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During his famous journey through America in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by the peculiar worldliness of religious practice. Unlike their European counterparts, who specialized in visions of heaven, "American preachers are constantly referring to the earth, and it is only with great difficulty that they can divert their attention from it." More than a century later, J.F. Powers built an entire career on this national tendency. And nowhere did he capture the sacred-and-profane balancing act with more amusement than in his 1975 novel, Wheat That Springeth Green. His protagonist, a Great Depression-era child of the Midwest named Joe Hackett, has early dreams of joining the priesthood:
If he decided to be a priest in a religious order, though, he could live out in the country, at a college, and have invigorating walks and talks with students ... and maybe some exciting adventures, and also do good, as often happened in the Father Finn books ("'My God!' cried the atheist") that Sister Agatha read to the class at the end of the day.
Joe eventually attends seminary, is ordained, and finds himself appointed as assistant to a high-octane contemplative, Father Van Slaag. But by the time he gets his own parish, in 1968, he's become an expert at relegating sanctity to the back burner. Overweight, agreeably resigned, Joe accepts the fact that "running a parish, any parish, was like riding a cattle car in the wintertime--you could appreciate the warmth of your dear, dumb friends, but you never knew when you'd be stepped on, or worse."
It takes the arrival of a young, over-earnest curate to jog his idealism back to life. And in return, he imparts to the younger man his knowledge of the "worldly" priesthood--a craft that Powers, no less than de Tocqueville, refuses to condemn. This exchange, which is gradual and grudging on both sides, occupies the greater portion of Wheat That Springeth Green. And the protagonist's regeneration, like that alluded to in the title, seems no less miraculous for being expected. The result is a marvelous, acute novel, which gives to Joe's spiritual rebirth the shape of a classic American comedy--trials and tribulations, and finally, a happy ending. --James Marcus
Book Description
Wheat That Springeth Green, J. F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life. Its hero, Joe Hackett, is a high school track star who sets out to be a saint. But seminary life and priestly apprenticeship soon damp his ardor, and by the time he has been given a parish of his own he has traded in his hair shirt for the consolations of baseball and beer. Meanwhile Joe's higher-ups are pressing for an increase in profits from the collection plate, suburban Inglenook's biggest business wants to launch its new line of missiles with a blessing, and not all that far away, in Vietnam, a war is going on. Joe wants to duck and cover, but in the end, almost in spite of himself, he is condemned to do something right.
J. F. Powers was a virtuoso of the American language with a perfect ear for the telling cliché and an unfailing eye for the kitsch that clutters up our lives. This funny and very moving novel about the making and remaking of a priest is one of his finest achievements.
Customer Reviews:
Church vs. Dreck.......2007-09-21
This final entry--1988 marks its long-delayed arrival--in a lengthy career (starting in the mid-1940s) of scant fiction marks the end of the postwar, triumphalist, yet marginalized, Midwestern Catholic parish--and notably here, rectory--intrigues that Powers excelled at conveying. His scale, being so focused, gains accuracy and depth by its concentration upon detail. Like a model railroad set, the 1:150 (or whatever!) ratio means painstaking attention to fidelity. Such realism to the untutored eye appears grotesque or caricatured, but to an aware observer reveals a nearly exact fit of form with content.
I give it four rather than five stars as I have re-read (and reviewed here, "Morte" and the thirty stories in their original three volumes as well as the collected reissue) all of Powers recently, and I believe that his many strengths as a writer are at times clouded slightly by his tendency towards oversubtlety. A forgivable fault in an era of so many authors straining for the obvious or what critics call "overdetermining" their subject, but Powers tends in all his work towards lengthy passages where not much goes on at all, but in which an editor could have polished the presentation and refined the craft even further. Powers appears to have been his own worse enemy and his own most scrupulous critic, on the other hand. Be it as it may, Powers makes nearly all of his peers look hasty, scattered, and undisciplined by comparison.
Action over the course of a priest's youth, coming of age, and gradual rise from curate to administrative assistant (when that word did not connote a secretary or receptionist) and then pastor comprises the narrative. Less verve here than the worldlier, more urbane Fr Urban had, but perhaps in his principled if compromised (the whole crux of the tension) fidelity to the needs of separating "Church from Dreck" Powers reveals that the need for reform Fr Urban realized while Vatican II was still in session (so to speak) by the end of the decade became all the more apparent as the slow slide downhill accelerated. Set by its conclusion around 1968, if offhandedly, the Catholic Worker roots of Powers and his conservative radicalism stand his fictional main character in good stead as priests wander off, parishioners ignore crusty priests' reprimands, malls open on Sundays, the hillbilly's war machine thunders on in the small town press, and guitars with cant supplant chant.
