Average customer rating:
|
Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History
Marina Leslie
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Reference
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Renaissance
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Classics
| Comic
| Contemporary
| Literary
General
| Criticism & Theory
| History & Criticism
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Renaissance
| Movements & Periods
| History & Criticism
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Systems Of Government
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Political Doctrines
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Literature & Fiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0801434009 |
Book Description
Marina Leslie draws on three important early modern utopian texts--Thomas More's Utopia, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, and Margaret Cavendish's Description of a New World Called the Blazing World--as a means of exploring models for historical transformation and of addressing the relationship of literature and history in contemporary critical practice. While the genre of utopian texts is a fertile terrain for historicist readings, Leslie demonstrates that utopia provides unstable ground for charting out the relation of literary text to historical context. In particular, she examines the ways that both Marxist and new historicist critics have taken the literary utopia not simply as one form among many available for reading historically but as a privileged form or methodological paradigm.
Rather than approach utopia by mapping out a fixed set of formal features, or by tracing the development of the genre, Leslie elaborates a history of utopia as critical practice. Moreover, by taking every reading of utopia to be as historically symptomatic as the literary production it assesses, her book integrates readings of these three English Renaissance utopias with an analysis of the history and politics of reading utopia. Throughout, Leslie considers utopia as a fictional enactment of historical process and method. In her view, these early modern utopian constructions of history relate very closely to and impinge upon the narrative structures of history assumed by critical theory today.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1039 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History.(Review) (book reviews)
Author: J.C. Davis
Publication:
Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 10
Issue: 1
Page: 236
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 1314 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History.(Review)
Author: Anne Lake Prescott
Publication:
Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: 53
Issue: 2
Page: 596
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Early Modern Literary Studies, published by Matthew Steggle on May 1, 2000. The length of the article is 806 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Review of Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History.(Book Review)
Author: Rachel Warburton
Publication:
Early Modern Literary Studies (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 2000
Publisher: Matthew Steggle
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Page: NA
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
The colorful true stories of ten monumental feuds in the history of technology
The history of technology is full of heated disputes over who, exactly, invented what. In this encore to his international bestsellers Great Feuds in Science and Great Feuds in Medicine, Hal Hellman brings to life ten of technology's most celebrated quarrels. Whether illuminating the battles between Philo Farnsworth and RCA (television), and Samuel Morse and Joseph Henry (telegraph) or the feuds currently raging over nuclear submarines and genetically modified foods, Hellman clearly explains the technology involved while providing vivid portraits of the disputants and their times.
Hal Hellman (Leonia, NJ) is the author of numerous science books, including Great Feuds in Science (0-471-35066-4) and Great Feuds in Medicine (0-471-20833-7).
Customer Reviews:
Nice book.......2005-04-30
The book start from the Luddite and end into the current biotech world. There is a lesson that the author wanted to share in this book. That is the Luddite is not phoebe about technology. It is more about economy. The end of the chapter, chapter 10, however, has a deep meaning. It would, in my opinion, describe a true Luddite, phoebe about technology. The last chapter is about genetic modification.
I really like reading from chapter 2 to 7, but I don't like the rest of the chapter. I plan at first to give this book a 5 star, then after reading half of chapter 9, I began to sense this book has a deep meaning about technology. I don't like a very sad ending. So I subtract another star after I find out that, in my opinion, the other really good chapter about technology invention, the telegraphy, the television and other great invention is used as a tool by the author to show the true but sad ending.
I would still recommand that you buy and read this book.
Hal Hellman's Latest Feuds Book.......2004-04-19
Most of us accept as a fact that Morse invented the telegraph and the Wright Brothers the airplane. Great Feuds in Technology opens your eyes to how controversial credits for developing these and other technologies were in the past and how some of them have not been settled even today. It also tells about disputes, such as the long-lasting one that Henry Ford had over a patent on the automobile, that had an enormous effect on how the technology and industry developed. Another outcome could have made the world we live in today quite a different place. The book ranges from technologies that are now obsolete, such as the miners' safety lamp, through the electric power industry, television, and to the currently controversial topic of genetic engineering. I was sorry when I came to the end of it.
