Customer Reviews:
Some good information.......2007-09-24
A good book for refrence material for the HAZMAT courses I teach. If you are buying this with the intent to use the information be really careful because some of the information is flat out wrong and will get you hurt and it will also get you put on a few watch lists.
Try again.......2006-09-28
I don't have any real hope that Mr. Powell will see this, but just in case, I have something to say to him. Sir: I remember your work--I bootlegged it when I worked at Kinko's in the early 80s. By then you probably already regretted your efforts.
However, the 80s were a bloated fun-seeking time, the only angst to hold on to was an overload of boredom. My main goal in trying out your recipes was to see if banana skins really did produce a satisfactory high (no.) The most subversive thing I did at that time was to sit very patiently and light my cigarettes on the heat-roll of the copier when I was out of matches.
I remember that the thought processes of my youthful, developing brain were alien and laughable to my more mature self today. But if I could retrieve the fearlessness, moral outrage, and impulsive bursts of energy, and apply them to the more reasoned ethics I enjoy today...
You once sensed without equivocation, that you had a purpose and you had the drive to see it through to completion. Now you seem like a voluntary inmate into one of Dante's levels of hell; you have tethered yourself to your early work, and will remain an apologist throughout eternity. Is that all there is? Or are you the same William Powell who is scouting the best possible golf course or cricket ground, or translating someone else's work?
When are you going to do something to measure up and outshine the fruits of your misguided youth?
The cure for your heartache is to overcome. Focus your grief and regret into a new, more powerful and striking act of courage. Get back to work, and use your long-forgotten talents and fortitude to create a work of magical genius that will override and transcend the earlier message you sent into the world. Mingle the lofty intentions you had as a youth with the compassion, vision and wisdom you own now as a father and teacher. Give us a kinder, gentler recipe for world peace.
As a teenager, your moral outrage kept you holed up in the library for hours creating the Cookbook. How can you feel no nostalgia? When was the last time you held an uncompromised belief? You have not been lobotomized; your manner and approach are milder now, you have found religion, but surely your basic values remain.
Or do you mean to say you are now FOR war for the sake of capitalism, or FOR the national guard being deployed to unleash tear-gas and bully-sticks on a peaceful civilian demonstration? Are you now GLAD that the Ku Klux Klan could lynch 'nigger-lovers' with impunity?
Forgive your young self and realize that these were the realities you lived with during the time you wrote the book. Your ideas were brash and inappropriate, but what were the sensible, middle-aged, law-abiding citizens doing? They were watching on TV while the young and the desperate fought their battles.
While you were writing the Cookbook, I was a first-hand witness to America's complacency, watching TV propped against my mom-and-dad's knees. They sat motionless, stunned and dismayed at what they beheld onscreen. They felt helpless, they did nothing, but they explained to me that the college students, the 'negroes,' and the anti-war demonstrators had the moral high-ground, and they were appalled at the violence and bigotry.
So are you trying to say that you are embarrassed and you wish you had joined your parents and grandparents on the couch, tsk-tsk-ing? What SHOULD you have done? What should we be doing now, as our volunteer servicemen and women are dying for a fraudulent cause in Iraq? As my 50-yr-old friend in the reserves is called up for active duty, alongside poverty-stricken 18 yr-olds forced to choose between jail-time or service?
What are the consequences of our complacency, now that we are the silent observers, full of inward regret, the only measure of our discontent being the sighs we emit or the way we avert our eyes?
I have moments of lucidity, where I consciously think about my cowardice and lack of action, but I bet as the regret-laden author of the Anarchist's Cookbook, your thoughts are far more developed and comprehensive.
So please, bundle up all this angst and remorse, forgive yourself and lead us again. Help us to take responsibility for our world, help us to support and not desert our youth and our soldiers the way middle America did in the 60s.
A new book by "the author of the Anarchist's Cookbook" would grab the attention of millions, by virtue of that credit alone. Your book could be a work of genius, but if it is only reasoned and well-written, that would accomplish enough. Off you go on the talk-show circuit, even if the book is crap.
Help us to make our children proud and want to live by our example, so they aren't as frustrated and desperate as you felt when you wrote your 'first' book. Get off the blogs and get back into the game.
Awesome Book.......2006-07-28
The material covered is fascinating if you enjoy the idea of making "cool" things from household products. The material is dated but an awesome book nonetheless.
Seriously..........2006-07-25
This book is accurate as a blind folded archer spun 3 times in a game of pinata. There is no real useful info in this book, you'd get more tactics out of a Steven Seagal film. This book should be taken out of print before some dummy hurts themselves. If you're interested in learning the tricks of the trade buy a surplus field manual (FM), Watch Discovery Channel, or Join the Military or some Government agency. Billy Powell was a very misinformed hippie. The part that gave it all away was the part about the M-1 Garand. "Used in both World Wars and Korea" WW2 and Korea yes, WW1 no. I think its luck of some higher power that this dummy didn't hurt himself in the process.
Lighten up, folks!.......2006-07-21
The author has provided the context in which he wrote this book. As an adolescent boy in the 1970s, I found it an interesting read. Since I had the good sense to not attempt any of the hare-brained schemes in the book, I am still healthy and have all of my limbs. If people are interested in improvised munitions and the like, there are at least six (6) US Army FMs and TMs on the subject that I am aware of. Bear in mind that the making of explosive devices is a serious felony, and should not be attempted without the proper Federal and State licenses and permits. BATFE does not take kindly to the making of unregistered and untaxed explosives.
Book Description
Beautifully designed A-Z of the totality of revolutionary politics. This brand new Crimethinc book is the action guide - the direct action guide. From affinity groups to wheatpasting, coalition building, hijacking events, mental health, pie-throwing, shoplifting, stenciling, supporting survivors of domestic violence, surviving a felony trial, torches, and whole bunch more. Incredible design, and lots of graphics give it that hip situ feel. Loads to read, to think about, and to do. At 650 pages, you could always throw the damn book at a suitable target. What are you waiting for?
Customer Reviews:
Work related.......2007-09-24
A good book for refrence material for the HAZMAT courses I teach. If you are buying this with the intent to use the information be really careful because some of the information is flat out wrong and will get you hurt and it will also get you put on a few watch lists.
Doesn't deserve the title.......2005-04-29
The activities described in the book are, almost without exception, harmless (if sometimes illegal) pranks or eco-friendly home ec. Handing out subversive pamphlets to college kids? Painting over billboards? More energy-efficient stoves? Is this what qualifies as a disaster these days? Your "Rocket Stove" is not going to stick it to The Man, I'm sorry. Don't buy this expecting anything interesting -- maybe grade schoolers would get a kick out of it, but that's about it.
An indispensable manual of direct action.......2005-02-01
After a long wait, America's heirs to the Situationists come through with a wide-ranging, imaginative, and inspiring compendium of actions that people can take to challenge the status quo. Big and small, legal and il-, the 62 recipes run the gamut from dumspter-diving to banner drops, open relationships to locking down streets, monkeywrenching to coalition building. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the direct action tactics that have developed in anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian circles in recent years.
One gripe-- the section on "undermining oppression" is a clumsy and unfortunate endorsement of the kind of identity politics that have so recklessly divided the left.
Book Description
Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.
Download Description
Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.
Customer Reviews:
A Love Story with Sauce.......2007-10-03
Every Tom Robbins novel is a fantastic journey with psychedelic whorl sauce. This novel will surprise readers who have navigated his novels with multiple converging stories and stretched fantasy. This is almost a regular novel from the Robbins set.
The novel has one story, of all things, a love story, with several overtly named and referenced themes the author invites the audience to analyze. This is a romantic novel (huh!) with a very traditional love story. I'm talking Romeo and Juliet stuff here. Is he baiting us? Is there something more to what he has directly pointed out? Maybe this time the story is told in his thoughts of object-ism, pyramid power, the moon and redheads (which is great) rather than his typical inviting challenge to follow the story in the characters. In this case, the story is a straightforward journey and the thematic discussions are the spot that requires effort. And by effort, I don't mean the Stairmaster or studying algebra, I mean allowing your mind to stretch out to meet Tom Robbins point to point.
