Great quotes and other passages are examined in historical and contemporary context.
Vardon’s slim text includes quotations from both prominent male historical figures and those who are, perhaps, slightly less well-known—Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Virgil and MacArthur, but also H.W. Beecher, Viscount Morley and Leo Burnett. The format is narrative, an arrangement unlike established reference sources such as Bartlett’s. Vardon’s approach is to present a quote and then provide “pithy commentary” for a “life altering read.” The author readily acknowledges that the book is “hardly the most comprehensive work” (its 20+ pages make it more like a booklet), but the work’s significance is still elusive. Is Vardon being self-deprecating with his so-called pithy commentary, or is he more serious, as when he states that the reader will be informed and inspired? The author’s opinions on issues such as welfare, feminism, war, capitalism and Nelson Mandela are fairly clear, so perhaps the book’s aim is to state opinions on contemporary issues and use the quotes as a backdrop. The delivery of the quotes and the real-life examples that illustrate them is problematic in several ways. There’s no apparent arrangement regarding subject, quoted figure, chronology, etc. Indeed, dissimilar quotes are included in the same paragraph. One such paragraph speaks of medicine, then quickly diverts to character. Another paragraph has several passages on self-destruction, then awkwardly switches to passages on language. There are also errors in syntax, including the displeasing redundancy of telling the reader what he’s just been told (e.g., “No work of quotations would be complete without quoting the great Nietzsche, and so I’ll quote Nietzsche”). The commentary that follows each quote is often mundane and even bizarrely neutral. Several comments simply assert, “So true. So true.” Sometimes the commentary is far too literal, especially for subjects so potentially and deeply philosophical. It seems a more thorough examination of all of these quotes is in order, one that includes exploring the nature of the quote, context, author’s meaning and various interpretations. No author credentials are given, but Vardon maintains that he is a student of history. The work could be improved with the simple addition of page numbers and an index. A confusing, dissatisfying assemblage.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466379008
Page Count: 26
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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