Book Description
Praise for Hal Hellman
Great Feuds in Mathematics
"Those who think that mathematicians are cold, mechanical proving machines will do well to read Hellman's book on conflicts in mathematics. The main characters are as excitable and touchy as the next man. But Hellman's stories also show how scientific fights bring out sharper formulations and better arguments."
-Professor Dirk van Dalen, Philosophy Department, Utrecht University
Great Feuds in Technology
"There's nothing like a good feud to grab your attention. And when it comes to describing the battle, Hal Hellman is a master."
-New Scientist
Great Feuds in Science
"Unusual insight into the development of science . . . I was excited by this book and enthusiastically recommend it to general as well as scientific audiences."
-American Scientist
"Hellman has assembled a series of entertaining tales . . . many fine examples of heady invective without parallel in our time."
-Nature
Great Feuds in Medicine
"This engaging book documents [the] reactions in ten of the most heated controversies and rivalries in medical history. . . . The disputes detailed are . . . fascinating. . . . It is delicious stuff here."
-The New York Times
"Stimulating."
-Journal of the American Medical Association
Customer Reviews:
David Foster Wallace's Righteous Twin.......2007-05-08
Wallace's seriously flawed Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Great Discoveries) made me wary of buying another pop math book by a non-mathematician, so I put off buying _Great Feuds_ for some time, but eventually I gave in, and I'm glad I did. Hellman's cautious approach contrasts nicely with Wallace's bombast, and, unlike Wallace, Hellman gets almost all of the details right, with a notable exception being his claim that having a smallest element (rather than each of its nonempty subsets having smallest elements) is what makes a set well-ordered.
There's a lot of quoting of the opinions of professional historians, which is probably appropriate for a book written by an outsider, but I found it a bit tiresome after a while (just as I did when Peter Ackroyd took a similar approach in Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination). Also, I felt that Hellman didn't make it as clear as he could have who ended up winning the war of which these feuds were battles. 21st century mathematics is overwhelmingly Cantorian, Zermeloian, and Hilbertian, in the sense that the existence of actual infinities and the appropriateness of using the Law of the Excluded Middle and the Axiom of Choice are all taken for granted by mainstream practitioners. There are respected researchers probing the effects of rejecting these principles, but they are few in number and those who do reject them are definitely working in the margins.
Don't let these quibbles or my 4-star rating keep you from buying this book. Within its genre, it's about as good as they come.
Readable Math.......2007-02-02
After seeing Mr. Hellman on CBS Sunday Morning News recently, I picked up his newest book, Great Feuds in Mathematics. A most enjoyable book. Although I am not a mathematician I was able to read "around" the few equations and enjoy the insight he brought to the math and its place in history. A good read.
Math is math.......2007-01-08
This book would be of most interest to advanced mathematicians and some philosophy initiates. I am a lay person with a large curiosity, however not being a math college major, limited my enjoyment of the "feuds."
Antonio Gonzalez
Fascinating Disputes But Beware The Challenging Arguments.......2006-10-30
This is an excellent book. The prose is clear and engaging and, despite the title, there are very few equations such that those who are equation-phobic have little to fear. However, many of the disputes center on nineteenth to twentieth century front-line research in pure mathematics - areas such as set theory, concepts of infinity, etc. These early ideas were prone to heated discussion and, in many cases, led to feuds. In order to allow the reader to understand the basis for these feuds, the author has included the essence of some of the key contentious mathematical arguments, often directly quoting members of each camp. I found that carefully following these arguments in detail could be difficult at times, but I certainly agree that pondering them is important if one is to clearly understand the position of each side. The final chapter poses the fascinating question: Are mathematical advances discoveries or inventions?" And here again, there are avid supporters of each side. I gave the book five stars because of the interesting subject matter and because I feel that the author has done a truly excellent job in presenting such a potentially difficult subject to as broad an audience as possible. Nevertheless, I still believe that I would benefit from reading some chapters a second time. Although anyone reading this book could learn much from it, I believe that it would be most enjoyed by serious math buffs.