As usual the characters in the story don't "fit the description"; an idealist princess and an outlaw; their actions intense and their purpose dubious which immediately makes it better than a "normal" book. I was challenged to dig the thematic definitions as deeply as I normally do the stories. Maybe I missed the connection between the characters and the themes that gives the book another layer. It is nice however, to see a different curve to a Robbins tale. For a regular Robbins reader the novel does have those things we love including the fantastic internal monologues that define the characters, the gluttonous descriptions of everyday objects (the Camel cigarette pack) and his incredible ability to concoct a story with a broken mold. For my tastes however, I enjoy dissecting a fantastic story more than I like trying to guess at someone else's conclusions on symbology and love.
Enjoyable Robbins.......2007-09-01
I have read Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, and Another Roadside Attraction, all of which would easily earn 5 stars (and do, for that matter). This is my least favorite of Tom Robbins' books, but it did keep me rather entertained. If you are into Robbins and you want to read lots of his work, I really think you should read this book (and the others listed above). If, however, you are looking for something better, check out Skinny Legs and All. This book is a great introduction to his style and is is better tied together than Still Life.
My main complaint about this novel is that it felt a little more disorganized than usual (yes, I know, Robbins does this intentionally). The follow up to this disorganization usually leads to meaningful connections and points at the end where the story(ies) is resolved. Although there is some resolution and excellent use of language (he is the master of the metaphor), it lacks the writing skill of his other works. Generally his books advertise the unique and he follows up by delivering the reader just that: an explanation of the problem with redheads, for example. Although difficult to say exactly why, other books tend to 'follow up' on these with more explanation and deeper meaning.
The other issue I have with this book is the character development. The relationship between the two protagonist redheads felt odd and forced at about 100 pages into the book. Whether or not you decide to read it, Tom Robbins' novels all demand patience. Give it time and make a commitment to the book. Knowing this, it is easy for me not to get worried 75 or 125 pages into one of his books. Being a little lost is OK at first.
garbage........2007-08-19
i really don't have much more to say than that. eh. i know this short and lazy review will bump me down a few spots on the reviewer ranks, but i dont care. i am already in the millions. robbins writes for the people who dont read...yes, that is you (i can see you scowling at my arrogance). read a real book...i know it is hard to do if your high school teacher isnt assigning it, and i applaud you for getting at least one down. keep trying.
Love is the ultimate outlaw.......2007-08-07
The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that we can make meaning then; let's just play with nonsense. However, are we being narcissistic by animating an uncaring world? Is it selfish to want a mutual relationship with a spoon? Clearly, having a job, or being a part of any organization is "dull" or even "evil." On the other hand, for Leigh-Cheri, an unemployed princess, and Bernard "Woodpecker" Wrangle, an unemployed fugitive, Objecthood is the highest plane of consciousness in the Outlaw bible. What is Objecthood? "In time, Leigh-Cheri became intimate with most of the inanimate objects in her environment..." In Objecthood, rain is not just rain, tequila is not just tequila, and of course, a box of cigarettes is not just a box of cigarettes. Throughout the book, Robbins is frantically personifying and free associating and generally making excessive word play. Whereas Vonnegut seemed to keep his descriptions to their intellectual and emotional essentials, Robbins prefers to repetitively lambaste a topic to death. Speaking of death, apparently, in 1980, a guy and his explosives could be considered a free-spirited nonconformist. However, in the later part of the 20th century, we have been jaded by the bombing massacres at Columbine (April 20, 1999) and Oklahoma City (April 19, 1995). The Woodpecker's light-hearted destruction of property no longer seems so playful or heroic. At one point in the story, Robbins even provides several recipes for making household bombs. Nevertheless, humanizing a cold abstraction or even some natural phenomenon gives us a way to understand it, one more way to arrange the world in our own terms, so that we can further comprehend it. Here the metaphors sometimes take over the book and control it. "Still Life with Woodpecker" is a pastiche of Vonnegut, Penthouse "Letters," pagan mythology and pop psychology. If you can get through the first third of the book, a mildly amusing story emerges.
couldn't even finish it.......2007-07-10
A now ex-boyfriend loaned me this book when we first started dating, it was his favorite book. Totally understand why we didn't work. I tried so hard to get into this book and read it and understand it, but it was awful (personal opinion only, don't blast me for hating). I can't even put into words why I hated it, I just did. It made little to no sense (the overly quirky and likely severely stoned author kept breaking into the story to yell at his old school type-writer the Remington...what>!?!). I should have ended the relationship based on the fact that this was his favorite book, turns out we were completely different and incompatable and our opinions of this book were merely the beginning. Not that there is anything wrong with him, the book or the author, its just not my thing even a little bit. No offense meant to those who are fans. I just didn't get it. What makes love stay...seriously, how can this book even remotely be marketed as a love story. Sure if an uptight yuppie princess finds a dirty, chain smoking, bad teethed criminal to be her Prince Charming, then ok...its a love story. Whatever.
Book Description
Shipwreck is the second part of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard's long-awaited and monumental trilogy that explores a group of friends who came of age under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas I, and for whom the term intelligentsia was coined. Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss, and betrayal. In The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, utopian idealism, and practical reformation.
Customer Reviews:
Lives cut tragically short, and painful losses all around.......2003-08-31
Tom Stoppard is arguably the single finest playwright of his generation, and the Coast of Utopia trilogy is a massive undertaking that in the hands of a less skilled author could have gone awry and badly. Stoppard though manages to make what could be a painfully pedantic history lesson into a moving portrayal of love, ideology, loss, and change.
Shipwreck is decidedly the most tragic of the three, the loss of innocence and the tragically young deaths of several characters are heart breaking, as is the way Stoppard deals the blow to the reader or audience. Vissarion Belinsky in particular lends a spark to the entire piece, and his desperation at finding the answer he has spent his life searching for is one of the most heart wrenching things I have ever read.
The history is neither dominate or secondary to the characterization here, rather Stoppard manages to make the historical events we know (or may not know) part and parcel of the volatile and fascinating lives of some of Russias greatest citizens.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent overview for the already initiated.
- Instructive, stimulating, inspiring
- Anarchism at it's best
- Best slim volume intro out there
- A Brief History of Anarchism
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Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
Daniel Guerin
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Customer Reviews:
An excellent overview for the already initiated........2007-01-28
This book is highly recommended for those who are already convinced of the value of anarchism and want to expand their understanding of anarchist history and theory.
Guerin packs a lot of learning into this slim (160 page) volume. His portrayals of the intellectual fathers of the movement-- Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, et. al., are nuanced and eye-opening. He pulls choice quotes froma broad range of sources and make clear the theoretical principles of social anarchism as they developed out of the 1st International all the way up through the 1960s.
His brief descriptions of the high water marks of anarchist struggle in Spain and Russia are concise, lucid, and affirming.
For all the book's strengths, though, it is not the most exciting reading. Guerin packs a lot of crucial information in, but somehow the spirit of revolt and solidarity, the real poetry of anarchism, doesn't shine through the presentation. In short, this is not the best book to use to turn newbies on to anarchism. For young people new to anarchism, I would recommend Crimethinc's "Days of War, Nights of Love" and "Recipes for Disaster". For the more mature, pragmatically minded initiates, Colin Ward's "Anarchy in Action" is a good place to start. For the questioning Marxist, Bookchin's "Post-Scarcity Anarchism" is essential reading.
Instructive, stimulating, inspiring .......2005-10-18
A basic tenant of Libertarian socialism is that workers should directly control and design what their political representatives' implement and should directly control their workplaces, so as to maximize their own freedom. As Marx stressed in his early writings the will to work, to create, to mold nature to our intellects and creative powers, is part of human nature, our "species-being." When prevented from developing their "species-being" by having to sell themselves to wage slavery, struggling to feed themselves and being fettered by other drudgeries, human beings are degraded. They become dysfunctional and their powers of intellect and creativity are assaulted. They become dysfunctional, anti-social. This would become very rare in a libertarian socialist with maximum personal freedom. A community could lock away any person committing criminal acts in order that his constructive "species-being "could be recuperated. Or if the criminal didn't want to do that, a community could expel the criminal from their midst. People should have a choice, said Bakunin of choosing to live in any community they wanted. If any community in a libertarian socialist society dosen't appeal to them, they can go live in the mountains and forests with the beasts as Bakunin put it. People with alternative lifestyles like nudists could set up their own community and link themselves to regular communities as called for in a program of Spanish anarchists in 1936.
