by Stephen Jay Gould ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1997
``What?,'' ``When?,'' and ``Why?'' are the titles Gould gives to the three short essays probing humankind's fascination with thousand-year intervals. He could probably have wrapped it all up in a single essay, but the show of erudition (one can picture Gould poring over ancient texts in Harvard libraries) will please the fans and certainly speaks to a theme that is moving more and more to center stage. ``What?'' asks why we are so fascinated with numbers, the ordering of things, and dichotomies, with Gould observing that we have moved from a belief that Christ will reign over a bountiful 1,000 years following an apocalypse to the calendric concept that at some turning of the centuries there will be a thousand-year time span that may precede an apocalypse. There really are no hard answers; Gould even states that the human brain surely did not evolve to do this kind of reckoning. ``When?'' deals with whether the 21st century begins Jan. 1, 2000, or Jan. 1, 2001. The conundrum is all the fault of a sixth-century monk who started the b.c./a.d. business but omitted a year zero. To make matters worse, Herod died in 4 b.c., so if he were contemporaneous with Jesus, revision is necessary (and accounts for Archbishop James Ussher's famous start date for the universe of 4004 b.c.). Finally, ``Why?'' returns to the issue of why mankind is obsessed with order, endowing God or nature with mathematical precision. Truth is, there is no compatibility in lunar and solar cycles, and all cultures have struggled to develop calendars to make the seasons fall where they should. All this would be a romp for Gould's wit and intellect save for a final discussion on individuals classed as autistic or retarded but who can instantaneously calculate the day of the week for a given date over centuries. Readers will be moved by Gould's personal account of the process and the person involved. (16 b&w illustrations, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-609-60076-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1974
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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