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.
Book Description
This book offers a vivid, compelling history of the first thousand years of Christianity. Ranging across the Christian world from China to Iceland, the narrative illustrates the diversity of Christian beliefs and practices. It also places the rise of Christianity in the context of other religious traditions, especially Islam. The author draws penetrating portraits of individuals and communities, from St Patrick and the Irish church to the Christian communities of Armenia and Mesopotamia.For the second edition, the book has been thoroughly rewritten and expanded. It includes two new chapters, on monasticism and Irish Christianity. The author has also added an extensive preface in which he reflects on the scholarly traditions that have influenced his work and explains his current thinking about the book's themes. The new edition contains new maps, a substantial bibliography, and a number of chronological tables to orient the reader.
Customer Reviews:
I read this for a class.......2006-11-27
I had this book for a class on Medieval Europe. This book was our main text for the first half of the course and I spent quite a bit of those two months reading this book... I probably would have liked this book more had I had longer to read and understand it. It's arranged in a very confusing way and it's terrible to write essays over. My professor said that Peter Brown is brilliant, and I think he probably really is. Unfortunatly, I was too lost to appreciate it. If things were arranged more chronologically and if some clear distinctions were made in people groups this book would be more greatly appreciated.
Excellent book -.......2006-01-15
The book goes beyond the rather narrow sounding scope of the title; Brown nicely covers the changes in politics and economics that fostered (or hindered) the spead of Christianity from Ireland to the Middle East. The subject matter is cogently presented and enjoyable to read, unlike other scholarship of this era where authors tend to prove to the reader how much they know leaving the reader somewhat in the dust. Fascinating (at least to me!) is the number of texts that Brown cites that show the changes in orthodoxy from one century to another in various geographical areas, and how those texts came to be preserved. Conclusions are based on either these texts or archiology, not flights of a priori fantasy that all-too-often formed the basis for earlier works on this period. All in all, a book of great scholarship, but most approachable.
A great writer produces unreadable prose.......2005-10-10
Let me say first that I have been a great admirer of Peter Brown for many years. His "World of Late Antiquity" was a seminal work that inspired a generation of scholars to look past the tired old concepts of the fall of the Roman empire, and his biography of Augustine, recently updated, is magnificent.
It was with some excitement then that I sat down to see what Brown had to say in a work that covers a larger span of time than most of his previous studies. And it was with a sinking heart that I realized, after a few pages, that this one-time master of prose has lost his way.
In his lengthy introduction, Brown seems determined to undermine every preconception we may have about Europe's evolution in late antiquity and the early middle ages. To reinforce his point, he puts quotation marks around a myriad of words and phrases: "Roman", "barbarian", "imperial", "Western." For a page or two this seems like a reasonable way of signalling that these words may not mean what we think they mean. But the trouble is, he never stops: the quotation marks multiply, sometimes occurring a dozen times on a page, and seldom less than once per paragraph. And it becomes impossible to know what he is trying to signify. If he finds words like "Roman" and "barbarian" useful, why doesn't he simply define what he means by them, rather than distancing himself from them? It seems pointless to contrast barbarian and Roman, if you believe that the one is not really barbarian, and the other not really Roman.
And it gets worse. What are we to make of the fact that Irish kings ruled over "plains"? Do the quotation marks signify that the kings called them by that term (or its Gaelic equivalent), or that they were not really plains? Why the quotes around "Carolingian minuscule", not just on introduction but in subsequent references -- was the script not truly Carolingian, or not truly minuscule?
I don't know who should take the most blame here, Brown for repeatedly flagging words as not meaning what we think they mean, without bothering to find alternatives that he feels are more accurate, or his editor for letting him get away with it.
I realize other readers may not be as bothered by this sort of thing as I am, but I found it baffling and, ultimately, offputting. I seldom return a book, and I never thought I would return one of Peter Brown's, but that is what I did in this case.
Deep and wide.......2005-07-23
Peter Brown first came to my attention through his scholarship in the study of Augustine, one of my particular interests in the field of church history. His biography of Augustine is considered one of the standards, having been written first in the 1960s, and revised for the turn of the millennium in 2000. This speaks to the length of his career and involvement with the study of church history generally, of which this volume is a wonderful survey.
