Book Review

Title: On Liberty
Author: John Stuart Mill
Publisher: Penguin Classics

No man, I believe, can possibly have read this book without being persuaded by Mill's eloquent arguments or moved by his sincerity and candor in his defense of free speech and individual liberty.

While most men do not doubt the necessity of individual liberty, most, including myself, hardly knew to what purpose or on what justification liberty should be defended and encouraged. We cannot be too often reminded that drastic consequences in exchanging freedom for the so-called "the good" of society in the last century. This book review continues.

Thursday, April 29, 2004

Book Review

Title: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
Author: Etienne De La Boetie
Translated by Harry Kurz

Timeless and timeliness are what I have chosen to greet this magnificent work by a man for mankind: Timeless as in its relevance now as when it was first penned four hundreds years ago; timeliness as we continue to witness the same incomprehension he faced in his time.

In this essay, he sought to examine how men could have consented to their own enslavement to tyranny. Not tyranny that subjugates men, he realised, but men choose bondage over freedom. This book review tells more.

Monday, April 26, 2004

Book Review

The 48 Laws of Power
Author: Robert Greene and Joost Elffers
London: Profile Books Ltd. 2001

This is one book which, I believe, politicians would openly condemn, religious leaders decry, and moralists object; yet, this would be the same book that they would quietly devour, study and apply in secrecy.

This book teaches statecraft - how one can secure power through deceits, manipulations and plotting.

Saturday, September 27, 2003

Book Review

The True Believer:
Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Author: Eric Hoffer
First Perennial Library, 1989, New York.

First published in 1951, this is one of very few books then that probed into the mind of a true believer whose blind faith and single-minded allegiance had nearly destroyed the world in the last century. 50 years on, some of Hoffer's analyses still ring true for fundamentalists, extremists and even terrorists which we now labeled these true believers. This book review tells more.

Friday, July 4, 2003