A Connecticut lawmaker finds inspiration in the Sabbath—and wants to share the love in this "inspired" tome.
Separation of Sabbath and state? Humbug! Lieberman makes no bones about his affinity for the Jewish Sabbath and its rich tradition as a weekly return to "freedom, redemption and salvation." At the outset, he writes, "I love the Sabbath and believe it is a gift from God that I want to convince everyone who reads this book to accept." The senator builds his case by blending religious reflection with personal history, recalling how when he’d arrive home from school on a Friday to a home redolent with "chicken soup, meat, or kugel (a sweet baked noodle dish)," it was hard not to look forward to the Day of Rest. He even echoes Proust: "When it comes to the Sabbath, we taste or smell or see or hear, and immediately we are transported to Shabbatland...with all its religious, mystical, and sensual meanings and memories." But it’s not all ideology and sound bites, with Lieberman offering practical advice on how to keep the Sabbath and best elevate and isolate the special day from the rest of the week: "Try to make your Sabbath conversations different from that of the weekdays. Elevate your talk. Rather than gossip, discuss ideas. Seek peace with your spouse. Avoid talking about business." The author deftly weaves his experience as an observant Jew on Capitol Hill into the readable exposition. Appealing for true believers and politicos alike.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0617-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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