One man’s homage to the place he calls home.
A poetic and vividly illustrated tribute to a pristine stretch of Hawaiian beach.
Readers familiar with this certified financial planner and former tax accountant’s philosophic musings and practical advice on wealth (Lighting the Torch: The Kinder Method â„¢ of Life Planning, 2006, etc.) may find this ecological encomium to Leho’ula, a tiny plot of Maui coastline, an odd topic for Kinder–especially when they learn that this defense of the land has been inspired by the threat of development. (The marketing plan for the book includes a 50 percent donation of the proceeds “dedicated to save the Hana coast from development and to support traditional Hawaiian culture.”) This richly produced edition includes his own photographs, poems and short prose reflections, which summon the ancient Hawaiian gods for a metaphysical communion on this sacred ground. Says Pig God Kamapua’a, “Hana means the breath of spirit and its work. Do your work. Master what you do. Bring the land back to the people. […] Love what feeds you, love your resources, love your fire, love what challenges you, love your enemies–I love pigs man–but love!” Kinder’s other recurrent theme emphasizes the vitality of the land in one’s inner life: “This earth is a garden / Its aromas, its breezes / and its light: flavors of consciousness / Lava bridges from another world / to the one where we are meant to live.” While these messages will appeal to the ecologically minded, especially those from Hawaii, the volume’s many photographs make the most convincing case for preservation. One look at the verdant grassland abutting a foamy sea or a beautifully composed silhouette of the tree line against a flaming purple sky, and even the most profit-driven developer will reconsider his plans. Includes 111 color images, 82 photos and 29 scans.
One man’s homage to the place he calls home.Pub Date: June 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9791743-2-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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