Anarchists in the 19th century, Guerin shows, were particularly cognizant of the dangers of authoritarian state socialism. Bakunin gave a particularly prescient prediction about it, though he unfairly described his rival Marx as an adherent of it. Authoritarian socialists like Lenin advocated a one party autocracy that would direct society until that autocracy determined that a society was fit for full libertarian socialism. Libertarian socialists have always recognized the possibility that capitalist institutions may need to be maintained, as society slowly transitions out of capitalist practices. But anarchists believe that direct political democracy should always exist during such periods even if capitalist practices still remain. During the two revolutions in Russia in 1917, the urban proletariat seized control of their workplaces as they had done back in 1905. In many instances workers had seized control of their workplaces after factory owners had fled or refused to comply with early Bolshevik decrees that factory managers share management with workers. Lenin was very uneasy about it but went along with it at first because of its popular support. Long before he achieved political power, Lenin had always written, even in his most libertarian work "State and Revolution" of the need for workers and peasants to be subordinated to an autocracy of "democratic centralism" By mid 1918, using the excuse of the civil war with the White armies and the invasions by the imperialist powers, the freedom of the Soviets were eliminated and they were forced to become docile instruments of Bolshevik policy. Anarchists who non-violently objected to the new policies were subject to savage repression. Because the Bolshevik leaders now delegated themselves all decision making power throughout their vast country, things got screwed up. The workers had to wait a very long time for approval so things didn't get done. The communication and transportation facilities that did exist in Russia at the time were in ruins. The workers were all quite willing to fight for the Bolsheviks in order to defend their self-management institutions. However, when the workers tried to run their factories on their own and coordinate with workers councils in other industries, the Bolsheviks forced them to stop. Guerin quotes Voline an example of this, workers at a St. Petersburg oil refinery who organized themselves to get their factory moving again but were stopped by the authorities. In early 1921, Alexandra Kollantay, urged the Bolshevik party to loosen restrictions on the freedom of workers noting the rising worker discontent, the cause of which was the stifling of that freedom. This contributed to Lenin's decision to officially ban all dissent in the Bolshevik party, which Trotsky later admitted set the party on a firm course towards totalitarianism. There were massive strikes in Petrograd and Moscow and workers and sailors in Kronstadt began to organize in solidarity. The Kronstadt activists demanded the restoration of the freedom of the Soviets and freedom of speech for anarchists and left socialists along with the Bolsheviks. They were against freedom of speech for more conservative socialists. They did not demand the removal of the Bolshevik party. War Commissar Trotsky sent a force that crushed the rebellion in barbaric fashion. Meanwhile in the Ukraine, workers and peasant soviets had been set up successfully under the leadership of an anarchist army led by Nestor Makhno. They drove out the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, then were much more successful against the White Armies than the Red Army. They were an intolerable threat to Bolshevik power so they were crushed. For instance in November 1920, negotiators from Makhno's army were sent to talk with the Bolsheviks but were arrested and shot by the CHEKA and the Makhnovist army units that had accompanied them were caught in a trap and disarmed.
Anarchism had a firm foothold in Spain, Guerin points out.. So when a left wing government was elected in Spain in February 1936 and Francisco Franco launched his first counterrevolutionary revolt, the workers and peasants stopped it by seizing control of their factories and their land and set up worker's and peasant's councils. The left wing government included some anarchists but was dominated by non-anarchist socialists. This Spanish government was forced by the hostile "neutrality" of the Western powers and the aid given to Franco's forces after his successful rebellion of July 1936 by the Fascist powers to turn to Soviet Russia for support. The power of Stalinists in the government grew and they used it to destroy worker self-management institutions, which were fairly successful for a period according to Guerin.
The last part of the book includes ssome interesting and even prophetic observations about the USSR in the mid-60's and reports on worker self-management within totalitarian political frameworks as in Tito's Yugoslavia. The last chapter, a postscript to the 1970 edition, has Guerin indulging in some very overly hopeful exhortations on the possibilities of the insurrections of 1968 in his country, France.
Anarchism at it's best.......2004-04-20
This book is absolutly the best book I have read on the subject of Anarchism. I wasn't able to put it down, ripping through it in two days, and reading through it again! Guerin does a fabulous job outlining the history of Anarchist thought and thinkers. I would also recommend his 'No Gods, No Masters', for a great collection of Anarchist writings.
This book is perfect for those already interessted in the movement, as well as people just looking to learn a bit about it. Also perfect for all those young "Anarchists" who think anarchy is about blowing $#!7 up (far to many of my friends fall into this, hopefully I can pull them out of it....).
Best slim volume intro out there.......2002-06-29
I read this book in a day, and filled the margins with many, many notes, something I rarely do. Clearly, Gruien doesn't cover every aspect of Anarchism, but for a brief introduction to Proudhon, Bakhunin and Kropotkin, it is the best out there. And, our very own American Anarchist Noam Chomsky did the introduction, which is just as good as anything in the book (Hell, his intro is half the reason I bought the book). Plus, it is a very well bound book. The pages are sturdy, the print clear, and the size small yet durable, something you really don't find in many Political books... Very recommended.
A Brief History of Anarchism.......2002-04-17
Wonderful overview of the ideas and actions of anarchism. Includes commentary on the Russian Revolution, Spanish Revolution, the distinctions between libertarian and authoritarian socialism, and the words of such essential thinkers as Proudhon and Malatesta, to name only a few. Also includes a brief but enlightening introduction from Chomsky that serves to place anarchism and its historical development in a broader and historical context. All in all, a worthwhile and valuable contribution for those searching for information on this neglected (at least in the United States)component of political/philosophical discourse.
Average customer rating:
- Timeless Entertainment
- A Modern Masterpiece
- Nihilistic buffoonery that opens the door to truth, understanding and redemption.
- Mind-warping and mind-expanding!
- Thursday's Child has far to go
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The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Modern Library Classics)
G.K. Chesterton
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Release Date: 2001-10-09 |
Amazon.com
In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday "a very melodramatic sort of moonshine." Set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists, his 1907 novel offers up one highly colored enigma after another. If that weren't enough, the author also throws in an elephant chase and a hot-air-balloon pursuit in which the pursuers suffer from "the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon."
But Chesterton is also concerned with more serious questions of honor and truth (and less serious ones, perhaps, of duels and dualism). Our hero is Gabriel Syme, a policeman who cannot reveal that his fellow poet Lucian Gregory is an anarchist. In Chesterton's agile, antic hands, Syme is the virtual embodiment of paradox:
He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity.
Elected undercover into the Central European Council of anarchists, Syme must avoid discovery and save the world from any bombings in the offing. As Thursday (each anarchist takes the name of a weekday--the only quotidian thing about this fantasia) does his best to undo his new colleagues, the masks multiply. The question then becomes: Do they reveal or conceal? And who, not to mention what, can be believed? As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone--what happens if most members of the council actually turn out to be on the side of right? Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy. --Kerry Fried
Book Description
G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn't be interesting at all, though, if he didn't also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.
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Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled 'A nightmare' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, The Man Who Was Thursday is firmly rooted in its time and place - turn-of-the-century London - but it also defies temporal boundaries. Police Detective Syme finds himself drawn into a world that seems to have gone beyond humanity when he is elected 'Thursday', one of the members of the Central European Council of seven monarchs. Dreamlike, prophetic, and frequently funny, the novel attacks contemporary pessimism and, through a bizarre series of pursuits and unmaskings, returns Syme - and us - to earth more aware of its beauty, promise, and creative potential.
Customer Reviews:
Timeless Entertainment.......2007-05-18
Chesterton sure knows how to write a thriller. Its turns are anything but predictable; its twists are also anything but nonsensical.
Despite Chesterton's intimation that it is simply a nightmare, I find it highly allegorical. Perhaps what's in a man's heart just comes out on the page, whether he intended it or not.
It's interesting that Chesterton picked anarchists as symbolic of the greatest evil of Satan. The book definitely lends itself to allegory, and it seems to have a very ambitious goal: to answer why there is evil in the world. The answer is also very interesting: good people suffer so that in the end when the accuser stands, righteousness will prevail not because it is untested, but exactly because it has been tested and purified. Sunday/Sabbath is a very interesting figure: simply by his presence he exposes everything. The greatest evil and anarchy is the deception that turns brothers against each other, and that evil is nothing MORE than a great deception. It's a very interesting concept, and plays throughout the book in the theme of the rash vows the Days promised to various others--and specifically, Thursday's promise to Gregory.
