My Goodreads review: As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. While informative and very well researched, some of the philosophizing can be a bit wordy and there are also some parts where I feel the analogy was stretched to fit the narrative. But otherwise, I enjoyed this. Fun read.
As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. Throughout history, the idea of dealing with the Devil has been a part of the human experience. Author Ed Simon reminds us that the first humans in the Bible, Adam and Eve, dealt with the Devil, exchanging their eternal life for knowledge and an apple.
Needless to say, deals don't often go humans' way. Many times, humans need divine intervention to get out their deals with the Prince of Darkness. Simon discusses examples in which the Virgin Mary helps sinners get out of their hellish predicaments. Sometimes God has to get involved and sometimes the human is damned and has to live with their unfortunate choice.
Devil's Contract definitely made me think. I would never have thought that Satan's meeting with Jesus in the desert in the New Testament was an attempted deal with the Devil. Satan was appealing to Jesus's human side, which is always vulnerable. Simon goes through thousands of years of examples of vulnerable humans, from Marlowe and Goethe's Faust characters to the real Faust, to show this trend. The book is extremely well researched.
But as I mentioned in my Goodreads review, Simon can lose the reader in his philosophical points. There are a few sentences that just didn't make sense, no matter how many times I read them. There were also several sentence fragments that had me scratching my head, thinking I missed a word. Although these grammatical faux pas made me stop, they didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the book. But it means Simon's editor could have used another look through.
Some of Simon's analogies were a stretch. I still don't understand how capitalism is a deal with the Devil and if it is, what about other economic systems? Are they better? And the section on the atomic bomb wasn't very clear. What about other weapons? Does mutually assured destruction mean we have all signed deals with the Devil?
I did however really like Simon's conclusions on "terms of service" and other agreements we automatically sign in exchange for the ability to use our phone and apps. The power of these devices and programs comes with a choice. Usually it means we agree to send our user data and sometimes our personal data to companies that don't have our privacy in mind. Is that a deal with a Devil? Maybe not in the Biblical sense, but maybe in a modern, technology sense.
That's the point Simon wants to leave us with. As we no longer believe in demons and Devils as they did five hundred years ago, are there still Devils in our society and we still dealing with them?
Recommended. 4 Devil horned stars out of 5.
