He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Rooney’s admirers won’t mind, though those unfamiliar with the commentator will wonder at the oddness of it all. Still, the present collection is mostly made up of offhand remarks about how much things have changed between then and now (“You don’t have to go to Mexico to get a taco”)-all vintage Rooney, of course, but with few surprises. Readers who think of Rooney as a lightweight may be surprised to find that he has meaty credentials as a journalist and writer, going back to his days with Stars and Stripes in World War II, when he wrote a book about the work of bomber crews that Edmund Wilson was moved to single out for praise in the New Yorker. Being white, I think blacks should forget it and go to work.” Most of the views gathered here are less provocative, however. He is also keenly aware of the contradictions of life in society, noting, “If I were black, I would be a militant, angry black man, railing against the injustices that have been done me.
Rooney has solid credentials as an old-fashioned liberal of an almost extinct type, one who dislikes hubbub and loudmouths but dislikes injustice even more.
#ANDY ROONEY 60 YEARS OF WISDOM AND WIT CRACKER#
As this gathering of his work over the years shows, his homespun pronouncements can veer from cracker barrel to downright eccentric, sometimes in the same sentence (“It sounds funny in the house without the television set on” “Doctors ought to think of some name for their outer office other than ‘waiting room’ ”). The nonagenarian is a veritable byword for folksiness.
#ANDY ROONEY 60 YEARS OF WISDOM AND WIT TV#
Thus Andy Rooney, who has made more than a few pennies over the years as a TV commentator, most famously for his sometimes curmudgeonly, sometimes cloyingly cute monologues on 60 Minutes. “If I reach into my pocket to pay for something and pull out a handful of change that turns out to be mostly pennies, I get discouraged about life.”
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