In this volume in Llywelyn’s “Irish Century” series her characters painfully experience the transition from traditional Republicanism to civil rights activism as Catholics in Northern Ireland seek social justice in the face of bigotry.
This book follows “1921” in Llywelyn’s “Irish Century” series. It’s a sad, tragic tale of the years following the Civil War, an era marked by poverty and hidden violence.
Real-money trading (RMT) is the practice of exchanging goods from virtual worlds (multiplayer online games, or MMORPGs) for real-world currency. In “Play Money” Jullian Dibbell describes his year-long excursion into the world of RMT.
The first part of the book is good, the last part it good, but too much of the book’s middle is taken verbatim from his blog. This isn’t writing, it’s recycling. He mentions two attempts to visit RMT operations (”gold farms“), but both are failures, which makes me wonder just how good a reporter he is.
The book is a mildly interesting memoir, but not nearly as thorough as Castronova’s examination of the same subject.
In “Empire” Card tries to map the fall of the Roman republic onto contemporary America. It’s an interesting concept that, in the hands of an accomplished thriller writer, could have been developed into a fascinating novel. Unfortunately Card - despite his abilities as a science fiction writer - doesn’t manage to pull it off. His second American Civil War is implausible and his heroes aren’t fully developed characters; worse, it’s dull. The “surprise” in the plot isn’t.
The best and most thoughtful part of the book is Card’s afterword. It’s worth reading and, since, he’s published it online, you can read it without having to slog through the novel itself.
Luke Timothy Johnson
The “search for the historical Jesus” is the attempt to find more - or more accurate - information about Jesus that can be found in a literal reading of the Gospels. By dispensing with faith and using the tools of textual analysis, groups like the Jesus Seminar claim to be able to find the “true story” of Jesus, untainted by theology. In “The Real Jesus”, Luke Timothy Johnson demonstrates that the study of “the historical Jesus” is an empty pursuit, that deconstructing the Gospels into bits and reassembling them is an arbitrary practice that results only in a circular chain of assumptions.
It’s important to note that Johnson has no objections to analyzing the gospels with all the tools available to the modern scholar. I doubt that he would have any objection to people like Fr. John P. Meir, who use those tools to clarify and explain the gospels. What he’s objecting to here is the practice of misusing those tools to support ideas and “facts” not present in the Scriptures.
Johnson rejects the “historical Jesus” in favor of what (or Who) he calls “the real Jesus”, the Jesus known to Christians through the ages. The “real Jesus” is someone that the faithful have a relationship with, not a Frankenstein’s monster based on bits and pieces dissected from the Gospels. Christianity, Johnson says, is not about what happened in the 1st century, it’s about believers experiencing the living Christ. He also points out that the message of Jesus in the Gospels is consistently a message of His self-sacrifice; this consistency is the one of the things that the dissectors destroy.
“The Real Jesus” is short, concise, and pointed. While some of the first half’s specific criticisms of the historical Jesus crowd are now a bit dated, the second half on the “real Jesus” and on the limitations of history (not history’s invalidity, its limits) is timeless.
“Against All Enemies” starts with an account of 9/11 as experienced in the White House by a member of the national security staff. Though dramatic, the reconstructed dialog in this section is either overly Clancy-like or Clancy is more accurate that I thought. Opening drama aside, the book is a fascinating first-person history of the war between the US and Al-Qaeda. Its author was an insider who served as adviser to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.
No one in the Bush administration escapes Clarke’s criticisms (though this Clinton partisan also points out Clinton’s rejection of his plans to destroy Al-Qaeda’s camps). It would be unbelievable if the administration’s incompetence wasn’t’ so well-documented elsewhere. Bush not only failed to pay attention to the risks before 9/11, squandered international good-will following the attacks, but embarked on the war with Iraq, a complete tangent from the real war on the terrorists. Clarke relates a slow train wreck of national policy, a disaster of epic proportions. His predictions have been validated by events since his book came out in 2004.
Clarke’s self justifying tone detracts from his story. Are we to believe that he had it all scoped out but nearly everyone around him failed? In fairness, my reaction to Clarke’s attitude may be partially a reaction to the reader of the audio book version I listened to. In any case, Clarke’s arrogance doesn’t invalidate his conclusions: the US government failed to pay attention to the growth of Al-Qaeda, failed to heed evidence of an impending “spectacular” prior to 9/11… failed to protect the nation. To some degree, and to his credit, Clarke’s book is an attempt by at least one government official to make amends for that failure.
Every American should read this book.