This novel, like his earlier (sharing with it a clumsy if rarified referential title) "Morte d'Urban," (1962), suffers from arid stretches, where the humor is so deadpan, the pace so true that the inert nature of our own shared experience with the clerical protagonists appears too neatly aligned. Dullness enters. A VD quarantine warning takes up one and a half pages verbatim. A few sample sermons from Father Felix (who helps out saying weekend Masses) summarize the stultifying, yet sincere, homiletics of a certain, less soundbitten, age. So with Powers, who in this novel had been criticized as a man out of time, with figures he identified with whose era had passed them by. Joe is only in his mid-forties. He seems much older. This may be a sign of now-diminished respect, when the maturity demanded of authority figures gave an earned dignity and a bit of unearned noblesse oblige to the clergy in smaller towns where the collar still mattered. Joe Hackett manages to get through the routine, and out of the limelight that had once courted his counterpart Fr. Urban, this parish priest does his best balancing God with Mammon, as the demands of a new accounting system make fundraising all the more essential, even as this pulls at the Gospel admonition that it's better to give alms in secret. How to square this with the need to make accountable freeloading parishioners when the Archbishop's needs come payable on demand? Out of such quandaries, Powers raises his own quiet art.
The need in fiction for a jolt, a spark, a spin off from the quotidian to the profound nestles, certainly, in Powers. This, however, moves along leisurely, and often nothing seems to happen for chapters at a time. Then, you understand that this accurately limns the trajectory of a recognizably human life like our own. You can see Powers' study of Joyce in his preparation of the slow ascent to epiphanies, such as Fr. Joe Hackett's finessed blessing of a scruffy draft resister who steps to tie his shoelaces while the padre finagles praying over his head and out of eyesight or earshot as the young man prepares to flee to Canada, on the pastor's unspoken advice but according to his moral example.
Re-reading this nearly two decades after it appeared, I admire Powers' critique of not only the institutional Church and its compromises with the world, but of his own admission that holy Joes only go so far in their own zeal in battling for their losing side. They must do so, vowed to do so and called by their Maker, but Powers recognizes in his own mellowing how annoying piety and phariseeism can be for the rest of us. Not for nothing is an early battle Joe engages in at the seminary, much to the disgust of some classmates and the suspicion of his rector, over the necessity of wearing a hairshirt.
Constructed in part from stories written over the past (two of which appeared in the last of his three thin story collections, 1975's "Look How the Fish Live," the novel does let its seams show. I wonder if parts of this novel were left too long on the shelf, or in hibernation. Yet, this is how Powers wrote. Very slowly, spending days pondering if a character would use the term "pal" or "chum" in referring to a confrere. Such was his state of mind, and more power to him. Probably a patron saint of scrupulous writers, if he is canonized as he deserves! His friend and colleague Jon Hassler eulogized him as "a saint with a bad temper." Hassler notes how Powers could strain so long over a detail that a reader, even an informed one such as himself, might miss the very nuanced finesse.
The extended battle of the story that was "Bill" for Joe to learn his new curate's name appears tedious and unbelievable, a shaggy-dog tale after a few pages of the many devoted to this embarrassing and rather cryptic episode. The story earlier published as "Priestly Fellowship" enters the novel mostly unchanged, but again the dive into the post-Vatican II uproar appears muted, if perhaps less dated for its lack of topicality to specific changes so much as the persistent lack of clerical fidelity. Yet, as the novel lengthens, the episodes do build upon possibilities tucked into these two stories, and while they unfold in off-handed and perhaps overly-controlled fashion, they are truer to the texture of everyday life for being so controlled. Holiness comes, if at all, minutely slow. The lack of histrionics or forced symbolism remains despite the uneven pacing in his longer works Powers' greatest talent. Powers knew when and how indirect first-person voice carried his stories; his shift in and out of his protagonist's minds is at its best in the imagined reverie Joe lets himself into as he pitches in the yard with Bill to let off steam. As with Urban's similarly prosy--both exaggerated and ordinary-- temptation at Belleisle in "Morte," the priestly heroes let their deepest selves emerge when they pretend they are just like the rest of us. Powers, and we, know better.
A final word, quoted from one of his students in Commonweal on his death in 1999. In the novel, out of his collar on a much-needed vacation, Joe passes himself off at the hotel bar as working for a "big concern," in "life insurance." The firm? "Eternal." Sort of a multinational, he admits, although he works out of a local "branch office." Powers explained when asked in class why he wrote so much about the clergy, and if he was anticlerical. "I'm not anticlerical. I simply look for a story that elucidates truth. If a human being buys an insurance policy, that's not much of a story. But when a priest buys an insurance policy, there's something going on that needs to be said and I want to say it." It took him nearly fifty years to write it.