The book is to be savored like a fine wine: with good food and slowly. You definitely need a few nights to absorb it, and, plan on a rereading. Personally, I loved it. I'm kind of sad *that* dream is over!
A Modern Masterpiece.......2007-04-18
Chesterton, the master of paradox, hits his stride in this dream of paranoia. For those of you who like your thrillers to pack their punches in terms of caliber, pints of blood shed, or body-count, you can all sod off. This is a thriller for the mind and the soul -- its aim is to save you from yourselves.
If you want your English simple, straighforward, fed to you in easy subject-verb-object format, leave as well. This is more post-modern than any of those douchebags you've been fed in your graduate classes at U.C. Santa Barbara.
If Chesterton is not the greatest modern author, then that is only because T.S. Eliot or Evelyn Waugh is slightly better.
The chief pity is that Americans -- most direly in need of this sort of instruction -- will not read this work.
Nihilistic buffoonery that opens the door to truth, understanding and redemption........2007-03-26
Because of our own doing, evil has been given a permanent place in our world, and G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, illustrates that fact perfectly.
At the very beginning of the novel, the daylight scene of the neighborhood changes by nightfall to a reality that is mind-bending and questionable, at best: "More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. " Page eight. As that evolution of perception can be placed upon an environment, again by our doing, how can that affect the perception of the people who are occupied within its confines? It does, yet it does so on a deeper plain. When is the presentation of goodness real goodness versus goodness out of obligation or duty? And can the person discern kindly obligation vis-a-vis authentic Christian goodness? Or are the two so firmly meshed together that they can not be extricated, for past events have indeed raised that question mark. It is a slippery slope, and one must always be on guard when goodness is used in order to obtain something compared to when something is offered freely without expectations or obligations, and we are speaking about the philosophical, and especially the theological here. Who can be trusted, and who can not be? Even though the act of proving oneself is cyclical, who is more credible, the one or the other, and what if the two are a part of the same circle and there is a divide, as say in religion? Who will predominate? Who is truer to God? And are facades used to mislead people? It has happened before.
What I enjoyed very much about The Man Who Was Thursday was that it raised an assortment of these types of questions upon my reading it, and they too were applicable in regards to faith and the Catholic Church, whose exposed duplicity (and I say that without spite) also raised a vast array of questions. As human beings are inherently fallible, religious or otherwise, it is faith (choose your denomination) that is the stabilizer for the unsteady human condition: "'You were,' said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast between the modern automobile and its strange, ecclesiastical lamp." P. 137. The strange, ecclesiastical lamp was doubtlessly symbolic of the light of Christ, the light of God, who is Truth in times of duplicity and doubt, where people, the anarchists, who appear to be anything what they really are. And when you can not even trust those who are close to you, which happens quite frequently to the characters in The Man Who Was Thursday, via fumbling idiocy and gnawing black doubt, you can only trust the light and blood of Christ as the last vestage of hope, for that love is life changing, and pages 163 through 167 are vital to the minute comprehension of that unknown gloriousness, for Sunday, towards the latter end of the novel, for escape purposes, rises via the aid of a balloon in a bumbling form of resurrection that is humanly endearing, pleasing and desirious in its own right.
Another element that makes The Man Who Was Thursday so appealing is that it has such an in-your-face truth offering in respects to people of power and authority and those who abuse that authority that is anything but faith-oriented: "The only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them..." Page 180. For someone in any capacity of religious or poiltical authority, who abuse their power and overlook their fallibility, to be privy to an act of evil (you choose what evil) and yet stay stoned silent, that is where that Light needs to seep into. Let not pride or the haughty veneer of what one is or desires to be prevent that.
In order to accept faith, one must know fully what he or she is, and that is what makes the novel so uplifting and jolly; it is an optimistic novel, because it mocks the bleakness of nihilism. Chesterton even has the happy-go-lucky audacity of inserting himself in the novel, but he does so with the full knowledge of where he came from, and where, in the end of life, he is fortunately going towards. "Chesterton is so thrilled by his acrobatic stroll along the razor's edge of nihilism that he earns hus sunniness a new on every page."--xvi. It is because he was never alone. We do seem to forget that every now and then.
Mind-warping and mind-expanding!.......2007-03-22
The Man Who Was Thursday is a Christian allegory, but it is not a simple allegory of the Christian faith, ala The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. This book is an allegory by a Christian thinker, for Christians. The Anarchists of this book are not the real-life bomb-throwers, but represent free will - the freedom to do evil. The policemen represent the Christian's desires to reign in the evil, and Sunday represents the Universe, the ultimate giver of good and evil.
Is this a great philosophical work, a key to understanding the ultimate nature of God? Well, you'll have to read that and decide for yourself. As for me, I found it to be a fascinating and at time unsettling work. It's easy to see why this book is considered a Christian classic, and its also easy to see why so many people read it and declare that they had no idea what it was about.
This is another one of those mind-warping book that is difficult to understand, but mind-expanding as you begin to grasp what the author is saying. I highly recommend this book!
Thursday's Child has far to go.......2007-01-30
The plot of this book is crafted with mechanical precision. Start to read and you've pulled the switch and it all gets rolling. Each word, sentence and paragraph accumulates into a picturesque ride moving initially at a cruising pace. Then the story continues to develop page-by-page gaining momentum and the reader at warp speed is drawn completely into Chesterton's improbable world. It is a not so subtle allegory of broadly drawn characters and events informed by what I interpret as the author's deeply held religious convictions. Here is planet Earth and the jolly, impish God overseeing every little thing of his creation. It's rough out there all right but hard work and great fortitude will see us mortals through. This is just what Thursday and the other bogus "anarchists" find through all their trials and lunacy. The Man Who was Thursday is not a great book (there are many people that think it is) but it is entertaining; clever through rather sophmoric. It occurred to me that the old Monty Python gang could have made it into a great movie that would have done justice to its zaniness. Maybe Tim Burton?
Average customer rating:
- It will not dissapoint you.
- Great novel by Conrad
- A Prophetic Tale
- This act of madness and despair
- The First Political Thriller
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The Secret Agent (Oxford World's Classics)
Joseph Conrad
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0192801694 |
Book Description
'An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.' Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be 'A Simple Tale' proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a 'monstrous town', a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery.
Customer Reviews:
It will not dissapoint you........2007-05-27
Its important to remember, that the novel is written at a time when democracy is not exactly well spread through Europe, and most of the continental countries are having a hard time trying to understand why the English shelter anarchists and Marxists and even allow them to publish their works.
No doubt that Conrad met a few of them in literary or social circles and found them amusing in their contradictions. That is why the "criminal mastermind" Mr. Verloc is portrayed more as a very lazy bourgeois than someone whose mind is set upon creating the conditions to change society.
On the other hand, Conrad is faithful to its belief on the perennial existence if not preeminence, of a dark side of the soul in everyone. So the atmosphere in which every character dwells is gloomy, sad and purposefully shows that no motivation is really beyond a person's self interest, even if you claim that you are doing it for God and country, to save the planet or your mother.
Great novel by Conrad.......2007-01-04
Anarchism was a big thing in the late 19th century and early 20th century (you can compare it with the situation of Islamic terrorism today). Several kings, presidents and other politicians were killed by anarchists during that epoch (US president McKinley and Austrian Empress Sissi was among them). Conrad's book is one of the best novels about the anarchist world, dealing with an anarchist cell working in London during that time. The protagonist, Verloc, is the head of the cell and also an informer for the police and an agent for an unnamed foreign country (thus, he is a triple agent) and his attempt to blow up the Greenwich observatory ends tragically for an unwitting member of his family. Note: Conrad amusingly says in the prologue that he never personally met an anarchist himself, but the main story is based on real events he probably picked up from the press of the time.
A Prophetic Tale.......2006-09-06
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent brought up many interesting topics for discussion. The group of motifs Conrad chose to weave into his 1907 novel is highly political in nature: Anarchist views, science, capitalism, socialism, idealization, private ownership, poverty, the police, and possibly even Muslim extremism. For a novel written when it was, in many places The Secret Agent seemed an almost prophetic tale of Mr. Verloc, a secret agent in London.
