Book Description
Readers who love Carl Hiaasen's off-the-wall novels won't want to miss this outrageous, eclectic collection of his notorious Miami Herald columns. His unique and passionate essays prove that the facts can indeed be stranger than fiction...
Customer Reviews:
it really kicks a__.......2006-07-30
This book is; to borrow another Hiaasen title a real Hoot. He is without a doubt not only informative,and thought provoking but he does it while leaving his readers in stiches. I think he shows a genuine affection for the idiots he writes about
Most columns are winners.......2006-07-06
Sidenote: I also wrote this review for "Paradise Screwed" b/c it's the same book, just different selected columns.
If you've ever read a Carl Hiassen book (or Tim Dorsey for that matter) and you wonder where he became so cynical, or where he gets his outrageous ideas from, read this book. Taking only the best of his newspaper columns, this book gives little glimpses into the absolute mess that was Miami/South Florida in the 80's/90's. Taking on anything from connected land developers, to cartel-backed politicians, to prostitute employing evangelists.
Each column is 1 to 1.5 pages in length making it the perfect length to read here and there, or big bites at a time. If you're a fan of Carl Hiassen, try this book not for Hiassen's opinion, but just for the shear knowledge of ludicrisiosity he imparts.
If you like his novels, you will love his columns.......2006-04-13
I've never set foot in Florida, but I can't get enough Carl Hiaasen. I've read every single novel he's written and I have to say his columns are just as worthy a read.
From the opening column of the book (Carl Hiaasen's Florida Stress Test) to some of the more serious writings (the group of prostitutes he talks to, the crumbling county health building) Hiaasen writes it all with a razor-sharp flair and zeal that can't be matched. You know this guys just loves going to work every day.
Who else would refer to the newly elected mayor of Miami as a "pernicious little ferret"?
Keep them coming, Carl. I'm waiting on Volume 3.
I Wonder What Happened to that Jeb Bush guy?.......2002-07-25
There was a brief stage in my college career when I hoped to get into newspapers. Unfortunately, I'm a very slow writer. I would sweat bullets over remarkably simple stories, and my editorial prowess was equally dubious. It was at that time I discovered Carl Hiaasen and his remarkably subversive novel, TOURIST SEASON. His author's bio indicated that his newspaper setting was drawn from authentic experience -- he was a columnist for the Miami Herald.
Unfortunately, the web was just in its infancy, and access to Hiaasen's newspaper writing was apparently one of the few exclusive benefits of living in South Florida. KICK ASS turns out to be just the sort of collection that I had been craving for many years.
KICK ASS does not disappoint. It begins with a nifty introduction that provides a smattering of biographical information on Hiaasen, as well as a context for the subjects and tone of his columns. Hiaasen clearly resides in a longstanding tradition of muckraking American journalism, and I mean that in the best possible way.
This is no mere sampling of his work -- there are more than 200 columns here, organized by topic, and just about every one of them meets the mandate stated in the title of the collection. Hiaasen has a passion for the environment, consumer protection, crime control, and good government. His portrait of a Florida reeling after the flood of growth and development of the last three decades is even starker than the one in his novels. Speaking of the novels, it is also fun to see where he "lifts" some of his ideas for the things that happen in his books. The overamorous dolphin of NATIVE TONGUE appears in KICK ASS as well.
If there is anything to regret about this book, it is that the topical organization often generates confusion for the reader when certain figures re-occur. Some of them almost develop a roguish charm. After all, us non-Floridians don't have to live with the direct consequences of local corruption. A little wrap-up to let us know how some of the notorious figures and controversies ended up would have been nice. I always hated that device at the end of his novels, but it would be perfect for a collection like this.
Another Must-Read from Hiiasen.......2000-06-27
As a lifelong resident of Florida (albeit a ninetten-year-old one), I have seen Florida at its best and worst. Hiiasen's columns represented in this book illustrate the "politics" and people of a great but confused state. If you live in Florida, have visited, or even have heard of it, this book will both amuse and depress you, as is the nature of the state. Everyone will identify with the outrage Hiiasen evokes over the disregard of the envirnment, the sham of politics, and the overall life in Miami, and indeed, all of Florida. This book will remind readers of what Marjorie Kinnan-Rawlings and Marjorie Douglass once experienced in Florida, and tells both the good and the bad of what has happened after a hundred years of exploitation If you want a non-stop laugh and a big dose of reality, read this collection - it's one of the best books in print right now.
