A balanced, broad summary of Catholicism's response to sexuality that will be a valuable reference tool for the layperson, although the scholar will find little that is original here. Fox, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, writes with an easy, accessible, journalistic style. The greatest strength of the book is the way he delineates the interconnectedness of the many sexual issues he tackles, e.g. gender roles, abortion, homosexuality, and contraception. His basic thesis is that Catholicism's ``natural law'' view, which Aquinas developed and which has now become the standard litmus test for Catholic morality, is the crux that defines widely variant sexual practices as sinful (natural law forbids all sexual relations not aimed toward procreation). Fox also provides intriguing behind-the-scenes explorations of contemporary Catholic politicking, such as the inner workings of Vatican II, describing how the Church was lovingly but firmly introduced to the modern era. He tells this story engagingly and expresses clear progressive opinions while retaining a nonjudgmental tone. The book is weakest, on the other hand, when Fox attempts to summarize 2,000 years of complex historical and religious changes in perfunctory digest form. Readers conversant in Catholic history may feel that Fox has sacrificed depth in favor of breadth. His insightful discussion of postVatican II Catholicism, however, more than makes up for his sweeping generalizations about the more distant past. His focus on dissenters within the Church is an especially perceptive chronicle of a growing cadre of critical Catholic thinkers who have formed unofficial but vocal groups such as Catholics for a Free Choice. Although he fails to provide definitive historical analysis of the many sex-related issues he addresses, Fox offers sensitive insights into contemporary Roman Catholic morality.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8076-1396-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Braziller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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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