Book Description
Best-selling text, WESTERN CIVILIZATION has helped over one million students learn about the present by exploring the past. Jack Spielvogel's engaging, chronological narrative weaves the political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military aspects of history into a gripping story that is as memorable as it is instructive. Each chapter offers a substantial introduction and conclusion, providing students a context for these disparate themes. The clear narrative of a single gifted author makes it easy for students to follow the story of Western civilization. Spielvogel gives the book depth by including over 150 maps and excerpts of over 200 primary sources--including official documents, poems, and songs--that enliven the past while introducing students to source material that forms the basis of historical scholarship. Available in many split options: WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Comprehensive, 6th Edition (Chapters 1-29), ISBN: 0534646026; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume I, To 1715, 6th Edition (Chapters 1-16), ISBN:0534646034; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume II, Since 1500, 6th Edition (Chapters 13-29), ISBN:0534646042; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume A: To 1500, 6th Edition (Chapters 1-12), ISBN: 0534646050; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume B: 1300-1815, 6th Edition (Chapters 11-19), ISBN:0534646069; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume C: Since 1789, 6th Edition (Chapters 19-29), ISBN: 0534646077; WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Since 1300, 6th Edition (Chapters 11-29), ISBN:0534646085.
Customer Reviews:
Awesome Book.......2006-05-19
Very easy explanation in book.........dont try to read whole book otherwise you will get sleep
Great for CLEP resource.......2006-01-18
Got this book as well as Volume I and used them as my resources for taking the Western Civ I and II CLEPS. Perfect for the job, and helped me get a very good grade, highly recommend for anyone looking to use for that purpose.
Revionist History.......2005-07-05
After being required to read this text for a class, I bought two other history books to which I could compare this one. I thought that Spielvogel was leaving out chunks of history, and revising the ones that he included, and I wanted to double check my facts before making any accusations. Well, boy was I right. This book makes the Publisher's tag line, "Changing the Way the World Learns" seem a little too true..
If you DO get this book, here are some things to look out for:
1. He is wrong on just about everything that has to do with art or music. He cites obscure artists and names them as the most popular, most of them had Christian themed work.
2. He glorifies Hitler and the Nazis and makes the Holocaust seem like nothing but a minor glitch in history.
3. The author has a degree in Reformation History and seems to be unable to help himself from relating every single event in history to religion. So keep in mind that Voltaire had more to offer history than an anti-Christian revisionist account of the fall of the Roman Empire, as Spielvogel states.
If I were you, I'd buy a different history book to read as well as this one, if this is required for a course. Preferably one that was published for the first time in the thirties or forties and has been updated since, so that its more clear it isn't revionist history. This one was first published in 2003.
Honestly, if I could give this book less than one star I would, but there's no such option on amazon.com...
yikes.......2005-04-22
This book was horrible for AP Euro, it was not in chronological order and often confused our class. Also, he skipped over some events that were important to know for the AP exam.
THIS BOOK SUCKS.......2004-12-30
Jackson J. Spielvogel has no sense of organization whatsoever. And as for those people who read this book for fun, SERIOUSLY need a life. I, however, am using this book as a text book for AP Euro and think it is absolutely ludicrous that we have to use it. It's confusing and needs to be written better. A LOT better. This book should get -1000000 stars.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent.
- Organization? Is that not in the authors' dictionary?
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- Try Harder
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Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World (1300 to the Present)
Robert Tignor ,
Jeremy Adelman ,
Stephen Aron ,
Stephen Kokin ,
Suxanne Marchand ,
Gyan Prakash ,
Suzanne Marchand ,
Michael Tsin , and
Stephen Kotkin
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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ASIN: 0393977463 |
Book Description
This provocative narrative history dramatically departs from the standard "rise of the West" storyline that has driven world historiography for a century. A stellar group of historians paint a decidedly different modern world history, one in which the rise of the West was not predetermined and where global integration has manifested itself in fits and starts rather than as a smooth process over the last seven centuries. This fresh interpretation, driven by powerful ideas and colorful stories, promises to engage readers for decades to come.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent........2007-03-31
Unlike the previous reviewers I found Tignor's text to be a highly lucid and comprehensive account of world history. If you have not read much history than you will have to be patient at first with the writing style as it is chock full of information and concepts that can seem disconnected an quite abstract. Yet, if you have the perseverance to stick with it, you be rewarded with a rich understanding of the themes that run through the narrative of human history. Strongly recommended.
