A thoughtful, generous vision of human creativity across centuries of culture.
A wide-ranging examination of cultural convergences throughout human history.
Puchner, a Harvard literature professor and editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, takes a capacious view of cultural objects and practices, from cave drawings to TikTok, that form our shared human inheritance. His project, he writes, was inspired by a need to define for himself the meaning of his own scholarly field, the humanities, which he understands as an engagement with the cultural past “for the purpose of redefining the present.” In each of 15 chapters, Puchner pleasingly investigates ways that cultures have redefined themselves, often through cross-fertilization. When ancient Greece adopted an alphabet from Egyptians, a largely oral tradition faded in favor of writing. However, libraries proved to be a vulnerable form of cultural storage. Plato, who gave up a career as a playwright to follow Socrates, understood the power of dialogue to teach, though he rejected invented dialogue to create the simulated reality of theater—a critique revived in dystopian tales such as the 1999 film The Matrix. The Romans proved adept at grafting Greek culture onto their own. Many centuries after Mount Vesuvius erupted, the discovery of the sculpture of a South Asian goddess was proof of cultural influences from India as well. Puchner underscores the enriching potential of cultural importation. For example, when a seventh-century Chinese pilgrim traveled to India, he returned with religious texts that he went on to translate, leading to the flourishing of Buddhism in China just as it was diminishing in India. The invention of museums as well as exploration, colonization, and global trade all have inspired artists’ imaginations. German artist Albrecht Dürer was astonished by the gold objects he saw displayed in Brussels, gifts from Moctezuma to Spanish explorers, meant to warn them of the Aztec’s power and resources. Instead, they incited greed and destruction. Looking at recent phenomena such as K-pop, Puchner is sanguine. “The arc of cultural history,” he concludes optimistically, “bends toward circulation and mixture.”
A thoughtful, generous vision of human creativity across centuries of culture.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780393867992
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
HISTORY | ANCIENT | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite guide to the biblical world.
Revelations from the Old Testament.
“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know,” observes Calasso (1941-2021), the acclaimed Italian publisher, translator, and explorer of myth, gods, and sacred ritual. In this probing inquiry into biblical mysteries, the author meditates on the complexities and contradictions of key events and figures. He examines the “enigmatic nature” of original sin in Genesis, an anomaly occurring in no other creation myth; God’s mandate of circumcision for all Jewish men; and theomorphism in the form of Adam: a man created in the image of the god who made him. Among the individuals Calasso attends to in an abundantly populated volume are Saul, the first king of Israel; the handsome shepherd David, his successor; David’s son Solomon, whose relatively peaceful reign allowed him “to look at the world and study it”; Moses, steeped in “law and vengeance,” who incited the slaughter of firstborn sons; and powerful women, including the Queen of Sheba (“very beautiful and probably a witch”), Jezebel, and the “prophetess” Miriam, Moses’ sister. Raging throughout is Yahweh, a vengeful God who demands unquestioned obedience to his commandments. “Yahweh was a god who wanted to defeat other gods,” Calasso writes. “I am a jealous God,” Yahweh proclaims, “who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, as far as the third and fourth generations.” Conflicts seemed endless: During the reigns of Saul and David, “war was constant, war without and war within.” Terse exchanges between David and Yahweh were, above all, “military decisions.” David’s 40-year reign was “harrowing and glorious,” marked by recurring battles with the Philistines. Calasso makes palpable schisms and rivalries, persecutions and retributions, holocausts and sacrifices as tribal groups battled one another to form “a single entity”—the people of Israel.
An erudite guide to the biblical world.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60189-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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