Meticulously detailed yet disappointing biography of the French activist/art authority/novelist/politician who began his career by trying to smuggle Khmer sculptures out of Indochina and ended up as minister of culture under de Gaulle's Fifth Republic. In the intervening years, Malraux helped establish an anticolonialist newspaper in Saigon, got to know the Communist cadre in China (about whom he wrote in his novel Man's Fate), led an air squadron during the Spanish Civil War (the source of Man's Hope), and was an important member of the French Maquis during WW II. Plenty of colorful raw material, then, but despite his piling up of facts, Murphy, a former staff member of The Economist, is unable to bring his protagonist to life. Part of the problem seems to lie in Malraux's character itself. Cold, egocentric, domineering, he refused to let the outside world penetrate beneath his chilly facade. Even the four major women in his life—Claire, his first wife; Josette, who bore him two sons out of wedlock; Madeleine, his brother's widow, whom he married after the war; and Louise de Vilmorin, his aristocratic mistress during his final years—seem to have been held at arm's distance. The closest Malraux appears to have come to a deep emotional involvement was with de Gaulle. Ironically, it was this attachment that led to Malraux's being vilified as a reactionary during the student riots of 1968. Murphy does provide some interesting insights, however: His analysis of Malraux's growing disillusionment with the Communist cause during the Spanish Civil War is sensitive and convincing, and an anecdote concerning the French minister's being invited to Washington to consult with US officials before Richard Nixon's first trip to China is intriguing (Henry Kissinger found Malraux's opinions hopelessly out-of-date). Heavy on the whos, whats, whens, and wheres; much too light on the whys. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1033-9
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
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
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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