Evil and world order (World perspectives ; v. 49) [Hardcover]

William Irwin Thompson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 116 pages
• Publisher: Harper & Row; 1st edition (1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060142766
• ISBN-13: 978-0060142766
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,695,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thompson was born in Chicago in 1938, but moved to Southern California in 1945, where he grew up to graduate from Los Angeles High School in 1957 and Pomona College in 1962. He received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study at Cornell in 1962 and a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship to do his doctoral research in Dublin in 1964. He received his doctorate from Cornell in 1966 and published his first book, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916 in 1967. In 1972, his second book At the Edge of History was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1986 he won the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award for his novel, Islands Out of Time.

Thompson has taught at Cornell, MIT, and York University in Toronto. His interdisciplinary interests are indicated in that he studied anthropology, philosophy, and literature at Pomona, and literature and cultural history at Cornell. He has served as visiting professor of religion at Syracuse University (1973), visiting professor of Celtic Studies at St. Michael's College, the University of Toronto (1984), visiting professor of political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (1985), Rockefeller Scholar at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco (1992-1995), and Lindisfarne Scholar-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in the autumn of each year from 1992 to 1996. In 1995 he designed an evolution of consciousness curriculum for the Ross School in East Hampton, New York and serves as a Founding Mentor, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ross_School). Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association in 1972 and served as its Director until 1997. He has now retired from Lindisfarne and teaching and lives in Maine and devotes himself to writing essays and poetry; he often contributes to the Wild River Review. (http://www.wildriverreview.com/) and the Seven Pillars Review.(http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really gets you thinking..., February 3, 2001

By 

C. McGowan (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evil and world order (World perspectives ; v. 49) (Hardcover)

It is a shame that this book is now out of print. It should be required reading for all public policy majors, political science buffs and anyone working in foreign policy.

Thompson paints a rather frightening picture of misguided attempts to alleviate suffering in the world. Most of us feel compelled to either initiate or join up with efforts to end global poverty, to feed the starving and educate the illiterate citizens of the global community. However, many programs designed to help often end up hurting. For example, feeding starving children in a country unable to support its population may lead to additional suffering when these children reach sexual maturity and then bear still more offspring. What Thompson does in this enlightening volume is point out the irony of causing suffering by trying to allieviate it. He goes on to say that, of course, we must feed starving people because it is our nature to do so, but why not allow foreign policy to look at the big picture. If a country cannot sustain its population, the population must be controlled; all the food in the world sent to a starving nation will do no good in the long run unless the reasons for the dire situation are addressed and remedied.

This book had a significant impact on me when I read it over 15 years ago. Its message has not dimmed through the years and, if anything, is even more timely now that India's population has topped 1 billion.