![]() ![]() There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. ![]() Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. ![]() The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). For the unwoke among us, Ramsey thoughtfully includes “Franchesca’s Simple Explanations of Not-So-Simple Concepts,” a “social-justice glossary” that includes definitions of such terms as “gender binary,” “cisgender,” “Latinx,” and “Slacktivism.”Īn admirable exploration of the rapidly morphing boundaries of social mores and online outrage the author helpfully points the way toward better communication. “I know the exact date I went from being a nobody, minding my own business in my corporate retail job,” she writes, “to being ‘internet famous’-and inadvertently making a lot of girls cry.” That moment came after she posted a video, “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls,” which went “super-massive, mainstream-news viral.” Ramsey’s narrative is a snappy mix of the funny, sad, and horrifying incidents that have shaped her life, many of which demonstrate lessons that can apply to a wide variety of modern-day readers. ![]() Ramsey was an early fan of YouTube and began making videos for fun. By high school, she had purchased her own domain name and began blogging. I basically grew up online.” She built her first website while still in middle school. Early on she admits that she is a product of social media: “I have a long and complicated history with the internet. With a program in the works with Comedy Central, the author offers her story as an illustration of why, in today’s overheated social and political environment, it is more important than ever to pay close attention to how we communicate with each other. Ramsey has a solid media platform: A comedian, actress, and blogger, she was a writer and correspondent for the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and Anderson Cooper 360. The host of MTV’s web series Decoded chronicles her difficulties navigating the early days of social media and her evolution as an advocate for social justice. ![]()
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