Organization? Is that not in the authors' dictionary?.......2005-11-02
While this book contains valuable information it seems horribly put together in seemingly random order. Many-a-times I found that I would be reading the exact same sentence in Chapter 3 as in Chapter 4. The authors largely ignored any sort of geographical or chronological organization and just puts sections in wherever the mood struck them.
book.......2005-10-04
the book arrived in the same condition they said it would and arrived when they said it would
Try Harder.......2003-10-30
Not only does this provocative narrative dramatically depart from the admittedly tired "rise of the West" storyline - it departs from the purpose of an educational text altogether. The writing in this book is, in a word, pathetic; the authors don't even appear to have a grasp of how to construct a paragraph. The powerful ideas and the context-hungry hodge-podge of stories in this interpretation of the history of civilization since 1300 are skewed by the authors' blatant preoccupation with the cultural dis-integration of contemporary Globalism - to the point of affecting the architecture of the book itself. Readers who flee from the possibility of understanding anything will certainly be engaged by the colorful pictures in this book. The rest of you would do well to keep shopping.
Book Description
After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.
By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them.
The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud become gold, as the alchemists believed? These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science.
Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists (and writers, too) invented the Western tradition of realism.
On visits to the great cities of Europe—monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto—Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world. Bursting with stunning four-color art, MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES is the ultimate Christmas gift book.
Customer Reviews:
All Over The Map.......2007-09-16
Maybe Cahill's a frustrated stand-up comic. Imagine the author as a stand-up inviting the audience to suggest topics for improvised comedic departure. Someone shouts out, "The Middle Ages!" and Cahill thinks, "Yeah. I can go with that." So we're off on tangent after tangent about Frank Zappa or Osama Bin Laden. Spare us the "cute" writing. Please.
Better Items Available.......2007-09-03
I agree with most of the negative reviewers of this product. The author is condescending and irritating. While he has a fine grasp of the English language, many of his conjectures are not only incorrect they are idiotic. His personal views, which he feels a need to share, detract from the story he is trying to tell in an unavoidable and irritating way. Stay away from this one.
Enjoyable overview of the Middle Ages & how they formed us.......2007-08-12
This is the fourth book in Cahill's "Hinges of History" series, and it is excellent. As others have pointed out it is not in-depth, not scholarly but rather written for people who don't usually read history. He makes it completly enjoyable, ties together main points, major movements, the pivotable people in a sort of quilt of moving shapes and colors that for a moment bring it all alive again. In this book famous and less famous people each are used to illustrate points about an era, and the changes that began in that era, and in fact that person may have been the one of powerhouses of the change, like Abelard, or Eleanor of Aquitaine, or simply a recorder or interpreter of it as Giotto was. Each fingernail sketch of a life in its unique era is memorable. Hildegarde of Bingen, at age 8, was given to the Church by her noble parents, to be interred as an anchorite, a life of complete sequestration, forever. Yet as she grew to adulthood the depth and breadth of her learning, taught to her in her little walled-in cell by a monk, grew to the point that her writings and correspondence was noted throughout Europe and even the Popes knew of her. She was perhaps the best known and best educated woman in Europe in her day and the most influential in the Roman Catholic Church. Made an abbess and allowed to preach and write openly she lived on to age 81, renowned and venerated. Eleanor of Aquitaine, the richest heiress in Europe at age 15, ruler of Aquitaine and other parts of France larger than the remaining lands of France itself was married first to the French king and went on Crusade with him, the first Noble woman known to do so; divorced him to marry her lover the much younger king of England; was the mother of several sons by him including Richard the Lion Hearted, her favorite...from her, most of the royalty of Europe descends. She was a strong, powerful,and free woman for most of her long life. The story of Heloise and Abelard, the great and tragic lovers is retold really well. Dante's story,his long exile due to the great wars of his native Florence and the feuding families at the root of it all reminds one of the Romeo and Juliet story: the "two houses"...But not to miss the point that each life discussed is tied in to a specific time and concept of an age different from us but leading toward us and our time. In fact, as the author points out, the events, the gradual change in thought-- never predetermined-- were how our era as it is now was formed; our way of seeing the world, our political, relgious, cultural and scientific, views were formed from theirs, our immediate cultural forebears.