This book, 'The Rise of Western Christendom', looks at the first 1000 years (the first half of Christian history). Despite its title, it does not focus exclusively on the idea of Christianity as a Western phenomenon. One of the great strengths of this historical survey, as opposed to many of the previous generation, is that it does not stop at the borders of Rome, nor does it take a linear progression approach to the history. Brown preserves the diversity inherent in the original church, showing the growth in Latin and Greek areas, as well as other areas that would arise such as the Antioch/Aleppo area, where Coptic and Syriac were significant languages, and art, architecture, liturgical development and scholarship thrived for centuries as a major centre for Christianity. Brown also discusses 'mirco-Christendoms', pockets both within and outside of the original Roman Imperial borders where Christianity was planted and grew more or less independently of central authority and direction.
To understand the history of Western Europe (of which this volume is part of a series on the topic), one must have a wider perspective than just the goings-on that took place on the European continental mainland. Indeed, from the very first lines, Brown starts with the city of Edessa, located in the ancient Fertile Crescent area, and the ancient capital of Ctesiphon, a city located very near modern-day Baghdad, which ruled a powerful empire that did not include any of the European continent, but which had profound influence over the peoples and empires on the European continent for centuries. Also included in Brown's history are peripheral figures - barbarians, farmers, frontierspeople - who often get overlooked in favour of the royal/imperial lines of history.
Brown looks both at individuals and institutions in his historical development and analysis. Individuals such as Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, Patrick, Clovis, Justinian and others are prominent, but the overall development of institutions and communities takes the larger portion of the text. There are major innovations such as monasticism and the rise of central church authorities and structures, and smaller institutions such as community governments. Brown includes the various tales of conversion for the different nations (the deliberations of the Icelanders, for example, versus the more forced conversions of the Norse) as well as the theological and administrative variations and homogenisation in the more central Mediterranean region. Brown also deals with the rise of Islam, the varying ways in which Christian communities and Muslim communities interacted and clashed, sometimes violently, but sometimes coming to mutually beneficial accords.
This is a book for students and scholars, although the general interest reader with a curiosity for church history and how it fits into the larger historical frame will also find this text useful. There are maps scattered throughout the text, as well as charts and tables. The book includes extensive endnotes for the scholar, but reading through the narrative does not depend upon them (saving one from having to flip back and forth endlessly). There is an appendix entitled 'Coordinated Chronological Tables' that traces the history from circa 100 - 1000, showing important events in the East, West, British Isles, and Scandanavia. A 44-page bibliography (one third primary sources, the rest secondary sources) and 27-page index round out the scholarship tools, making this an incredibly useful reference resource.
This book is often used at my seminary for the first half of church history, and is used at many schools (undergraduate and graduate level) for history courses generally. Brown's text is engaging and clear, easy to follow and well developed. It is a pleasure to read in addition to being interesting in material and presentation. Brown's text had both depth and breadth, not sacrificing one aspect for the other, but managing to hold both in good proportion to the other.
Origins and developments in the western tradition.......2004-03-25
Professor Brown has substantially revised The Rise of Western Christendom, originally published in 1996 as part of the "Making of Europe" series edited by Jacques Le Goff. The result is a much stronger work, which will appeal to scholars of Late Antiquity more than the first edition while still captivating the general reader.
In the second edition Brown continues to treat the localization of Christianity in regions from the North Atlantic to Asia. He describes how Irishmen, Saxons, and others transferred to their homeland relics, styles of art and architecture, and ecclesiastical customs, thus believing that they "had brought to their own region a 'microcosm' which reflected, with satisfactory completeness, the 'macrocosm' of a worldwide Christianity. . . . They strove to cancel out the hiatus between 'center' and 'periphery' by making 'little Romes' available on their home ground" (15). Brown calls the local variations of a broader Christianity "micro-Christendoms." In his characterization of the British Isles, he writes "The religious leaders of every region claimed to possess at home a set of customs and doctrines which were ultimately derived from 'true' centers of Christian learning and practice in a wider world" (359). Through statements like this, Brown tries to erase the model of thinking about Christianity in terms of "center" and "periphery," a theory he borrows from anthropology and religious studies.
