THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH:
November, 2009

Each month or so, BuzzFlash is privileged to have nationally syndicated progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann review a progressive book or DVD exclusively for BuzzFlash. See other progressive premiums at The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

Thom Hartmann's Review -- Exclusively for BuzzFlash -- for November 2009:

"The Book of Genesis"
Illustrated by R. Crumb

Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

The Book of Genesis is arguably the most important of our cultural foundations today. And R. Crumb’s illustration of it – and his postscripted commentary – is astonishing. Jewish and Christian “believers” as well as anthropologists and atheists will find a gold-mine in the stories which most inform our modern culture’s interpretation of who we are as humans relative to the world, its other life forms, and the “god” of the Bible.

In the Introduction, he says, “I, R. Crumb, the illustrator of this book, have, to the best of my ability, faithfully reproduced every work of the original text…” It’s true. For the first time, even the boring or confusing parts of Genesis are readable. Crumb took five painstaking years to produce this masterpiece, and it truly deserves that word when being described.

But it’s in the commentary at the end of the work that R. Crumb reveals a thoughtful brilliance that almost transcends the artistic brilliance he brought to the text. Simple, straightforward, and almost buried with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever at the end of the book, Crumb lays out an understanding and vision of the early Hebrew tribes that is startling, revolutionary, and ultimately totally credible.

According to one of the two different creation stories in Genesis, Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel, but after Cain killed Abel, he went to a nearby city and found a wife. Another city? Apparently Jehovah didn’t create all human beings; he only created the Hebrew tribe. (Virtually every aboriginal tribe in the world, in fact, has its own creation story which is unique to its own people and doesn’t include or often even explain other tribes.)

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