An illuminating exploration of the life of the mind and the sometimes-fraught production of art.
A spirited re-creation of the world of the German founders of the post-Enlightenment movement.
Following on her excellent biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature, Wulf reconstructs the intellectual circle of the German town of Jena, which Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling, a local “translator, literary critic and muse,” called “the Kingdom of Philosophy.” The reigning spirit of that circle was, perhaps arguably, the eminent writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—arguably because his pals played snarky games behind his back, one calling him an “old worn-out demigod,” and because his real home was nearby Weimar, not Jena. “The Jena Set” would do their squabbling English romantic successors proud: A new argument or schism was always brewing, sometimes over matters of philosophy and sometimes over personality, as with the split between the Schlegel and Schiller clans. “As her dislike grew, Charlotte Schiller began to advise others to fumigate their rooms once Caroline Schlegel had left,” writes Wulf of one episode in the feud, while August Wilhelm Schlegel wrote in a letter to a friend, “People hate us—good! They curse us—even better! They make the sign of the cross to ward us off like blasphemers, Jacobins, and corrupters of youth—God be praised!” For all the rancor, Wulf notes, the productivity of the Jena circle was astounding: dozens of philosophical tomes (especially Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit), natural-history treatises, poems, and, from Goethe, long-in-the-making works such as Faust. Indeed, “The Jena Set’s ideas rippled out from the small town in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar to the wider world,” championed in Britain by Coleridge and Carlyle and by Thoreau and Emerson in the U.S. Many of their fruitful ideas remain: nature as a living thing, art as a way of uniting humans with nature, and, against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, their insistence on individual rights.
An illuminating exploration of the life of the mind and the sometimes-fraught production of art.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-65711-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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