The well-trod ground of ecospiritualism is trundled over once again by Spretnak (The Politics of Women's Spirituality, 1981, etc.). Modernism is Spretnak's unoriginal bugbear: It can be found tattering the social fabric; it lurks behind the disintegration of the economy, health care, everyday life, ethnic and racial hatreds. Modernism is the deep structure repressing the ``real,'' imposing discontinuities ``between humans and the rest of the natural world, between self and others, between body and mind.'' Economic expansion and technological innovation, Modernism's frayed mantras, are little but the mechanistic blatherings of an ideology gone sour, Spretnak intones. The body is not a biomachine requiring external intervention upon breakdown; it is a self-correcting energy system. Nature is not simply matter to be acted upon; it is a dynamic, self-regulating cosmos. Place is not just where you are, but an influential ecosocial frame. Yes, yes. The mingling of body- mind/cosmos/place is where Spretnak situates the ``real,'' so she mooches about in the theories of chaos, complexity, and Gaia, and in the works of John Ruskin, William Morris, and revolutionary artistic movements to buttress her point. And they are points well taken but here made ponderously and without a whit of humor. The writing is lumbered, and Spretnak comes across as schoolmarmish and scolding: ``Ironically, the counterculture of the sixties was dismissed as romantic even though its ignorance of the Romantics was almost total.'' She is drawn to the dry, high-minded ``geologian'' Thomas Berry, reasonably enough, but her position is impoverished when she ignores the spirited intellectual high jinks of Paul Feyerabend and others who so nimbly eviscerated the notion of modernity. ``The gist of all this is that life is an interactive phenomenon of planetary and biospheric scale.'' Stop the presses.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-201-53419-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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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