Fresh analysis of Wilson, his times, and the evolution of his international position; by Knock (History/Southern Methodist Univ.). With never an extra word, Knock creates a sense of the creative ferment, innocence, and scale of a still-young America that brought into being such vigorous visionaries as Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene Debs, and John Reed. He shows a thoughtful Wilson, confident in his intellectual capacities, unafraid in the company of socialists and radicals, aware that new ideas would be needed to solve new problems. But Knock's Wilson isn't an original thinker: ``The salient ideas...he derived from other groups and individuals'' and ``the broad concept [of the League of Nations]...had long been espoused by a disparate constellation....'' Nor was Wilson quick to grasp realpolitik. His (and America's) isolation and lack of historical instinct are clear as he conducts WW I press conferences that simply ignore the incredible slaughter in Europe in the belief that we can remain uninvolved. Knock traces a pattern of Christian virtue, moral conviction, and idealism that made Wilson into a national hero who could address the (primarily Republican) League to Enforce Peace to thundering applause; and he shows how these same qualities— combined with lack of experience in international affairs and negotiations—would eventually undo Wilson. The American leader's reliance on his advisor Edward Mandell House's intrigues and optimistically inaccurate reports here figure in the failure of the President's Pan American Pact (a kind of model for the League of Nations), and suggest how this pattern of wishful thinking about human and national motivations would lead to similar results at Versailles. Sharp, succinct, and expert. (Twelve halftones—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-19-507501-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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