An Engaging Writer but Superficial and Wrongheaded History.......2007-07-15
Though an engaging writer, Cahill is an appallingly bad historian. He compares the medieval nun Hildegard of Bingen to blues singer Bessie Smith (Hildegard's lyrics display a spiritualized eroticism) and the woman in bondage in The Story of O and refers to Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City in the same passage. ("This was one loose sister," is his characterization of Hildegard.) He compares Dante to James Joyce on the grounds that both were exiles infatuated with their mother cities. He characterizes WWI's Gallipoli as a "confrontation between ... Islam and the West," an appallingly bad summary of a complex military campaign which had little to do with religion and a great deal to do with military matters. Throughout the book, Cahill tramples history into a muddled paste of great figures and exalting moments, ignoring nuance or exception. He concludes with a five-page diatribe against sycophancy and buggery in today's Church. The footnotes don't inform much; the bibliography omits essential scholarship (e.g., R. W. Southern on medieval humanism, Roberto Lopez and Lauro Martines on Renaissance humanism). It is difficult to conceive of an audience that would benefit from reading this silly and superficial book.
Haven't finished reading it yet...too soon..........2007-07-05
but from the first page I have felt as though this is the easiest and most interesting way to experience history.
I don't believe anyone else can make reading & studying history such a pleasure. My method is to jot down notes on a small paper pad with the page number noted, so I can go back & make sure I have absorbed the links that have led to the future. There is such a stupendous wealth of detail.
I have all of Thomas Cahill's Hinges of History books so far and have never been disappointed yet.
Mary H.
Book Description
How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance. Placing all the major crusades within their medieval social, economic, religious, and intellectual environments, Madden explores the uniquely medieval world that led untold thousands to leave their homes, family, and friends to march in Christ's name to distant lands. From Palestine and Europe's farthest reaches, each crusade is recounted in clear, concise narrative. The author gives special attention as well to the crusades' effects on the Islamic world and the Christian Byzantine East.
Customer Reviews:
Gained a perspective.......2007-05-26
This was the first book I ever read about the Crusades. I felt I needed some historical background for the Christian-Muslim tension that we see all around the world today. This book presented the subject in an unbias way that left me feeling I could draw some informed opinions on the subject. To be frank, some of my conclusions were not what I expected them to be prior to reading the book. I am not a good reader. It is a struggle for me to get through a book. I looked forward to reading this book every evening until I finished. It left me wanting to learn more about the subject. One last thing...it is only 225 pages and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.
Understand the Crusades from a Medieval Mindset.......2007-03-24
Following September 11th, 2001 and George W. Bush's idiotic claim that the war in Iraq was a "crusade", Westerners looked to the past to make sense of what is currently happening in the world; a clash of East and West. Most, if not all, books on the Crusades take a liberal enlightenment stance of attacking the West and portraying the Crusaders as warmongerers who were only interested in their personal wealth and power. The reason for this outlook is because those books were influenced by authors and research done during the Imperial Age of both Europe and America which had overtones of the West imposing it's will onto the East which authors compared to the Crusades.
Madden's book takes a very balanced and scholarly approach to the Crusades; instead of adding on to the list of historically and socially flawed texts about the subject, he shows in a very simple and easy to understand way the mind set of both Medieval Europe and Islam. By doing this he doesn't fall victim to trying to explain the purpose of the Crusades using the modern secular mindset but the pious devotion to God found in both Christian and Muslim camps which makes understanding them easier. Once the reader is acquainted with the Medieval world, Madden does take an unbiased secular approach to what the Crusades were and the impact, if any, they have on current state of affairs.
With a little over 200 DETAILED pages Madden does a thorough job explaining the finer points of the Crusade without overbearing the reader with a list of dates and endless family genealogies. I highly recommend this book to those who are looking for an introduction into the complex subject of the Crusades or just to get a concise overview of what they were about without ploughing through thousands of pages of other texts. This is my second book on the Crusades, James Reston's Jr's "Warrior's of God" being the first (it's a closer look at Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade; Reston, like others in the past, is biased towards the East/Islam, but only in the introduction of the end of the 2nd Crusade, the bias surprisingly disappears after that, great book highly recommend it).
