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评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Journalist/environmentalist McKibben ( The End of Nature ) here performs, as a challenge to current thinking about the environmental crisis in the West, a provocative reading of the book of Job. Blaming a prevailing consumer capitalism which claims that ``more is better'' and ``economic growth is unquestionably good'' for humankind's neglect of the natural world, McKibben argues that such a worldview also produces a destructive kind of individualism in which humanity locates itself proudly at the center of the universe. Taking Job's encounter with God in the whirlwind as a model, McKibben urges instead an approach to nature that is grounded in joyous celebration of its wonder and beauty as well as in a humbler perception of our place in it. While this book is marred by repetitive writing and its readings of Job are often narrow, it nonetheless offers a powerful statement. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
A thorough compilation of letters that sheds new light on the Scottish writer and minister (1824-1905), a seminal figure in modern fantastic literature. Since his rediscovery in 1947 by C.S. Lewis, MacDonald's romances (especially Lilith and Phantastes) and fairy tales have been ranked as classics of world literature. But despite a slew of biographies, the Scot's inner life has remained somewhat veiled, a problem that this outstanding collection helps to redress. The letters--directed for the most part to MacDonald's wife and children--disclose little about his literary tastes (although he does confess an aversion for Thackeray) and nothing about his writing methods. But they are aglow with what editor Sadler (English/Bloomsburg University) calls MacDonald's ``incurable optimism,'' a product of his deeply held Christian faith (the same theological outlook that made his books the prototypes for C.S. Lewis's Narnia septet). At age 21, MacDonald writes that ``God is now with me....I try to trace him in little things.'' Later, he tells his mother that ``I wish to be delivered from myself. I wish to be made holy.'' Letters to Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and other notables underscore this spiritual drive, which is evident especially in the face of tragedy: Of his brother's death, MacDonald writes that ``what he was he is now--only expanded, enlarged, and glorified.'' He chats about travels to Boston and Algiers; lectures, homilies, poetry, and novels; the griefs of old age (``I have never known such a time. Friend after friend going'')- -each letter adding to the overall impression that, in MacDonald, English literature came as close as it ever has to producing a genuine saint. Yet another treasure, noble and uplifting, from Britain's Victorian trove.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Environmentalist McKibben, famous for The End of Nature (1989) and author of a meditation on television and the material culture, The Age of Missing Information (1992), here seizes on the story of Job as a metaphor for contemporary civilization's problems with the environment. Or, rather, the environment's problems with contemporary civilization: Job hardly matters in the grand scheme. God, speaking from the whirlwind, admonishes Job for his self-importance; that he is a good man and that the woes visited upon him are unjust is irrelevant. Humans aren't at the center of creation any more than badgers are, and the forces of nature march inexorably. Just now, however, civilization is demonstrating a pernicious ability to actually alter nature. Primarily because of the greenhouse effect, temperatures will rise, coasts will be flooded, species wiped out--and humanity, like Job, will be punished. Unless, of course, we come to our senses and take action--or unless we embrace a spiritually bankrupt, bioengineered, completely managed world that eliminates the laws of nature as we know them and that also, McKibben speculates, will eliminate God. A fancy argument, and McKibben, who actually seems to believe that we "live in a society where for most people the very idea of `need' has been banished," often seems precious and privileged. Still, his collection of lectures will circulate where his other books have. ~--John Mort
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Arguing that we are entrapped by ``our belief that endless material growth and expansion is both possible and fulfilling,'' McKibben asks, ``How can one believe deeply in God and yet be so cavalier about God's creation?'' An environmentalist, Sunday school teacher, and the author of The End of Nature and The Age of Missing Information, McKibben uses the biblical story of Job to articulate modern assumptions that hide us from the larger perspective of God's grand and glorious creation. In the process, he comments on the modern sins of consumerism, overreliance on automobiles, overpopulation, and placing ourselves at the center. His illustrations of how we are creating a ``managed world'' that will be ``even less hospitable to our religious message than the current one'' are wide-ranging. Recommended for public libraries.-Carolyn Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.