by M.K. Sudarshan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2017
A sometimes-dense but often enlightening dive into Sri Vaishnavism.
A book of personal essays on subjects related to a particular Hindu sect.
Debut author Sudarshan explains in the introduction that Sri Vaishnavism’s followers pay allegiance to Lord Vishnu and follow the philosopher Ramanuja. In this lengthy work, the author explores a range of topics connected to the faith, including a comparison between Socrates and Krishna, a short story based on the Ramayana, and the many ways in which cows show their good nature to man. Each essay comes back to the subject of the author’s own spiritual identity. He explains that he was born in India and received a largely Western education growing up, but in later years, he decided to investigate his Sri Vaishnavism roots. His investigation led him to many of the considerations in this book. Readers who are completely unfamiliar with the Bhagavad Gita or other Hindu texts may need to do further investigation to get a firm grasp of these essays, but many touch on thinkers from the Western canon, as well. William Blake, William Shakespeare, and William Wordsworth all receive mentions, and it’s in this blending of influences that the book achieves its unique, inviting perspective. Along the way, Sudarshan invites readers to consider such things as the origin of the word gopuram (“temple tower”) and the power of zero. He writes in an enthusiastic, descriptive manner, and it’s clear that he cares deeply for his chosen topics. Exclamations are used sparingly but powerfully: “Many people think that detachment means withdrawal from the world!” Nevertheless, certain essays may be opaque to some readers. One, depicting a “mock trial” with Rama and Sita from the Srimad Valmiki RamayanamI, will be a baffling exercise if the reader has no prior context and is exhausting even if they’re familiar with the main players. That said, the reader has many essays to choose from; even if some test the novice’s patience, there’s still much to discover.
A sometimes-dense but often enlightening dive into Sri Vaishnavism.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4828-8628-3
Page Count: 724
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
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
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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