Book Description
A Mother's Last Hope
Alone in a country she didn't know well, chased by men who were willing to kill to get what they wanted, Lakeview veterinarian Tori Riley would do anything to keep the daughter she gave up for adoption safe -- even depend on a man who might not be telling her the truth.
A Hero's Last Stand
Called out of early retirement for one final job, former DEA agent Noah Stone didn't trust Tori's motives -- what kind of vet gets herself tangled up with drug lords? But there was no time for questions, for every second brought an unscrupulous enemy closer to Tori's daughter . . .
Download Description
Tori Riley inadvertently becomes involved in a dangerous drug trafficking mystery when she visits Thailand -- and must rely on DEA agent Noah Stone to help save her daughter.
Customer Reviews:
Page turning suspense with characters that will touch your heart.......2006-06-24
Even in the Darkness is a perfect combination of wonderful characters and suspense that doesn't let up. That's a hard balance to keep and Shirlee McCoy does a great job.
Tori Riley has been through much pain in her life. She's been let down too many times in her past by men, and to her understanding, by God too. So she believes that the only person she can trust is herself. When she travels to Thailand to visit her biological daughter Melody, and Melody's adoptive parents, Tori unknowingly puts all of them in danger when she innocently purchases a rosewood box for Melody as a gift. What she soon learns out is that there is a drug lord who will do anything to get his hands on this box.
Noah Stone is a retired DEA agent who comes back to Thailand as a favor to a friend. His knowledge of the area is vital to bring down a major drug ring in the area. Noah also knows God has called him there for a reason. When he rescues Tori and she leads him to the box, he is uncertain of her motives. Is she really a drug runner as the DEA suspects?
When the stakes are raised even higher, Tori is forced to rely on Noah to help save Melody's life. Will he let her down as so many other men have? As Tori begins to trust Noah, she also realizes that maybe it wasn't God who abandoned her. Could God still love her and answer her prayers, even after she turned her back on Him?
A real page turner.......2006-01-14
EVEN IN THE DARKNESS is a fast paced novel that will keep the reader turning those pages. Tori Riley, small town veterinarian, gave her daughter Melody, up for adoption. Now Joi Raymond, Tori's best friend and her husband, Mark, Melody's adoptive parents, are serving as missionaries in Thailand. When Tori arrives to celebrate Melody's birthday, she goes shoppping and accidently ends up with a rosewood box intended for Lao, the head of a vicious drug cartel. Tori is taken captive but is freed by Noah Stone, a retired DEA agent, who has been called back into service. Now Tori is on the run, hunted by men who will kill to get what they want.
When Lao kidnaps Melody, Tori and Noah set out to rescue her. Their search leads through a treacherous jungle to an abandoned village for a confrontation with a man who wants Tori, dead or alive. Independent Tori learns to depend on Noah and to accept the God he worships. If you like excitment you'll enjoy Even in the Darkness.
Average customer rating:
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Even in Darkness (Judges)
Gordon J. Keddie
Manufacturer: Evangelical Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0852342012 |
Average customer rating:
- Entertaining, scary, infuriating, and deeply satisfying
- It'll SPOOK Ya!
- Even in Darkness Rocks!
- An extremely cool suspense novel with a great ending
- Great Book!
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Even in Darkness
Jeffrey Leever
Manufacturer: Writers Club Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0595208649 |
Book Description
Something sinister is at work in Stratton, an isolated college town in the quiet plains of the Midwest.
Jay Downing’s best friend disappears, then is found dead. When the police chief won’t pursue answers, Jay is forced to act—and is drawn into a cunning world he never knew existed.
The battleground is a most unlikely source: The University Jay attends. Beneath the college campus lies a series of tunnels. Shrouded in secrecy. And frequented by a group of people capable of anything.