Artful, beautiful, and simplicity, as if Shaker furniture were transformed into words.......2007-02-09
Anyone who has not read J.F. Powers is missing a major American voice in letters. This review will not be adequate to even speak of his skill.
Complete lives are sketched with the faintest of references, such as a family who the hero, Father Joe Hackett, brings from the city to remind his comfy parishioners of the trials of the poor (shades of the "holy poverty in the city" mantra so common from my youth). He tells their entire story with three unconnected lines sprinkled as a leitmotif throughout the narrative.
The hero's interior monologue is both revealing, and surprising. Throughout the novel faint points of challenges and grace (and simple, just-sufficient grace) carry the reader along with Father Joe's eventual conversion (rededication?). This is the story of a bumbling soul who eventually inhales the breath of the Divine.
Every person I've ever given a J.F. Powers book to has thanked me (Catholics and non-Catholics alike). Highly recommended, for this is monumentally great literature.
A Powerful Masterpiece.......2005-05-31
The best of the series of books published by The New York Review of Books are all the works of J.F. Powers, who died in 1989. Powers' novels and stories are almost entirely concerned with Catholic clerical life in the midwest. I hadn't read his last novel, Wheat That Springeth Green, and I was happy to find that the new edition contained an introduction by the author's daughter, Katherine Powers. Wheat That Springeth Green is every bit as fine as Morte D'Urban, his first and only other novel written some 25 years earlier, and a National Book Award winner as well. In its treatment of character and plot the latter novel is theologically perhaps even more complex.
Joe's character is cast from the first pages: as a toddler he gets attention from his parents' friends merely for declaiming at a party "I go to church!" We also learn of his parents' antipathy towards the parish priest's intoning on the subject of the "Dollar-a-Sunday Club," an attitude that Joe will inherit, and which becomes a theme that will be played out in a number of surprising ways. We also sense something of his aloofness in these first chapters as well. He doesn't keep up with many friends, but he does seem to know the value in keeping up appearances: "Joe just smiled at Frances and everybody, so they couldn't tell how he really felt about being in the sack race..." Joe is a good athlete, even in grade school, and the race he really wants, but doesn't get, is the sprint.
Much of the story revolves around Joe's relation to money, so that even an early adventure (described in nearly pornographic detail) involving his first adult relations with women is later understood to be subsumed by his larger pecuniary obsessions. His sexual sins, or at least the memory of them, turn out to be something of a red herring: at the seminary he asks his instructor, "Father, how can we make sanctity as attractive as sex to the common man?" a question that (rightly) earns him nothing but mirth from his fellow seminarians. We are given hints that as Joe grows older he succeeds in overcoming his youthful scrupulosity. After a stint at Archdiocesan Charities he is assigned to the parish of St. Frances - a name shared by his childhood infatuation and a co-traveler in that youthful adventure. So as far as sex is concerned, there is in his maturity there a sense that all is right with Joe, if not the world. That this is the case is dramatically reinforced by the nearly hopeless entanglements of an ex-seminarian, some of which leads to misplaced retribution that Joe patiently, even faithfully endures. These episodes are magnificently structured, displaying in Joe's life a kind of fate that is worked out through choices made less in freedom than with a concern for propriety and in service to principles that are neither his own, nor of the church in which, as he says in other circumstances, he does so much hard time.
Other obstacles to holiness, as perhaps they always must, remain. Although his basic attitude is good, the reader realizes that the young Father Hackett has refused one halo in favor of another when he refuses to toady up to either the priest in his parish or to the archbishop in his archdiocese. Money matters are everywhere in evidence: the rectory built by Joe; bribes offered by parishoners; purses collected on behalf of retiring priests; inheritence; a collection drive that is farmed out to a private firm - in which Joe will take no part. All this points to beyond the contradiction in one man's character to a paradox that is funamental to our very being. How do we care for an abundance which is most fully ours when we least consider it our own?
Joe's misappropriation of his own nature, and indeed human nature, leads to a truly heinous transgression in one of the final chapters. That this transgression is committed and then resolved in secret, without comment from Joe or even the narrator, points toward a God who is as truly all merciful as he is unnoticed even by lesser beings working on his behalf. I would guess that the true thorn in Joe's side is also Powers', and while reading I several times wondered whether the crux of the story wasn't inspired by his frustration at watching baskets and plates passed through the pews, week in and week out, for a lifetime.
Very highly recommended.
perfect.......2004-11-01
It is nothing short of a tragedy that more readers aren't familiar with J.F. Powers. This book is truly brilliant. Powers is at heart more craftsman than contemporary novelist, which is doubtless why he only published two novels. Wheat That Springeth Green is unlike anything else I've ever read. It's that rare novel that achieves perfection.