Yet, by entitling the work The Rise of Christianity in the West, the author reifies the notion of Christianity as a "western" phenomenon although a significant portion of the book treats the localization and perpetuation of Christianity in non-western regions such as Syria and Persia. In fact, his discussion of the climate of competition among religions in the East is every bit as penetrating as his examination of the West. A more fitting title to this abolition of core-periphery, therefore, might be Micro-Christendoms: Christianity and Diversity from 200-1000.
The first edition received mixed reviews. One historian of Late Antiquity wrote that ". . . the exuberance and delight inherent in his interpretation . . . ought to make this book attractive and influential" (Journal of Theological Studies 48.2 [1997], 671), while another scholar of the period claimed that "its picture is skewed, and its conclusions are not demonstrated" (American Historical Review 102.5 [1997], 1463). With this second edition, Brown will continue to elicit criticism from those believing that he is too theory-oriented at the expense of doing proper "positivist" work. On the other hand, many of the problems which scholars of Late Antiquity pointed out in the first edition focused on the lack of documentation, and it is here, among other places, that the second edition enhances the work. Although the original had no notes, this version has sixty pages detailing the author's sources. The first edition had a seven-page [End Page 139] bibliography with no primary sources; the second contains a forty-four page bibliography, including eleven pages of primary sources.
Another way in which Brown improves the second edition is by adding two new chapters, "Powerhouses of Prayer: Monasticism in Western Europe" and "The Making of Sapiens: Religion and Culture in Continental Europe and in Ireland." He also amends his chapter "Christianity in Asia" and renames it "Christianity in Asia and the Rise of Islam." And he divides the chapter "Christianities of the North: Ireland and Saxon Britain" into two separate chapters, treating local Christianity in each region more fully.
Furthermore, Brown refines the layout of the visual aids and adds to them. The first edition contained four maps at the beginning of the book whereas the second has ten maps placed strategically throughout the body of the text to correspond to the geographical areas under discussion. Likewise, the second edition has chronologies arranged within the narrative to give the reader a point of reference for the persons, places, and events being examined. These additions allow the reader to organize and contextualize the contents, a point which is especially helpful since the book covers such a broad period and has a vast regional scope. Finally, the placement of sub-headings throughout the text strengthens the structure of the second edition. The reader will find the sub-topics easier to configure within the broader thesis.
This book makes a useful text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in religion and history. It is helpful for its survey of Christianity, the questions it raises regarding the relationship of religion to ethnicity and locality, and its notes and bibliography, which point to related studies. At $29.95, the paperback is a reasonable addition to the individual scholar's library.
Nathan Howard
Book Description
This is Volume A (chapters 1-12) of the best-selling Western civilization text that has helped hundreds of thousands of 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 that sparks students' imaginations by giving them a context within which to understand these disparate themes. And while the single-author narrative makes it easy for students to follow the story of Western civilization, Spielvogel has included dozens of maps and primary sources--including official documents, poems, and songs--that enliven the past while introducing students to the challenges involved in interpreting history. This text is available in many split options: WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Comprehensive, Fifth Edition (Chapters 1-29), ISBN: 0-534-60006-9 WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume I, To 1715, Fifth Edition (Chapters 1-16), ISBN: 0-534-60007-7 WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume II, Since 1550, Fifth Edition (Chapters 13-29), ISBN: 0-534-60008-5 WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume A: To 1500, Fifth Edition (Chapters 1-12), ISBN: 0-534-52949-6 WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume B: 1300-1815, Fifth Edition (Chapters 11-19), ISBN: 0-534-52950-X WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Volume C: Since 1789, Fifth Edition (Chapters 19-29), ISBN: 0-534-52952-6 WESTERN CIVILIZATION, Since 1300, Fifth Edition (Chapters 11-29), ISBN: 0-534-60010-7
Book Description
Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in the wake of the Scientific Revolution - of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief, by the new philosophy and the philosophies, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, slavery, and ecclesiastical authority, as well as man's asendancy over woman and theology's domination over education and study, substituting the modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, the Radical Enlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present-day interest in the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have been astonishingly little studied, doubtless largely because if its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulties of fitting it into the restrictive conventions of 'national history' which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to the Radical Enlightenment finding its proper place in modern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettrie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating.......2007-10-07
An interesting and well written history of the radical Enlightenment - the growth of atheism and deism in particular. The author writes engagingly and makes what could otherwise be a tedious subject interesting. I found the descriptions of how philosophy books were literally smuggled into countries as contraband quite intriguing and more than a bit amusing.
