Any book which comes from the pen of Reinhold Niebuhr is important. For the dynamic professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, New York, is not only recognized as one of America's leading theologians, but is being blocked looked to increasingly by the laity to provide a clear and incisive intellectual base for the consideration of the confused issues of our day. Many of his admirers have been hoping that he would some day produce a book which would clearly show the implications of his philosophy. This volume of essays approaches it, particularly as far as political and international issues are concerned. Even so, those who will expect to find a pat formula for the Christian solution to our problems will be disappointed. For Niebuhr ors nostrums, whether they be the utopian dreams of liberals, the status quo of conservatives, the Marxist doctrine of the communists, or the proposal for a World Government. His "realism" consists in realizing that every issue is confused, that no human proposal or program is all black or all white and that it is only as we approach each problem in the humble acknowledgment of our own sinful pride and irradicable lust for power that we have any hope of making of ourselves channels for the redemptive grace of God. Not easy reading. Many of its passages will have to be reread many times, but it will be worth it. The titles of the essays give some indication of the profundity and practicality of Niebuhr's thinking: "The Presuppositions of Faith and the Empirical Method in the Achievment of Realism", "Augustine's Political Realism", "The Foreign Policy of American Conservatism and Liberalism", "Democracy, Secularism and Christianity", "Why is Communism So Evil?", "Coherence, Incoherence and Christian Faith", "Love and Law in Protestantism and Catholicism", "The Illusion of World Government", "The Christian Witness in the Social and National Order", "The Anomaly of European Socialism", "Ideology and the Scientific Method". A book to be featured.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1953
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1953
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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