Coed Kristin Holiday, whose green eyes draw Jay close, is the only person he feels he can trust for help. But is Kristin all she seems?
Two men, one a disgraced former law officer, and the other a cop with a history that still haunts him, just might have given Jay the break he needs to bring the darkness to light. Jay realizes he must overcome the evil before it spreads further into the community, and from there...
Even in Darkness, the debut novel from author Jeffrey Aran Leever, will pull you in with suspense and not let you go until the final page.
Customer Reviews:
Entertaining, scary, infuriating, and deeply satisfying.......2002-09-05
Jeffrey Aran Leever is a publications manager for a nonprofit organization in Colorado. An English/writing major from the University of Nebraska (Kearney), he presently lives in Arvada, Colorado. He has co-authored two published non-fiction books.
Colleges often have immense power with the locals of the communities they serve...power which can be turned for dark purposes. When Jay Downing's friend Reed Manley doesn't appear for a preappointed "night on the town," and some strange girl tries to lure Jay into the University's long unused underground tunnels, Jay begins to fear for his friend's life. The police treat Jay as if he is on drugs, and when Reed's body appears outside of town, even the coroner seems to be in on the coverup. But it is the professors at Jay's school in Stratton who act the most bizarre:
"Jay looked again at his professor, and wondered what the man knew. What pieces of the truth he held. It was as if Lanum was trying to hold back something, and yet share it at the same time. As if there'd been something Jay had done that gave Lanum reason for contempt. It had to have been something independent of their never-quite-so-serious interactions in class. But what?"
The idea that a university setting could be used for nefarious purposes, and that professors (who, after all, are supposed to represent the creme de la creme) could be arch-fiends stirs up a shiver of recognition in all of us. (Who hasn't dreamt about not attending class and not knowing where their final was?)
Even In Darkness is a well written, spine-tingling, Gothic, Steven Kingish novel that grips the reader from page one. Leever's use of uncertainty in speech, action, and tone puts the reader into a nervous state from the beginning. It is an excellent tool to produce the results he wants, which is to scare us to death and keep us turning those pages. Even In Darkness is an great first effort in the genre for Leever, and presents him as a new talent to be reckoned with. It is entertaining, scary, infuriating, and deeply satisfying, all at once. A great read.
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It'll SPOOK Ya!.......2002-03-06
Leever has definitely arrived with 'Even In Darkness"! I couldn't put it down...if you enjoy suspense-filled novels, this one belongs in your collection!
Even in Darkness Rocks!.......2002-02-14
For the person who doesn't read often (like me), this is the kind of book that keeps you engaged and needing to read on to the next section. The pacing is excellent, and the backdrop of the story--a university campus that takes on more and more of a menacing feeling as the book progresses--is excellently done and unsettling at the same time.
I particularly liked the character of Breeze, and what happens with Kristin near the end of the book. The scenes in the tunnel system underneath the campus with Kristin being pursued in the dark by two bloodthirsty thugs were enough to give one nightmares, but it was great suspense.
Overall, a great read.
An extremely cool suspense novel with a great ending.......2002-02-14
This is a very intense read. The book grabs you and doesn't let go. I simply wasn't ready for the twist at the end, but whoa! Jay's (the main character's) a guy whose feelings I could really relate to. He's definately a man with "balls."
I really enjoyed this book. The suspense is right up there with the stuff on the bestseller list. I will read anything else this author comes out with.
Great Book!.......2002-01-29
This book is a thriller from start to finish. Word to the wise; don't read this book before you go to bed at night, you may not be able to get to sleep.