Two notes of caution, however: First, be at least somewhat familiar with the basics of western philosophy. Either have taken a college-level course in it or read a basic book on the topic such as Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. Second (and this is only a minor complaint) the author provides copious quotes, mostly in French, without translation. While it is possible to figure out the gist of most of these from the context, it is somewhat annoying at times. The assumption seems to be that if you're studying philosophy, you must speak French.
I will undoubtedly follow this up with the author's other book on the Enlightenment in this series.
Radical, Contestable.......2007-07-16
Jonathan Israel presents his work as an important new history of the `Early' Enlightenment (1680-1740).
He has two key, inter-related theses. Firstly, that the whole of the early Enlightenment was driven by an engagement with the views of Spinoza (e.g. P.431) and secondly that the whole of the early Enlightenment, across Europe needs to be understood as a single, integrated process.
At one stage (P.456) he draws a comparison betweenSpinozism and Marxism and that gives you a good sense of how he sees Spinoza's movement.
His own background as a specialist in the Enlightenment in the Netherlands comes strongly into play and the book is at its best on this topic. The original growth of Cartesianism is taken as read. Spinoza's breach with Cartesian dualism and his counter arguments for monism are gone into in more detail . The book comes alive when discussing the popularizers of Spinoza such as Leenhof, Van Dale, Bekker, Kuyper, Van Den Enden, Meyer, Beverlaand, Goeree. Other radical figures such as Vauvenarues, de Boulainvilliars, Radicati, le Clerc take on a new significance in this light.
Such figures have been lost to history. It is a paradox of the history of philosophy that the greatest intellectual achievement often resides in defending the indefensible, putting obstacles in the path of progress. Those who championed change often achieved less of lasting intellectual quality, being too busy achieving a different world.
It is for this reason refreshing that Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Voltaire, Leibniz, Malebranche and Rousseau play a support role in this book. Soon we begin to believe that the Enlightenment may indeed have been driven forward by radical deists and atheists elaborating on Spinoza.
The argument goes too far as we slip from the 1670s and 1680s to the 1730s and 1740s. Israel is too keen to amalgamate the whole period. He fails to emphasise sufficiently that whereas Spinoza's own work, with Geulincx and Malebrance and Gassendi was part of a debate about Descartes, what came later was something different. Spinoza may have survived better in the 1730s as an icon than Descartes or Malebranche, but he was no less an historical figure. The new battle, by that time, was - as he says - a three cornered fight. But the third corner with Lockean empiricism and Leibnizian/Wolffian rationalism was an emergent mechanical materialism and not a continuing Spinozism. The two over-lapped, but were not the same.
Furthermore, Israel nowhere recognises the full force of the Newtonian-Lockean and Leibniz-Wollfian critiques of Spinoza - undermining, respectively the epistemology and concept of necessity on which Spinoza relied. The internal tensions and dialogue within Spinozism are also often lost sight of in the repeated insistence on drawing the lineage of continuity. Thus the intellectual origins of 18th century materialism are misplaced and he does not see that the changed treatment of Spinoza in the works of the moderate Enlightenment, such that he came aroudn 1730 to be treated with « meticulous care » (P.658) derives from Spinoza's increasing irrelevance.
