1 comments about Calvin & the Calvinists.

1. Calvin was a Calvinist as Paul Helm shows by his response to R. T. Kendall's work, "Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649". The only drawback I see with this fine little volume is that one would first need to be familiar with Kendall's work. Otherwise the reader would be lost. I first purchased Helm's book thinking it was a primer on Calvinism. While it may well serve this purpose, I discovered the need to obtain Kendall's book(no simple task) and then read Helm's response. Helm adroitly disabuses Kendall's notion that Calvin believed in a universal atonement, demonstrating that the English Calvinists were indeed his heirs and not merely those of Theodore Beza. While the discussion may be a bit out-of-date, it is not uncommon to find many with a propensity for the doctrines of grace who reject the concept of limited atonement. Hence Helm's book is still a valuble resource.

3 comments about Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon.

1. This book is in many ways superb. The writing is smooth, the judgments intelligently based on evidence, the archival research prodigious. But it leaves one with oddly little sense of Bacon the man. Partly that's because the authors don't speculate, confining themselves to the historical record. That's a great virtue, but it also means we never get a sense of Bacon's relations with his wife, or even his sexuality. We hear about his chronically poor health, but not what his symptoms suggest to a modern doctor. Also, the authors don't examine Bacon's writings in any sort of detail. This is definitely a "life and times", not a "life and letters."
   
   The authors rarely step back to give an overall picture. There are no scene-setting panoramas, no authorial intrusions to explain why, for example, they decided to go into such detail about the activities of Bacon's brother Anthony. One gathers that the authors believe Anthony and Francis were working closely together, but I would have liked to have their thinking explained more fully. (Although Anthony is practically the main character of the first quarter of the book, his death is mentioned only in passing.)
   
   These criticisms reflect my occasional irritation with the book, but they don't detract from the authors' tremendous achievement. If the authors had included everything I missed, the book would have been quite a bit fatter, and that would have been a negative, too. As it is, the book is (just barely) small enough to be read without risk of injury, unlike so many other modern biographies.
   
   The book contains a great deal about Bacon's political activities, as another reviewer has noted. That's because a great deal of Bacon's life was occupied with political activities. If all you want to read about is Bacon's scientific works, you shouldn't read a biography of their author. In the case of Isaac Newton, there is practically no difference between the life and the scientific work. But in Bacon's case, there is not only a difference but a dichotomy. He was a successful lawyer and politician who also happened to kick-start the Scientific Revolution.
   
   To summarize, Hostage to Fortune provides all the details, but not the outline. My advice would be to familiarize yourself with the basic course of Bacon's life and his achievements before reading this book, so you can fully appreciate its richness.



2. A powerhouse of academic scholarship, this book is the most tedious and boring biography I have ever read. Too many pages on Bacon's political career, too little on his scientific achievements.



3. While the book starts slowly with what seems to be an overly detailed account of Bacon's family and their activities, it is a clear headed and balanced account of a man who achieved fame across the centuries, as well as in his own time---but never great virtue, character or happiness in his own life. It is quite readable, and even engrossing in the second half. Scholars will appreciate the careful documentation and extensive reference to sources and supporting materials.

1 comments about Adorno: A Biography.

1. I first found this book in 2004, in the Virgin superstore in Nice on the day Derrida died, but it was in French: I considered even then buying it, and laboring through it with my Petit Robert, so magisterial it seemed.
   
   Fortunately, the English translation provided by Rodney Livingstone is idiomatic and most readable.
   
   This is more than a biography, it is also an introduction to Adorno's thought, which is comprehensively discussed as it unfolded under the awe-inspiring drama of a refugee who, as a formerly pampered child of the Wilhelmine *haute* bourgeois, had to undergo "the return of the nightmare of childhood" in the form of National Socialism: the absolute triumph of the bully.
   
   Many red herrings and university-pub arguments can be resolved using Muller-Doohm's comprehensive scholarship. It's clear from the text and the large number of footnotes and references that Adorno in no way disavowed his Jewish inheritance or betrayed radical students to the police.
   
   Other potential skeletons in Adorno's closet are comprehensively addressed, including two embarassing early efforts: an opera based on Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (which brings to mind Karl May westerns) and a review with moderate praise for a German oratorio based on words penned by Baldur von Schirach, the (half-American!) founder of Hitler youthdom.
   
   In the latter case, nondialectical reasoning devolves to mere free association in which almost any keyword can trigger a witch-hunt, because formal logic (as Adorno knew) is inadequate in any situation of missing information, which describes society as a whole then and now. Adorno neatly defused this situation, unlike so many others, by a straightforward admission of the truth: like Robert J. Oppenheimer, the American inventor of the atom bomb who like Adorno was privileged in childhood, Adorno was cash-register honest.
   