Average customer rating:
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Even the Darkness
Carole Simpson
Manufacturer: Authentic Lifestyle
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1850780919 |
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Even the Darkness: A Novel
John Thomas Tuft
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0785282262 |
Average customer rating:
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Even God Suffers: Finding Hope in the Darkness
David Batstone
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Theology | Reference | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Faith | Christian Living | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0551027282 |
Average customer rating:
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Even in Darkness
Dungeon Family Cdaris 14693
Manufacturer: ARISTA RECORDS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
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ASIN: 6306712097 |
Book Description
From ancient Greece they came, remnants of the glorious Trojans. Led by Brutus, Kingman, holder of the bands of gold that wield the very magic of the Gods, these travelers are bowed but not broken, and they have come to Albion to begin anew. A vision of beauty called them to create a new Troy, and when they landed on the shores of the land that became Britain, they found an old magic that was fading. And so they began to construct a new Labyrinth, a place of magic that will bring unimaginable power to those who can control it.The temptress who brought Brutus to this land seeks to use him for her own purposes, but in that she fails, for it is the bride of Brutus who dooms the completion of the labyrinth . . . and sends all the players in this drama--handsome Brutus, his beautiful wife, Cornelia, and the sensuous and deadly Genvissa--into a hell of death and rebirth, until the Labyrinth is completed and the ancient magic is set free.A thousand years pass. Cathedrals rise in place of mud and wattle huts, hymns to saints replace odes to Celtic and Greek gods. But the magic from the dawn of time waits, and the players are not yet done with their destinies. They have new faces and new bodies, but old souls---and not all who have come back remember their parts in this drama. There are kings and princes, deadly court intrigues, and ancient powers awoken.And a warrior across the sea who only waits for his opportunity to finish what was started centuries before . . .
Customer Reviews:
The series is definitely improving.......2006-12-04
Gods' Concubine is the second book in Douglass' 'Troy Game' series, and it was definitely more engaging and enjoyable than the first. This time around, a thousand years have passed, and the characters we met in the first book have been reborn into the age of William the Conqueror. In fact, Brutus is William himself and Cornelia is the queen of England, wife to Edward the Confessor. Coel is reborn as Harold Godwinson (Harold II) and in a cruel twist of fate Genvissa has been reborn as Harold's wife. Other characters from the first book are also reborn and find themselves drawn once again into the struggle for control over the Troy Game, which has itself been lying and waiting for a thousand years.
This combination of fantasy and historical fiction is an intriguing way of presenting a time period in history. The reader is left guessing, and possibly researching further, as to which details are real and documented and which are purely the product of the author's vivid imagination.
Better and more devoloped than the first.......2006-02-21
This book is much better than the one before it. While Hades' daughter was good, the ending felt rushed and actions came so fast they were hard to follow. Not so with this book.
All the players have once again been born, this time two thousand years after the disaster that was the attempt to build a labyrinth in England. Some know who they are, some don't. Thus, most of this book is spent in yearning (which is quite affecting and very fun to read) for something. An old lover, an old friendship, an old power.
Just reading the confusion people have because of last lives is fun, but what's even more fun is the anticipation this book holds. Everyone is waiting for something.
And you'll be really surprised by what happens to Cornelia. It turns out the connection she has with the land is so much more than anyone ever thought. This is portrayed not in the almost sickening female/whom thing of the last book, but in a much more developed sense of loving the land and having a true connection to it, weather you are female or not.
Also, Brutus essentially becomes a good person. Which is nice. In fact, everyone improves their personality a lot in this book.
So read this even if you didn't love Hades' daughter. It's something you'll want to clear your schedule to finish. I guarantee by the time you're through you'll be desperate to read the next one. I know I was.
Five stars.
Three months later-in retrospect I don't think I like this series very much. It's not very well written, it has no likeable charecters and a lot of the actions are brutaly offensive. Faced with the forth book recently published I find I've just lost intrest. In retrospect I think I find Sara Douglass's writing to be very dark and depressing and gloomy-but not always in a way that works. I wouldn't advise reading her stuff, excepting Threshold, unless you can work a two week depresion into your life.
A Great Fantasy Series.......2006-02-01
The first was great... the second was better... I can't wait to read the third.
I've only read Douglass's Wayfarer Redemption series before this, and I liked it, so I thought I would try some of her other stuff. The Troy Game series I found to be a wonderful spin on some ancient beliefs. A fine, fun, read that combines love and action into a perfectly good novel.
