A dry yet thorough life of the Enlightenment philosopher and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (170788). Buffon was, according to the late French historian Roger, a man who loved money, power, and women, and who acquired all in great quantity through much intrigue. Yet Roger drops the scientist-as-James-Bond frame almost immediately to recount at great length the intellectual ferment of the time—and that is far from an exciting read. Roger presupposes of his readers a background in the life sciences, and he writes fluently of Buffon's contributions to the nascent theory of ecosystems, to embryology and mineralogy, and even to theology. Roger also turns up a few lesser achievements, among them Buffon's invention of a ``burning mirror'' that would focus sunlight on flammable objects, a mad scientist's dream come true. (Buffon never put this weapon to use, but his method of constructing concave mirrors is still used today.) But too much of Roger's text is given over to discussing the minutiae of Buffon's arguments with other scientists (in which Buffon was often wrong) and not enough to analyzing the significance of his discoveries and theories. Roger also bows rather too deeply in the direction of psychohistory. ``What is striking today, more so even than Buffon's daring or his mistakes, is his inability to realize his ambitions,'' he writes. ``Was he scrupulous in his methods or lacking in his imagination?'' Roger never really volunteers an opinion, although he treats us to innumerable episodes of Buffon's wrestling with many demons. More detailed explication of Buffon's real contributions to evolutionary theory—Roger rightly points out his influence on Darwin—and other sciences would have been welcome in the place of so much emphasis on his shortcomings, for no scientist's work remains current for long. (28 b&w illustrations, 2 tables, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8014-2918-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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