A hortatory blend of wishful thinking and old-fashioned one-world polemic: likely to convince only those already converted...
What if they gave a war and nobody came? Or: Is there anyone in the room who’s not in favor of world peace?
Schell, the always distraught author of Fate of the Earth (1982) fame, seems to worry that, in the wake of September 11, plenty of his compatriots are ready to trash the planet to root out the perps, responding to an unstable and unfriendly world “by pursuing the anachronistic, Augustan path of empire.” Bad idea, Schell enjoins: a lot of people could get hurt, and indeed the whole world could be turned into a smoking husk if “just a few dozen of the world’s thirty thousand or so nuclear weapons” were somehow put to use. Instead, he urges, the way to get justice accomplished is to put the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to work: to resist evil through nonviolent means. Granted, the world would be a more just and lovely place if, instead of caving in to Osama bin Laden’s bunch, the Afghan people had “declined to do the will of the conqueror and, taking a further step, organized itself politically to conduct its own business”—but, as George Orwell once observed, people being beaten and bombed are more likely to do whatever it takes to stop their tormentors from causing further harm, including making a few accommodations. Schell is poetic, outraged, and always idealistic, and at times his arguments threaten to sway the skeptic—as when he offers a novel if highly selective reading of the American Revolution, arguing that nonviolent resistance was as important to the rebel cause as Washington’s cannons. Still, even the most starry-eyed reader is likely to wonder at the likelihood of America’s (or, for that matter, al-Qaeda’s) laying down arms just at the moment, or at the utility of confronting a Mohammed Atta with a daisy, or, indeed, whether the present state of affairs is really the path toward “annihilation,” or just an unfortunate blip on history’s radar screen.
A hortatory blend of wishful thinking and old-fashioned one-world polemic: likely to convince only those already converted to the satyagraha cause.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8050-4456-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Two intriguing 1930s novellas, fine examples of a then-popular genre: literary Pan-Africanism. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, racial patriotism ran high in the US, and American blacks rallied behind the ancient African kingdom. These two stories combine propaganda and entertainment; while they read like straightforward murder mysteries, they demonstrate the commitment of essayist, journalist, and satirist Schuyler (18851977) to the outcome of Ethiopia's struggle. An influential writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Schuyler rejected the idea of a black aesthetic and criticized the movement as ``The Negro-Art Hokum,'' yet many of his articles and editorials for the influential Pittsburgh Courier are now considered classics of African-American journalism. As editor Hill (History/UCLA) points out in his evocative foreword, Schuyler had the creativity to convey his ideas to a general audience, both in journalism and—in the case of these novellas and two other stories recently reissued under the title Black Empire (1991)—in pulp fiction. The first work here, ``The Ethiopian Murder Mystery,'' opens with the discovery of a dead Ethiopian prince in a Sugar Hill apartment. The police charge a prominent Harlem socialite, who admits to being with him minutes before the coroner's estimated time of death, but insists he was still breathing when she left. A young newspaper reporter convinced of her innocence does some inspired sleuthing and unravels a conspiracy involving a death ray with which the Ethiopians could annihilate the invading Italians. In the second tale, ``Revolt in Ethiopia,'' a rich American interested only in the good life abroad falls in love with an Ethiopian princess seeking to procure money to support her country's freedom fighters. When the Italians kill her bodyguard, the American comes to her rescue and joins her on a perilous journey to retrieve precious jewels from an ancient mountain sect in the hills of Ethiopia. Proof that art and politics do mix.
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 1994
ISBN: 1-55553-204-7
Page Count: 229
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A think piece about personal choices that unearths more round holes for square pegs.
One of America’s most influential pollsters carves the present into bite-sized pieces in an attempt to reveal future trends.
Penn gained fame as an advisor to Bill Clinton during his 1996 campaign by identifying blocks of constituents like “Soccer Moms” as potential voters. Here, he and co-author Zalesne expand their trend-spotting to identify 75 burgeoning patterns that they argue are both reflecting and changing our modern world. Each chapter examines a discrete subdivision with themes ranging among politics, lifestyle, religion, money, education, etc. These easily digestible nuggets of scrutiny are fairly straightforward and primarily serve as a kind of pie chart of the human race, dividing Earth’s citizens (primarily Americans, although a single chapter is devoted to international issues) into the cliques and tribes to which they subscribe. Among the emerging classes, the authors find “Cougars” (women who pursue younger men), “New Luddites” (technophobes) and “Car-Buying Soccer Moms,” among dozens of other sub-surface dwellers. The book’s generalizations are sound and cleverly written, despite their brevity, and will undoubtedly appeal to marketing analysts and armchair sociologists, as well as fans of Megatrends and Malcolm Gladwell. Yet the book stands on an unbalanced argument. “Microtrends reflects the human drive toward individuality, while conventional wisdom often seeks to drive society towards the lowest common denominator,” Penn writes in a conclusion, explaining why such movements are important. But by dividing and isolating people into popcorn-sized kernels of experience, their innate individuality is lost in many little crowds instead of one big one. Another troubling factor is that few of the book’s observations feel new. How often have superficial features about stay-at-home workers, caffeine addicts or shy millionaires been recycled on the evening news, let alone the Internet and other mediums? Penn tries to spin the gravity of these ripples. “Movements get started by small groups of dedicated, intensely interested people,” he says. But his observation could apply to anything from the Third Reich to MySpace. More cynical readers may feel like a number.
A think piece about personal choices that unearths more round holes for square pegs.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-58096-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
