John O'Connor's first four years as the Archbishop of N.Y.C. have often engulfed him in contention and controversy. He says he is in awe of the city he serves, and his wonder is bound to increase with the publication of this remarkable biography by one of the town's most staunchly liberal Jewish writers. Hentoff (Does Anybody Give a Damn?, 1977; Boston Boy, 1986; etc.), a regular contributor to the Village Voice, spent two years with the Cardinal. When he introduces himself at their first interview as a member of the "Proud and Ancient Order of Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheists," we know his evident respect and steadily growing admiration for O'Connor do not come automatically. Hentoff chronicles O'Connor's career from his days as a parish priest in Philadelphia through his long military service—an experience that later earned him the reputation as the "Genghis Khan" of the 1981 bishops' committee on nuclear disarmament. O'Connor has created headline's in New York from the day he arrived—scolding Jewish leaders for their attacks on him after his trip to the Middle East, arguing with Catholics Cuomo and Ferraro about their stands on abortion, angering homosexuals with his opposition to New York's Gay Rights Bill; Hentoff examines in depth the Cardinal's consistent position as theologically orthodox and socially liberal. O'Connor emerges here as a strong, compassionate, and deeply searching man who is at the center of the anguishing issues facing American Catholics today, deeply disturbed by the centrifugal forces at play in the wake of Vatican II. Hentoff quotes one observer who feels that O'Connor "has a good shot at being the first American Pope." Mean-while, Hentoffs brilliant and engrossing portrait will surprise many liberal Catholics—and provoke many others into a reassessment of the man and his message.
Pub Date: July 1, 1988
ISBN: 0684189445
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988
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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