Rigorous study of the constitutional right to choose reproductive technology, by law professor/legal bioethicist Robertson (Univ. of Texas, Austin). For the author of The Rights of the Critically Ill (not reviewed), procreative liberty—the freedom to decide whether or not to have children, and whether or not to rear them—is a fundamental right of all individuals, fertile or infertile. Therefore, he argues, individuals should be free to choose reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and the morning-after pill without government interference, unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in regulating such a choice. It seldom can, he claims. For example, the government may justifiably mandate that a severely retarded girl use the long-term contraceptive Norplant to protect her from sexual abuse in an institutional setting, but it may not make Norplant compulsory for HIV-positive individuals or convicted child abusers. Robertson contends that a ``basic commitment to procreative liberty'' entails respecting a couple's advance agreement to freeze or discard embryos, to enforce surrogacy contracts (even if the gestating mother later changes her mind), and (probably) to genetically ``enhance'' embryos. He analyzes the constitutional implications of each technology with a law professor's penchant for outlines and obfuscation (e.g., ``Objections to paying surrogates are often more deontological than consequentialist''), but with a firm sense of the wrenching real-world questions left unanswered and the specific ways people can protect their reproductive rights. For instance, he urges that lesbian couples seeking children through artificial insemination ``have one partner provide the egg for the embryo which is then gestated by the other partner.'' A searching exploration of the ever-expanding parameters of ``choice'' written with Solomon-like sagacity. General readers will certainly be challenged, but this is not a law book for lawyers only.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-691-03353-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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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