Scholarly, exhaustively researched, packed with highly esoteric information, this massive study is less daunting than it might seem at first glance, thanks to Schama's lively writing style and his eye for the colorful and thought-provoking detail. Specialized, but likely to instruct and, more importantly, entertain the general reader. Focusing his attention on the Netherlands during the 17th century, Schama investigates the linkage that the citizens who wrested their lands from the sea felt with the waters lapping their shores. The sea, quite understandably, was viewed as an enemy and, in a particularly evocative section, the author discourses at length on the identification the Dutch felt with the Children of Israel, especially the Jews of Exodus and their flight through the Red Sea. It is intriguing to speculate on how Netherlander attitudes influenced our Puritan forebears during their stay in the Low Countries. Puritan talk of founding the "New Jerusalem" and the Calvinist emphasis on Old Testament teachings owe much lo the Pilgrims' sojourn in the Netherlands. Equally provocative are the insights given into Golden Age attitudes toward sexuality—chastity was demanded and. again, had something to do with Old Testament attitudes, this time toward "cleanliness." Not that women were secluded, as they were in Latin countries; they were, in fact, quite liberated in their social intercourse, but a Dutch woman's reputation had to be as spotless as her doorstep. The dichotomy between apparently uninhibited public behavior and the strictest private morality confused and shocked both Catholic visitors and Puritan moralists. Among other topics that come under Schama's scrutiny are art, superstition. finance and child-rearing during the period when the Dutch Republic was one of Europe's superpowers. In each area he explores, Schama discovers details that prompt far-ranging speculations about religion, philosophy and the human condition. A stimulating and important dissection of a little-known but constantly fascinating era. A lavish compilation of 325 photographs (not seen) illustrates the text.
Pub Date: May 31, 1987
ISBN: 0679781242
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lyrical work of intellectual history, one that Popova’s many followers will await eagerly and that deserves to win her...
The polymathic Popova, presiding genius behind brainpickings.org, looks at some of the forgotten heroes of science, art, and culture.
“There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives,” writes the author at the outset. She closes with the realization that while we individuals may die, the beauty of our lives and work, if meaningful, will endure: “What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust." In between, she peppers thoughtful, lucid consideration of acts of the imagination with stories that, if ever aired before, are too little known. Who would have remembered that of all the details of the pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler’s life, one was racing across Germany to come to the aid of his widowed mother, who had been charged with witchcraft? The incident ably frames Kepler’s breaking out of a world governed by superstition, “a world in which God is mightier than nature, the Devil realer and more omnipresent than gravity,” and into a radical, entirely different world governed by science. That world saw many revolutions and advances ahead of the general population, as when, in 1865, Vassar College appointed as its first professor of astronomy a woman, Maria Mitchell, who combined a brilliant command of science with a yearning for poetry. So it was with Rachel Carson, the great ecologist, whose love for a woman lasted across a life burdened with terrible illness, and Emily Dickinson, who might have been happier had her own love for a woman been realized. (As it was, Popova notes, the world was ready for Dickinson: A book of her poems published four years after her death sold 500 copies on the first day of publication.) Throughout her complex, consistently stimulating narrative, the author blends biography, cultural criticism, and journalism to forge elegant connections: Dickinson feeds in to Carson, who looks back to Mitchell, who looks forward to Popova herself, and with plenty of milestones along the way: Kepler, Goethe, Pauli, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne….
A lyrical work of intellectual history, one that Popova’s many followers will await eagerly and that deserves to win her many more.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4813-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish journey.
An engaging, casual history of librarians and libraries and a famous one that burned down.
In her latest, New Yorker staff writer Orlean (Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, 2011, etc.) seeks to “tell about a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine.” It’s the story of the Los Angeles Public Library, poet Charles Bukowski’s “wondrous place,” and what happened to it on April 29, 1986: It burned down. The fire raged “for more than seven hours and reached temperatures of 2000 degrees…more than one million books were burned or damaged.” Though nobody was killed, 22 people were injured, and it took more than 3 million gallons of water to put it out. One of the firefighters on the scene said, “We thought we were looking at the bowels of hell….It was surreal.” Besides telling the story of the historic library and its destruction, the author recounts the intense arson investigation and provides an in-depth biography of the troubled young man who was arrested for starting it, actor Harry Peak. Orlean reminds us that library fires have been around since the Library of Alexandria; during World War II, “the Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books.” She continues, “destroying a culture’s books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never happened.” The author also examines the library’s important role in the city since 1872 and the construction of the historic Goodhue Building in 1926. Orlean visited the current library and talked to many of the librarians, learning about their jobs and responsibilities, how libraries were a “solace in the Depression,” and the ongoing problems librarians face dealing with the homeless. The author speculates about Peak’s guilt but remains “confounded.” Maybe it was just an accident after all.
Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish journey.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4018-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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