paper 0-415-17230-6 By Rietbergen (Modem History/Univ. of Nijmegen, Netherlands), a magisterial review of Europe’s cultural history from the Roman Empire to the post-WWII era. Rietbergen denies that Europe is a strictly geographical expression: instead for him, Europe is “a series of world-views, of peoples’ perspectives on their reality, sometimes only dreamt or desired, sometimes experienced and realized as well.” Despite the cultural diversity of Europe, the author perceives several unifying themes: one is Catholicism and its offshoots, which for centuries after the collapse of Rome defined the civilization of Europe. A modern unifying trend is the gradual evolution of many European countries toward constitutional and democratic government, which emphasizes the political and economic freedom of the individual. To present these themes historically, Rietbergen divides European history into four distinct cultural phases: the gradual emergence of a pan-European entity in the Roman Empire, which gave political unity to far-flung lands formerly dominated by Celtic and Germanic barbarians; the coalescence of a Christian Europe with a Roman character, which resulted in a uniquely European civilization in contrast to the eastern Christian and Islamic civilizations around the Mediterranean; the development of new ways of looking at man and the world with the emergence of humanism, the Renaissance, the great world explorations, and the Enlightenment; and the modem age, with its emphasis on consumption and communication, material culture and progress. The author concludes that Europe is evolving toward a future in which classical tradition, Christianity, and ethnic identity will have less cultural significance for Europe than in the past, but in which distinctive humane European values will continue to have an impact on the world. A thoughtful though ponderous meditation on the development of the “European idea” and its significance for the world.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-415-17229-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
Categories: HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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
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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
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