Joe Hackett, for all his faults, is one of the most fully-realized and sympathetic characters in contemporary fiction. As he matures, so does the book: from his hilariously overblown pretensions at the seminary, to his ennui and malaise as a pastor, to his subtly glorious final redemption.
In the final analysis, the book is not so much satire as fable about goodness. Despite being about the life of priests, the book is more a moral fable than a simply Catholic one: it's about how to do good in a world where it all seems futile. Joe Hackett is a cynic, but he's also at heart an idealist and optimist. So is J.F. Powers.
On Not Being Lonely in the Suburbs.......2004-04-30
I read it in the early fall, a perfect time of year for me to read this sort of book, as it reminded me of my early years as a student at a Catholic elementary school in the suburbs. The book follows the life of a Catholic priest named Joe Hackett who struggles with faith and politics and more than anything else the shattering mundanity of his suburban life. Tree-lined streets, shopping malls, station wagons, vinyl siding, and wall to wall carpeting are Hackett's foils in a book that manages to be charming, melancholy, and very funny at the same time. Reading the book turned out to be a great way to spend a few September weeks. If anyone out there happened to enjoy The Sportswriter and Independence Day by Richard Ford, then you will enjoy this book as well.
Customer Reviews:
Jake and Chelsea bring firefighter trilogy to a close.......2000-06-17
Jake finds himself supervising a new firefighter in his team - unfortunately, Chelsea has a bad reputation because she got involved with a fellow coworker and ended up in a terrible situation.
Now as he struggles with his attraction to her, he must also cope with what appear to be Chelsea's mistakes. In reality, someone who doesn't want her around is making it appear as if she were incompetent, and it is putting the team in danger.
I loved these three books by Kathryn Shay. If you haven't read her, please do so, they are filled with great, real characters and details about the life and work of firefighters that make everything come alive.
One of the Best by One of the Best.......2000-04-29
Kathryn Shay is one of my favorite writers and this time she outdoes herself! Code of Honor is a wonderful story about two people with pain in their past who have the courage to overcome them -- and they do it with a lot of humor, passion and emotion.
There aren't too many books with firefighter heroes -- and fewer with firefighter heroines. I almost wish there were, but only if they were this good! There are two more books in this series, but this one is my favorite. Ummmm...love that Jake! I can't recommend this exciting and fascinating story enough.
Third book in her superb firefighters series!.......2000-02-25
This latest in her contemporary series about firefighters is exceptionally well-written, sexy, emotional, and sometimes funny. I just love Jake and Chelsea together. Jake is stoic, gorgeous, and Chelsea's boss...Uh-oh! The story is irresistible. I hope this is not the last book in her series. I hope Delaney and Reed's story is next! I highly recommend the 1st two in this series, FEEL THE HEAT and THE MAN WHO LOVED CHRISTMAS. I Loooove this series!
This third in a trilogy is a fine romance.......1999-12-23
Rockford, New York Fire Chief Talbot informs Lieutenant Jake Scarlatta that his team will inherit firefighter Chelsea Whitmore. Jake wants nothing to do with Chelsea . She had a bad run with her present assignment when she ended a relationship with a peer, Billy Milligan.
Chelsea quickly proves she belongs with the crew and earns their respect. However, one member deeply feels women should never be firefighters and begins to do dirty tricks to make Chelsea look incompetent. As Chelsea worries about her future with the department, she and Jake fall in love. However, she vowed to never again have a personal relationship with a firefighter after Billy, who continues to stalk her. Jack vows to go by the book after ignoring problems so long that his best friend suffered while on his crew. Neither one wants the other, but love leaves both needing the other.
Kathryn Shay's third "America's Bravest" tale warmly brings to a conclusion a wonderful contemporary series centering on an upstate New York fire department. CODE OF HONOR is filled with problems confronting firefighters and the department that makes for an exciting read. The lead characters are a beautiful duo and the return of the cast from the two previous novels makes the audience feel they are part of a community. Ms. Shay pays homage to the country's brave firefighters in an entertaining trilogy that will leave fans appreciating the efforts of professionals and the author who depict them accordingly.
Harriet Klausner
Average customer rating:
- Treasure Now Found
- Bad, bad book
- Unlikely tale with no research content
- A very Odd account
- Truth is Funner than Fiction
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The GOLD OF EXODUS
Howard Blum
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Amazon.com
When a millionaire adventurer goes in search of the true Mount Sinai, he gets more than he bargained for. Spies, missiles, and secret military installations are just some of the obstacles that Larry Williams and his sidekick Bob Cornuke must confront in their unprecedented journey to find the lost treasures of Moses. In The Gold of Exodus, award-winning journalist Howard Blum records a page-turning story of an adventure that makes history. While risking their necks by sneaking into the xenophobic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, amateur archaeologists Williams and Cornuke become pawns in a game of international espionage that eventually leads them to the top of the most sacred mountain in the world, and into the hands of shotgun-wielding Bedouins. The Gold of Exodus is a true story that is too unbelievable to be fiction, too suspenseful to be put down, and too significant to soon be forgotten.
