An investigation into religion, science and life from debut author Kleenoff.
Writing a book in an attempt to reach his own conclusions to many of the larger questions in life (e.g., What is God?), the author presents a tome of extensive proportions. Tackling topics as diverse and difficult as the existence of God, the mechanisms of evolution and the rearing of children, the book makes for a compendium of questions, answers and more questions. Race, homelessness, addiction and the Israeli-Arab conflict all receive attention. Sources include Stephen Hawking, Phil Donahue, The American Heritage Dictionary and an anonymous anti-Semitic blog (in a portion which dissects and criticizes anti-Semitism). The conclusions reached tend to be as disparate as the topics. A God figure as presented by mainstream religions is largely dismissed, though the existence of a God of some kind is by no means ruled out. Science is deemed vital to understanding mankind, though it is not without its ambiguities. As a layman, the author is keen to point out that which appears contradictory or confusing, such as with the Big Bang Theory: “According to conservation law, energy…cannot begin from nothing. Yet this is exactly what scientists are trying to justify when theorizing that the universe stemmed from a tiny point that turned into billions of galaxies.” Obvious at times (such as with this note on child rearing: “Although adolescence from the point of education is often the most rebellious and difficult period of a life span, the preceding age periods should not be neglected”), the book functions as an introduction to world religions, a polemic on evolution and a blunt investigation of Soviet society (“While people felt proud of having the first man sent into space, they did not much enjoy the rest of reality, finding very little improvement in the remainder of their lives”). Having formed such opinions over a lifetime, the book creates a feeling of conversing with the author. How readers will react to this conversation depends on how willing they are to listen. That the author writes with absolute care and earnestness, however, never comes into question.
Vast and questioning, the book explores a variety of topics with a concise dedication.
Pub Date: May 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499010275
Page Count: 558
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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