“I think, therefore I am” is only the beginning of the story.
The work of the French rationalist is best understood within the politics of the 17th century, as cogently presented here for the non-philosopher.
Born in 1596, Descartes reached adulthood at the start of the Thirty Years’ War, the bloody European conflict rooted in religious clashes between Protestants and Catholics. Born Catholic and educated in the Jesuit tradition, Descartes spent some time seeking a suitable career—perhaps as lawyer, perhaps as engineer. As the latter, he traveled throughout Europe as a military consultant, although Grayling suggests provocatively that Descartes may have served as a spy. The discovery of clandestine activities, the author argues, may explain why Descartes absconded to the Netherlands (tolerant and out-of-the-way) in 1628 and began his purely intellectual investigations. Yet, in the charged atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation, to be a man of science was no small risk. A decade earlier, Galileo had been excommunicated for publishing evidence supporting the Copernican model of the solar system. Descartes, mindful of these difficulties and a devout Catholic, sought to separate matters of faith from matters of reason. For the scientific revolution to continue, he needed to wipe the slate clean and start over, and thus he conceived his Method of Doubt. Much of his life in the Netherlands was taken up with the careful and measured working out of his ideas on mathematics, logic, optics, physics, medicine and many other areas of rational inquiry. He also slept ten hours a day, lingering in bed until noon, and had an affinity for cross-eyed women. After the publication of his work, Descartes was arrogant to a fault in defending his ideas. Perhaps too vain in later years, his commission to personally tutor the Queen of Sweden led to his death from pneumonia one Scandinavian winter.
“I think, therefore I am” is only the beginning of the story.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8027-1501-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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
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