The failure to chart as carefully as he might have the changing pattern of influence of the radicalEnlightenment reflects a certain crudity of approach which affects more substantially Israel's unwisely formulated second thesis. The idea that the early Enlightenment was a single trans-European process is simply too crude. Israel's own nation-specific chapters don't even support it. Israel speaks repeatedly of the `Republic of Letters'as an unproblematic trans-European unity. Yet the evidence is of a far more complex set of phenomena, driven not only by the interchange of ideas, but also by the precarious realities of book and manuscript circulation (often via smuggling routes) of erratic patterns of translation and survival of Latin as an international language and of local governmental and institutional politics. We never get any structured treatment of the complex inter-related systems of dialogue in secret discussion circles, in the manuscript circulation of material and in the very different published circulation of material. It is paradoxical that the national and even `local' character of the Enlightenment is so effectively lost in the midst of so sweeping and knowledgeable a survey across Europe.
A very particular and telling problem lies with defining the margins between heterodox Christianity and deist Enlightenment. Israel's account involves drawing figures like Leerhof into the deist fold while evaluating others such as Van Hatten as merely heterodox Christians. Tellingly, at one point we are assured that Stosch's stance was « philosophical not local » (P.641). We see here an artificial distinction that has less grounding in historical reality than in Israels' retrospective schema.
It is strikingly illustrated in this book that when Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach rejected philosophy he was rejecting a substantial, reputable tradition of philosophical militancy against revealed religion. Spinozism was a militant tradition, determined, in its day, by bravery and deception to undermine the established churches.The early Enlightment was also a period of militant deism rampant among the ruling elites, championed by figures such as Federick the Great, the Duc de Noailles and the Earl of Shaftesbury. This combination of dissent from within the ruling elite and isolated radical intellectuals is strikingly strange to us.
Despite the weaknesses of his two specific theses on this period, Israel has written a fascinating work, reminding us of that militancy, of Spinoza's central role in it and of - as so often - how the militant minority drive the moderate as well as the reactionary mainstreams.
Fascinating Intellectual History.......2007-05-12
An utterly fascinating study of intellectual history in Europe, especially Holland, on either side of the turn of the eighteenth century. "Radical Enlightenment" refers to what were perceived as hard-line attacks on authoritarian, particularly religious ideas, specifically the ideas of divine providence, the afterlife, rewards and punishments for behavior. Israel sees Spinoza as the chief philosophical force behind the radical ideas with his concept of a single substance composing the universe, i.e., pantheism is seen as atheism and is either persecuted by church and state or modified by less "radical" thinkers such as Leibniz and Wolff, Locke, and others considered part of the more "moderate" Enlightenment. Anyone interested in the development of modern ideas and the progress of knowledge or philosophy generally would be hard-pressed to find a better written, researched, or more comprehensive source for the period. Israel is obviously writing for intellectuals, but be advised that he quotes frequently from French sources and does not translate, so make sure your French is in order.
A slightly flawed masterpiece.......2005-01-05
Most people, when they think of the Enlightenment, think first of 18th France, of Voltaire and of Diderot. The late Roy Porter, in his spirited Enlightenment (Penguin paperback) claimed that the roots of the Enlightenment were actually in England. Then we have recently had James Buchan's Capital of the Mind, which claims in its subtitle that the philosophers of Edinburgh "changed the world". Jonathan Israel says that these are all parochial approaches, and that the Enlightenment was a movement whose international character he intends to illustrate. He has indeed read prodigiously in international literature: his bibliography gives 26 pages of published primary sources and 31 of secondary literature, and these include titles in Latin, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Danish.
Nevertheless, what emerges quite clearly from this book is that he places the origins of the Radical Enlightenment very firmly in 17th century Holland in general and in Spinoza in particular; and although one might perhaps expect this from a historian whose previous book was an equally massive work on the Dutch Republic (OUP), he makes a totally convincing case for this. In the course of it we learn much about many Dutch thinkers. Many of them are scarcely known in this country; and there are some, like Anthonie van Dale and Frederik van Leenhof, who according to Professor Israel are almost unknown even in Holland today.