My opinions, which probably doesn't count for much.......2005-11-25
I enjoyed the first book tremendously. One thing in that book that I liked was the fact that my sympathies for different characters kept on changing. I love that in a book! But, from other reviews on amazon I can tell that not many others liked that.
If you are in that boat, you'll be glad to know that nothing like that happens with this book :D The characters are more static. They are also learning from past mistakes, some slower than others.
It is a great book and I recommend it to all - especially because you have to read it first before the next book in the series, which is even better!!!
The Troy Game lives.......2005-07-17
In part two of Sara Douglass's "Troy Game" series, the characters from the first novel have all been reborn into 1065 England, the time when Edward the Confessor is dying and William of Normandy is planning his invasion. Cornilia has been reborn as Caela, Edward's queen. Together with Ecub (now Judith), Loth (now Seawalt) and even Silvius (Brutus's murdered father) they attempt to hide the Kingman bands from Swanne (reborn Genvissa), the Menatuar Asterion (his identity is not as well known to the others) and Brutus (ironicly, now William of Normandy). But there are many traps for Caela to wtch out for; both norman court ambitions of who will win the throan when Edward dies; but also who will gain control of the Troy Game. The one thing no one expected was that the Game would become a conscience entity itself.
The big problem I had in the first book, "Hade's Daughter" was that the characters were all so dispicable. That problem has been fixed in this book. Brutus has become a more understanding and loving husband, though to his current wife Matilda. He still holds a grudge against Cornilia. He only wants enough to do with her as to finish the Game. Caela also has grown up a lot. She is not the spoiled little brat she was last time; now she is a very intellegent young woman who willingly shoulders great responsablility to the Game, to the Land, and to Mag and Og. Gennvisa as Swanne lost a lot of authority and power, and so she was an easy target for Asterion's trickery.
The story is a good one. That is an interesting period in English history, and making the principal characters real historical figures was interesting. The parts where Caela had to move the bands through a ruined Troy was pretty cool. And Asterion's final move for power was pretty cold and also very correct. The inclusion of the child's game hop scotch was also a neat twist. What I had a problem with was that the book had little action. I was hoping to have a more detailed description of the Invasion of England, much like when Brutus seiged and destroyed Cornilia's city in the first book. Also it took a long time to get to where it was going, the court intriege took forever to get through. But it was still a pretty good bridge book, if especially bleak at the end.
I can not wait to read book 3.
Average customer rating:
- Essential for understanding social violence
- Boring and bad theology
- General Overview - Contemporary Applications of Girard
- Good, but not what I was expecting
- HARD TRUTHS
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Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads
Gil Bailie
Manufacturer: Crossroad Classic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
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Violence and the Sacred
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The Scapegoat
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The Girard Reader
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Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
ASIN: 0824516451 |
Book Description
This book is about the spiritual crisis of our time. It is also a literary work, an often miraculous interplay between cultural documents and historical periods.
Customer Reviews:
Essential for understanding social violence.......2007-04-18
As we head into the post industrial Dark Age, brought on by global warming, climate change and the end of the oil age, it is important that we understand the nature of the violence that pushes us to the brink of extinction in a nuclear armed world that is still poised on hair-trigger alert, with the spread and upgrading of weapons of mass destruction, that are illegal according to the world court.
This book is excellent at uncovering the deeper roots of our violence. An important cvontribution to the subject.
Boring and bad theology.......2006-03-14
Bailie is an engaging writer and a true believer. I envy him. I would love to believe in the Girardian view. It would make a "mechanism" the scapegoat. This is a much more comfortable problem than the Gospel problem: we are all sinners.
Girard is warmed-over Hegel, which has been warmed over numerous times before, leading inevitably to totalitarian regimes.
Don't buy it. If you must buy the book, don't buy what's in it. The goat you scape may be your own.
General Overview - Contemporary Applications of Girard.......2005-11-12
Recognized for its contemporary applications of Girardian theory on violence and the sacred, Baile examines the current cultural crisis facing humanity. Written in the early 1990's, Baile believes the Cross and the gospel shatter the need for scapegoating and sacrifice, but humanity has yet to complete this cultural transition. To achieve this end, this book can be split roughly into four parts: understanding our current cultural crisis, an examination of sacrificial institutions, a Girardian hermeneutic of Scripture, and a study of philosophy and nationalism.
