A veteran reporter on the New Age scene (Beyond the Quantum, 1986) ably explains the latest hip paradigm before soaring off into hyperdimensional inner space. Our world and its contents, suggests Talbot, are ``only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time.'' Behind the breathy prose, he's talking about the universe as a hologram; this is, as a three-dimensional representation of a higher reality. Two men fathered this theory: Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist who claims that the brain functions holographically; and physicist David Bohm, who took the ball from Pribram and carried it right through the goal posts, describing the cosmos as a ``holomovement,'' the ``explicate'' projection of an ``implicate'' reality. This implies, says Talbot, that the ``objective universe...might not even exist.'' So far so good, if a bit gooey. But Talbot then goes on a pixilated hologram hunt, unearthing evidence for the new paradigm in telepathy, schizophrenia, synchronicity, the placebo effect, stigmata, acupuncture, psychokinesis, poltergeists, precognition, UFOs, psychic archaeology-and more. Without exception, the author takes a naive approach to these phenomena (for instance, near-death experiencers are ``actually making visits to an entirely different level of reality''), evincing a sort of naive New Age Boy Scout eagerness that reaches its zenith when he talks about his own psychic adventures, like watching a ``small brown object'' materialize in his office. Fifty sold pages-then like, far out, man.
Pub Date: April 24, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-016381-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
A wealthy and powerful philanthropist chronicles his exploits on behalf of world Jewry. This memoir from the chairman of the Seagram Company Ltd. (which owns Putnam) and friend of presidents and prime ministers is better than might have been expected, but it's still of extremely limited appeal; the World Jewish Congress, of which Bronfman has been president since 1981, is far removed from the lives of most American Jews. Despite the title, Bronfman writes more about the making of deals rather than the making of a Jew, and he primarily describes his experiences as president of the WJC. Some of the stories are indeed good, such as the way he twisted a reluctant Lech Walesa's arm to condemn Polish anti-Semitism and used his friendship with former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze to win the freedom of a Jewish prisoner. Also, Bronfman writes with refreshing honesty. Few other Jewish leaders of his stature would write that former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir ``really pissed off President George Bush'' by building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories ``like there was no tomorrow.'' As far as Bronfman is concerned, there was indeed a tomorrow, represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whom he supported philosophically and monetarily. His descriptions of his horror at Rabin's assassination and his anger at those on Israel's right whom he accuses of creating the atmosphere for it—including current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—are by far the most powerful parts of the book: ``When I found out that the killer was a Jew . . . my disgust was overwhelming. . . . I called him a loathsome, arrogant cockroach. He demeaned every Jew in the world with his murderous act.'' An interesting and provocative memoir—but likely to be found so by an extremely small audience, limited primarily not just to Jews, but to those who recognize Bronfman as an important figure in Jewish affairs.
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14220-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Roberts (In Search of the Birth of Jesus, 1995, etc.) cobbles together an absorbing pastiche of his India forays over a span of 20 years. Back in the mid-1970s, fresh from Oxford, Roberts lands in Bombay, looking for Truth but willing to sample anything thrown his way. He does spend many days and nights among holy men and saints and yogis and spiritual teachers (at one point he enjoys a tranquil, pastoral year at the ashram of Sathya Sai Baba in Puttaparthi), even experiences an epiphany of sorts (Roberts is the first to admit that putting such an event down on paper is grasping at straws). But he's most comfortable telling little episodes and incidents, anecdotes, conversations, and brief histories, willing to let the babel and bedlam of his India work its magic on him. It might be Bombay, which ``smelled like the enveloping breath of a monster gorged on overspiced sewage''; or the albescent peaks, flashing rivers, and green valleys of Swat, a Shangri-la he visits with a brash drug wholesaler; or his numerous run-ins with the plain and sad and awful, from prostitutes to junkies, the dirt poor to witless spirit questers. He fashions a nifty, concise history of Goa from the early 16th century and takes a bead on Mother Teresa (a tad vain, and more than a tad manipulative) and the goatish Bhagwan Sharee Rajneesh (late of Seattle and Rolls-Royce fame). Cultural dissonances play him like a stringed instrument, changing the way he sees things. When he returns in the 1990s, the general state of decay has advanced, but the subcontinent continues to keep Roberts off balance and knee-deep in strange adventures. In presenting his personal India, Roberts is an artful skeptic, a relativist with a sense of humor, and a crackerjack storyteller.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1996
ISBN: 1-57322-047-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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