by Philip Gorski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2017
Though the narrative is occasionally as dense as a rain forest, it will be rich and rewarding for the determined explorer.
A philosophically and academically rigorous argument that charts one way to political reconciliation in these divisive times.
At the outset, Gorski (Sociology and Religious Studies/Yale Univ.; The Protestant Ethic Revisited, 2011, etc.) declares that he’s not writing for scholars, but although he generally adheres to that aim, he sometimes crafts thick paragraphs with multiple allusions that might daunt general readers. His work is also organized in a traditional academic format, featuring introductions, conclusions, lists of points and distinctions, and more than 70 pages of endnotes and bibliography. Nonetheless, this is an important work, one that returns us to our national origins, examines the evidence about our founding—and our founders—concerning religion and its interactions with public policy. Gorski dispels any number of hazy historical beliefs, on both sides of the political spectrum, including the notion that the United States is a Christian nation or that we are an entirely secular nation. He spends much time defining, and refining, his terms and categories and includes the work of many philosophers, historians, writers, and political figures to illuminate his points. Some are names quite familiar—e.g., Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Jerry Falwell, and George W. Bush, while others will be principally familiar to academics (Robert Ingersoll and John Rawls). Gorski is frank and unapologetic about his own left-of-center leanings and issues dire warnings about what will happen if we fail to heal our divisions. Unfortunately, most of his suggestions at the end of the book are unlikely to occur—e.g., “make civic holidays into holidays again”—and though he warns about public ignorance, it’s surprising that he does not emphasize more emphatically the absolute necessity of improving our system of public education.
Though the narrative is occasionally as dense as a rain forest, it will be rich and rewarding for the determined explorer.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-691-14767-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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