Synopses & Reviews
American religion, Steven Goldberg claims, has fallen into a trap. Just at the moment when it has amassed the political strength and won the legal right to participate effectively in public debate, it has lost its distinctive voice. Instead of speaking of human values, goals, and limits, it speaks in the language of science.
In the United States, science has extraordinary influence and respect. American religious leaders seeking prestige for their point of view regularly couch their responses to technological developments, or defend their faith, in scientific terms. They claim, for instance, that medical studies demonstrate the power of prayer, that science validates the Bible, including its account of creation, and that patenting the genetic code is dangerous because genes are the essence of who we are.
But when ministers, priests, and rabbis expound on double-blind studies and the genetic causes of behavior, they do not elevate religion, Goldberg maintains, they trivialize it. Seduced by Science examines how, by allowing scientific discourse to set the terms of the debate, American religious leaders facilitate religion's move away from its more appropriate and important concerns of values, morality, and humility. Science can tell us a lot about what is but precious little about what ought to be and our religious leaders often miss the chance to add an important voice from a faith-based perspective to the public debate that follows scientific advances.
Discussing the most recent and pressing collisions between science and religion-such as the medicinal benefits of prayer, the human genome project, and cloning-Goldberg raises the timely question of what the appropriate role of religion might be in public life today. Tackling the legal aspects of religious debate, Goldberg suggests ways that religious leaders might confront new scientific developments in a more meaningful fashion.
Review
"Provides the reader with a lucid and accessible entre to the contentious issues surrounding the role of religion in American public life." - Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
Review
"A readable book that will be a valuable addition to university libraries and useful reading in courses on science and values." - Religious Studies Review
Review
"Insightful and penetrating." - Science
Review
"This interesting book makes a strong demand on religiously inclined readers . . . warning not to justify things of the spirit by signs material. . . . Goldberg's warning is one to take seriously." - The Christian Science Monitor
Review
"Goldberg's expertise in the legal system, science, and contemporary social issues allows him to frame public debates in their proper perspectives. His presentations of the relations between law and religion offer insights that tend to be ignored and he convincingly shows that religious values have a central place in today's controversies."
"Provides the reader with a lucid and accessible entre to the contentious issues surrounding the role of religion in American public life."
"A readable book that will be a valuable addition to university libraries and useful reading in courses on science and values."
"Insightful and penetrating."
"This interesting book makes a strong demand on religiously inclined readers . . . warning not to justify things of the spirit by signs material. . . . Goldberg's warning is one to take seriously."
Review
“I am not aware of a book that covers the same ground as this oneᾹlet alone one that does so using such thorough research and with such technical competence.”
-Anthony M. Gould,Université Laval
Review
“Jacobs offers a history of the federal government's efforts to curb labor racketeering. The heart of his text focuses on the results achieved by employing Civil RICO suits to weed out organized crime from unions long mired in corruption. The Justice Department has mounted twenty such efforts since 1982, and Jacobss book is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of this controversial tactic. He tackles this ambitious project with a combination of detailed research, clear writing, and judicious consideration, all of which have been a hallmark of his previous texts on corruption and organized crime. The result is a must read book for anyone interested in the problem of union corruption and what to do about it.”
-Industrial and Labor Relations Review,
Review
“For an understanding of RICO litigation against unions, Jacobss book is a good choice.”
-Law and History Review,
Review
“Jacobs, legal scholar and expert on the Mafia, sets out to show how the Mob has distorted American labor history, explaining the relationship between organized crime and organized labor, as well as recent federal efforts to clean up unions.”
-Booklist,
Review
“James Jacobs, a New York University law professor and author of Mobsters, Unions and Feds, says Mafiosi were hired by union organizers in the early twentieth century to combat company toughs. Now, he says, they specialize in ‘selling the rights of workers.”
-USA Today,
Synopsis
American religion, Steven Goldberg claims, has fallen into a trap. Just at the moment when it has amassed the political strength and won the legal right to participate effectively in public debate, it has lost its distinctive voice. Instead of speaking of human values, goals, and limits, it speaks in the language of science.
In the United States, science has extraordinary influence and respect. American religious leaders seeking prestige for their point of view regularly couch their responses to technological developments, or defend their faith, in scientific terms. They claim, for instance, that medical studies demonstrate the power of prayer, that science validates the Bible, including its account of creation, and that patenting the genetic code is dangerous because genes are the essence of who we are.
But when ministers, priests, and rabbis expound on double-blind studies and the genetic causes of behavior, they do not elevate religion, Goldberg maintains, they trivialize it. Seduced by Science examines how, by allowing scientific discourse to set the terms of the debate, American religious leaders facilitate religion's move away from its more appropriate and important concerns of values, morality, and humility. Science can tell us a lot about what is but precious little about what ought to be and our religious leaders often miss the chance to add an important voice from a faith-based perspective to the public debate that follows scientific advances.
Discussing the most recent and pressing collisions between science and religion-such as the medicinal benefits of prayer, the human genome project, and cloning-Goldberg raises the timely question of what the appropriate role of religion might be in public life today. Tackling the legal aspects of religious debate, Goldberg suggests ways that religious leaders might confront new scientific developments in a more meaningful fashion.
Synopsis
Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated the labor movement as effectively as in the United States. Yet the government, the AFL-CIO, and the civil liberties community all but ignored the situation for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, however, the FBI, Department of Justice, and the federal judiciary have relentlessly battled against labor racketeering, even in some of the nation's most powerful unions.
Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the first book to document organized crime's exploitation of organized labor and the massive federal cleanup effort. A renowned criminologist who for twenty years has been assessing the government's attack on the Mafia, James B. Jacobs explains how Cosa Nostra families first gained a foothold in the labor movement, then consolidated their power through patronage, fraud, and violence and finally used this power to become part of the political and economic power structure of Twentieth century urban America.
Since FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972, federal law enforcement has aggressively investigated and prosecuted labor racketeers, as well as utilized the civil remedies provided for by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute to impose long-term court-supervised remedial trusteeships on mobbed-up unions. There have been some impressive victories, including substantial progress toward liberating the four most racketeer-ridden national unions from the grip of organized crime, but victory cannot yet be claimed.
The only book to investigate how the mob has exploited the American labor movement, Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the most comprehensive study to date of how labor racketeering evolved and how the government has finally resolved to eradicate it.
About the Author
Steven Goldberg is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of Culture Clash: Law and Science in America, winner of the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award, also available from NYU Press.