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IN SEARCH OF AN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM

Name: IN SEARCH OF AN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM
Author: Jay P. Dolan
ISBN: 0-19-506926-9

A HISTORY OF RELIGION AND CULTURE IN TENSION

by Jay P. Dolan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2002

In all, more patent than potent.

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An eminent Catholic historian (History Emeritus/Notre Dame Univ.) tries with mixed results to examine the ways American culture and Catholicism have affected one another.

Dolan (The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present, not reviewed) is no prose stylist. His language is conventional, predictable, even pedantic and banal. Clichés are frequent, and so are dull quotations from sectarian authorities. But despite these impediments, the author provides a useful outline of the story of Catholicism in America. From the earliest pages, he establishes the central conflict between what he calls the “republican” and “monarchical” models of church authority and organization. He shows how these models have gone in and out of fashion, and he can’t hide his regret that the latter, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II (for whom Dolan appears to have little professional regard), is now ascendant. (A powerful postscript, written as news of the current sex-abuse scandal is emerging, reveals his belief that the church must permit women and married men to become priests.) Dolan examines a number of cultural issues that have greatly affected the status and role of the church in America, including immigration, wars, women’s liberation, civil rights, public education, church-and-state conflicts, and the economy. In his most engaging section, covering the past 40 years, he reveals his great admiration for John XXIII and his disdain for the conservative, authoritarian policies of the current pontiff. He does a good job, as well, of showing how Hispanic and black Catholics have affected the church as a whole. Although he addresses abortion and birth control, he does not point a way toward any resolution of these contentious issues.

In all, more patent than potent.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-19-506926-9

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE
by Robert Greene

- BOOK REVIEW
MASTERY
by Robert Greene

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Drake Producing 48 Laws of Power Show

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955

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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.