by Shane Claiborne ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2016
In this often moving and unsettling book, Claiborne provides a meaningful contribution to a deeply fraught topic.
Passionate Christian activist Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, 2006, etc.) uses Scripture and societal statistics in an argument for the abolishment of the death penalty.
The author begins by considering the victims of crime involved in death sentence cases. He notes that the death penalty is rarely satisfying to those left in the wake of tragic crimes; instead, it prolongs mental anguish for victims’ families and places the emphasis on the criminal as opposed to the victim. After addressing the needs of victims, Claiborne explores faith issues surrounding the death penalty, arguing that the early Christian church was strictly against its use. The author points to the death of Jesus—“the most famous execution in history”—and notes the irony that his followers would ever support the executions of others. Turning to modern times, Claiborne acknowledges that the death penalty has been dwindling in use worldwide, and in the United States, for decades. He also points out that the U.S. ranks alongside such nations as Saudi Arabia and Iraq in its use of the death penalty, while most nations have banned it or diminished its use. Claiborne finds a tie between the modern use of execution and the history of illegal lynchings in the American South, arguing that the death penalty today continues to be a racially charged issue. After discussing botched executions, the innocent on death row, and the weight of the issue upon executioners themselves, the author offers an alternative viewpoint on how to bring about justice in such cases. Claiborne’s arguments are well-structured and, perhaps necessarily, laced with pleas to emotion. Proponents of the death penalty (among others) may be put off by his localization of the issue as a problem inherent to the Southern states, specifically to Southern evangelicals.
In this often moving and unsettling book, Claiborne provides a meaningful contribution to a deeply fraught topic.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234737-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Albert Camus
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Stephen Batchelor
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.