The gospel has greatly changed the course of human history, and its effects still drive human history. Unlike primitive religion that needs sacred violence to dispense with violence, the gospel allows humanity to dispense with organized violence without falling into apocalyptic violence. The biblical tradition creates a moral concern for victims, but this concern does not reduce both victimization and violence. On the contrary, having empathy for the victim destroys the social harmony that conventional sacrificial rites seek to achieve at the expense of a victim. Our cultural habits favor scapegoating and sacrificial rites to bring social harmony, but the gospel has eroded the myths that keep this sacralization conscionable. Empathy for the victim and the need for sacrificial rituals are incompatible, and the violence we see in the world today is the result of this incompatibility. Violence has become more devastating and powerful because it has "lost its capacity for generating the metaphysical aura that gave it its sovereign power and its moral privilege," (53). As such, humanity is losing its ability to differentiate between beneficial and destructive violence, throwing societies in chaos. Like the example of Captain James Cook's trip to Tahiti in 1777, we rely on the vestiges of the sacrificial system, and Baile believes that the gospel comes to encourage us to live without them. In the meantime, however, an inept sacrificial system, or one aware of its muderousness, becomes more violent. When the ritual loses its religious aura the fascination of the mob will unleash further violence.
Baile seeks to understand how violence that fails to achieve catharsis leads to mimesis. When sacrificial institutions are abandoned, new representatives are selected for group fascination - fascination primarily geared towards the person who brought down the original institution. The group falls into chaos and sacrifices the new representative to bring social cohesion, and, in order to understand its actions, the group divinizes the representative. This system of scapegoating has been around since the dawn of time, but through the light of the gospel, this is no longer viable. As the sacrificial system collapses, we must rethink our desires that lead towards violence, desires that, if unchecked, can lead to uncontrolled or apocalyptic violence.
Examining the role of mimetic desire, Baile seeks to understand the source of violence. Like two toddlers fighting over a toy or two adults wanting the same item on sale, the exhibition of desire for an object from another person leads to our desire for the same object. In a concise Girardian overview, Baile shows how this desire leads to violence and religion through the sacrifice of a scapegoat. Myths, prohibitions, and rituals emerge to remind the tribe of its achievement of internal solidarity. The gospel story, from the point of the victim, comes and ultimately demythologizes this mythology.
To understand the full impact of the Cross, Baile seeks to understand the history of biblical Israel. Over the next several chapters, Baile interprets the scripture with a Girardian hermeneutic in order to highlight the evolution of the biblical understanding of sacrifice. From Adam and Eve to the resurrection of Jesus, Baile asserts that Scripture gradually exposes the errors and inadequacies of sacrificial ritual. This revelation culminates in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Perhaps oversimplified, Jesus' death overturns our scapegoating predispositions, and his resurrection expresses the "profound emancipation" (232) from these systems.
Because Paul stated that philosophy cannot express the Cross, Baile examines the superiority of the Gospel over philosophy. The Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega noted that philosophy will never unearth truth because it orbits around its "radical past." Philosophy ultimately functions like primitive religion and is incapable of understanding the truth of the victim. Examining the history of philosophy, Baile opines that philosophy became a haven for the primitive sacred and that philosophy is in crisis because of the revelation of the gospel. To understand true historical and anthropological knowledge, philosophy must examine the role of the victim. The Cross then is the root for post-philosophical epistemology.
Baile concludes with an exploration into the complex phenomenon of nationalism. Nationalism, civil war, and ethnic cleansings are in effect religious phenomenon. Because of a sacrificial crisis and the awareness of the gospel, groups have "tended to endow something else - race, ethnicity, nationality, ideology - with religious significance ..." (263). Because we cannot live without an understanding of religious transcendence, if we do not find transcendence in God, we will create "some shabby semblance of transcendence, a transcendence born out of violence or prelude to it" (270). Only to believe and to love God will allow us to love our neighbor and remove us from the shackles of violence and sin. In his epilogue, Baile concludes that the church is currently both a stumbling block and a cornerstone to undermine the structures of sacred violence.