Interestingly enough, its first prophetic topic is of great importance in today's terror-stricken world, the plot of the story centering mainly on an Anarchist terrorist plot to put one of their followers, Mr. Verloc, in charge of blowing up an observatory. His method of choice, the suicide bomber, is eerily familiar to today's reader. What makes this suicide bomber plot all the more interesting are the obscure details Conrad includes that led me to question whether Verloc and his family were, in fact, Muslim. In Sir Ethelred and the Assistant Commissioner's chapter ten discussion, the Assistance Commissioner's thoughts question the country's domestic policy and focus on his battle against the "paynim (heathen/Muslim) Cheeseman," which is Verloc. Toward the end, Conrad describes Mrs. Verloc as walking around town covered in black except for her eyes. These two details combine to add a Muslim thread to this already visionary terrorist suicide bombing plot in London, curiously reminiscent of recent world events.
Stevie's comments to Mrs. Verloc on the taxi were intriguing as well, receiving new life from the recent New Orleans natural disaster. Stevie's sympathy for the poor taxi driver and poor horse lead him to wonder why the police don't fight to stop injustice. Mrs. Verloc's response, "They are there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have" is followed by Stevie's question of "What, not even if they were hungry?" The way the media portrayed and the police responded to the "looting" in New Orleans was the answer to Stevie's question: "Yes, that's the police's job even if the poor are hungry."
The Secret Agent, even though nearly a century old, brings to the forefront topics that seem to our world today fairly new. The details connect with the reader because of their strange relevance, spurring conversation about the various topics listed above.
Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
This act of madness and despair.......2005-09-04
This novel is confusing, melodramatic and contains too many improbable developments.
Its main character, Verloc, considers himself as an anarchist, although his role is 'the protection of the social mechanism', because 'protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury'.
As an 'agent provocateur' for a foreign country, he is forced (otherwise he looses his job) to organize a terrorist attack, which should 'waken up the middle classes' against 'unhygienic labour' in Great-Britain.
He is also a spy on revolutionary activities of a small club of leftists fanatics (a combination of marxists and anarchists).
Conrad's superlative style is everything except subtle: 'the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour' and 'the poor, pathetically mendacious, miserably authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum and soap-suds', seem to contradict a 'bad world for poor people'.
The writing is sloppy. One time, an organization is called the Central Red Committee, another time, the International Red Committee. A 'Central' Committee seems rather bizarre for anarchists ('I depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident.')
A dialogue between a police chief and a pure anarchist ('looking for the blow to open the first crack in the great edifice of legal conceptions sheltering the atrocious injustice of society') seems improbable, as well as the short love story between Verloc's wife and another anarchist, at the end.
However, certain aspects of the novel are very actual, like the use of 'a weak-minded creature with carefully indoctrinated loyalty and blind docility and devotion', to carry out the fatal terrorist attack. Also actual is the following sentence: 'the existence of secret agents should not be tolerated, as tending to augment the positive dangers of evil'.
This book has not the same high standard as Conrad's masterpieces like 'Hearth of Darkness' and 'Lord Jim'.
Only for Conrad fans.
The First Political Thriller.......2005-06-07
Joseph Conrad's novel "The Secret Agent" is referred to in many places as the prototype of today's political and espionage thrillers. Except that it's not really much of a political thriller at all. The agent of the title, Mr. Verloc, has grown complacent in his role as an informant to a foreign embassy in London and is pressured by his superiors into pulling off a shocking act of terrorism in order to prove his worth to his colleagues. The novel is mostly about the domestic repercussions that occur when things go badly wrong.
This novel effectively toys with the reader's expectations, but it does so in a somewhat dubious way. Conrad introduces several characters and sets the stage for what appears to be a thriller with political overtones: several people have a vested interest (personally or politically) in the outcome of Mr. Verloc's actions. However, none of these characters ends up being of any importance, and nearly all of them drop out of the narrative altogether. The novel ends up being much more about Mrs. Verloc than it does about anyone else (including Mr. Verloc). This effectively pulls the rug out from under the reader's feet, but I would have received more satisfaction if Conrad had been able to keep suspense alive while still juggling a larger cast of characters. Maybe I should have been ready for this narrative sleight of hand, given the novel's subtitle, "A Simple Tale," but as it was the novel didn't take focus until it was 3/4 over and by that time too late for me to shift my sympathies.
What the novel does well, however, is to give its reader a deliciously tangible sense of the seedy underworld at play in late 19th-century London. Conrad personifies the mist, funk and squalor of London until the city itself nearly becomes a character in the action. Also, for anyone who maybe knows Conrad for being an obtuse, thick writer (especially if your previous knowledge of him comes from reading "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim"), "The Secret Agent" is refreshingly straight forward.
Customer Reviews:
Drop the religion.......2006-09-30
The biblical and creator references in this book are overwhelming. I thought I was buying a book about knitting, but found the references too distracting to be able to focus on her knitting instructions.
Needs a New Title.......2006-08-11
There are a surprising number of rules and opinions laid down in a book advocating knitting anarchy. I found it sort of preachy and self-important.
A "gentle" anarchist author?.......2006-04-11
I did not buy this book for the designs---nobody should, and they are not the point of the book anyhow. I bought it to review the technical information for my knitting classes, which according to some other knitting teachers, was first rate and unbiased, in this book.
Instead, on page 24, this supposedly hyper-tolerant and unbiased author lets creep in a definite intolerance towards Continental Purling, saying "it takes quite a contortion" and refers to "being blocked by the difficult maneuver". While she does say in boldface everyone should knit however they want, just a few pages earlier, why then include the various slams against Continental purlers? It is simply another way to knit, and I am not the only one who does not find it contortious or difficult, at all.
The other reason I do not give more stars to this book, is that the information given is really nothing new---Elizabeth Zimmermann's several offerings include all of the technical information of this tome, including the now-sacrosanct discussion of how the stitch is mounted (leading leg/edge, whatever you wanna call it these days) and have some truly beautiful classic designs to boot. If you're looking for good coverage of knitting technique, you'll do much better with any of the Zimmermann classics.
eye opening!.......2005-02-14
I only just picked up a copy of this book the other day, but already it's having a profound effect on the way I look at my knitting.
It's not a pattern book, and it won't make you hip, but it will explain how knitting actually works, and how knitters can make that work for them. Zilboorg's book is a real eye opener, and equips those of us who do our stitches a little differently with the knowledge and ability to deflect purists, stitch nazis, and other fiber arts authoritarians when they tell us we're doing it wrong, and show them that our stitches are perfect regardless of whether we knit Continental or English, leading leg in front or back, or if we wrap clockwise or counterclockwise.
This is an important book.......2005-02-03
For several years I've been told by friends that I ought to lay hands on a copy of this book, before it goes out of print. When I finally found one and spent an evening reading it, I discovered why there is such a buzz about the book.
Although you may be drawn to the colorful pages and designs (which are only a small part of the volume), what lies at the heart of this book are its sensible, clear, illuminating explanations of how those loops operate as they slide across your needles, leaning this way and that. Anna admits that it was not particularly appealing to her to so thoroughly describe the characteristics of stitches, but she seems to have dedicated herself to the task and succeeded very well. In fact, her explanations are really quite engaging, because they are so illuminating.
Once you take the time to read through her pages, studying her illustrations, you will never again knit without understanding what your stitches are doing. Basically, Anna has taken the time to open her eyes to the movements of stitches, and articulated and illustrated it well enough for the rest of us to benefit from her examination. If this sounds hopelessly abstract, it isn't - it's liberating and right before you.
Now that I've read the book myself, I have begun to recommend it in all the workshops I teach. It answers one question I hear several times every workshop, which is: "Why does this stitch lean the wrong way/what should I do about it?" This question will never mystify you again, and the concept of a wrong way will vanish.
Cat Bordhi, author of Socks Soar on two Circular Needles, A Treasury of Magical Knitting, and A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting.
Amazon.com
At the end of the first millennium A.D., itinerant preachers crisscrossed Europe warning that the end of the world was nigh. Hundreds of thousands of people took heed, joining religious cults and anti-governmental militias in preparation for the coming war between good and evil. (If this sounds familiar, it is proof only that history is cyclical.) During this heady time, Europe exploded in religious war, peasant revolts and sectarian strife, marked by the first large-scale massacres of Jews and gypsies, the first inklings of inquisitions and holy crusades. Norman Cohn, a masterful writer and interpreter, carefully explores this extraordinary period in European history in a book that bears rereading as our own millennium approaches its end.
