Out of a “fractured and fractious time,” the author asserts persuasively, the medieval mind evolved into the modern. Another...
A British philosopher examines a century of profound intellectual change.
In this sweeping, lively historical survey, Grayling (Philosophy/New Coll. of the Humanities, London; The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Troubled Times, 2015, etc.) argues vigorously that in the 17th century, an “age of strife and genius,” humankind experienced “the greatest ever change in…mental outlook.” Certainly the century was peopled by some major figures, including Descartes (the subject of one of Grayling’s biographies), Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Hobbes, Spinoza, Pascal, Galileo, Newton, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Besides giving an overview of their contributions, the author reveals how they interacted in the rich “republic of letters” in which they shared ideas. Letter writing, he contends, flourished because of the availability of cheap paper and both public and private postal services. Significant among the busy correspondents was a French Minim monk, Marin Mersenne, whom the author describes as “the seventeenth century’s closest thing to an internet server”—he corresponded with about 150 leading mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers and fostered the sharing of their ideas. It was Mersenne, Grayling notes, who put Descartes together with Pascal. Also influential in disseminating ideas was the polymath Samuel Hartlib, who boasted nearly 500 correspondents across Europe, including Galileo, and wrote dozens of letters each day. Grayling sets the robust intellectual life against the politics of the day, which saw unrest, upheaval, and almost constant war. Only for three years was there no fighting; war was “the normal condition of the time; war was the wallpaper.” Nevertheless, war pushed scientific innovation as armies sought improved weaponry. Grayling examines scientific change more broadly, contrasting religious and occult perspectives on understanding nature with the rise of the scientific method. By the end of the century, faith had been repudiated as a method of inquiry.
Out of a “fractured and fractious time,” the author asserts persuasively, the medieval mind evolved into the modern. Another thought-provoking winner from Grayling.Pub Date: March 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7475-9942-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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