Highly readable though not as thorough as other, more in-depth texts.
A skeptical investigation of ethics portrayed in the Old Testament.
Looking to the Old Testament for ethical guidance is, as debut author Burchell argues, a dicey proposition. As related to famines, plagues, war, genocide, incest and hosts of seemingly innocent victims, the God of the Old Testament (referred to in this text as Yahweh) frequently displayed vengeful, unpredictable behavior. As the author says, “We find the word righteous over four hundred times in the books of the Old Testament, but rarely do we find the righteous triumphant.” What exactly did Noah do to curry favor with the Lord and avoid the great flood? Why was it acceptable for Joshua to kill off a long list of innocent victims on his campaign through Canaan? With the Old Testament often lacking in detail (or far too engaged in it), opportunities for interpretation are frequent. Attempting to focus solely on the ethics that can be gleaned from the Old Testament, the book succeeds in condensing a daunting biblical investigation into a digestible read. Readers new to such criticism will find an easy starting point here, since Burchell walks through the Old Testament in chronological order. Though somewhat flippant at times, his conclusions—such as how there’s something “distinctly unmerciful” about the mercy of the Old Testament—aren’t unfounded. And though the book lacks a framework of ethics beyond generally understood concepts of good and bad (i.e., murder is bad) that might allow for a deeper level of criticism, Burchell nevertheless makes an easily understood argument for just how puzzling Scripture can be, particularly with regards to right and wrong.
Highly readable though not as thorough as other, more in-depth texts.Pub Date: June 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482738490
Page Count: 284
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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