Useful for tourists, students of French culture, and historians of Christianity.
An exploration of six great cathedrals in Paris.
In his latest book—part travel guide, part history book, and part homage—Bloch, a professor of French and humanities at Yale, provides a thorough account of the “monumental churches” of Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Chartres, Sainte-Chapelle, Amiens, and Reims, all from a variety of perspectives. In each case, Bloch discusses the predecessor buildings that stood on the sites of the current cathedrals. Many of these histories are surprisingly ancient. Saint-Denis, for instance, “had been the burial place of French kings, beginning with the Frankish leader Dagobert, who died in 639.” These histories, which wind through medieval times into the Renaissance, offer intriguing tales of court politics, church power, and cultural change. Each capsule history also seems touched by two of the great enemies of Parisian cathedrals: fire and the French Revolution. Fire has been an ever present threat, most recently destroying Notre-Dame in 2019. However, the revolution was just as devastating for most of the cathedrals. Bloch examines the art and architecture of each cathedral in great depth, noting that the art was not merely decorative or sacred, but also practical for elucidating sermons and lessons. “In an age in which few could read or write and literacy was the sign of a clerical education, the cathedral was, in the popular phrase, ‘a poor man’s Bible’ and a teaching tool,” writes the author. “The priest preaching a sermon might illustrate his lesson by pointing to the astonishing array of sculpture and stained glass illustrations of biblical figures and stories by which he was surrounded.” Though the text is well written and filled with meaningful information, general readers may be overwhelmed by countless descriptions of sculpture and stained glass, which tend to blur together. The book contains nearly 100 photographs.
Useful for tourists, students of French culture, and historians of Christianity.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63149-392-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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