One thing you'll definitely get from this book is that the Crusades were not black and white, good vs. evil, West vs. Islam; too many factors are involved to make it so. Get the book and learn that whatever you may see in the media about what is happening in the world today has some sort of agenda.
Next up: Runciman's 3 volume work (although it is dated and is somewhat flawed in thinking) and Tyerman's "God's War".
not objective.......2007-02-07
Good book if you throw objectivity away and look at history with a sentimental eye rather than a neutral mind. I was dissapointed in the way the book was written.
An easy introduction.......2007-01-28
This book is great for beginners. The writing is smooth and lively, and the author doesn't overwhelm you with too much useless information. Once you're done with this book, if you're interested, you should move on to the books by Jonathan Riley-Smith (we're using them at school). His books contain more information but they are more difficult; I would not recommend them for beginners. You should start with this.
Both Thomas Madden and Jonathan Riley-Smith take a refreshingly balanced approach. They do not paint the Crusades and Imperialism with the same brush, as if the crusaders were just a bunch of greedy European Christians out to plunder innocent Muslim lands. This is currently the popular view; but it confuses the greed of secular imperialists with the piety of devout crusaders. Furthermore, it assumes that Islam spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Spain 'innocently.'
Instead, the Crusades were armed pilgrimages to the holy land with three main objectives: a) to come to the aid of Eastern Christians who were under threat by Muslim forces, b) to recapture some of the territory which was recently conquered by Muslim forces, and c) to improve relations with the Eastern Church. Unfortunately, the Crusades eventually failed in all three of these areas.
Once a crusade was launched it was difficult to control, and too many atrocities took place along the way. Two common examples of such atrocities are the massacring of Jews in Germany during the First Crusade, and the sacking of the city of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Nevertheless, these atrocities were never the initial intentions of the Crusades. Thomas Madden explains all of this in a very fair way. He neither shies away from the ugliness of these atrocities nor uses them to justify an anti-Catholic/pro-secular rant.
A breath of fresh air.
Lots of information in a small form factor.......2007-01-22
After seeing the great reviews for this book, I picked it up to try to gain a better understanding of the Crusades and how it may be related to current events. I was kind of shell shocked with all of the details this book throws at you. But after getting deeper into the book, it was actually a great read. From the disappointments of the Crusades to the identification of the misunderstanding that often result from historical misconceptions, this book packs a lot of information in a concise and interesting format.
Amazon.com
In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars," the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury. When stability returned in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning, becoming not only the conservators of civilization, but also the shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on Western culture.
Book Description
The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe.
Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" -- and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians.
In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost -- they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task.
As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.
In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's
A Distant Mirror,
How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.
Download Description
From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne--the "dark ages"--learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization--from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works--would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland.
Customer Reviews:
Enjoyable reading.......2007-09-28
I enjoyed this book and am somewhat surprised by the nasty reviews. I wasn't looking for a historical textbook or I would surely have looked elsewhere. As an introduction to the role Ireland played in history, I found it a scratching of the surface that made me want to go out and learn more. And I loved Cahill's rather lighthearted amusing writing style. I'm intrigued enough to want to read more in the hinges of history series and I find myself wanting to study Irish poetry from the middle ages.
An enjoyable read!
An ok book about the Irish.......2007-08-27
An ok book about irish civilization. I cannot say that I loved this book. It was a general read about the Irish. I was not overwhelmed by this.
Heavy reading.......2007-07-18
This book is an interesting intellectual history of the fall of Western classical civilization, and how its literary works and ideas were preserved and then brought back to life through Irish monasteries. Cahill begins with an analysis of why the Roman Empire collapsed, which he supports by drawing heavily on classical writers, from Plato to Cicero. He also examines the state of Irish society at the time, using the Tain as an example. He then traces the history of Saint Patrick bringing Christianity to Ireland, and how the new Christian monasteries came to be the institutions that preserved the ancient classical texts and brought them back to mainland Europe in future centuries.