   Certainly, maddened monks of the new order can, and probably will, mine this text for nasty stuff. But the worst they will find is a midcentury bon vivant who had affairs outside of marriage with the tacit approval of a de Beauvoir-ish wife, Gretel Karplus, who was getting entirely too much material and spiritual gratification by her association with a husband loyal to her where it counted.
   
   That a philosophy and a sociology could emerge organically and idiomatically from a musician's biography will of course offend the system-builders *malgre lui* of liberalism, who are heavily invested in the orthogonal and the rule-driven, because they have no negative ontology and can't avoid making rules; the logic in which they find themselves embedded is a remorseless as Robespierre's "Church of the Supreme Being", and as dead on arrival, as we see in Iraq. Indeed, the very idea that a man who wanted to be a composer could instead become a sociologist based on his musical background will remind them of Adorno's slightly fraudulent maternal grandfather, about which Stephan Muller-Doohm has information that is new, relative to older biographies of Adorno.
   
   Adorno's maternal grandfather was an opportunistic fencing master who adopted the name Adorno to build an aristocratic clientele in the now-dead world of the nineteenth century, and the chapter on his grandfather is light opera...in which it all comes out right in the night, as it did in Rosa von Stamboul or the Student Prince, because of the improvement in bourgeois status during the 19th century in which a truly rising tide rose even somewhat leaky boats.
   
   But it is to be tone-deaf in the American way not to understand the "constellation" of light opera and the horrors of the twentieth century, about which Adorno was morally concerned, in that strong way which needs no religious grounding. Shostakovich was a composer Adorno did not admire, and Adorno does stand accused, in his musicology, of a simple racism constructed not by malice in his case but by refusal to leave Middle Europe psychologically. Nonetheless, Shostakovich unconsciously echoes an Adorno theme (the life that encompasses both beauty and horror, finding them irreconcilable) when in one of his symphonies, the operetta tune "And then I Go To Maxim's!" becomes a German attack, musically, a mass bourgeois psychotic overwhelm.
   
   The chapter on Adorno's grandfather conjures a world in which a significant segment of Europe's population was rising up and not falling down as today, and an examination of our own internal psychology (as well as experiments such as that conducted on General Electric employees in the 1920s) shows us that we're less alert to our objective position in society than to the sensation of motion up, or down.
   
   The direction went straight down, of course, in 1933, and the reader of this book is able through its great detail to cathect to what it must have felt like, which builds empathy 12 ways...sorely needed when people in the USA can be content with the idea of the same sort of thing happening to the sort of people who, in Baghdad, used to go to the rough equivalent of Maxim's.
   
   In fact, the very statement that "a musician can't ever be a sociologist!" is a type of that oh, so very categorial, so very administrative, statement which bugged Teddy, because the "can't" is even in formal logic subject to the riposte, why the hell not.
   
   Americans used to know this, and Adorno and Horkheimer found this refreshing as Muller-Doohm recounts. But it's an open secret, in today's America, that the rules are naturalized. America has become old Europe.
   
   Adorno, like any man, had his limitations. A wag right here on Amazon (cf. the reviews of Aesthetic Theory) calls him the intellectual equivalent of white flight, and Adorno's "On Jazz" was an unintended joke: as Muller-Doohm documents, Adorno simply confused American whitebread Pop (the 1940s equivalent of Britney and the Bee Gees) with jazz and blues. Adorno never retracted "On Jazz" although, as documented here, he knew Benny Goodman personally.
   
   We are spared any auto-da-fe, in the form of Adorno getting down to the sounds, such as are seen in Disney's 1939 Fantasia where the "classical" musicians play "jazz". Muller-Doohm mentions one American TV programme which Adorno liked, and this was a natural history program. Instead of a schizophrenic divide between work and leisure, or all work and no play, Adorno clearly drew no line.
   
   At the same time, he never seems to have found much of what he was looking for in Pop culture but always found something deficient. His reactions to the Beatles are reproduced and they bear the test of time, because in fact the Beatles became spokesmen for the rich in songs like "Revolution" less than ten years after Adorno grumped at them, and John Lennon, the most intelligent Beatle, went his own way.
   
   As to other red herrings, Adorno, as documented here, did call the cops on the rioting students.
   
   But this wasn't the first time Teddy found himself on the business end of the dialectic. Student radicals, in Germany and the USA, demanded a nondialectical and indeed mechanistic "change", a system reset on a world-computer. Today, the same clowns grown fat and old run companies and destroy lives in the name of the same second-order Maoism, a simpleton's rejection of the dialectic.
   
   So seemingly marginal, so misunderstood, and such a perfect gentleman, Adorno was always oddly sorted with thugs like Brecht. But his own theory was organically connected with his biography in a way unseen in public intellectuals, who all too typically mixed appeals to others for a compassion and ability to simply live with others that they did not manifest in their personal lives (with Brecht and Sartre being exhibits A and A prime).
   
   Adorno lived the categorical imperative in the sense that for most public intellectuals, a world filled with their clones would be a nightmare, but a world of Teddies would be a civilization.
   
