Mixed reviews for John Paul II from a veteran BBC Vatican correspondent. Willey spends almost no time on John Paul's rise, concentrating instead on the Pope's 13-year reign. The author allows that he's ``fascinated and appalled'' by John Paul's pontificate. The entrancement comes from watching the Pope juggle a hundred hot potatoes at once, most notably the demise of Communism, for which John Paul receives ample kudos. One welcome chapter outlines the state of religion (so-so to vigorous) in Eastern Europe. But the Church is strongest now in Africa and Latin America, and here the Pope gets mediocre-to-flunking grades. Some of the issues are merely curious (how should the Church respond to spear-dances at the altar during African masses?), but the bulk of Willey's beef with the Pope is substantive and political. John Paul, he argues, is inconsistent on the relation of religion and politics, entering the fray when it suits him (as in Poland) but condemning others who do the same (as in his criticism of liberation theology). Willey's biggest kvetch is with the Pope's handling of ``cafeteria Catholics'' (who ``pick and choose their beliefs as they please''). Here, Willey discerns a ``bulldozer papacy'' whose ``strong-arm methods'' have ``sacked'' the Church of unorthodox theologians and legitimate lay dissent. He also rejects papal condemnation of birth control, in vitro conception, and abortion. Church finances, women's rights, relations with other religions, and AIDS are also scrutinized. Willey's arguments have been made before, but he comes up with some wonderful anecdotes along the way (e.g., that the bullet with which Ali Agca shot the Pope has been woven into the gold crown worn by the Virgin's statue at Fatima). A competent riposte to the spate of recent pro-John Paul II books (e.g., George Weigel's The Final Revolution, p. 1247, and Richard John Neuhaus's Doing Well and Doing Good, p. 970). (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08798-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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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