Amazon.com
"The facts, even the theories, are history. It is the process that is the living science; that's what makes the activity exciting to those who practice it," science writer Hal Hellman observes. "Often, however, the process of scientific discovery is charged with emotion.... Holders of an earlier idea may not give it up gladly." Hellman describes some of the most emotional, dramatic, and personal debates in scientific history. He rounds up the usual suspects--Galileo versus the pope, Newton versus Leibniz, Cope versus Marsh, evolution versus Creation--but also includes less well known, but no less interesting, conflicts: Wallis versus Hobbes on squaring the circle, Voltaire versus Needham on embryos. And he boldly includes two conflicts in which (some) of the combatants are still alive: Don Johanson versus the Leakeys on human origins and Derek Freeman versus the ghost of Margaret Mead on Samoa. Never a dull moment. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Book Description
The dramatic stories of ten historic feuds: How they altered the course of discovery-and shaped the modern world
Hall Hellman tells the lively stories of ten of the most outrageous and intriguing disputes from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Bringing the cataclysmic clash of ideas and personalities to colorful life, Hellman explores both the science and the spirit of the times. Along the way, he reveals that scientific feuds are fueled not only by the purest of intellectual disagreements, but also by intransigence, ambition, jealousy, politics, faith, and the irresistible human urge to be right.
Unusual insight into the development of science . . . I was excited by this book and enthusiastically recommend it to general as well as scientific audiences. -American Scientist
Hellman has assembled a series of entertaining tales. . . . many fine examples of heady invective without parallel in our time. -Nature
An entertaining and informative account of the unusual personalities and sometimes bitter rivalries of some of the world's greatest scientific minds. -Publishers Weekly
A fascinating new book which details some of the most famous disputes of the ages.-Courier Mail
Dry science history turns into entertaining reading without sacrificing historical accuracy. -The Christchurch Press
Great Feuds in Science is wonderful history, as the reader learns how scientists had to fight with religious leaders and other scientists to get their work recognized, accepted, and even get the credit for it! -Bookviews
Customer Reviews:
Light on Science, plenty of Emotion.......2003-10-31
I had mixed emotions about this book. There wasn't that much deep insight into the underlying science or philosophy under debate, so it was sometimes hard to decide whose side I might have been on?
It did focus on showing the emotional side of the combatants, which makes them all too human, but also disappoints because it showed how emotions & personality got in the way of the facts, and as Scientists one always thinks that the 'facts' will transcend mere human frailties? But this book shows them all too plainly.
A new approach to popularizing science.......2000-09-24
I suppose it is an eternal effort to try to bring science to the public in an interesting way. Hellman, who according to the blurb has written 26 other popular science books, takes the tack of presenting various controversies in science, of which there are a depressing number.
Hellman picks ten, most of which are fairly well-known: Galileo vs. the Church, Newton vs. Leibniz, and so on. He springboards off of these to various extents to present the science behind the controversies or at least the history thereof. In particular, he takes the Darwinism vs. creationism issue up to the present day, even mentioning Behe and Darwin's Black Box. Other controversies are inherently recent: Donald Johanson vs. Richard Leakey on mankind's family tree and Derek Freeman's issues with Margaret Mead. (I have to side with Mead on the latter, at least as the situation is presented here. Freeman comes across as an opportunist looking for a way to gain publicity more than as a seeker after truth.)
It's lightweight if sometime saddening reading, particularly in such cases as Lord Kelvin, whose successes were undeniable but whose lack of flexibility hindered the progress of science at times.
Great zeitgeist, thin science.......2000-08-01
Hellman has an excellent ability to describe the personalities, the scenes, the zeitgeist, but unfortunately he is not too good in science. He never really gets into the heart of the matter, he never discusses any details, he usually relies on second hand sources, he leaves the story in the air just when starts to get exciting. If you know history of science, this book does not contain anything new or startling. But it is fun reading for the uninitiated.
How great science REALLY gets done.......2000-05-19
Scientists are human, too. They have pride, turf, and overbearing egoes. This little book, with its chapters relating disagreements and outright feuds between scientific luminaries, shows how the March of Science rarely proceeds in lockstep. The fur flies the thickest in Newton versus Leibniz, concerning the invention and popularization of calculus. This is a good "sidebar" book, to go along with a more conventional history of science. The human drama within provides a couple of nights of good reading.
