SOURCE: Elshtain, Jean Bethke. “Dirty Little Soporific.” Commonweal 108, no. 13 (3 July 1981): 408-10.

In the following review, Elshtain considers Ambition hackneyed and disappointing.

This [Ambition] is a strange book. Epstein means to resurrect ‘ambition’ from the bad name it currently holds. Sadly, he observes, “To say of a young man or woman that he or she is ambitious is no longer, as it once was, a clear compliment. Rather the reverse. A person called ambitious is likely to arouse anxiety, for in our day anyone so called is thought to be threatening, possibly a trifle neurotic.” So we've got a bad conscience about ambition. We assume that behind the achievements of ambition lie “vanity, greed, the will to power.” Ambition is said to “bring out the worst in the people,” to be “antisocial … insatiable … corrupting … leaves only victims, renders men mad … or pathetically broken.” How did we reach this sorry...