At times a bit dense for the casual reader, but Eck’s perseverance illuminates one of the world’s most mysterious and...
A far-reaching exploration of the spiritual geography and sacred spaces of India.
With its hundreds of disparate peoples connected by a shared conception of place, India is, in the words of statesman Jawaharlal Nehru, “an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie [has] been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer [has] completely hidden or erased what [has] been written previously.” The country is densely layered with places, events, markers and deities from the Mahabharata, the Rig Veda and other foundational Indian texts. Each of these sites, in turn, is connected to the others in a vast, complex network stretching the length and breadth of the land, from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. It is this mythical or spiritual geography that gives Hinduism its power and meaning and shapes how other faiths, from Sikhism to Christianity and Islam, are practiced there. Eck (Comparative Religion and Indian Studies/Harvard Univ., A New Religious America, 2001, etc.) explores the numerous holy rivers and pilgrimage paths of India, seeking out temples and shrines marking a particular place’s significance within the span of Indian cosmology. Explaining how the various gods in the Hindu pantheon are associated with certain regions and features of the landscape, Eck connects the Hindu legends to the physical geography of the country. In this way, every village, creek, ridge or copse of trees represents an identifiable moment, object or event in the Hindu scriptures. Pilgrims bring these associations to life by traveling the land on hundreds of set paths—e.g., from the head to the heart to the navel to the feet of Krishna—helping to develop, as they go, a united sense of Indian identity that transcends linguistic or cultural affiliations.
At times a bit dense for the casual reader, but Eck’s perseverance illuminates one of the world’s most mysterious and multifaceted countries.Pub Date: March 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-53190-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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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