Book Description
Mount Sinai. For many, it is the most sacred place on Earth—the site where God descended to give Moses the Ten Commandments. Yet for centuries, mankind has not known its exact location. In this heart-pounding true story, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Howard Blum tells the enthralling account of two modern-day adventurers—Larry Williams, a two-time Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Montana and a self-made millionaire, and his friend Bob Cornuke, a retired policemen and former SWAT team member. Lured by the prospect of finding the fabled fortune in gold that the ancient Hebrews took with them when they fled from Egypt, the two men set out to find the true site of Mount Sinai—with only the Old Testament as a guide.
Eminent biblical scholars at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have argued that Mount Sinai is not in the Sinai Peninsula at all, but rather in northwestern Saudi Arabia. However, they were never allowed into the kingdom to prove their argument. When Cornuke and Williams are also denied entry, they daringly sneak into Saudi Arabia. And what they discover at the mountain known as Jabal al Lawz will astonish the world—and inspire readers to rethink the role of the Bible in history. They find the remains of the stone altar at which the Golden Calf was worshiped, the twelve pillars that Moses ordered to be erected, the cave where Moses slept, and, most sensationally, the unnaturally scorched spot on the mountaintop where God gave Moses the two stone tablets. They also explain, in a fascinating account, the truth about the parting of the Red Sea waters. And not the least of their discoveries is the fact that one of the most sacred spots on earth is now a top secret Saudi military base. As these two adventurers follow in Moses' footsteps, they become pawns in a dangerous game of international power politics and intrigue, This action-packed tale—part high-tech treasure hunt, part modern-day spy thriller, and part biblical detective story—is riveting. And it is all true.
Download Description
Howard Blum tells the account of two modern-day adventurers - Larry Williams, a two-time Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Montana and a self-made millionaire, and his friend Bob Cornuke, a retired policemen and former SWAT team member. Lured by the prospect of finding the fabled fortune in gold that the ancient Hebrews took with them when they fled from Egypt, the two men set out to find the true site of Mount Sinai - with only the Old Testament as a guide. Eminent biblical scholars at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have argued that Mount Sinai is not in the Sinai peninsula at all, but rather in northwestern Saudi Arabia. However, they were never allowed into the kingdom to prove their argument. When Cornuke and Williams are also denied entry, they daringly sneak into Saudi Arabia. And what they discover at the mountain known as Jabal al Lawz will astonish the world - and inspire readers to rethink the role of the Bible in history. They find the remains of the stone altar at which the Golden Calf was worshiped, the twelve pillars that Moses ordered to be erected, the cave where Moses slept, and, most sensationally, the unnaturally scorched spot on the mountaintop where God gave Moses the two stone tablets. They also explain, in a fascinating account, the truth about the parting of the Red Sea waters. And not the least of their discoveries is the fact that one of the most sacred spots on earth is now a top secret Saudi military base. As these two adventurers follow in Moses' footsteps, they become pawns in a dangerous game of international power politics and intrigue.
Customer Reviews:
Treasure Now Found.......2005-09-28
In the book, there are two guys. Their names are Larry Williams, a self made millionaire, and Bob Cornuke, a retired police officer and a former Swat-team member. Larry Williams is also an archaeologist and he hears rumors that the real Mount Sinai (the mountain where god gave Moses the Ten Commandments) is actually in present day Saudia Arabian, on Mount Jabal al Lawz. They want to make sure that they are right, so they actually follow the route on which they believe the Hebrews used to get out of Egypt. After a couple of days, they realize that this must be the way that they took. Every single detail that is in the bible they find. When the get to what they believe is the Reds Sea, They go scuba diving in it. They find the prove that they need and Larry almost gets eaten by a shark.
They finally find a way into Saudia Arabian. They run into several problems like their rooms get broken into, someone is following them and their batteries are missing for their supplies. When their journey finally ends and they get to Mount Jabal al Lawz, they find that the mountain has actually been turned into a military base and is surrounded by guards. Will they survive? You have to read to find out.
I liked how the book switched between Larry and Bobs perspective. The only thing that I didn't like is how the book started the book by starting at the end and flashing back.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to research the bible or is interested in the bible.
