Minshall has written a captivating book that can help anyone understand group behavior and why politicians promising change so seldom achieve it. His writing style is free-form and fluid, with touches of humor that sometimes fall flat with weak puns. The volume, littered with weird capitalization, superfluous exclamation points, and spelling mistakes of common as well as proper nouns, such as “Mark Zukerberg,” “Jack Welsh,” and “Julius Cesar,” cries out for a skillful editor and proofreader. It would also bolster Minshall’s case if he backed up his arguments with more footnotes. Like most critiques, this book is long on criticism but short on solutions, which seem in this case to boil down to hoping the United Nations will somehow get memes under control.
Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the largest political entity.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9642773-7-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Renaissance Institute Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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