I found Cahill's approach to history quite interesting, in his heavy use of contemporary literary works to exemplify his descriptions. He argues that it was the special nature of Irish intellectual society, in which the monks were interested in reading and preserving all classical works without censoring them, which enabled many classic Greek and Roman texts to be preserved. Without such broad interests in preserving all ancient texts, Cahill argues they would have been lost for good with the looting and burning of the great European libraries, and the ideas in them would not have been available to fuel the renaissance. The book is quite thought-provoking, and would make a good choice for book discussions.
Wonderful Book.......2007-06-14
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Like many of Thomas Cahill's books the author spends the first few chapters on background history (which can be a slow read for some - myself included), but once he sets up the time and place it is a smooth enjoyable ride that leaves you inspired and enriched.
Not scholarly literature.......2007-06-13
I thought Cahill's premise was fascinating. The book was interesting, too, but it's not a scholarly work. Cahill tells a story. I admit that I have not read enough in this area to be able to fully critique his work, but like any work the reader should not blindly accept everything he or she reads.
I was disappointed by the vagueness of much of Cahill's text. Much of it seemed irrelevant. Ausonius and Augustine and Plato are nice, but I don't know if they're really the greatest cross-section of classical civilzation to cite. I was confused by the way in which the story was told. I felt cheated by the layout, which seems to indicate that events happened in this order: 1) Rome is great, 2) Rome is overrun by barbarians, 3) Ireland becomes civilized, 4) Ireland enlightens the world, 5) the world is saved. However, if you look at the chronology in the back, these events are intertwined and one is not necessarily the result of another. This book seems to be the bones of the story - but it's not fleshed out. Please note that Cahill's credentials are as a religious scholar, not a historian.
Cahill's arguments are interesting, and he did illuminate an aspect of history that was previously a shadow of the Dark Ages. The time between the fall of the Roman empire and Charlemagne seems to be a black hole in history. Cahill does make the usual error of assuming that the people of his society are the only people in the world - but anyone who knows anything about history knows that the world was never empty. I may give Cahill another chance, but I have my reservations.
Book Description
The first volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History covers the transitional period between the later Roman world and the early middle ages, c. 500 to c. 700. This was an era of developing consciousness and profound change in Europe, Byzantium and the Arab world, an era in which the foundations of medieval society were laid and to which many of our modern myths of national and religious identity can be traced. This book offers a comprehensive regional survey of the sixth and seventh centuries, from Ireland in the west to the rise of Islam in the Middle East, and from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean south. It explores the key themes pinning together the history of this period, from kingship, trade and the church, to art, architecture and education. It represents both an invaluable conspectus of current scholarship and an expert introduction to the period.
Amazon.com
King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West.
Customer Reviews:
The other side of the White Man's Burden.......2007-10-15
Not since Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness" have we seen the cold-blooded truth about the cold-blooded atrocities that were all too commonplace during the era of "the white man's colonization of Africa." Here "the art of despotism Western style" was perfected and perhaps reached its apotheosis through the evil but almost Teutonically calculated machinations of a petty and vile King of Belgium.
Examined from inside the hermitically sealed inner chamber of horrors of a forgotten and almost unrecorded, and still seldom acknowledged 20th Century holocaust, the author lays bare -- atrocity-by-ugly-atrocity -- the moral and humanitarian horrors of the subjugation of the "Belgian Congo." It is a crime of such monumental proportions that it will forever stain the character of the entire Belgian people.
Yet, despite the fact that these horrors, in almost every respect rivaled the European holocaust committed against Jews and other "so called undesirables," until this volume, the atrocities of the Belgium Congo had remained a carefully ignored and much repressed - if not subtly rationalized and protected part of Western history.
Just as Hitler disguised the last train ride to Auschwitz as a vacation to an idyllic labor camp, so too did Leopold's henchmen -- which, as usual, included a sizable contingent of the Christian clergy - also disguised their perfidy under the cloak of "civilizing the barbaric Africans." If it does nothing else, this book finally reveals who the real savages of Africa were.
Adam Hochschild shakes the moral conscience in more than just one way: The key subtext of his book is that there is no final justice in this world. The strong, the greedy and the powerful continue to murder and otherwise ravage the earth with impunity; and then as King Leopold II did, they rewrite history to cover their crimes. Overtime, even those who know the truth are unable to come to grips with what they know and with what they have seen. In order to retain a modicum of their conscience intact, they learn that it is much healthier to pretend to forget. Otherwise, how else can they sit idly by and watch the dead rest peacefully, when the unremitting Christian-backed moral hell on earth continue to rage unabated above their heads?
