A well-written theoretical look at the difficulties of postmodern government.
This fourth book by independent scholar and former member of the U.S. Foreign Service Ophuls expresses the author’s ideal vision of contemporary politics.
Political scientist Ophuls attempts to outline a rational view of nation-state politics based on the writings of thinkers such as philosopher Edmund Burke, economist John Maynard Keynes and President Thomas Jefferson. “By orienting civilization toward nonmaterial ends—toward making souls instead of consumers—we can become fully human within the bonds set by nature,” Ophuls writes. The author lays out, in 35 very brief essays, how a pattern language of polity—that is, good design criteria for a nation-state—might look with great specificity, although he doesn’t go into great detail about why they meet his standards; he also doesn’t fully develop a nature metaphor he introduces early on. That said, the author’s ideas, written in thoughtful and sometimes trenchant prose, often prove surprising: “[H]ypocrisy is the vice,” Ophuls writes, “that, in paying tribute to virtue, actually supports morality.” His support of limited government and individual liberties may seem to indicate libertarian leanings, but such a judgment might be shortsighted, given this scholarly book’s complex textures; he cautions that liberty is not license and argues for small but powerful government that can operate in limited but effective ways. Not content to stick with democratic institutions, Ophuls recommends that a nation-state should be run by a wise council of elders, who can rely on “mandarins” to carry out its dictates. People, the author argues, are a mixture of devil and angel; the only way to overcome human nature is through prudence and by taking a long view of state affairs. As he makes his arguments, Ophuls is at home quoting ecologist Wendell Berry and psychologist Carl Jung; the breadth of his sources, as well as his political schema, makes for an engaging, deep reading experience.
A well-written theoretical look at the difficulties of postmodern government.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480073166
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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