Fresh take on an old topic.
Literary study of the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.
Gordon (English/Endicott Coll.; Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet, 2005, etc.) makes it clear that her book is not another theological or historical excavation of ancient texts. “This book,” she writes, “proffers an exploration of the stories that have been passed down to us as stories.” Considering the texts as a set of important, intriguing stories, the author provides a refreshing viewpoint unconcerned with critical minutiae of authorship or theological reverberations. Gordon focuses on the roles of Sarah and Hagar, Abraham’s wife and concubine, and mothers to two great nations. Acknowledging the short shrift given these two remarkable women, the author provides a closer examination of their roles. Gordon moves slowly, sometimes a bit laboriously, through the brief story of Abraham’s life, beginning with his decision to leave his homeland and finishing with his death. Referencing passages from the Koran, the author provides readers with points of reference as to the importance of the story to all three monotheistic traditions. Gordon’s major contribution is the chapter on Hagar’s encounter with God in the wilderness, at which point Hagar “names” Him. The author points out that “no one had ever invented their own [name for God], and no one else ever would.” She goes on to posit that Hagar’s description of God as one “who sees me” is a major basis for the theology and morality of all three Abrahamic traditions. The author speculates at length on periods of “silence” in the text. Given the paucity of detail provided by scripture, much of this discussion borders on conjecture. Nonetheless, Gordon adds something new to an already full body of scholarship on Abraham.
Fresh take on an old topic.Pub Date: July 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-11474-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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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