BizCar - English Language Books: International supplier of books in the English language
|
|
|
| The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95 (61.09 RON)
Buy New: $18.43 (43.39 RON)
You Save: $7.52 (17.70 RON) (29%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 57837
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.5
ISBN: 0060559799
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3082
EAN: 9780060559793
ASIN: 0060559799
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Customer Reviews:
 TOO WORDY; PREMISE BREAKS DOWN June 27, 2008
6 out of 24 found this review helpful
I was disappointed: the first few chapters held promise and were interesting, had one thinking that something great was coming--even named a few names, then it petered out and became tedious and lost the premise.
 Difficult but worthwhile June 19, 2008
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
This is one of the very few books of recent years that has kept me up most of the night reading. Those who discount the power of the type of schmoozing Sharlet describes have not spent much time working in and around government. I would recommend a trilogy: add to this book Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience and you will get a pretty fair picture of the cynical, amoral manipulators who have been at the heart of our recent history and why they have been so successful. It's a difficult read, but so what? I was struck with the thought that Sharlet is actually describing a cult. In this case, the cult revolves around the idol of Jesus, who offers the monumental advantage of being dead and therefore never showing clay feet, nor contradicting the pronouncements made in his name. Thus, the greedy can more freely persuade the gullible to be happy with their lot in life. We need many more investigative journalists like Sharlet.
A compellingly brilliant account of power in America June 5, 2008
58 out of 61 found this review helpful
A compellingly brilliant account of power in America and how it's shaped by religion. 'The Family' chronicles the ideas advanced by the elite Christian fundamentalist group of that name at the highest levels of government during the past half century. Through its White House and congressional connections, the Family has influenced the deployment of US power, especially in foreign policy during the Cold War and beyond. Led by the talented and Machiavellian Doug Coe, the group has operated sub-rosa in the corridors of power unhindered by democratic accountability.
Jeff Sharlet, a scholar-writer on the nexus of religion & politics, pursues three goals in this remarkable book: (1) To trace elite fundamentalism's lineage from Jonathan Edwards in the 18th c. through the 19th c. religious leader Charles Finney to the present; (2) To demonstrate the Family's behind the scenes role in deployment of American power; and (3) To challenge the purely secular American historical narrative by arguing the role of religion behind the facade of formal power.
Sharlet accomplishes the first objective with verve, the Finney chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Based on his research in the Family's archives, the second goal is achieved, especially on the group's involvement in blunting US de-Nazification policy in postwar Germany, facilitating Indonesia's Suharto's crushing of East Timor, and encouraging the Somalian dictator and other similar types. The author's third challenge is the most ambitious, but I believe he meets it.
In fact, if the critical sociologist C. Wright Mills who wrote the influential 'The Power Elite' (1956) were alive today, I expect he'd be among the first to welcome 'The Family' revelations on the secretive role of Coe's elite "followers of Christ in government, business, and the military" in the projection of American power.
provocative, different from other christian right books June 4, 2008
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
This is a surprising and engrossing book--part investigative journalism, part immersion, part history, Sharlet assembles shocking (and often funny) evidence from the group's archives, shows its operation in contemporary political life, and considers the deeply personal dimensions of the Family for some of its members. Most importantly, he weaves the Family's history into a larger thread of American religion and foreign policy. While the past few years have witnessed a flood of books on the current fundamentalist moment, this book will stand the test of time for the originality of its analysis, which moves beyond short-sighted hysteria and looks at the theological, historical (and sometimes erotic) underpinnings of a fundamentalist vision that has been largely neglected by scholars and journalists while it acts powerfully below the public surface of legislation and politics.
There is a tendency in books about the Christian Right to assume that there is an average American voter (the reader) and that this person is purely and simply a victim of the Right, a tendency to fall into the essentially reactionary trap of blaming everything on George Bush--or Dick Cheney--to take this genre of analysis to its ultimate conclusion. Sharlet is one of the few authors I've read who consistently rejects this. He understands fundamentalism as a full-fledged social movement--it is contentious and unified, ideological and deftly pragmatic, alternately exhilarating and pedestrian, the product of perfect timing and a phenomena decades in the making. From this perspective, the Family's preference for secrecy and its obsession with elites is alarming, but more frightening to me was the fact that their agenda (the crushing of organized labor, the support of dictatorships abroad, the resurrection of sexual purity codes) is one that has hurt many Americans, but also one in which they have been complicit.
Nuanced and complex June 4, 2008
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
Because I have had a professional relationship with Jeff Sharlet in the past, and cannot approach The Family as a single work (instead viewing it with the respect and admiration I have for all Sharlet's writing) I was not going to review this book. However, the idiocy of the above rant requires me to say this:
This book is as complicated and nuanced as the religio-political landscape of our very tricky world. For this very reason, many people will NOT understand it. Sharlet has not dumbed anything down. He has not reduced the world to a two-party system, or pandered top our need for answers (that do not exist). Instead, he has approached his topic with an eye for connectedness and complexity. Remaining at hall times a sharp eye, a brilliant writer, and an honest man He has done this at no small cost to himself.
If certain readers want simpler answers, they have FOX news. For those of you willing to stretch a little, Jeff Sharlet has written an amazing book.
|
|
|
