A British philosopher examines a century of profound intellectual change.
In this sweeping, lively historical survey, Grayling (Philosophy/New Coll. of the Humanities, London; The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Troubled Times, 2015, etc.) argues vigorously that in the 17th century, an “age of strife and genius,” humankind experienced “the greatest ever change in…mental outlook.” Certainly the century was peopled by some major figures, including Descartes (the subject of one of Grayling’s biographies), Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Hobbes, Spinoza, Pascal, Galileo, Newton, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Besides giving an overview of their contributions, the author reveals how they interacted in the rich “republic of letters” in which they shared ideas. Letter writing, he contends, flourished because of the availability of cheap paper and both public and private postal services. Significant among the busy correspondents was a French Minim monk, Marin Mersenne, whom the author describes as “the seventeenth century’s closest thing to an internet server”—he corresponded with about 150 leading mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers and fostered the sharing of their ideas. It was Mersenne, Grayling notes, who put Descartes together with Pascal. Also influential in disseminating ideas was the polymath Samuel Hartlib, who boasted nearly 500 correspondents across Europe, including Galileo, and wrote dozens of letters each day. Grayling sets the robust intellectual life against the politics of the day, which saw unrest, upheaval, and almost constant war. Only for three years was there no fighting; war was “the normal condition of the time; war was the wallpaper.” Nevertheless, war pushed scientific innovation as armies sought improved weaponry. Grayling examines scientific change more broadly, contrasting religious and occult perspectives on understanding nature with the rise of the scientific method. By the end of the century, faith had been repudiated as a method of inquiry.
Out of a “fractured and fractious time,” the author asserts persuasively, the medieval mind evolved into the modern. Another thought-provoking winner from Grayling.Pub Date: March 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7475-9942-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Categories: HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
Did you like this book?
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