Good, but not what I was expecting.......2005-01-27
Bailie asserts that the Gospel has fundamentally changed the way humanity views what he calls sacrificial violence. Taken in the big scheme of history, the Bible is relatively new literature. And regardless of one's personal beliefs, it is hard to argue that the Bible hasn't been the dominant moral influence on the Western World. The argument Bailie makes in the first half of this book is that violence, along with many obvious negative effects, can positively affect a society's structure. Ancient cultures engaged in sacrificial violence, often in the form of ritual sacrifice. While to a Christian outsider this may seem immoral, it served a purpose within those cultures by unifying them. In it's simplest form, often as a scapegoating device, a religious leader would select a person to sacrifice before a tribe went to war, or to appease the gods so that the crops might grow. While it is tough to believe that these sacrifices had anything to do with the outcome of a war, Bailie suggests that they actually did. It wasn't that the gods were pleased and thus helped the tribe, but that the tribe was united by this ritual. It served as a kind of primitive pep rally. It was more a psychological advantage than a divine one. That was the nature of many cultures throughout the world. They were bound by ritual violence in one form or another. What the story of Jesus did, was flip that on its head. The Bible was the first religious literature to be told from the point of view of the victim. Jesus was by choice a victim of ritual, state-sanctioned violence. "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do." This, according to Bailie, threw back the curtain, or unveiled the machinery that was in place. Bailie uses several examples of groups engaged in a frenzy of impulsive violence, shocked to their senses by an outsider stepping in and questioning it. That, on a cultural level, is what Jesus did. He threw the world into a crisis because the Christian viewpoint can no longer accept this ritual violence (there's a section on the church and church-sanctioned violence, but that's something else), and thus one of the pillars that held civilization together has been removed. We are desperately searching for something to replace it.
I had hoped, from this point, that Bailie would go into HOW we are trying to replace it, what this means for modern culture, and how we can survive this crisis as a unified world. Instead, what follows is an in-depth analysis of the Gospels, where he dissects many of the stories to support his grander assertions. I wish he'd gone the other way. Rather than support his assertions, I was more interested in the implications of his assertions. What are some current forms of sacrificial violence? There are many, I believe. Our current wars. Our criminal justice system. Capital punishment. One does not need to look further than the spectacle of the Scott Peterson case to see that this is the current equivalent of tying someone to a tree and stoning them. This is not to comment on Peterson's guilt or innocence, merely on the effect this spectacle has on society. It has been said that nothing brings a country together like a war. I wish Bailie had explored these topics, but aside from a short bit on nationalism as the new religion and a brief examination of a few modern genocides, he turns inward to Biblical analysis.
Perhaps it's unfair to criticize this book for not doing something the author never intended to do in the first place. Bailie's breadth of source material (he draws from all facets of history, literature, poetry, and religious material) is incredible. But as someone uninterested in Biblical analysis, and as someone who was on board with Bailie's theory already, I would have found an application of his theory much more interesting than a support of it. Maybe that will be another book.
HARD TRUTHS.......2003-06-07
HARD TRUTHS
In Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie makes a hard demand of the reader: put aside for this time your cherished preconceptions, and listen. That is not only a hard demand but a risky one for any writer to make, lest he be found foolish. In my judgment, Bailie is not foolish, but prophetic.
Bailie is founder and director of the Florilegia Institute, a kind of Catholic "think tank/apologist." In his analysis of the roots and results of violence, he scrutinizes disparate sources, ancient and modern, including the Bible and current events. He does so both as a Christian and as an anthropologist, peeling away layer by layer the myths and pieties often associated with "The Greatest Book Ever Written." Readers who regard the Bible primarily as a literal statement of God's word may be shocked at many of Bailie's assertions, but they need to remain open to the end of the book and beyond. As well, non- and nominal Christians will be put off by Bailie's unwavering focus on Jesus Christ's role in the unraveling of the power of "sacred violence", but they need to "put on" what Bailie considers to be the fundamental Christian message.