Good, rather light, informative.......2000-04-25
More than a "popular science" book, GREAT FEUDS IN SCIENCE touches a number of disciplines, including philosophy, religion, politics, and sociology. Hence, this book has a fairly wide, if not universal, scope. While his writing is not what I would call distinguished, Hellman is skilled at cutting corners and providing reasonably accurate portraits of these feuding scientists and thinkers, as well as neat summaries of their hypotheses (and world views, biases, nasty streaks, and the like). This is easy reading; any reasonably intelligent 16-year old will get through the book with no problem, and they'll be better off, more informed, for having done so. So while this book may not be an important source for someone writing a paper for a physics dissertation, it will be helpful for anyone wanting a little more than an encyclopedia entry on why, say, Newton or Darwin, is important. Hellman wisely includes notes and a helpful bibliography for those who want more.
Book Description
"An exciting, well-researched work, which should appeal to anyone with an interest in the nature and progress of the human race."
—American Scientist
The cataclysmic clash of medical ideas and personalities comes to colorful life
In this follow-up to the critically acclaimed
Great Feuds in Science (Wiley: 0-471-16980-3), Hal Hellman tells the stories of the ten most heated and important disputes of medical science. Featuring a mix of famous and lesser-known stories,
Great Feuds in Medicine includes the fascinating accounts of William Harvey's battle with the medical establishment over his discovery of the circulation of blood; Louis Pasteur's fight over his theory of germs; and the nasty dispute between American Robert Gallo and French researcher Luc Montagnier over who discovered the HIV virus. An informative and insightful look at how such medical controversies are not only typical, but often necessary to the progress of the science.
Download Description
The history of medical science is fraught with controversies and rivalries between major researchers. In this follow-up to the critically acclaimed Great Feuds in Science, Harold Hellman tells the stories of the ten most heated and important of these disputes.
Customer Reviews:
Really well-written book about ridiculous feuds..........2005-04-15
Men. I can say that, because all of these feuds involved men, except for one concerning Rosalind Franklin and the DNA fiasco...with one of my least favorite scientists, Watson.
It never ceases to amaze me the amount of ego that gets involved in scientific and medical discoveries. It's humongous! Fights concerning rights of discoveries or inventions, fights concerning doing the right thing for the patient (rather than the doctor), etc. have existed since the beginning of time and are continuing today. The very last section of the book had to do with the discovery of the AIDS virus by Gallo (American) and Montagnier (French).
Some of the earlier feuds had to do with the discovery of how the body really works through doing dissections of both animals and human cadavers. This was frowned upon by the Church, which basically ran society during the middle ages and into the Renaissance, but some brave men like Harvey and Di Vinci went ahead and did what needed to be done. So when they actually published their findings, all hell often broke lose. This often put these physicians and scientists at risk for life, but their refusal to rely on ancient theories from Galen is what paved the way for modern medicine.
I enjoyed the way Hellman writes. He's a little bit of of a cynic and smart aleck, just my type...since I'm that way myself. The information is concise and interesting. I knew about some of the fights from previous medical histories, but Hellman often gave information that wasn't available in these books. The story concerning Semmelweis who discovered the real reasons behind women dying in childbirth from pueperal fever (exhange of germs from cadavers to women in labor by doctors not cleaning up prior to touching those women) is probably one of the saddest stories I have ever read, especially since he ended up being brutalized in an insane asylum, and it killed him at an early age.
This should be on a list of required readings for medical and research students. Perhaps if more of them realized how ridiculous these spats are, especially if they involve ego and money (which is a current huge problem thanks to the pharmaceutical companies and kickbacks to physicians), they would learn to allow ethics to govern more of their behavior.
People who enjoy medical history, and teachers can use this book to interest students in medicine and research, because these are areas of a good percent of the jobs today.
Karen Sadler
Science Education
Serious Fun.......2001-05-17
What a delightful page-turner this book turned out to be. I needed information, fast, and this sounded like a good buy. It sure was. The author makes very complex ideas and medical procedures understandable for lay people, but doesn't sacrifice the seriousness of his subject. His wry wit does not demean the eminent and not-so-eminent figures he writes about but, rather, brings them back to life. In fact, the author himself seems to be sitting in the room with you, relaxed and talking about some people you both know.