The other subtext is equally chilling: This revelation gives a whole new meaning to Rudyard Kipling's poem, or William Easterly's book of the same name: "The White Man's Burden." It is that the white man's greed and crimes over the past half millennium -- in the Americas, against all of Africa and most of Asia - under the guise of doing good for the less civilized -- has bequeath to us all a moral "scorched earth." All of humanity has been compromised and greatly diminished by the white man's rampant quest for his version of civilization and progress.
Now, in the aftermath of the bloodiest century in history, it is not too much of an exaggeration to suggest that the white man's greed and immorality normalized under the guise of doing good for the less civilized has itself become a kind of global moral savagery that is now a burden for all the world.
Five Stars
the heart of man is desperately wicked.......2007-09-25
If you have somehow achieved sufficient literacy to read user reviews on Amazon, and still believe that people are basically good, now's your chance to read a book that will relieve you of this misconception. King Leopold's Ghost gives historical proof that there is no problem in recruiting enough people to torture, humiliate, and kill perfectly innocent Africans by the millions.
All I can say is thank God for the press and for Christian missionaries. If it hadn't been for those two institutions, the horror in Africa perpetrated by the Belgian king would have continued unabated until all of the land drained by the Congo river was stripped of all human inhabitants.
Ashes from the White Sepulcher .......2007-08-16
A masterful work. Hochschild outlines an entire world duped by charms and charming sentiments. Millions perished while Leopold gains wealth untold. Maiming, murder, mayhem and the crooked world of Presidents, Kings and Congresses. Leopold mastery of the world stage lasted decades. Long term lessons on how governments manage what is perceived to be the gospel truth. Hochschild deserves high recognition for this introduction into the world of tycoons and titans plundering a nation in the name of Christianity. Hochschild's assessment of current Zaire affairs are disturbing. Cobalt, uranium and a host of lesser necessities available to the of best armed encampments from the native riches of this African country. The plunder continues
The True Story Behind Heart of Darkness.......2007-07-14
In the annals of atrocities committed by human beings against ourselves, the historic and ongoing mistreatment of Africa by the Industrialized World takes the (highly dubious) prize. While an extremely generous revision of history might forgive the arrogance and naivety of the colonial powers for believing that clothing, Christianity, modern weapons and free markets would be enough to make Africa like Europe, King Leopold II of Belgium seems to stand out ahead of the pack. King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, in one respect, is a depressing narrative about how MILLIONS of Africans were "civilized" by trading their lives and liberty to grow Leopold's personal fortune. But it is also an inspiring story about how a few people, through their passion for the inalienable rights endowed to all people, shook Europe and America awake and their efforts to bring about real change in the Congo.
Hochschild, as he explains in his preface, first became aware of the crimes against humanity instigated by King Leopold by accident. A quote from Mark Twain (active in the Congo Movement during the decades around the turn of the 20th century) about the 8-10 million people that were helped to their graves by Leopold's regime in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Such a tragically huge tally is striking, and it inspired Hochschild to find out as much as he could. King Leopold's Ghost begins with a whirlwind synopsis of the first 400 years of European imposition upon Central Africa -- the Portuguese, Afoso, Prester John, the Colonial Era. The pace slows once Henry M. Stanley and Leopold enter the picture.
The lives of Stanley and Leopold, the two major do-ers in the tale of the subjugation of the Congo, are discussed in detail. Stanley, the explorer, ended up on Leopold's payroll because he really didn't have much else to do. His explorations down the Congo, though courageous and admired, did not raise the kind of interest he though it should in the Foreign Office of his native Britain. Stanley became available for employment just as Leopold's machinations and Machiavellian dealings were justifying (among his fellow monarchs) his desire to take over control of the Congo. Of course, according to Leopold, this was all just so that he could lift up the poor Africans and encourage free trade. Leopold, who never actually visited his kingdom in Africa, needed a surrogate in-country to clear the bush and establish trading stations. Stanley was his man.