Bad, bad book.......2005-04-22
This book is written like a 4th-rate children's adventure story. From the spy story to the lead "characters" furtive journey into Saudi Arabia to their diving expedition - it's all so full of hyperbole and exaggeration that the pictures of the book are needed to convince the reader that the trip happened at all.
The author's genius, if you could call it that, is taking real people and re-casting them as one-dimensional cardboard characters. The way these treasure-less "treasure hunters" go about the task of finding the Exodus treasure makes them appear more clueless and dumb than I believe humans could have been in real life.
In one passage, one of our heroes can't get his metal detector working. He painstakingly completely disassembles and re-assembles the machine and cannot figure out the problem. His genius partner suggests he checks the batteries. Wow, they're missing! And they aren't just missing. No, they were stolen from the machine by the mysterious unnamed spies that are constantly following the pair and attempting to thwart their journey. Right! It hurts to read this book.
Not to spoil the end of this ridiculous tale, but they don't find one ounce of gold or any other treasure. I searched on the web and found numerous point-by-point rebuttals of the "Sinai in Arabia" thesis of the book. The most concise I read was "Problems with Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia" by Brad Sparks. Look it up and read this free well-written paper rather than waste any time with the silly "Gold" book.
Unlikely tale with no research content.......2003-12-28
I have the hardest time getting rid of books, and every purge of the family library ends up being a long series of painful decisions. Yet I had no trouble giving away this book after the first reading.
I would like to give at least some praise before discussing the weaknesses of this book - but I have the hardest time finding any. The idea is entertaining and some of the travel scenes are exotic and unusual.
That said, the book as a whole is poor in many respects. The writing is, at most, unremarkable. The chapters of the book are poorly architected, and it is sometimes difficult to understand why one follows the other. The thesis in the story is both unlikely and unbelievable, and there is not an iota of proof to any of the many rather incredible assumptions. Finally, some of the "facts" in the story (i.e. what the authors say they actually did and saw) are somewhat difficult to believe.
I thought that this was about the narrative of a new set of biblical archeology finds along with some controversial analysis. What the book really is, is a poorly written travelogue along with the expose of a thesis whose theme is about as well proven as the idea that aliens built the pyramids.
I normally see some redeeming value, or a potential audience, for most of the books I read. In this case, I would say: by any means stay away, even shipping costs only would be too high a price for this book.
A very Odd account.......2003-10-30
I'm not sure what to say here. THis is a very odd book from someone who has written two other great books. Blum's account of the Jewish Brigade in WWI and hisa account of the Yom Kippur War(Eve of Destruction) are both marvelous and TRUE accounts of the events. Having done extensive research on te Yom Kippur war I can vouch for 'Eve of Destruction's' authenticity. Yet this book seems oddly out there.
First of all the two men this book chronicles Larry Williams and Robert Cornuke have both written books on the subject detailing their adventure. Now the problem is that the books are in conflict. WIliams book details two trips while Cornukes book is ambivlent on whether he has found Mt. Sinai and he does not mention Israeli Mossad. So this deminishes the books credibility.
The Saudi archeological service cannot be trusted. Many people claim that the book must be wrong because the Kingdom of Saudi has destributed some pictures of the painting described in this book and these painting look more european then biblical. Well who trusts the Saudi internal government, which is a dictatorship and has no reason to release evidence about this mountain, especially if such evidence will bring millions of non-Mulsims to the kingdom for pilgrimage. Saudi already has one holy cty, it doesnt want another.
THis book is not racism as some claim nor is it 'offensive' it is merely an exploration of the Biblical site of Mt. Sinai. THose that accuse this book of being offfensive because these guys had to sneak into Saudi should instead accuse the Saudis of offense for not allowing international research teams to search their country for non-muslim archeology.
The Kingdom of Saudi does have a lax intelligence service if your an ex-SWAT member and this is clear from the many terrorist attacks on U.S installations in the kingdom so those that say this cant be true because oft he vaunted Saudi intelligence service are also wrong. Saudi, as the book shows, is a fuedal state that lives in the modrn world.
Those that say the discovery, if true, has ramifactions for the worlds religions are wrong. It has no ramification for any of the religions. Mt Sinai is where god gave the commandments and the laws to Moses.
An interesting book
Truth is Funner than Fiction.......2003-08-05
This book reads like the best of the best spy novels. It flows. It has suspense. It has shady characters and heroes. Espionage,danger, intrigue, exotic locations. Biblical artifacts. And it is all true! Makes the adventure come alive and reads like a ride on a roller coaster. I have put down works of fiction half read and implausible. I raced through this book. I gave it all the free time I could spare. It was simply wonderful. And I keep seeing evidence that a movie is on the way. Step aside, Indiana. These guys are real! And they are messing around in your playground.
