The Devil doesn't really get his due in this rushed ``If it's Tuesday, it must be Beelzebub'' biography. While most religions have devils, few have placed as much emphasis on this personification of evil as Christianity. His lineage is mixed, with distant relations as diverse as Egyptian gods, the Canaanite's divinity Baal, and the Greek god Pan (from whom he inherited his looks). Because the early Church focused almost exclusively on the supposedly imminent Second Coming, the Devil played only a secondary role. But with apocalypse a no-show, he was rushed onstage to shore up the faltering beliefs on the faithful. Evil is always a problem in a monotheistic system, and the Devil was a useful scapegoat. Those, like the Gnostics, the Cathars, and the Albigensians, who suggested that the world and everything in it (including, perhaps, the religious establishment) was the work of the Devil, were ruthlessly suppressed. In fact, the Devil has usually been more sinned against than sinning, offered up as the thin pretext for a truly horrific Church-sponsored catalogue of repressions, inquisitions, and other general nastiness, from the extirpation of heretics to religious wars to the witch-hunt mania. As medieval superstition gave way to the Enlightenment, the Devil began to fade as an active instrument of malice, but he acquired a compensating literary reputation as Goethe, Milton, Hugo, and Shaw all gave him star treatment, often casting him as a ``romantic rebel.'' The 20th century has not been kind. Despite several recent comeback attempts, he is now largely washed up, with perhaps only Baudelaire's wisdom for comfort: ``The Devil's deepest wile is to persuade us that he does not exist.'' Stanford, former editor of the Catholic Herald of London, does a thoroughly adequate job of chronicling his subject's career, but there is just too much material for one slim volume to fully examine the significance of the Devil in all his guises.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-3082-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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An exploration of the importance of clarity through calmness in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Austin-based speaker and strategist Holiday (Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, 2018, etc.) believes in downshifting one’s life and activities in order to fully grasp the wonder of stillness. He bolsters this theory with a wide array of perspectives—some based on ancient wisdom (one of the author’s specialties), others more modern—all with the intent to direct readers toward the essential importance of stillness and its “attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence.” Readers will be encouraged by Holiday’s insistence that his methods are within anyone’s grasp. He acknowledges that this rare and coveted calm is already inside each of us, but it’s been worn down by the hustle of busy lives and distractions. Recognizing that this goal requires immense personal discipline, the author draws on the representational histories of John F. Kennedy, Buddha, Tiger Woods, Fred Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other creative thinkers and scholarly, scientific texts. These examples demonstrate how others have evolved past the noise of modern life and into the solitude of productive thought and cleansing tranquility. Holiday splits his accessible, empowering, and sporadically meandering narrative into a three-part “timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the human body.” He juxtaposes Stoic philosopher Seneca’s internal reflection and wisdom against Donald Trump’s egocentric existence, with much of his time spent “in his bathrobe, ranting about the news.” Holiday stresses that while contemporary life is filled with a dizzying variety of “competing priorities and beliefs,” the frenzy can be quelled and serenity maintained through a deliberative calming of the mind and body. The author shows how “stillness is what aims the arrow,” fostering focus, internal harmony, and the kind of holistic self-examination necessary for optimal contentment and mind-body centeredness. Throughout the narrative, he promotes that concept mindfully and convincingly.
A timely, vividly realized reminder to slow down and harness the restorative wonders of serenity.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53858-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | SELF-HELP | BUSINESS | MOTIVATIONAL & PERSONAL SUCCESS
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