Once trading stations were established in the Congo, Europeans came to trade. At first, the primary object of plunder was ivory, but then, with the advent of bicycles (and later automobiles) with inflatable tires, wild rubber became the main export. And so began the "Rubber Terror," where the people of the Congo were forced upon pain and death to harvest the latex. The result, as described by Hochschild, was unbelievable savagery on the part of the civilized world.
Fortunately for the world, the tale of the subjugation of the congo has some undo-ers as well, foremost among them E.D. Morel. The Congo Reform Movement had a worldwide following that made Leopold miserable. Unfortunately for the cause of justice, Leopold died and the Congo Free State (as it was then known) was merely transferred to Belgium -- Leopold was never punished for his crimes against humanity. In 1960, with the rising tide of anti-colonialism beginning to wax all over Africa, Belgium handed power over to the Congolese to rule themselves and try to pull a reasonable government of the people from the humid air. That has not faired particularly well either.
Adam Hochschild's book is well written and engaging. He made a valiant effort to find the words of actual Africans describing their plight during their struggle -- rather than just the victors, or, at best, some sympathetic compatriots of the victors. The paperback edition comes with an extended afterward where the author describes some of the consequences of bringing this too long forgotten take to the forefront again.
Detailed Readable History.......2007-07-05
Positives:
Detailed, readable history about Belgium's Scramble for Africa in the Congo. Hochschild does an excellent job of introducing key figures who aid King Leopold in getting 'his colony' in Africa as well as those who fought against the Belgian King's enslavement of the Congolese people. In addition, Hochschild intersperses the general experience of the colonizers and the Congolese with personal stories from sadistic colonizers, missionaries, the King's lobbyists, and most critically, some of the 10 million people devastated by King Leopold II's obsession.
Negatives:
Hochschild often distracts from the history he is so effectively telling through tangential introductions of more contemporary history and through personal analysis of historical events being presented. His personal analysis interrupts the pace of the history being told, and causes suspiscion about how the author chose to use the facts he researched.
Book Description
Succeeding in World Civilizations class isn't easy. That's why Adler and Pouwels wrote WORLD CIVILIZATIONS: VOLUME II: SINCE 1500 in its trademark, easy-to-read style. Hundreds of illustrations, maps, and documents, overviews, self-tests, and other learning aids make the history of world civilizations easier for students to study and understand. Volume 1 includes thirty concise chapters make content manageable.
Book Description
Listen to a short interview with Karen Ordahl Kupperman
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Captain John Smith's 1607 voyage to Jamestown was not his first trip abroad. He had traveled throughout Europe, been sold as a war captive in Turkey, escaped, and returned to England in time to join the Virginia Company's colonizing project. In Jamestown migrants, merchants, and soldiers who had also sailed to the distant shores of the Ottoman Empire, Africa, and Ireland in search of new beginnings encountered Indians who already possessed broad understanding of Europeans. Experience of foreign environments and cultures had sharpened survival instincts on all sides and aroused challenging questions about human nature and its potential for transformation.
It is against this enlarged temporal and geographic background that Jamestown dramatically emerges in Karen Kupperman's breathtaking study. Reconfiguring the national myth of Jamestown's failure, she shows how the settlement's distinctly messy first decade actually represents a period of ferment in which individuals were learning how to make a colony work. Despite the settlers' dependence on the Chesapeake Algonquians and strained relations with their London backers, they forged a tenacious colony that survived where others had failed. Indeed, the structures and practices that evolved through trial and error in Virginia would become the model for all successful English colonies, including Plymouth.
Capturing England's intoxication with a wider world through ballads, plays, and paintings, and the stark reality of Jamestown--for Indians and Europeans alike--through the words of its inhabitants as well as archeological and environmental evidence, Kupperman re-creates these formative years with astonishing detail.
Customer Reviews:
History done right.......2007-06-24
Kupperman does an excellent job of establishing the cultural, religious, and political atmosphere at the time of the colony's origins. I found it fascinating to immersive myself in the whys of the colony: why was it started, why were people interested in investing in it, etc. I also felt there were a lot of interesting parallels to the story of the colony and to that today--of how government and corporations often place financial interests far above humanitarian interests. The book also gave me a much more accurate idea of what it must have meant to be a colonist and helped dispel the myth that in fleeing England these people found a land of freedom and opportunity. It also gave me a very deep appreciation for the first settlers as without them, I surely would never be here. This excellent work does a wonderful job of providing an intelligent, in-depth examination of our origins as a country and it does so in an engaging manner so that it reads more like a novel and nothing like a dry textbook.
