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). Compassionate and sensitively told, Greene’s story accomplishes an exceptionally difficult feat: transforming tragedy into both a spiritual journey and a celebration of wonder.Ī poignantly uplifting memoir of moving forward after terrible loss. The powerful visions of death and rebirth they experienced helped them to understand and embrace the brokenness within themselves with love, grace, and gratitude. After the couple discovered they were pregnant, they went to see a ceremonialist in New Mexico who they hoped would help them process Greta’s death along with the impending birth of the son who would never know his sister.
They took up yoga while Greene “became a prospector for safe screaming spaces” where he could release pent-up emotional suffering. They also decided to leave the home where Greta “padd agreeably around every corner” and start a new life-complete with what they hoped would one day be another child-elsewhere in the city. After feeling Greta’s presence in a local park, the author suddenly realized that “there will be more light upon this earth for me.” He and Stacy began attending grief workshops, one of which included a medium who encouraged them to “pay attention to signs” from their loved ones. “Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it,” he writes, “a blinding fission of every emotion.” A bitter rage made Greene hate the “unexamined happiness” of the people-especially parents-he saw around him while Stacy was forced to confront not only her own anguish, but that of her mother. Overcome with grief and guilt for having “failed this little person so completely,” the couple struggled to fit the shattered pieces of their life together again. Shockingly, a brick from an eighth-story windowsill fell on Greta’s skull, causing irreversible brain damage. One day, Greene and his wife, Stacy, left Greta with her grandmother. A Brooklyn-based music journalist’s account of his 2-year-old daughter’s accidental death and his journey to acceptance of her passing.
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