A thorough historical account, undermined by strident political editorializing.
Debut author and pastor Coates offers a spirited defense of Israel as both a modern nation and a holy land.
Israel has been a lightning rod for political debate since its 1948 creation as a state, but its fraught history reaches back thousands of years. In this book, the author begins with an interpretation of the biblical covenant forged between Abraham and God—an election of a people and a divine promise which, he asserts, God maintains today. He then takes readers on a tour of Israel’s history in the Bible and in modern times, asserting that its successes, including a vibrant economy and dynamic democracy, are the result of its special place in God’s plan. Also, Coates argues that Christians should care about the plight of Israel because their own spiritual tradition is deeply entangled with Judaism, and that Jesus’ expected return may only be understood in light of Israel’s privileged status. Furthermore, the author examines the enmity that some groups have against the Jewish people, and asserts that political Zionism is a proper response to it. The backbone of the entire study is a meticulous accounting of the biblical treatment of Israel, and the connections between the Old and New Testaments. Coates writes in an accessible prose style, and despite his close exegetical investigation of Scripture, the book’s tone is more popular than academic. He also expertly demonstrates the profound theological debt that Christianity owes to Jewish predecessors. Finally, he delivers a remarkably concise account of Israel’s birth as a modern nation and the opposition to it. Unfortunately, Coates’ rhetoric can take turns toward the polemical, sometimes expressed as breathless hyperbole: “In an increasingly crazy world, there is one unfortunate constant: the universal hatred of the Jews.” Readers will also find some lines offensive, as when Islam is called a “perversion of Judaism.”
A thorough historical account, undermined by strident political editorializing.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5434-0605-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: XlibrisAU
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2018
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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