One of the towering—and most controversial—figures in occult history, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91) cofounded the Theosophical Society and profoundly influenced the spread of Eastern and (many would say) pseudo-Eastern spiritual doctrines in the West. Here, Cranston (coauthor, Reincarnation, 1984—not reviewed) offers an energetic but nearly hagiographic biography of this remarkable woman. Born to well-off Russian parents, HPB exhibited a willful personality early on—as evidenced by her marriage at age 17, to spite a governess who said she'd never attract a husband, to 40- year-old Nikofor Blavatsky: The marriage was never consummated, and HPB soon ran away to begin her world travels. These took her to the US (where she became the first Russian woman to gain citizenship), India, Tibet, and England. In London, HPB met her Hindu ``Master,'' whose guidance helped her to elaborate Theosophy, which teaches that all religions derive from a universal wisdom embodied throughout history by ``adepts'' such as Jesus. With her forceful character and alleged psychic powers, HPB won many followers, including Thomas Edison, and increased the number through books (The Secret Doctrine, etc.)—despite frequent charges of charlatanism—until her death. Cranston, apparently a true believer who attended ``Theosophy School'' in the 30's, draws on prodigious research—but it's all aimed at defending HPB and includes numerous reports of HPB teleporting objects, etc. Moreover, in her urge to tie HPB to traditional religion, Cranston displays a woeful ignorance of basic Buddhist doctrine, and, in trying to enhance HPB's stature, she argues unconvincingly that HPB prophesied future scientific advances. Cranston even expends about 500 words explaining HPB's influence on...Elvis. Well detailed—but the astonishing adventure of HPB's life too often gets lost beneath Cranston's piousness. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1993
ISBN: 0-87477-688-0
Page Count: 656
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
A convincing case for resolving financial conflicts of interest that compromise the judgment of doctors and that bias the clinical choices they make. Whereas lawyers, certain financial professionals, and government officials are considered by law to be fiduciaries- -i.e., obligated to work for the benefit of those they represent- -there's as yet no effective policy to hold doctors accountable in this way. The medical profession has never developed a framework to address this problem, and, according to Rodwin (Law and Public Policy/Indiana University-Bloomington), it's unlikely to do so. Here, Rodwin examines seven activities that lead to significant conflicts of interest among physicians: kickbacks; referral to facilities in which physicians have a financial interest; the selling of medical products that they themselves prescribe; hospital purchases of private practices; payments by hospitals for patient referrals; gifts by pharmaceutical firms; and risk-sharing in health-maintenance organizations (HMOs). Disturbing examples of each of these activities dot the text and dramatize how patients can be adversely affected by them. Rodwin draws on the regulatory approaches of other professions to offer recommendations for solving the medical establishment's conflict- of-interest problems. He argues for setting up new institutions and rules to hold physicians to fiduciary standards, with legislatures taking the lead in laying down the ground rules, and with courts, regulatory agencies, third-party payers, and state attorneys general enforcing them. One interesting concept the author examines is the regulation of the medical industry by a federal commission, similar to the regulation of the securities business by the SEC. A constructive contribution—featuring a well-presented analysis as well as concrete proposals for reform—to the ongoing discussion of our national health-care crisis.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-19-508096-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
Courageous but flawed attempt by Woiwode (Indian Affairs, 1992, etc.) to examine Christian culture and his own faith in the light of Acts, ``the most overtly narrative book of the New Testament.'' Woiwode's grit lies in his willingness to discuss Christianity despite—as he hammers home—the bias against religion among America's cultural and academic elite. He ponders the task of the Christian writer and finds it, as did Dante, Tolstoy, and Eliot before him, to be a search for ``a way to live the life Christ calls us to live.'' The best compass here, says Woiwode, remains the Bible. Thus his interest in Acts, toward which he takes a Protestant approach (Woiwode is an rthodox Presbyterian), paring away doctrines that he sees as excrescences to get at the unvarnished revelation. His technique, a combination of common sense and writerly savvy that ignores biblical scholarship, gets him into trouble at times. For instance, while it's charming and even instructive to call Peter's account of Judas's suicide ``an elaboration, in a sophisticated accreting manner that would please a Robbe-Grillet,'' it's naive to believe that the numbers in Acts (e.g., 40 days as the span of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances) must be literally true because, as Woiwode claims, Luke has a novelist's eye for factual detail: Such literalism ignores the different aims and methods of modern and ancient writers. Similar exegetic goofs pepper the text, but no matter; far more exciting is Woiwode's ability to connect the ancient dramas of Acts to modern life. In so doing, he plucks away at the nature of sin, baptism, miracle, and other issues, and tells of his own religious conversion and return to the land, always in the same shimmering prose that marks his fiction (``I pressed a footpedal that released a pyramid of fifteen finished bales, outlined white-gold in a sudden gate of sun''). Pretty shaky as scholarship—but a tough, moving personal testament.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-069404-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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