Reviews – Page 7 – The Book Blog

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest -1975 DVD

Rating:

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest [1975] [DVD]

This 1975 classic portrayal of how the routine of an American psychiatric asylum turns upside down by one man, a disruptive, rebellious prisoner feigning madness, Randall P McMurphy, who was unforgettably portrayed by Jack Nicholson. It is a deceptively simple story, set within a stiflingly small world, the ward ruled by Nurse Ratched.

With the potential to fail miserably, considering the bleak setting, it is at turns dramatic, frightening, funny, moving and uplifting. It is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, a psychiatric nurse with a serious point well made, the lack of humanity in such institutions of the time. We may well feel we are on familiar ground here, since so many films, novels and TV series have similarly explored the dehumanising aspects of large institutions, for example, hospitals, prisons, schools and military establishments, all having received attention. Needless to say, if not the first, ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ is a definite front runner. One could draw a comparison with ‘Hamlet‘, set within the confined court of Elsinore, and the central question, “Is he mad or isn’t he”?

The novel ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ) is told through the eye of the narrator, a mute Native American, Chief Bromden. It can take a while to follow him, as he explores the idea that the patients were the only sane, truly human people within a closed society forced into compliance by a powerful, machine-like, autocracy, using drugs and electro-convulsive treatment on the patients, and more subtle means on the lesser staff. The film opted for a more objective, conventional narrative, which reportedly infuriated Ken Kesey. The rumour is that he would never watch the film.

Continue reading One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest -1975 DVD

Life’s Dominion- an argument about Abortion and Euthanasia

Rating:

Life’s Dominion: Argument About Abortion and Euthanasia

Today, doctors command technology that can keep people alive, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years. People near death, people under constant sedation, either through permanent incapacity or severe pain, people for whom there is little or no chance of improvement or recovery.

Most of us dread such a scenario, for ourselves or a loved one, life without thought or feeling, or to use the familiar analogy, a vegetable. Increasingly, people recognize the value of advance medical directives, legal documents stipulating that specified medical procedures should not be used to keep the signer alive under certain circumstances, and/or appointing someone else to make such decisions should the signer be unable.

Continue reading Life’s Dominion- an argument about Abortion and Euthanasia

The Facts of Life- Shattering the Myth of Darwinism

Rating:

The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myth of Darwinism by Richard Milton

I initially picked up Richard Milton’s 1992 book (since revised in 1997), on the strength of the title, and as an introductory look at the evolution debate. It goes without saying that at present there are many more books for than against evolution, but for two reasons I was interested in this one. I too, believe evolution as taught fatally flawed, but also read both sides of the argument in order to understand more about the physical world, and also how men choose to present evidence (see Darwin on Trial by lawyer Phillip Johnson). This issue is, I believe, of such importance, I welcome a trained journalist examining it.

Continue reading The Facts of Life- Shattering the Myth of Darwinism

Catastrophe

Rating:

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World (1999) by David Keys

During the last few years, there has been an upsurge of interest in theories about Catastrophism. A natural disaster like a large meteor impact or the eruption of a super-volcano would have the capability to wreck the modern world. Even the recent economic cost of one small Icelandic eruption should give pause for thought. There are at least two good reasons for concern. Firstly, the growing recognition that man has a responsibility to recognize the threats to our planet, in this respect, a similar argument to the Green environmentalists, but secondly, with computer and other technologies, we can analyse both fresh and long-held historical data in a way that clarifies the underlying issue. David Keys’ Catastrophe argues that a massive volcanic eruption in the sixth century precipitated the collapse of the ancient world.

He suggests that an eruption of Krakatoa in 535 A.D. was the primary cause of a global climatic catastrophe that caused widespread famine, pestilence, and extinction of many civilizations around the globe. Keys reasons that a huge volcanic eruption, near the equator, sent volcanic emissions high into the stratosphere where air currents distributed them around the globe, creating a veil through which sunlight struggled to penetrate. As a result, the earth sustained flooding and cooling over the next century, which caused the failure of crops. People and animals scattered and either starved to death, or died from pestilences that swept the civilized world in the sixth century.

Continue reading Catastrophe

With Shame Remembered

Rating:

With Shame Remembered (1978) by Bill Beatty

`With Shame Remembered’ is a short account by Bill Beatty on the history of `Transportation’, the policy of transporting petty criminals as well as hardened felons from 18th Century Britain to Australia. Often a horrifying story of cruelty, but also lighter moments. It has often been assumed that the transported convicts were all habitual criminals, the scum of Britain, sent away in the enlightened hope that life in a distant colony would reform them into useful citizens.
In reality, the death rates, immorality, brutality and even accounts of cannibalism, as well as the effects of the British policy on the Aboriginal population, leave a picture of `man’s inhumanity to man’, if not on the same scale, in the same spirit of Nazi Germany and the concentration camps.

Continue reading With Shame Remembered

The Reversing Earth

Rating:

The Reversing Earth (1982) by Peter Warlow

‘The Reversing Earth’ is a book that sets out to answer some very disturbing questions, Why did ancient peoples insist the sun at one time rose in the west and not the east? What could account for the magnetic anomalies preserved in our sea beds? Why did conditions for mammoths and many other animals change so catastrophically, and relatively recently? These and other questions not satisfactorily answered by any one theory, are brought together in a comprehensive, readable, and logical theory that also serves as a guide to Catastrophist, as opposed to Uniformitarian scientific thinking. It thus gives due consideration to Velikovsky, but should be more palatable to his detractors, as this theory does not involve impacts with other cosmic bodies. One of the original considerations by Velikovsky was why such a theory should be so unpalatable to us, and of course it is simply that, logically, if it happened once, it could happen again.

Continue reading The Reversing Earth

The Bible came from Arabia

Rating:

The Bible Came from Arabia

What to make of a radical theory, effectively rewriting Biblical geographical and historical preconceptions?
In short, as I understand the theory, the original land promised to Abraham was not the land of Palestine as we know it, but an area of western Arabia, bordering the Red Sea, now known as Asir. Evidence presented is almost entirely founded upon place-name or topographical evidence, but the author never discounts the ancient presence of some Jewish people in Palestine. After the return from Babylonian exile , in 537BC, the Jews `returned’ to the site of present day Jerusalem, hence the Biblical term `daughter of Zion’. Some thirty locations we associate with the Bible, predating 537BC, such as Salem, Zion, Hebron, Beersheba, etc. being named in Palestine in similar fashion to York (UK), New York (US). Other authors have identified this phenomenon associated with displaced peoples worldwide, such as The Key by John Phillip Cohane (1969). Biblical history after the Babylonian exile is largely accepted by the author.

Continue reading The Bible came from Arabia

The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain

Rating:

The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain (1946)

I came to this author via John Mitchell’s “Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions” where Comyns Beaumont is the subject of Chapter 15. There he is described as a ‘revisionist geographer’,

which, considering he claims many of the original locations of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Palestine in Britain, is something of an understatement.

He noticed the similarities between British place names and those in the ancient world, and concluded that many of these places had, in reality, been in Britain itself. Loch Carron in Scotland, for instance, and the nearby village of Erbusaig sounded to his ears strangely like Acheron, the Greek river of hell, and the mythical purgatory Erebus. Achilles, the Greek hero, grew up on the island of Skyros, which could be none other than the Isle of Skye. Bath had to be Athens; the names of the two cities were too similar for it to be otherwise.

Then, reasoned Comyns Beaumont, if the Flood had occurred in north-western Europe, it was surely likely that Noah, and every other biblical character, had lived there too. The British Isles were the true cradle of world civilization.

Why Freud was wrong

Rating:

Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis

Freud, according to this 1995 book, dispensed psychoanalysis “as if it was a science, when it seems more akin to a faith or a cult, with Freud as a modern ‘Messiah'”. It is an explanation of the human condition firmly rooted in Darwinian evolutionary theories. That Freud was able to do so may well be down to the 20th century spiritual vacuum, the failure of the churches post world war, and their little, if any, moral authority. It is in this respect that Freudian psychoanalysis bears comparison with Darwinian evolution. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory remains a popular psychiatric approach. Its use, however, has been chiefly in the United States. Thus New York, with nine million inhabitants (1980) had almost a thousand psychoanalysts, whereas Tokyo, with eleven million people, had but three!

Continue reading Why Freud was wrong

The Cruel Peace: Everyday life and the Cold War

Rating:

The Cruel Peace: Everyday Life and the Cold War (1992) by Fred Ingliss

As one of the generation that grew up with the Cold War, what did it mean at the time? I now realise it was very much a third-hand experience, a vague, somewhat indeterminate, threatening presence that although seemingly far removed from teenage life, threatened to obliterate all. It was conveyed through television, above all, on the news, documentaries and films, but also newspapers and books.
`On the Beach’ by Nevil Shute, I remember reading as a 12 year old, a profoundly depressing story of the end of the world `not in a bang, but a whimper’. Later, `The Third World War’ by General Sir John Hackett, which pretty convincingly said that the so-called `nuclear peace’ since 1945, was a cover-up. Perhaps that was why I failed to feel enthusiasm when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, although it would be churlish to ignore the changes for the better in Eastern Europe.

Continue reading The Cruel Peace: Everyday life and the Cold War