Especially interesting to those already willing to make the paradigm shift to a cooperation-based world, but in need of some...
Demonstrating a wide knowledge and understanding of hard and soft sciences, Riddle creates a road map for those ready to live a more connected, positive and bountiful existence.
Among the abundance of books focusing on, well, abundance, Riddle’s work stands out for its ability to synthesize historical, current and complex scientific and social concepts to support a beginner’s steps toward a major paradigm shift: cooperation instead of competition in world of abundance rather than scarcity. Using four underlying principles of reality (interconnectivity of energy, individual participation in creating reality, the nonlinear quality of our experience and the complex nature of reality) and three principles of coexistence (interdependence, adaptability and cooperation), Riddle weaves theory and examples together to create an organized and accessible whole. Frequent brief and illustrative exercises encourage the reader to personalize the experience; thorough notes, diverse references and an index of exercises make this text extremely easy to use. Riddle’s suggestion of the need to move beyond scientific method and a static view of reality to a world of dynamic potential, even with her application of quantum physics, won’t win over every reader. But her thoughtful guide and its emphasis on a more positive worldview will be especially appealing to those already curious about alternative theories but wishing for a scientific basis to undergird the new possibilities. With her upbeat tone and clear prose, Riddle offers a self-help book that could actually achieve its purpose; the text (the first in a series of three) supports, energizes and informs those searching for a more joyous, harmonious and meaningful way of living.
Especially interesting to those already willing to make the paradigm shift to a cooperation-based world, but in need of some handholding and a little science to take the next step.Pub Date: March 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1449079260
Page Count: 256
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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