Review by Library Journal Review
Edmundson (English, Univ. of Virginia; Why Football Matters) here contends our culture has abandoned its ideals and we are worse off for it. Comprised of six chapters-the first three on ancient ideals, the last three on threats to ideals-and bookended by a short introduction and conclusion, Edmundson's narrative claims that we've become practical, materialistic, and skeptical and that few of us live up to ideals, such as those represented by Homer's Achilles, who sought greatness, and Hector, who sought to serve. But if we are truly as he says then it seems we live up to a different Homeric ideal-that of Odysseus, cunning, persevering, and determined. The author blames today's economic, environmental, and social problems on our failure to live up to the principles of greatness, sacrifice, and compassion, but he offers no substantive argument for this. Ironically, though, we do strive to be like Achilles-to be great-but for many, their Achilles' heel is the unwavering assumption that they are already great and need not change. VERDICT Because of the aforementioned flaws, this title is not recommended.-William Simkulet, Univ. of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood Cty., Marshfield © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
What happens in the rush to gain the world? We lose our souls, of courseand, Edmundson (English/Univ. of Virginia; Why Football Matters, 2014, etc.) adds, our ideals to boot. "The profound stories about heroes and saints are passing from our minds," writes the author on the first page. They're passing from our minds because we are so occupied with making money, that most realistic of endeavors, that we have forgotten even the barest outlines of how to be idealistic. If this seems a grumpy-old-man jeremiad, Edmundson avoids get-off-my-lawn, Harold Bloom-ian impulses by almost immediately settling on a most unlikely culprit: namely, William Shakespeare, whom he credits for putting our minds onto the matters of the bourgeois age so thoroughly that he finds, and we find, "little use for chivalry and the culture of heroic honor." Other players in Edmundson's drama of the great states of Self and Soul include Freud, Plato, Blake, Tolstoy, Buddha, Jesus, and Donne, to say nothing of Frye and Pound. In short, it's the usual who's who of the Humanities 101 of yore, though that course has now given way to less heady surveys. Edmundson identifies three central virtues: courage, compassion, and contemplation. Each has found numerous interpretations; the author, for example, contrasts Achilles and Hector in the Homeric poems, the former as an example of self-interest, the latter as one of self-sacrifice, each addressing the matter of courage in different ways. Edmundson's essays are smart and to the point, and there are some very good turns, as when he lists all the positive things that come from a life devoted to contemplating the ideal. A big-screen TV is not among them, but, he counsels by way of consolation, "having freed yourself, you will make others free." Though Shakespeare fans may feel defensive, Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