The Jamestown Project.......2007-05-13
Once I started it I couldn't put it down! Very factual and riveting. The author did an exceptional job of relating what these poor people actually lived to start our great nation.
A Good "Atlantic" Reworking of the Jamestown Story.......2007-03-28
Karen Ordahl Kupperman revisits territory she knows well with this latest history of Jamestown. What distinguishes Kupperman's history from the slew of other books which have come before is the very self conscious effort to put the founding of Jamestown within an Atlantic history context.
For people who are looking for a detailed history of Jamestown itself this is not the book. Instead you should perhaps try one of Dr Kupperman's other books. She only gets to the actual founding of the colony in the last two chapters of the book. Instead she discusses the world which brought about the colonization. That is the true purpose of this book and why it is called the Jamestown PROJECT. By placing the story of the colony within the larger background of financial expansion, political maneuvering, and geopolitics, Kupperman makes us very conscious of the contingency of Jamestown. This was not an inevitable event, the precursor to American history. Rather, it was the END of a long series of events and trends which contributed to the settlement there and the way it developed.
Along the way Kupperman takes us on a sweeping journey of the Early Modern world. Her topics range from the waxing and waning of Islamic powers, to the routes of Spanish expansion, to the creation of Caribbean colonies, the continental wars of 16th century Europe, and the life of Native Americans both in America and Europe. All of this is, while at times disjointed, a welcome background to the colonization of Jamestown and reframes the familiar story in illuminating ways. The background explains why the colony was founded the way it was: why did the colonists refuse to grow food? Why did they interact with the Natives the way they did? Kupperman's book is a useful one for anyone interested in the early history of America or the Atlantic world.
Book Description
The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.
Customer Reviews:
Very informative.........2007-10-06
Very informative book! Weir manages to give us a detailed description of the personalities of each of these six queens. What makes this book such a success is that its very easy to read making it impossible to get bored!
History made interesting.......2007-09-17
I haven't been a big history buff in the past (no pun intended) but after seeing a glimpse of a documentary on Henry VIII, I was curious. This book was GREAT! I simply couldn't put it down and lugged the big book with me on the bus, on planes, etc. In fact, it inspired me to continue reading up on the Tudors. Highly recommended!
The perfect storyteller........2007-08-24
Impeccably researched, fantastically written, wonderfully enthralling. Anyone interested in British history, monarchs in general, the tudor period, politics, or anyone who just plain likes gossip will love this book. It was really great.
Loved this book!.......2007-08-14
A friend recommended some of Philipa Gregory's books to me. After reading "The Other Boelyn Girl" I decided to try non-fiction. I would have never dreamed that I would enjoy a big, thick, historial, non-fiction book about 16th century England. However, "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" was fantastic! I could not put this book down! I have ordered Ms. Weir's other books about Lady Jane Grey, Henry VIII's court and Elizabeth. After reading this book, you will look at the Tower of London, Hampton Court, Hever Castle, etc. in a completely different way when in London. You have to hand it to the Brits; they have the most interesting and fascinating history of all.
Great account of history.......2007-08-12
If you're in the market for a book that gives a thorough account of each wife of Henry VIII, then this is the book for you. Over 600 pages long, this packs together history and great writing. It's written chronologically, from Henry's days before his betrothal to Katherine of Aragon, up to the death of his last wife, Katherine Parr. It flows together perfectly. It's easy to read, to boot. I think my favorite parts were the quotes taken from personal letters, and hand-written accounts by those closest to the royals themselves.
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- Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint : (Techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints) (Write Great Fiction)
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- Your Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945
- 1984 (Signet Classics)
- A Sourcebook on the Roman Games (Blackwell Sourcebooks in Ancient History) (Blackwell Sourcebooks in Ancient History)
- Adaptation, Acculturation and Transnational Ties Among Asian Americans (Asians in America: The Peoples of East, Southeast, and South Asia in American Life and Culture)
- Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution
- All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
- American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World
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Western Civilization: Volume I: To 1715
Western Civilization: Volume I: To 1715 (with InfoTrac)
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