Engaging overview.......2001-03-01
A sprightly romp through three hundred years of medical history, focusing on ten major contretemps. Entertaining and educational, it's also a cautionary tale for would-be medical researchers: many of the "heroes" of these tales (Semmelweis, Bernard, Franklin) meet extremely unkind fates. If you enjoyed Hellman's previous outing on feuds in science, you'll find here more of the same.
Book Description
Praise for Great Feuds in History
"Everyone loves a good fight, especially on the world stage, and Evans calls these contests with skill and flair."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Evans captures all the drama and controversy in these streamlined accounts brimming with invigorated, well-paced prose."
--Publishers Weekly
In Great Feuds in History, Colin Evans puts us in the middle of ten of history's most significant struggles-high-stakes personal conflicts that had a lasting impact on the societies around them and on generations that followed.
Spanning five hundred years of political rivalry, spiritual conflict, and ancestral discord, here are ten fascinating true tales of ambition, greed, jealousy, passion, and fear that are as gripping and meaningful today as they were in their own turbulent times.
- Queen Elizabeth I versus Mary, Queen of Scots
- English parliament versus King Charles I
- Aaron Burr versus Alexander Hamilton
- The Hatfields versus the McCoys
- Joseph Stalin versus Leon Trotsky
- Roald Amundsen versus Robert Scott
- The Duchess of Windsor versus the Queen Mother
- Bernard Law Montgomery versus George Patton
- Lyndon B. Johnson versus Robert F. Kennedy
- J. Edgar Hoover versus Martin Luther King Jr.
Customer Reviews:
Some feuds that changed history........2007-01-08
This is a nice easy read. Each feud is roughly twenty pages long and makes for some nice light reading. Some I wouldn't rate as world changing, but they are interesting. I did not know much about any one one dispute--except perhaps Montgomery and Patton. The McCoy-Hatfield feud was also very interesting and I can't remember that much written about that from other sources. This is an interesting bit of history, and perhaps there are some other feuds that may rate higher than what the author selected (Shah versus Khomeni).
This book is a nice weekend or beach read. The reader will be amazed at the hatred these feuds generated. Evans does a nice job of detailing these pointed conflicts in this book.
If you're looking for some mindless history..........2002-07-19
Not a bad book, you could be reading something completely devoid of content. However, I am very concerned about not only the content in this book ("Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy"???) but also the way is presented. At various points throughout my reading, I felt as if my intelligence were being insulted. Perhaps this book is aimed more at a non-history lover kind of audience and is written in a "verbal-candy" kind of way. At any rate, if you can't get the middle name of one of your main subjects right (it's Robert FRANCIS Kennedy for anyone not in the loop), then what about all of the other details? I am left wondering how much of the content was historically accurate and how much is there purely for entertainment. If books were newspapers, this one would be somewhere between the New York Post and Star (the tabloid).
Mayhem 101.......2002-01-31
The author chose ten feuds of history and describes them in condensed but well researched detail. There is not much here that is new, but it can be interesting for somebody who would like to more about them. Some of these feuds are more slander and ping pong verbal aggression than actual mayhem, There isn't much blood flowing.
It is the author's choice of course, to select the ten feuds he wants to write about. But I wish he had selected more truly drag-out fights like Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII at Canossa. Or, in modern times, Harry Truman going after General MacArthur.
Books:
- Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-team at War
- Shadow Warriors: Inside The Special Forces
- Six Silent Men...Book Three (101st Lrp/Rangers)
- So Far from God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848
- Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity
- Soviet Field Fortifications 1941-45 (Fortress)
- Spanish-American War : The Story and Photographs (America at War (Brassey's))
- Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
- Synopsis: An Annual Index of Greek Studies, 1993, 3: An Annual Index of Greek Studies, 1993 (Annual Index of Greek Studies)
- The #1 New York Times Bestseller: Intriguing Facts About the 484 Books That Have Been #1 New York Times Bestsellers Since the First List in 1942.
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Inner Ring
- Pit Bulls for Dummies
- Girl Anatomy: A Novel
- Learning Autodesk Maya 8|Foundation +DVD
- Methods, Standards, & Work Design
- Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law
- Life Under Ice
- Mismatch Explanations of European Unemployment: A Critical Evaluation
- Human Element: A Course in Resourceful Thinking
- Handbook of Sec Accounting and Disclosure 2002, Spring Edition
