A fresh and thoughtful analysis that sheds much-needed light on an often overheated phenomenon.
A fascinating look at the importance of the religious fringe in American life.
Jenkins (History & Religious Studies/Penn State Univ.; Pedophiles and Priests, not reviewed) argues convincingly that cults and new religions are significant social and cultural contributors to the healthy development of society. Present-day groups should be seen in historical perspective because they have their core beliefs rooted in 19th- or early-20th-century movements. Other generally accepted practices (such as female clergy and charismatic worship) or those still considered unorthodox (such as polygamy), have their origins in earlier Christian sects or non-Christian fringe religions. These new beliefs develop because the needs of people are not being satisfied by the established churches. The religious mainstream reject the new groups because of their own fears of the new, of the other, and of competition. It is no trite observation for Jenkins to point to the astounding growth in size and respectability of such sects as the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), Baptists, and Pentecostals—all of whom were considered invidious in their early years but are now mainstream religions. Without denying that many new religious groups have engaged in morally suspect or legally questionable activities, Jenkins maintains that these have been a small minority. Governmental organizations and established clergy have usually combined with a fervent muckraking press to misrepresent new sects as dangerous. They also frequently mislabel them as "cults," a once respectable term that is now pejorative. The rights of individuals to believe and take part in what are characterized as cults is now legally guaranteed because once marginalized groups (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses) won in court the constitutional right to their way of worship. But as recent events (such as the Waco killings) demonstrate, ignorance and the quick stereotyping of cults according to the worst examples (e.g., Jonestown) by religious and secular authorities may have disastrous results.
A fresh and thoughtful analysis that sheds much-needed light on an often overheated phenomenon.Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-19-512744-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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