G.W.

Woefully outdated and uncomfortable

Revisado: 11-19-20

As a conservative I found this painful to listen to and not at all prescient about the future. He has a few good points mixed in, but his repeated returns to racism as a conservative value are extremely uncomfortable and his fear that the Soviet Union would bury the West was long ago disproven. He seemed to believe the West was only strong when it had political and military control over a growing segment of the world. He fails to see that it is western ideology that is its strength and that as this spreads, the West continues to benefit. In the end, he wore the same blinders he accused the liberals of wearing.

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

Not what I expected

Revisado: 03-20-19

Not a lot of science in this book. The title is pretty misleading. The book is really about dealing with pain and loss. It seems like he’s saying if we had more faith we’d have less loss, although he also says that’s not what he’s saying. Regardless, the book isn’t about science and any claimed connections to quantum theory are strained at best. There are some good quotes from scientists, but they really have nothing to do with the book.

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Way too short

Revisado: 01-06-18

Interesting summary of Ur history, but there's so much more that should have been included.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Interesting but flawed

Revisado: 01-04-18

Includes a lot of great insights about humanism and the directions our society and technologies are headed. On the flip side, he's much too quick to dismiss the possibility of the supernatural, even when it offers better explanations for things he admits he can't explain (the human mind, the basis of morality). He proposes the idea that humanity will kickstart the creation of an all powerful Internet of All Things that will drive the universe toward some ultimate purpose, but completely dismisses the suggestion that such a power already exists. If he can accept that the universe will someday have an all powerful intelligence driving its machinations, why not take the next step and admit that such a force is already at work driving the world we know and directing humanity toward its predetermined goal?

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Snarky and condescending

Revisado: 12-12-17

Basically just a long series of stories to prove that America has always been classist, without offering any alternative path. It's a take down of our history and society without any offer of improvement or recognition of any advancements that have been made. She ignores any data on social mobility or the statistics showing that literally half the people in America's top quintile were not born into that class. Things are not perfect in America, but I fail to see how this book offers to make anything at all better.

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esto le resultó útil a 29 personas

Lots of details but not much insight

Revisado: 03-15-16

I understand that historians today believe it is their job to report facts without critiquing them, however, this book could have been a lot more interesting had the author made some attempt to weave these disparate histories into some kind of narrative on the drivers influencing the Renaissance. The time spent covering societies in south and mesoamerica made it clear that the author didn't have any interest in explaining the relevance of the various stories with the supposed subject of the book. The abrupt ending was also disconcerting without any type of closure or explanation for why this particular event in SE Europe should signal the end of whatever era she was claiming to cover.

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

Disturbing

Revisado: 08-20-15

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Scorsese's forward says he loves this book, and he seems to have a fascination with Judas, perhaps identifying with him most among the characters in the Bible. In a pivotal point in the story, a defrocked priest makes the claim that "Christ would apostatize" and the protagonist ultimately decides to do the same, being egged on by an imagined figure of Christ asking him to trod on his face. While I do not want to condemn someone who has faced a trial I have never had to endure, the fact is that Christ did not apostatize when given the chance. He had the choice to denounce his divinity claims, but did not. The priests in this story did not make the same choice.
What bothers me about this story is that it seems to be telling people who are asked to deny their faith at the tip of a sword that their lives are being given in vain. If Christ is real, it says, he will forgive them for apostasy, and if he is not, they are dying for nothing. Either way, their sacrifice is pointless. I disagree that this is the lesson to be taken from the martyrs in Japan (or the current martyrs dying in the middle east). I don't think you need to even believe in God to see the valor in the sacrifice these martyrs made and the evil of the men torturing them in an attempt to control their beliefs. The priests in this story not only betrayed their faith, they helped the government hunt down other believers, promoting the very evil they pretended that their apostasy was meant to end.
It is not through apostasy that the church will grow. It is through the faith of the brave peasants who gave their lives for a hope in the world hereafter. Perhaps our faith is not as strong as these peasants, but we diminish their sacrifice and we call evil good when we pretend that the role of Judas has equal value in this world as the role of Christ.

What could Shusaku Endo have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The book should have dealt more with the negative impacts of the priests' denials rather than leaving it to be inferred in the details of the epilogue. It does not honor the deaths of these martyrs to claim that their deaths were avoidable if they had only understood that Christ forgives apostasy. It is by their faith that the church is built, not by pragmatic decisions of people who convince themselves that evil is good.

Which scene was your favorite?

I was moved by the character of Monica who looked into death unafraid and gave her life for a priest who would abandon his own faith and everything she had died for.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

it was an interesting story and an important period of history for anyone in the church or with European or Japanese blood to understand.

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