Cultural historian Gerson (History/New York Univ.; The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Modern France, 2003, etc.) shares his vast knowledge of and fascination with the legendary seer.
The author attempts to explain how Nostradamus’ (1503–1566) mystique has endured for more than five centuries. Trained as a doctor, he found that writing almanacs was much more to his pleasure, and this interest eventually begat his most famous work, Prophecies. He categorized his quatrains in groups of 100 and wrote a total of 942, although new ones appeared after his death. Nostradamus eventually became a good excuse for disasters, and few were above writing quatrains in his style; he was a matter of wonder and public amusement as well as an answer to anxieties and fears. While he was a Catholic of Jewish heritage, he never really accepted a religion, cult or political faction. The growth of communications in the 16th century enabled his writings to proliferate throughout his native France and elsewhere in Europe. Like the Oracle at Delphi, Nostradamus’ quatrains are worded so that interpretation is just a matter of the reader’s tendencies. There are few dates in any of his work, and he wrote in veiled terms, switched verbs and often changed tenses. While some of his obscurity could have been involuntary, it is much more likely that he did it deliberately. He also predicted that he would have detractors, and his mysterious death only adds to his mystique.
Gerson deftly explains the lure of Nostradamus, but no one can possibly translate his verses. Just like poetry, only the author knows what he meant.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-61368-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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