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Gold of Exodus the Discovery of the Most
Howard Blum
Manufacturer: Hodder Stoughton
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0340640456 |
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piano solo
Publ: Chappell & Co 5348-2
from Otto Preminger 's film starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint
Product Description
3 page sheet music from the Main Them from Exodus.
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Nantucket to California: The Gold Rush exodus
Bill Principe
Manufacturer: Picton Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0897254503 |
Book Description
The Guru Papers demonstrates with uncompromising clarity that authoritarian control, which once held societies together, is now at the core of personal, social, and planetary problems, and thus a key factor in social disintegration. It illustrates how authoritarianism is embedded in the way people think, hiding in culture, values, daily life, and in the very morality people try to live by. The book unmasks authoritarianism in such areas as relationships, cults, 12-step groups, religion, and contemporary morality. Chapters on addiction and love show the insidious nature of authoritarian values and ideologies in the most intimate corners of life, offering new frameworks for understanding why people get addicted and why intimacy is laden with conflict. By exposing the inner authoritarian that people use to control themselves and others, the authors show why people give up their power, and how others get and maintain it.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Diagnosis of Authoritarianism with a Bad Prescriptive Twist.......2007-06-03
For the most part, the authors of The Guru Papers do a masterful job of unmasking authoritarian power. I first read this book about twelve years ago shortly after completing A Course In Miracles (CIM) at a new-age church. After doing the Course, I attended CIM group discussions for several years and I started to attain somewhat of a guru status. I was tempted to accept the power and perks available to a guru, but my conscience told me there was something morally wrong with being worshipped as a spiritual authority. So I turned the gig down and stopped doing the Course.
After reading The Guru Papers, it became clear how adversely authoritarians had affected me throughout my life. Prior to doing A Course In Miracles, I did Werner Erhard's EST Training and his cult-like Seminar Series. And, in my early days, I was raised as a Missionary Baptist where the Christian authorities (with their authoritative Bible) informed me that I was a sinner in need of salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. I came to despise oppressive authoritarians of all kinds and my resistance to them led me to these "personal growth" disciplines. But ultimately I found that there was an ideological authority behind every supposedly "personal" discipline.
The Guru Papers did help me cut through the fog that surrounds authoritarian power. However, when Kramer and Alstad shifted into their prescription mode in the chapter called "Epilogue: Where to Go from Here?" they demonstrated their own brand of authoritarianism. The "paradigm shift" that they advocate is really a masked version of global socialism, which is currently being presented in the guise of environmentalism. Even though environmental socialism is based on secular beliefs, it has all the traits of fundamentalist religion: Predictions of a pending doom due to "our self-destructive nature," salvation for "humanity" and "the planet," and a feeling of moral superiority for the true believers of the environmental "progressive" flock.
I recommend you read The Guru Papers, but pay special attention to the way the authors do a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and start preaching their version of social justice and environmental religion. If you want to know why it is that people can seem to be enlightened authorities on certain issues and then flip flop when it comes to advocating what "society" should do in the future, then I recommend you read about "constrained" and "unconstrained" worldviews in Dr. Thomas Sowell's book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice.
this book saved my life.......2006-10-13
while this book is written so intelligently and with such a global vision, it seems inapproprate to refer to it as a self-help book. but this book did help to save my life and it therefore is, for me, a self-help book. this is one of the books that helped me the most when i was trying to deprogram myself after freshly exiting myself from a cult. it was given to me when i was in crisis by a beautiful man who had grown up within a strict mormon community. he had been greatly helped by this book as well. i was also helped by the link the kramers make between religious and political cultic tyrannies...such a liberating book--i could not recommend anything more highly--for anyone and everyone everywhere. we are all affected by the pernicious control patterns this book so beautifully explores. i was further impressed when i discovered that kramer has been viciously attacked in print by andrew cohen (cult leader) and cohen's 'what is enlightenment?' crew...so great when the real enlightened ones do stand up. they always speak quietly and are humble.
A "Must Read" book........2006-10-06
This book is an inoculation against manipulation. If you are a young person, please read it as soon as you can. It will save you years of wasted life.
Valuable and thought-provoking.......2006-08-17
I found this book useful when I was attempting to understand how I had gotten myself involved in a cult-like group. The authors are very thorough in their deconstruction of the dynamics of authoritarian relationships both in spiritual groups and in society as a whole. In reading it, I gained a great deal of insight as to my own relationship to those tendencies.
I have to add one caveat, however. The authors make it clear that they do not consider any transcendental experience to be valid, but merely evidence of a manipulated psychological state. I can't agree with them on this; I think they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That said, I still feel that they have some very valuable things to say about the bathwater.
