A sophisticated, densely referenced, scholarly take on the perennial traits of human deceit and dishonesty.
An intellectual discourse on the essence and history of duplicity.
In an attempt to answer the question “Is it ever acceptable to lie?” Denery (History/Bowdoin Coll.; Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology and Religious Life, 2005, etc.) delivers a predominantly referential tome on how ancient history viewed deception and why the behavioral evolution of dishonesty, from the Medieval period and Middle Ages to the early modern world, continues to influence society at large. He does so through a multipart narrative offering five differing perspectives on how lying has altered historical events, beginning with an astute analysis of varying theological conceptions of mendacity. The author juxtaposes God and the devil, with each entity exhibiting its own form of both obvious and cleverly cloaked deception. Denery also examines the schematics of the Garden of Eden and ideological debates of theologian philosophers such as Augustine, Calvin and Descartes to create a rich tapestry of creative thought, attitude and presumption. He interprets these theories with an expert hand while exploring how mistruths upended the secular law of the Middle Ages, and he scrutinizes the controversial crossroads of masculine and feminine deceptive traits. Not necessarily for casual readers, Denery’s classroom-ready textbook is often stiffly academic in tone and delivery. The author smartly skirts the tinderbox subject matter of dishonesty within the political arena (which could endure ad infinitum) and concludes with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s take on how lies are simply “problems with natural causes and, hopefully, natural solutions.” Collectively, Denery’s chapters authoritatively chronicle deception’s gradual evolution from a hellish side effect of satanic belief to perhaps the pivotal axis upon which the contemporary world turns, ultimately (and somewhat startlingly) rationalizing that “[w]hile lies might occasionally threaten civil society, they also make it possible.”
A sophisticated, densely referenced, scholarly take on the perennial traits of human deceit and dishonesty.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0691163215
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf