Book Review: "The American Soul"

[dustdevil28]

by Jacob Needleman.

I finished this book about a month ago, but I negleted to post a review. This review may not go as well since it isn't as freash anymore, but I thought it was a good book to do a review on.

The author of the book is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and so I can guess that the majority of members here would pass on this book, but I gave it an honest chance.

The book does a nice job of observing the will and philosophy of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abe Lincoln. In that summary the constant theme is how these men saw in America a nation with a unique balance that allowed the individual man enough outward freedom that anyone could want while having a government that has had the remarkable ability to keep itself in check against corruption and dictatorship. A government that is meant to serve towards the good of the people it governs and for the most part does.

A few parts of the book I didn't like, the chapter tittled "The Crimes of America." It covers the crimes against the Native Americans and Slavery. In covering the Native American situation the book gave a nice history of the the Iroquis belief of creation that revolve around a belief in Carma that I enjoyed reading and although the Indian way of life was destroyed. With Slavery, the author does acknowledge that one cannot correct a crime by doing crimes apon others, or namely, descrimination against white people for the sake of justice. His goal is for Americans to be aware of the crimes and to resolve not to repeat them. In this I think we all know that the Indians will never be purged from the land, nor will we seek it, and slavery has and will always be a thing of the past for this country.

Overall I did enjoy this book as the author presented a different view on how to live life and to recognise the will of nature.

[dustdevil28]

just bumping this up.

[dustdevil28]

I mentioned to Chris during our exchange on the Dr. Death thread his typing and reasoning seemed to be very similar to the author and this book and mentioned that he may like to read it. If he happens to come back here and clicks on this thread, I'll leave this excerpt from his chapter on Thomas Jefferson as a taste of the book.

"Immediately, we are in front of the idea of human rights and capacities given us by nature (and nature's God) itself. And of course, we hear in this the most famous and important words of the American nation written by Jefferson in 1776. But it is not often recognized that these opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence are far more than a political statement. They embrace a powerful psycological and metaphysical claim, an overwhelmingly influential summary of assumptions about the nature of the human self and our place in the universal world. And these assumptions have become our assumptions about who we are, what we are and the nature of the real world."