One of the most important books for the 21st century, .......2005-04-01
God. The God of Science, The God of Papal Infallibility, The God of National Security, The God of Family Values, The God of Buddhist Selflessness, The God of Unconditional Love. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing.
The Guru Papers elegantly identifies the masks that power uses to hide its abuse of others. Authoritarianism is the exercise of authority which, presuming an unquestioning obedience, can tolerate neither question nor challenge, meeting either with disregard or punishment. Assiduously distinguishing the everyday exercise of authority - living life and making choices amongst the propositions it presents - from the bullying domination intrinsic to the type of power unwilling to recognize an equal, the authors carefully dissect the threads which, woven together, comprise the cloth of abuse. Whence abusiveness flows, certain features are invariably present.
When a "leader" sets up an ideological standard of perfection or purity that no human being can attain, and our consequent failure of such attainment becomes the raison d'etre for a double standard of treatment whereby the leader gives orders and we obey them, we have lost our freedom, particularly if we believe it is for our own good.
Whenever one pole of a duality is identified as essential to good living and the other pole leads to evil, behind that mask an authoritarian moralist weaves his tale positing that which he believes is most important, that which he says is God. Gurus and religions, politicians and governments, educators and schools, parents and families, and lovers and spouses frequently equate evil with selfishness and goodness with selflessness and sacrifice. They say if I am sufficiently sincere and pure of heart, I will sacrifice what I want for what they tell me is best. Thus, I will be a better man.
There is little difference between the cult leader who demands allegiance to the unproven presumption of his godliness, and the lover who, crying "let me be myself," claims his imperfections should be accepted without limit in the name of unconditional love. When a moral demand for sacrifice is made in the name of something sacred, be it the Immaculate Conception or an Idealized Lover, one best be brave and ask one's questions. If such courage is met with punishment or disregard, one better run. If one does not, one's conduct will communicate that there is something wrong, and it's not with the other guy.
The essence of authoritarianism attacks the inner certainty of individuals by claiming that it knows a superior, more moral path. It not only condemns an individual's assertion of self as selfish and wrong, but also is unwilling to engage in dialogue which does not adopt an unquestioning regard for that which it deems sacred. If an individual adopts this moral dichotomy, he can only mistrust himself as inferior. This, Alstad/Kramer say, is the purpose of authoritarian control: to generate internal self-mistrust which makes the individual available to imposition of control by an external authority.
They correctly expose the deception that such externally imposed control is benevolent. According to Kramer/Alstad, authoritarian persons are never benevolent because such persons use others for their own selfish purposes while lying about it, saying they are not, if they are saying anything at all. "Do as I say, not as I do; and if you dare question what I do, you are questioning what all good people know is beyond reproach. You, too, would have respect if only you were a good person. Since you are not, you must do as I say. It is for your own good." Such is the circle of authoritarian ideology.
The language of authoritarianism is the language that Orwell named double-speak. There's no Orwellian double-speak in this book, just hard-hitting practical logic that rips the guts out of sacred cows that have fed too long in pastures provided by a naive and idealistic population. Such a populace, wanting to be good, denies that someone who directs their focus on great and beautiful-sounding ideals could be ripping them off, as was one of Hitler's more notable tricks.
Thus, the book shows how both the willingness to psychologically dominate, and to surrender to such, are embedded in one another. The dominating and the dominated persons both believe in an unattainable and essential purity which requires extreme sacrifices, both in its name, as well as for its attainment. One person makes the sacrifice, after the other has convinced him he must, erstwhile he would be morally condemned as selfish and self-centered for having disobeyed the other who claims to know best.
The Guru Papers recognizes that both self-centeredness and selflessness exist - you cannot purge the self of selfishness - and must work together in oneself in balance. It forcefully argues why intelligent negotiation is life-affirming whereas dumb submission invites death. It meticulously dissects the myriad protean tricks authoritarianism employs to maneuver its subjects into place and keep them there. Access to information and accountability for one's conduct are essential for the brave new world that might emerge if the reptant strain of authoritarianism in humankind does not destroy this world first in the name of knowing better.
The book says listen to yourself and if you are degraded or expelled for asking questions, recognize that the inadequacy lies with the authoritarian character, not with you. The Guru Papers makes the authoritarian predicates accountable and exposes them when they are not. It's about time!
Books:
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- Where River Turns to Sky
- Who Will Run the Frog Hospital
- Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York
- You're Not You: A Novel
- 1,001 Ways to Make More Money as a Speaker, Consultant or Trainer: Plus 300 Rainmaking Strategies for Dry Times
- A Frolic of His Own
- A Hunger Artist (Short Prose of Franz Kafka Series)
- All This Heavenly Glory
- Ambition and Love in Modern American Art
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