Nothing groundbreaking, but Tobin provides a light, fluffy, fun read.
The origins of major Western holidays, from a Catholic perspective.
Former Catholic Advocate editor Tobin (Selecting the Pope: Uncovering the Mysteries of Papal Elections, 2003, etc.) makes the argument that virtually all aspects of the modern Western calendar are derived from Roman Catholic sources (with a good deal of help from pagan culture). Much of the information here is readily available elsewhere, but he does a service by collecting these facts into a single volume. Tobin begins with the start of the Christian liturgical year—Advent—and moves on to Christmas, tackling the book’s title question (no, Jesus was apparently not born on Christmas, as is now widely known). The author moves along chronologically through the year, treating both well-known holidays such as Easter and Thanksgiving, as well as less widely celebrated ones, such as Christ the King Sunday. Tobin provides interesting tidbits and trivia throughout, making for a quick, entertaining read. Along with an explanation of various holidays, the author explores the origin of the Gregorian Calendar. In all cases, Tobin brings his readers back to the Catholic perspective. For instance, when discussing Thanksgiving (which, he wryly points out, “is not a Catholic holy day, per se”), the author provides a family prayer for use around the Thanksgiving table, approved by the Catholic bishops of the United States. Tobin also devotes a chapter to the effects of the Second Vatican Council on the church calendar. Woven throughout the narrative are references to or reminders of how secular society has made use of various holidays for commercial means (“The greeting card, flower, and candy industries love, love, love St. Valentine, for he provides substantial cash flow in the first quarter of the year, the first major spending holiday after Christmas”).
Nothing groundbreaking, but Tobin provides a light, fluffy, fun read.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-230-10487-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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