A rosy but incomplete picture that would be of greater value to educators if the author weren’t trying so hard to sell the...
A markedly positive account of a growing network of high schools designed to help poor urban youth prepare for college.
Freelance journalist and former U.S. Catholic magazine editor Sweas produces a sequel to G.R. Kearney’s More Than a Dream (2008), which told the story of the first school in the network, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago. From that beginning in 1996, the Cristo Rey network now includes 28 college-prep schools in cities across the country. Although the schools are Catholic, students need not be, but they must be from low-income families. They are often minorities and are definitely behind in their studies. Besides serving the urban poor and disadvantaged, the system has been a lifesaver for Catholic high schools threatened by a shortage of once-available nun and priest teachers, higher costs and dropping enrollments. The Cristo Rey schools operate corporate work-study programs in which students work for local companies five days per month, an arrangement that brings in money for the school and introduces students to the world of work. Sweas uses the personal stories of students from various schools to illustrate how the system works and how the students view their experiences. To round out her portrait of the network, the author interviewed teachers, administrators, board members and corporate sponsors, nearly all of whom are glowing in their appraisals. Unfortunately, Sweas’ presentation often reads like a promotion piece for the network—e.g, while frequently mentioning that the schools have a 100 percent college acceptance rate, she omits data on how many students drop out of Cristo Rey high schools, how many actually attend what kind of college and what their college graduation rates are.
A rosy but incomplete picture that would be of greater value to educators if the author weren’t trying so hard to sell the system.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0062288011
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