Book Description
The end of the millennium has always held the world in fear of earthquakes, plague, and the catastrophic destruction of the world. At the dawn of the 21st millennium the world is still experiencing these anxieties, as seen by the onslaught of fantasies of renewal, doomsday predictions, and New Age prophecies. This fascinating book explores the millenarianism that flourished in western Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Covering the full range of revolutionary and anarchic sects and movements in medieval Europe, Cohn demonstrates how prophecies of a final struggle between the hosts of Christ and Antichrist melded with the rootless poor's desire to improve their own material conditions, resulting in a flourishing of millenarian fantasies. The only overall study of medieval millenarian movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium offers an excellent interpretation of how, again and again, in situations of anxiety and unrest, traditional beliefs come to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities.
Customer Reviews:
As ever, the millennium is just around the corner.......2007-08-30
Cohn's "Pursuit of the Millennium" has aged well and nearing 50 years of age it is deservedly a classic. Its subjet might be considered by some to be esoteric: it deals with prophets from middle age Europe who led others to believe that the end of times was at hand, and that they had been chosen by God to purify the world in preparation for the Kingdom of the Last Days, and with pantheistic mystical anarchists who believed that they could do no evil because they had connected with their divine essences. In most cases these figures are virtual unknowns even for people who like history. The few that still turn up are Thomas Müntzer, the leader of the rebellious peasants who were exterminated in the Battle of Frankenhausen (a character in the historical fiction pastiche "Q" by Luther Blisset) and John of Leyden, the tailor who created a totalitarian kingdom of saints in Münster. For the revolutionary millennarians the tale is a bit repetitive, and it usually went like this: a former priest or a hermit with a violent disposition concludes, after meditating for a long time, that he is living at the end of times and that he is God/ he is a god/ he has been chosen by God or a god to lead the just and the good in a final, apocalyptic, war against Antichrist and his followers, to usher in the millennium of the saints announced by John the Divine, prior to the end of the world and the final reckoning. The hermit or defrocked priest finds some followers and eventually is able to take hold of a town or a castle, which he converts into a stronghold with the help of the rootless rabble. Then he proceeds to plunder from the rich (nobles and clergy) and to purge the unredeemed. Eventually the powers-that-be get their act together and dispatch an army of knights who, after a bloody fight are able to capture the prophet and his main followers, who usually are burnt or beheaded after enduring torture. It is peculiar that even thought they are always defeated and crushed, the sort of people who are drawn to this type of leader will rise up to follow them again and again.
Cohn's book tells the story in just the right detail. He shows that certain regions were particularly sensitive to the millennarian prophets. Many such arose in the Northwestern corner of Europe (Northeastern France, the Benelux countries, the Rhineland in Germany). He also shows that generally poor people have had rational aims: to use pressure in order to improve their lot by acquisition of certain rights. Only a minority has felt the attraction of millennarian revolutions, and these usually have been uprooted people without a settled role. Also, these revolutionary initiatives were able to succeed (even if for a short while) only in times of chaos or unrest (i.e., the Crusades, visitations of the plague or black death, economic crises, etc.). Usually the self-appointed prophets used the social disruption in order to further their cause and take advantage from the momentary weakness of defenders of the status quo.
Cohn is a sober commentator who shows that recent historians have sometimes ignored the evidence to further a political agenda. Thus, leftist historians sometimes refused to acknowledge some activities of the prophets whom they regarded as protorevolutionaries (such as their inclination to institutionalized promiscuity or their remarkably violent language), probably in order to maintain their status as predecessors of current "progressives".
An interesting conclusion from the reading of the book is that, contrary to what many think, ideas are not a neutral good to be chosen by informed customers in an efficient marketplace. Some ideas appeal to dark places in people's minds: these are dangerous ideas, and parents and teachers would do well to instruct their children, so that they do not succumb. One such idea is that "God" is in everything, and that when a person becomes aware of this he or she becomes entirely free and can follow his or her desires without any negative ethical implication. Another way of putting this is that nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so, as Hamlet said. This type of belief might lead a person to the most brutal behaviors without any perception that they had done ill. This is a very common opinion nowadays, and in fact both the millennarists and the mystical anarchists have their successors nowadays. Today, the center of millennarian agitation is surely the USA, were many people believe that the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) is a play-by-play description of the end of the world and that they will live to see it happen. And many new age sects (including Scientology) appear to hold the belief that we can become gods and be free of conventional morality and ethics.
In his conclusion Cohn suggests that many radical movements of the XX century are in fact new versions of the old millennarian revolutionary heresies. There can be no doubt that this is the case: human motivations change little over time. What changes is the language in which they are articulated. In a religious era, the language and imagery were religious. in a godless age the language attempts to be scientific and logical. But underneath there beats the same old hope: the hope to see evil punished and evildoers destroyed, to be part of a chosen elite with a new understanding of the nature of reality, and an exhilarating vision of a better future through hardship and strife. We can all empathise with these feelings. Action movies, comic books, tragedies, country music and soap operas resonate for many of us because they take their inspiration from some of these elements. I only regret that Cohn did not expand the point, although other authors have done so, most notably Michel Burleigh, who in his recent two volume history on the clashes between politics and religion from the French Revolution to our days has shown that much of what passes for politics is in reality religion by another name, and how the most revolutionary creeds of the XX century were really millennarian sects.
And Cohn's perspective is so pertinent that it even explains the rise of Islamic fundamentalism tinged with visions of a holy war that will redeem the world and turn into the Umma, the community of the believers. The followers of fundamentalism have been the large masses of uprooted peasants without a clear role in a modernizing world, and their leaders have been intellectuals or semi-intellectuals who can understand how the world works but want no part of it, other than to redeem it in an apocalytic struggle. Their counterparts in other religions are very similar to them: people who want to find a meaning for lives that provide none, people who are sensitive to unfairness and who instinctively resonate with violence and retribution, people who yearn for zoroastrian visions of entirely distinct good and bad. As ever, for these people, the new millennium of peace and joy is just around the corner, although sadly it can only come about on mountains of corpses and through rivers of blood.
My impressions of "The Pursuit of the Millenium".......2007-08-11
A scholarly work giving an insight into (Non mainstream) Christian people's attempts to predict both the timing and the intent of a millennium.It has left the Holy Roman church virtually intact despite the attacks made against it; that is it does not pass judgement on the attitudes, teaching and actions of the church during the period presented.
How Greed and Exploitation Lead to Revolution - in Vain.......2007-08-10
I believed a history book such as this one would not get revised and ordered an old print of 1972 for an alluring bargain. Now I know better, but I was lucky. There was at least one revision, in 1969 of this 1957 book. Among other changes an entire chapter got included.
This by the time of this review half a century old book is on millennianism. Which has nothing to do with the last or the "current" turn of the calendar, but with the expectation of a paradisical kingdom to get introduced by the (returning) messiah, no matter when. Which would last for a millennium. The time frame is half a millennium, from the 11th to the 16th century. The book largely concentrates on north-western Europe, specifically France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bohemia and England. Only occasionally referencing other territories.
Talk is about the crusades, especially from below. Poor masses embarrassing the official knights for their anarchic conduct, such as cannibalism and genociding Jews and Muslims, but also the rich Christian clergy. This book is primarily about the medievil class struggle. Ultra exploitation and general greed causing desperate mass movements with religious hope and frenzy. Norman Cohn elaborates on the social conditions and transformations from peasantry to urbanization, thus putting historical data into context. While most other authors highlight official history, i.e. the history of kings and popes etc., Norman Cohn focuses on the poor revolting. I have never before heard about a shepherds' crusade, yet there were two of them. Some of those crusades were directed against the Christian clergy and the establishment in general. That's why even today, official history lessons aren't that eager to teach about them. Some insurrections described include the flagellants (who were also genociding Jews), Beguines and Beghards (who inspired the term beggars), Thomas Müntzer, Anabaptists and all sorts of self-declared saviors. Their followers largely jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Often literally, as the establishment punished with the stake quite liberally. But also for the mostly quick turnovers of the high aspirations of the brave new worlds into lethal absolutism. As such, the ancient Greek-Roman derived ideas of communism turned sour before the 20th century, namely in the European medievil Imes.
