FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For a Review Copy or to schedule a
Darcy Cohan
PoliPointPress, Director of Publicity
p: 415-339-4111
e: darcycohan@p3books.com
Never before has American capitalism been more broadly scrutinized for its moral failings. Its primary sin, we are told, is greed. But in his radical, intellectually adventurous, and witty new book, (PoliPointPress, September 2009), Curtis White argues that the problem with capitalism is not in its sins but in its virtues.
These virtues come originally not from within capitalism itself, but from what White calls the , an ancient-even primitive-ethic. The virtues of the Barbaric Heart are familiar and still very much alive for most Americans who, like athletes, Darwinians, military commanders, and businesspeople, believe that winning, surviving, triumphing, and accumulating great wealth are virtues. Tragically, all of these familiar qualities are dependent on the ultimate "virtue of necessity": violence.
Searching deeply within the worlds of finance, environmentalism, and religion, White's moving and often witheringly funny account is a summons to understand what virtues threaten us and what alternate virtues offer us hope.
Among the subjects White discusses in The Barbaric Heart:
• How Americans worship Hot Air Gods.
• The Idols of Environmentalism.
• The relationship of human work and ecology.
• Sustainability as a "Good without light."
• How Beauty, not technology, is the best response to environmental destruction.
• And an inspiring description of a "tree-hugger's faith."
The Barbaric Heart has been praised as "intellectually acrobatic" and will leave readers with the hope that humans might someday create a more "thoughtful" world, in which we will no longer be "slaves, and not instruments of violence, but beings intent upon the beautiful as a social principle."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Curtis White is a novelist and social critic living in Normal, Illinois. Among his recent books are
Requiem, The Middle Mind, and The Spirit of Disobedience. He is also a frequent contributor to Harper's Magazine, Orion, and Playboy. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Illinois State University.
# # #
THE BARBARIC HEART:
Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature
by Curtis White
$16.95, PoliPointPress, September 8, 2009, Trade Paper
ISBN: 978-0-9817091-2-3
181 pages, 5 1/2"x 8 1/2"
For a Review Copy or to schedule a
Darcy Cohan
PoliPointPress, Director of Publicity
p: 415-339-4111
e: darcycohan@p3books.com
Never before has American capitalism been more broadly scrutinized for its moral failings. Its primary sin, we are told, is greed. But in his radical, intellectually adventurous, and witty new book, (PoliPointPress, September 2009), Curtis White argues that the problem with capitalism is not in its sins but in its virtues.
These virtues come originally not from within capitalism itself, but from what White calls the , an ancient-even primitive-ethic. The virtues of the Barbaric Heart are familiar and still very much alive for most Americans who, like athletes, Darwinians, military commanders, and businesspeople, believe that winning, surviving, triumphing, and accumulating great wealth are virtues. Tragically, all of these familiar qualities are dependent on the ultimate "virtue of necessity": violence.
Searching deeply within the worlds of finance, environmentalism, and religion, White's moving and often witheringly funny account is a summons to understand what virtues threaten us and what alternate virtues offer us hope.
Among the subjects White discusses in The Barbaric Heart:
• How Americans worship Hot Air Gods.
• The Idols of Environmentalism.
• The relationship of human work and ecology.
• Sustainability as a "Good without light."
• How Beauty, not technology, is the best response to environmental destruction.
• And an inspiring description of a "tree-hugger's faith."
The Barbaric Heart has been praised as "intellectually acrobatic" and will leave readers with the hope that humans might someday create a more "thoughtful" world, in which we will no longer be "slaves, and not instruments of violence, but beings intent upon the beautiful as a social principle."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Curtis White is a novelist and social critic living in Normal, Illinois. Among his recent books are
Requiem, The Middle Mind, and The Spirit of Disobedience. He is also a frequent contributor to Harper's Magazine, Orion, and Playboy. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Illinois State University.
# # #
THE BARBARIC HEART:
Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature
by Curtis White
$16.95, PoliPointPress, September 8, 2009, Trade Paper
ISBN: 978-0-9817091-2-3
181 pages, 5 1/2"x 8 1/2"