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Summary: No Time for Heroes: Feeding the Saints to the Beasts
Review: If the 20th century was the era of totalitarian states then it was also the era of many isolated and unsung individuals attempting to withstand particular instances of cruelty, brutality and inhumanity. Surprisingly, the institutions of oppression associated with Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the People's Republic of China resonate to one degree or another in larger modern organizations found in contemporary North America: multi-nationals, municipal entities, Federal corporations and agencies. The methods for destroying individuals are vastly improved over the knock on the door at midnight and the train ride to an Arctic concentration camp. Now, dissidents are eliminated cleanly, quietly, even "legally." The point of this book is that the forms of ethical resistance associated with the incredible heroism of figures such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Oscar Schnidler, and Harry Wu occur under different appearances today. Unfortunately, the effect of resistance to evil ordinarily produces futile results - the walls seem to specialize in falling in on the individual resister while the public good and general interest is hardly advanced following the episodes. In a sense, this is a dark book perhaps of neo-Gothic horror since the reality is that the doers of evil escape thanks to enjoying the presumption of right and virtual invisibility. Repressive organizational technique includes "learned helplessness" (the bureaucratic ability to appear innocent while invariably smashing the box marked "fragile"), the employment of lawyers skilled in turning statutes into injustice, and the exploitation of the inherent ability of modern organizations to avoid accountability and, even, recognition. Who needs this book? Professor Alford's book has particular value to would be authors, instructors, and playwrights. These will find the book muse-like for its stock of great and gory chucks of raw reality. In its pages new ideas, vistas and themes to inspire the imaginative writer, even the artist. One can readily imagine a contemporary Arthur Miller carefully taking notes as he or she turns the pages. For the discerning reader, this book is even collectible for its future scarcity - like a copy of Freud in Hitler's Third Reich. Prim organizational librarians and censorious officials will recoil at the ghastly truths and pitiable realities described within its pages. One may rest assured that the book will never found in the libraries of Federal agencies - unless the agency's business involves harassing whistle blowers. Those few copies placed in public libraries will certainly be culled out and disappear from sight when the real meaning and significance of it become known to the authorities. For the general consumer, entranced with the illusory world purveyed by the mass media - luxuriating in consumerism, searching for impressive books to place on the coffee table, Prof. Alford's tome is apt to be baffling, improbable, and irritating. Moreover, and worse of all, it has no pictures and does not even come with a music CD. "Tom Hardy"(see pages 27-29)
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