Many of the previous reviews put attention to the above. I have three thoughts about that. First, this book has been written and published during the heyday of McCarthyism. Obviously till today it is possible to read the book as anti-communist exclusively. Yet - second -, the author didn't critizise communism alone. In fact, the central focus is rather on the capitalist condition, which caused those mass movements in the first place. He isn't only warning about the dangers of system changes, but also of NOT changing at all. The Bible warns against greed at many places and unequality in general. The opposite has been and still is the condition of the world we live in. No system change is an easy quick fix. Because our meme pool functions within the very same parameters of greed, power and constructs of separation. Even in communism, no matter wether religious or anti-religious, some people quickly become more equal than others. This book is a warning against absolutism. Forcing one's views into other peoples' throats. It is a warning against ever more radical conditions and views until everybody (else) is fed up with those conditions, pushes them from the pedestal ENTIRELY and when in lack of a solution relying on the previous model. Which hadn't been reformed in the first place for nothing. That way, society is circling within the very same dysfunctionality, but under the illusion of system changes. The question therefore is: Were the Dark Ages' wannabe reformers too radical or not radical enough?
Both. As the third thing is that this book doesn't only critisize the radicals, but also the persecuting establishment (which executed atheists just the same). Both persecuting the mystics as sick. Who get described in this book as gnostics, stoics, Free Spirits, Ranters, Spanish Brotherhood of Muslims, Amaurians and by other terms. Unsurprisingly many reviewers blind these mystics as the same ill-advised fanatics. But the book isn't saying that. Though not really pointing out the opposite directly either. The reason for the misoverstanding is that mystics sound crazy to the masses of today no less than the absolutist loonies. Yet, they hold the key to enter the road for a real change. The basic message being: Everything in existence is God/Allah/Jah/the universe, etc, all separations are constructs of the illusory human mind. Overstanding that, equal treatment establishes itself on a different plain than a nice should-be command. The book does provide some mystical texts, including on the divinity of every human, every living thing, in fact everything and a hint of the illusion of the separation of genders (p. 325). The latter of which I find most interesting, as I wasn't aware that medievil Europe harbored a subculture knowing this. Eurocentered, the author puts all of these mystics in the derivation line of Neo-Platonism. Whereas in reality, all of this is derived from ancient Black Egypt.
Unfortunately the book isn't going into what sprang into my mind as a theory immediately and continuously while reading this book. The major religious concern of the masses is against greed and exploitation, still hinting at the Sodom story rather in this context. Whereas today, greed and exploitation isn't such a religious concern anymore. In fact, communism has become severely anti-religious. But the Sodom story is still featuring majorly in religious preachings. But in a completely different context. Most certainly the Noah-Ham story has been misinterpreted in order to justify the exploitation of slavery shortly thereafter. The book doesn't go into it, but mentions that the populace fought adamantly for the abolishment of serfdom anywhere - based on the Bible. It seems obvious that the Sodom story has been misinterpreted to divert attention away from "Thou shall not be greedy!" in the first place, away from the detesting of the rich, who included the Church. In that way the medievil subject of the book hasn't lost its topicality at all indeed.
If you want to find out more about general modern mysticism, read for example The Mystical Journey from Jesus to Christ and based on science From Science to God: A Physicist's Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness. On the schemes of exploitation no matter the superficial system, read Putting It All Together: World Conquest, Global Genocide & African Liberation.
This is an excellent book. According to the above it could be so much more - not only describing history, but changing the present. At the Imes of having been written, those issues couldn't get written about. As I-and-I (we) haven't left the Dark Ages yet, not really. "We" only think we have...
History As A Warning: A Very Prophetic Book! .......2006-12-18
I have read this book several times: And each time I do; I am still amazed at the brilliant historical research of Christian millennial movements that Norman Cohn gave to the world. This book is timeless, and serves as a great warning to everyone. The apocalyptic movements from the earliest times of Christianity, to the Reformation was not only dangerous in its extremism, but what amazes me, is that it still among us: civilized though we may think we are. Everything is served up in this great book: flagellants, false messiahs, heretical saints, crazed visionaries, and insane prophets of doom. The belief that the apostles lived a life of poverty, and that all men had to share led to a struggle of class warfare, which in turn led to many wars and spilt blood. All in the name of God.
The pages of history are filled with the names of men whose desire for power, be it political or religious, lead many others into the abyss: Those whose own despair with the world around them are led to believe in the false messages and sense of security of divine righteousness. And as such, much blood has been spilled by these deceitful and crazed false teachings. These corrupters of truth have not gone away, they are still among us: No matter what their religion. And that is why this book is as important now, as when it was first published.
In the book, Norman Cohn's research gives light into the revolutionary millennial cults that spread into dangerous movements. Part of this was the mistrust of the established Church in Europe during the middle ages, and resentment of the aristocracy, whose ties and deep connections to the Church was seen as one of depriving the people of a truer and better life. And although these were legitimate complaints by the people, the fact that through there own despair, they were led by others to seek out equality in its most extreme form, is truly frightening. The millennial movements gained most of their members from the poor, and unskilled urban dwellers who were uprooted due to famine in many cases. Seeking the Kingdom of Heaven and God, however, led by demagogues and fanatics, the book goes into much detail of how, where and why these cults thrived. Highly highly recommended. [Stars: 5+]
History and warning.......2006-11-30
This is a brilliant and fascinating history of Christian millennial movements, cults and apocalyptically-motivated uprisings from earliest times up until the Reformation era. In the sheer bizarre freakishness of this tale of flagellants, messiahs, visionary madmen, heretical saints, reincarnated Jesuses, religious libertines, crazed hordes of rootless paupers, and genocidal prophets who sought to bring on the millennium in a sea of blood, this study is like a deformed sideshow mutant that both mesmerizes and disgusts you. However, it's more than just entertainment. I believe that it is a prophetic work.
The apocalyptic DNA strand was never eradicated from the human animal and will surely resurface in the Christian world when the conditions are right. Those conditions, among which are social dislocation, cultural deracination, political corruption, establishment-religion apathy and hypocrisy, have been rising to an extreme heat since the 1960s. Millions of people have been, and will continue to be, severed from traditional means of understanding the world and will find meaning by turning to the deviant and heterodox forms of Christianity that have proliferated in the past 30 years in America. The powerful leaders of these faith groups provide certainty, spirituality and carnal satisfaction with prophecies, visions, "miracles", divine revelations, new experiences via mind-altering practices, promises of earthly prosperity and a sense of belonging by exacerbating the hostility with "the world". Apocalyptic theology is an ever-present theme. The followers of these televangelist messiahs are peaceable enough now, but should their bellies ever be shrunken by an economic downturn- the last of the necessary conditions- we will see violent millenarian movements like nothing the world has ever known. If you're interested in what that kind of world may look like, read this book.
Book Description
In this brilliant and widely acclaimed book, winner of the 1975 National Book Award, Robert Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions oaf our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.
Customer Reviews:
Masterpiece of Pop-Philosophy .......2007-01-10
Nozick's A, S, and U is a great work of philosophy; not merely for its clear and forceful arguments, but because of its ability to act like a textbook. With ASU, you get a broad coverage of political theories, ethical theories, theories about argument, economics, government and more. Highly recommended for anyone who is doing philosophy at an undergraduate level.
I Loved This Book.......2006-06-18
An observation and common criticism of the book, both in this little Amazon fishbowl and elsewhere, is that Nozick takes givens, starts the arguments, and proceeds without initial justification of his givens.
The charge is accurate. So throughout the logic of the case he builds one finds comments like, "This does not take seriously the person as an individual" with no support or clarification. What are these statements? Are they broad appeals to what everyone has already recognized through some moral sensory apparatus, a moral fact? Are they simply what Nozick has taken as true beyond dispute, or at least, beyond fruitful argument?
Some times they are. Some times, as with property rights, Nozick has simply accepted the work of previous thinkers, there John Locke. Are there flaws with Locke's property rights base? Yes, indeed there are flaws with any theory, and one must accept the least flawed if he ever wants to advance to a higher subject. This is especially true of ethics. But Locke is certainly no insignificant thinker, but rather a reliable starting point of an analysis. And what the author perceives as commonly accepted (but not necessarily unanimously accepted) principles are fair game when one is presenting an argument--without such data, we have nothing but skepticism unbounded.
And yet many seem intent on criticizing Nozick for not reinventing the wheel--for simply filling in gaps in other theories, weaving certain ones together in new ways without going through the substrata of the entire philosophy of Western civilization, doublechecking each vein.
