A rich, entertaining compendium of thoughts on the Amish way of life.
An analysis of family life in Amish communities.
After being approached by her agent to write a romance novel set in Amish country, Miller (The Measure of Katie Calloway, 2011, etc.) set out to learn as much as she could about this private community of industrious people. She was particularly drawn to the children, who appeared well-fed, well-behaved, polite and happy. Over a period of years, she became friends with many Amish families and even managed to acquire an invitation to a young couple’s wedding, a rare experience for an “Englisch” person. Beyond their deep faith in God and the religious rules that govern their lives, Miller discovered many things in the Amish experience that appear lacking in the “Englisch” community. The Amish surround themselves with family, so grandparents and grandchildren intermingle on a daily basis. The elderly are not placed in nursing homes but are cared for by their sons and daughters and neighbors. Divorce is almost unheard of, which creates a stable environment for children, and children are taught from the toddler stage that everyone has chores to do to assist in daily life. They don’t drive, get an education beyond the eighth grade or own computers, but some use modern cellphones and computers as tools at work. Not all of life is work-related, as children play together with simple toys, and adolescents intermingle, but all learn from their older siblings and parents to take pride in cooking, gardening, farming and animal husbandry, and they are encouraged to work on projects that might bring them a little spending money. In this informal examination, Miller, with the assistance of Amish community member Stutzman (Hiking Through, 2012), not only provides a kaleidoscope of insight into the daily structure of Amish parenting, but she compares and contrasts it with “Englisch” parenting and offers ways to incorporate Amish methods into one’s own life.
A rich, entertaining compendium of thoughts on the Amish way of life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5340-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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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