The seminal assertion of Bailie's book is best stated in his quotation from literary critic Northrup Frye: "Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself." All civilizations (according to Bailie) arose out of a sea of chaotic violence, and were in fact established by acts of such overwhelming and consummating violence (the apocalypse) that chaos was stilled and stability reigned. At least for a while, as in the Bolshevik Revolution. This "screen" of history (or myth) is a whitewash protecting the civilization from facing its own founding horrors, especially by shutting away the faces and voices of the countless innocent victims. "History" we admit, is written by those who win. The celebration and ritual re-enacting of this founding act of "sacred violence", now a sanitized myth, is the beginning of religion, with its bloody sacrifices (often human), and its prescriptions and taboos, all intended to placate fickle gods (ideologies) who alone, it is now exhorted and believed, have the power to keep the apocalypse from recurring.
The effectiveness of the founding myth (still according to Bailie) and its ritual re-enactments in maintaining stability has relied on two factors, the first being the ardent acceptance by the members of the civilization of the "sacred truths" of the founding myths, and the second being the non-recognition of the victims. To see and hear the human victim, Bailie points out many times, is to empathize and see through the screen, thereby nullifying its "good" effect.
Bailie argues that Western civilization, over the course of several millenia, has gradually and uniquely come to see the plight and humanity of the victim. It has done this through the Bible of Judeo-Christian culture:
". . . all of the world's religions urge their faithful to exercise compassion and mercy. . . . But the empathy for victims --as victims-- is specifically western, and quintessentially biblical." (p. 19)
The Jews, alone among the ancients, stubbornly wrote or referred to facts about victims in the mix of their writings, thereby creating in much of the Old Testament, including the Pentateuch, the Proto-History, instead of a "sacred history", or myth. The face of the victim may be seen not only in the Psalms and in Isaiah and the prophets, but also in the stories, including those of Abel, of Jonah the reluctant prophet, of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses' empathy with the Jewish slaves; and it reaches its fulfillment in the New Testament, told from the point-of-view of Jesus, the infinitely innocent victim. This is not to say that the Old Testament is a unified treatise condemning violence and defending violence. It is in fact an odd mixture of mythic sacred violence, historical fact, and advocacy of victims. The beauty of Bailie's book is his ability as an anthropologist to unearth the historical facts and extract them from the mythological debris.
There is no need today to document today's escalating cycles of violence. Palestine will more than suffice. The supreme irony in Bailie's thought is that Western civilization's maturing empathy with victims over the centuries has made "sacred" violence unpalatable, and ineffective. This fact is amply documented in the book, as in our refusal to use ground troops to oust Milosevic from Kosovo, and our reluctance to maintain the "peacekeeping force" in Somalia once American servicemen began to suffer significant casualties. The military presence was seen as not only victimized, but ineffective. We may today dwell with sad fascination on the present debacle in Iraq. So much for "shock and awe"! Sacred violence has lost its stabilizing ability to fend off chaotic violence.
The protective screen is fading, but unfortunately the human instinct towards violence remains. Bailie writes at length about the nature of this instinct, rooted in mimesis, the impulse to imitate, to want what another wants, to fall in with the scapegoating mob. It will seem to many readers that we are indeed out of time, out of money, and out of luck.
One need not believe in the resurrection of Christ, or in his divinity, or indeed to believe in his actual historical existence, to appreciate and follow his message: To achieve world peace (a step towards the Kingdom of God), we must all --as individuals, as societies and nations-- completely and irrevocably abjure violence. Bailie is no more sanguine about our prospects than you or I:
"Ultimately, there are only two alternative to apocalyptic violence: the sacred violence . . . and the renunciation of violence. That the former is now impossible, and that the latter seems hardly less so, doesn't change the facts." (p. 25)
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Citation Details
Title: Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads.
Author: Martin R. Tripole
Publication:
Theological Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1996
Publisher: Theological Studies, Inc.
Volume: v57
Issue: n1
Page: p174(3)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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