I find that criticism unfair. Each writer, each theoretician, must accept certain truths to begin with, accept some axioms and from thence go forward. It simply won't do to demand an entire universe in every book. Some times the premisses a writer starts with will be bizarre to the reader, and so he will not accept the conclusions. Those skeptical of "rights" in general will find trouble accepting where we are led--and if the premisses started with are so absurd perhaps we can rebuke the author for his warped view on reality. But nothing presumed here can be dismissed so easily. You may charge, accurately, that Nozick has yet to prove the existence of external reality, and ergo, this political argument is unsupported. But you're a silly person to do so.
And some of you take the idea that a progressive tax could be immoral to be simply insane, and thus you find the book's conclusion contrary to reality as such. But I tell you the quality of the book is not merely its truth (though I do believe Nozick has presented here a powerful moral truth), but also the case Nozick builds from the (often widely-held) premisses he selects, and the mastery and beauty of that case. I don't think anyone can fairly deny the grandness of what he has done here. (I am not arguing that truth is insignificant--I am arguing it is one of many components of quality).
To be honest, I loved this book. I loved the honesty, I loved the politics he justified, I loved the vibrancy of Nozick's arguments, the freshness of his methods, the power of the Rawlsian critique, the dangling tantalizing questions. I loved the parts I agreed with and those I didn't agree with.
I loved the setup--the journey through economic theory to bring us a just minimal state from the anarchist's state of nature. I loved the detours along the way--the discussion of animal rights, utilitarianism, punishment and deterrence. I loved the minimal state, and the crisp arguments that ruled any increase in it immoral. I loved the discussion of utopia, born like dessert after a full meal, a whole new set of fun arguments, providing us with more rich analytic devices, and exploding possibilities.
I loved Nozick's style--never, not for a second, patronizing. Smart, quick, concise and dense, poignant with its thoughts, and yet neighborly, polite, forthright and friendly. Were I not already a libertarian I'd be one now. Were I not already interested in philosophy, I would be now. Were I not already an ardent Nozick groupie, I would be now.
There is a passage where Nozick gives a short paean to Rawls, the beauty of his theory, the mastery of his technique. Surely Rawls deserves it, but there can be no doubt that after this work, Nozick deserves no less glowing praise. It is hard to stress sufficiently the warmth and artistry of what the author accomplishes: the birth of a political philosophy, and a journey there with every step amazing. No cliches, no tricks, just light.
With this book, the libertarians have carved a slice of truth from the world. We can be defeated--but now we must at least be faced.
Viscous or Brilliant?.......2006-01-11
When I neared the end of this book, I was learning so much, I couldn't believe how I drudged through it in the beginning. Except that I did so for a reason.
This book is divided into 10 chapters. The first 6 answer claims of anarchists--they establish the existence of the state as legitimate. These 6 chapters are tedious, tedious reading. To be honest, I got very little out of them. Yet, you have to read these to be able to understand the rest of the book (sadly).
The reason? Chapters 7-10 are flat out GREAT. He crushes the welfare state beautifully, humiliates Marxism, and so on. Excellent stuff. I got tons out of these chapters.
So, half of this book is tedious drudgery (though still very brilliant stuff, to be sure), while the other half is very beneficial and enjoyable.
Recommended, with conditions.
Crystalline Reasoning Untested by Rock of Reality.......2005-08-16
This book represents a crucial turning point in American political philosophy. It should be mandatory reading for anyone who would start making sense of the differences between pre-Reagan and post-Reagan political views of the world. By comparing the style and substance of this book with Rawl's Theory of Justice one might learn much about the philosophies that have driven the politics of these two eras.
This book is presented in three sections. The first argues for a 'minimal state' in preference to anarchy. The second attacks 'utopian' notions of society. The third poses the author's own model of the 'utopian' state. There is a glittery, shiny, mathematical precision to the arguments. And when one encounters arguments that make sense, the sketchy quality works to the book's advantage and the book shines.
In the first section the author imagines established societies without the protection of governmental bodies. He posits the evolutionary development of hypothetical security companies and illustrates how these firms would always fall short of providing the minimal protections even their own clients should reasonably expect. He derives a hypothetical governing body he calls the 'minimal state.' This body has the rights to do certain things we normally associate with government, But these rights, he argues, fall far short of those posited by others, including our own government. If one assumes away most of the problems industrial societies face, Nozick's notion of the 'minimal state' is an interesting one and perhaps even a sensible one. He certainly makes the case that it is preferable to anarchy.
To the extent that the last chapter is construed as an argument about the 'unabridged rights of free association,' it also stikes one as being sensible and clear; brilliant, even. But the author's argument is too sketchy to robustly support his grandiose intention.
The second section is more difficult to believe than the other two. Consider a counterargument Nozick poses to refute one argument in Rawls' Theory of Justice.' This argument is related to a queston about how to divide among a group's participants the excess gains that are realized as a result of cooperation. (Paraphrased for clarity.)
1) People are entitled to their natural assets ( i.e. intelligence, strength, so on)
2) People are entitled to the benefits that flow from their natural assets. (i.e. income)
3) People's holdings accumulate as benefits from their natural assets.
4) People deserve their holdings because of rightful means by which they accumulate.
5) It is wrong to wrest holdings from people if they deserve them.
The author suggests that Rawls would rebut this syllogism at line 1. Then he proposes an argument which reaches the same conclusion but avoids positing 1) . And claims victory.
Not so fast. The second line of the argument , 2), could mean that people deserve 'all of the benefits that flow exclusively from their natural assets.' This is a premise that is a little hard to dispute, but has no legs. It does not carry the argument where it needs to go, because practically speaking such cases are never in dispute. Alternatively it could mean that people deserve 'all of the benefits that flow at least in part from their natural assets.' It is upon this meaning that Nozick must base his argument if it has any relevance to the cooperative behavior that pervades the modern world. But this interpretation is of no help in resolving the disputed claims of ownership that arise regarding the excess profits of cooperation. All parties involved do precisely this - claim all the benefits that flow in part from their natural assets. And we arrive back at the problem Rawls was trying to solve in the first place. Nozick's counter-argument is only helpful in trivial, practically indisputable cases that involve no cooperation.
There are a number of other very simple objections one can raise to Nozick's syllogism. It appears, for instance, not to properly treat the case of children. This argument is too simple and its implications too involved to state here.
Perhaps we have misunderstood the author in this case. Still, this example illustrates a kind of disconnection with reality that pops up now and again throughout the second and third sections - a failure to recheck the mathematically derived world against common sense understanding of the real one. It represents a case where the form of an argument is the means of persuasion rather than its sense. And the form is set up by the facile wordings of the starting premises. The appeal to pure logic might be compared to the appeal of a geometric proof (one whose premises might be a little shaky, perhaps).
Or it might be compared with a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. It is bright and shiny and attractive. One might be left with the sense that the author, starting in London, has pointed his Silver Shadow of reason in the correct direction and, in attempt to drive it to the resource-rich continent of Australia, is methodically driving it right over the precipice at the Cliffs of Dover.
brilliant but myopic.......2005-04-07
This book is brilliant for its microscopic and short term analysis of what is just, but it leaves out the possibility that short term microscopic violations of liberty can ensure the long term maximization of liberty. In this way Nozick's treatise is myopic. His entire treatment of what I would consider the most important critizism of libertarianism (namely the fact that redistrobution is necessary to maintain stable equilibrium of the economic divide due to the fact that well off persons can "use this power to give themselves differential economic benefits") is but one paragraph long (p272) and seriously lacking in credulity.
On the microscopic level, one of my many complaints with Nozick's treatise is how, for example, slavery is to be prevented with only a minimal state. Nozick handles this point by suggesting that "in the short run a more extensive state" could "rectify" this situation (p231). My problem with this response is that the same force that would cause an injustice like slavery would also prevent such rectification. In other words, Nozick ignores the fact that practically speaking a minimal state is often prevented from self-organizing the creation of such a rectifying more extensive sate, and that this point must be taken into account if one wishes to believe that the minimal state is the most just in the long run. Only the extenisve state can insure that gross injustices like slavery do not naturally evolve out of a given system.
In the end, I respect much of Nozick's argument, and it may well be true that mandatory redistribution is unjust for those wealthy folks who do not wish to part with some of their money to help the needy. But that does NOT mean that such persons are not a**holes.
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