   Muller Doohm's Adorno should in my view have Kant's epitaph:
   
   "For his natural gifts, not merely as regards the talents and motives that may incite him to employ them-but especially the moral law within him, stretch so far beyond all earthly utility and advantage, that he feels himself bound to prize the mere consciousness of probity, apart from all advantageous consequences-even the shadowy gift of posthumous fame-above everything; and he is conscious of an inward call to constitute himself, by his conduct in this world-without regard to mere sublinary interests-the citizen of a better."

5 comments about The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe.

1. I was given this book by a friend who knew my keen interest in learning about people who lived a great life as an example to others of the potential within us all.
   
   This little 55 page book doesn't go into too much details of the life of Walter Russell, it touches upon his accomplishments and success in all areas of his life and leaves out dwelling on any suffering he went through to accomplish great things but it does talk about HOW he did it.
   
   The best part of this book, besides giving us a glimpse into the life of an extraordinary man, is that it points the way for each of us to find that same measure of greatness within ourselves - if we choose to do so.
   
   Some have reviewed this as "stupidity" but the mans success speaks for itself and "stupidity" and sarcasm will not find you greatness...
   I enjoyed reading this book very much and hope you do to!



2. This little booklet is basically a rehash of the same insane nonsense that L. Ron Hubbard attempted to spew when Hubbard was doped to the gills on illegal narcotics and alcohol. Nothing that the author writes is even remotely scientific, testable, or falsifiable. All the book contains is endless outrageous stupidity and cynical commercial appeals to gullible, ignorant people.
   
   I acquired my copy of the booklet at my local public library where the book had been donated and the library staff rejected it as insane, possibly criminally fraudulent stupidity.



3. This book is inspirational, but lacks spirit connection. Mr. Clark basically wrote a bio about Mr. Russel Walter who was chosen to reveal incredible gifts from God. The book's composition gave me the impression that Mr. Walter's meditations reveal the secrets of the universe - everything stems from lightwaves. His reasoning for his talents (without books) bears witness to the inner self (Universal Intelligence). On a different page, he gives humble references and praise to famous Americans like Mark Twain, Tomas Edison and Henry Ford. I doubt if Mr. Walter really knows these people . . . they really worked hard for their wealth, yet they did not have a formal education; moreover, they all had a dark side.
   
   From a Biblical point of view, Satan did not test this man's faith like Job of the Bible, perhaps because of the deception of wealth lends itself to the evil one. The book makes the universal gifts sound so real without any sacrifice or struggle in Mr. Walter's life. Even Jesus suffered for his glory and power.
   
   As a Christian, I say "beware." You know the saying, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is a SCAM." One thing I do believe, YOU determine your fate . . . God willing.



4. I've just finished rereading this book for the third time.
   
   I was drawn to it again when challenged to create my "vision" for my business and life.
   
   If you are a results-oriented type person, then you will like this book because: Russell was: musician, professional skater, sculptor, artist, writer, architect (designed several NY buildings), RE developer, philosopher, etc.
   
   If you are a deep-thinker, connected to the Higher Source type of person, then you will like this book because: Ch. 5 shares the 5 laws of success that further connect you to the Source, there are great quotes like, "I believe mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius self-bestowed. Every successful man I have known. . . carries with him the key which unlocks that awareness and lets in the universal power that has made him into a master."
   
   "What is that key?" I asked.
   
   "The key is i-desire-i when it is i-released-i into the great eternal Energy of the Universe." i-italics-i p. 6 and 7
   
   Read it, and then recommend it to others. I had never heard of this man until an author/professor recommended it. Thanks Dr. James Payne!



5. Walter Russell lived a MOST AMAZING life. He knew "The Secret" innately, it appears. He seemed to move effortlessly through life persuing his dreams successfully and unselfconsciously, achieving all that he desired. Inspirational.

No comments about Life and Letters of Erasmus.

No comments about The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall.

No comments about On Jung (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

1 comments about Centred in Truth (Volumes 1 & 2).

1. Swami Nitya-swarup-ananda (1899-1992) was a famous and brilliant monk of the Ramakrishna Order who founded and developed the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Calcutta, India. Centered In Truth is an outstanding two volume testament to his life and wisdom. Volume One (654 pages) presents his fascinating biography, including two visits to the United States. Volume Two (474 pages) is collection of his personal writings, commentaries, reminiscences, and memorial lecture programmes in his honor. Shelley Brown became a Vedantist in 1953 and began a spiritual dialogue with Swami Nitya-swarup-ananda that continued until the day he died and therefore is the perfect choice for presenting this great man's life, thought, and accomplishments to a western readership. Highly Recommended.

1 comments about Angel with Crooked Feet.

1. This is one of the best books I've read this year, very inspirational. When most people would have given up, he pushed through. This book is proof that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

No comments about Greek Philosophers (BCP Greek Texts) (BCP Greek Texts) (BCP Greek Texts).