The distillation of years of research, study, reflection and writing — and the fulfillment of the promise of The Culture of Cities, The City in History will challenge, disturb and inform all who come to grips with its thesis and development. Virtually, here- through the central theme of the city- is world history. It is far more than the study of urban culture through the ages. It is a revitalization of civilizations- with focus particularly on the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of ancient Greece, the age of Pericles, the disintegration of the Hellenistic period, "richer in science than in wisdom", and the deterioration when Rome took over. He explores those factors that made the Greek cities unique- the contribution brought to urban culture by Olympia, Delphi, Cos- the decline of even respect towards the gods. To this reader this is the most revealing section, for he approaches half-known facts and endows them with fresh vision and interpretation. The nature of the ancient city sets the note, until the concept of perpetual war and conquest was evolved, never to be lost. His portrayal of the Roman city concept, too, is different from the accepted one, as is their contribution to world history. Almost cynical he seems as he itemizes Rome at its best, its worst, and in survival with Byzantium. The emergence of the Christian culture, the role of monasticism, the struggle of the Middle Ages against the barbarians and how the urban movement was reborn out of insecurity. We then see Romanesque Europe, we study medieval town planning, the Baroque of the 16th and 17th centuries and the mercantile capitalism that emerged supreme. His final section forms a chant of dismay and discouragement- but not, finally, of despair, over the advance of urbanism gluttonously embracing all outlying districts, turning men into machines. But in the shadows he sees glimmers of hope, that the very instruments of our destruction can be turned around to be instruments of salvation, and that the "One World Man" can be the goal of the future city:- "that of creating a visible regional and civic structure designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world". So closes one of the great achievements in social studies of our times.
Pub Date: April 12, 1961
ISBN: 0156180359
Page Count: 788
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1961
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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