True, it is a Frenchman, René Descartes, who could be said to have planted the seeds of what would become the Enlightenment, and there is a good deal about him in the book; but the principal theatre for the debate about Descartes is again shown to be Holland, where he had moved for safety in 1628, where the Discours de la Méthode was first published in 1637, and from where it later spread to other countries. Indeed, Spinoza's first published work was The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (1663). I think myself that the title of the book is somewhat misleading. It ought really to have been called Spinoza and the Enlightenment, since it is almost wholly devoted to his influence: all later Enlightenment thinkers of whatever nation are discussed almost exclusively in terms of the extent to which they were in agreement or disagreement with him.
That debate is described in exhaustive - I would say - exhausting - detail, since in fact the various arguments are repeated over and over again. There are principally three parties to this argument: thinkers of the Radical Enlightenment who follow Spinoza more or less all the way; those of the Moderate Enlightenment, who accept a broadly rational approach but stop short of denying a providential deity and the principal mysteries of the Christian faith; and the Conservatives or fideists who demand total acceptance of the traditional doctrines of the churches about such matters as miracles, the existence of Hell and of the Devil. Jonathan Israel patiently gives the arguments of this last group more space than most histories of the Enlightenment would do. Interestingly, many members of even the first group often denied that they were "Spinozists". That label was used by anti-rationalists, right up to eve of the French Revolution in a positively McCarthyist way to discredit even members of the second group, who themselves went out of their way to condemn Spinoza in the strongest terms. The true Spinozists often protected themselves by giving a full statement of the Spinozan positions and then following them with perfunctory or even deliberately feeble objections.
Despite its enormous length and the width of Israel's research, the book does remain rather narrowly focussed. The debates described in the book are largely about religion and about the challenges to deductive rationalism both from the churches and from the pragmatic schools. Such discussion as there is of Enlightenment political thought is again entirely related to the influence of or reaction against Spinoza's unfinished Tractatus Politicus. So, for instance, the debate in France between the thèse royale, the thèse nobiliaire, and democracy does not feature on its own terms. At the end there is an interesting short section on Diderot and his relationship to Spinozism; but there is nothing much of interest on Montesquieu, Voltaire, Helvétius or Holbach, all of whom are considerable figures in the history of the French Enlightenment. And there are just two references to Hume.
There are two other major criticisms: the book takes much previous knowledge for granted (for example, what exactly had been both the psychological and political teaching of Thomas Hobbes). Although there are several references to Malebranche and Malebranchisme, there is nowhere a concise account of what that philosopher taught: the "Occasionalism" for which he is famous has just two references in the index, only one of which links that doctrine with him.
However, Professor Israel has undoubteldy written a most important book which significantly shifts the focus of Enlightenment studies. For that and for his immense scholarship he deserves the praise that reviewers have heaped upon his book.
Good survey.......2003-04-18
It's a good book if you want to have an overview of the general philosophical and cultural atmosphere of the time.
Amazon.com Reviews
In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world. Each has brought profound change--for instance, the remaking of the commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as decadent.
To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo--and, he adds, the scientific foundations for today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the 16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the "Me Decade." Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel, defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides.
Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or little-explored in this attractive venture into cultural history. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.
In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have "Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarch's Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester" – show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras.
The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the creative novelty that will burst forth – tomorrow or the next day.
Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.
Customer Reviews:
My enduring Top-2 pick for understanding the Meaning of Life book........2007-02-24
I have been reading and comtemplating about the Meaning of My Life for 4-5 years now. After reading many books on a variety of subjects, I still recommend Barzun's book as my Top-2 best book for understanding LIFE, and therefore providing the context for piecing together a meaning for YOUR LIFE. My other top pick is Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant. Dawn is not a chronological or objective presentation of history. The book derives coherence by allowing the reader an intimate view inside of one, heavily-opinionated mind. This method might have produced gibberish if the writer was an ordinary scholar. But because Barzan's mind was honed by a lifetime of research, and he was an exceptionally gifted thinker on the subject to begin with, the method produced an exceptionally excellent book. I do not think it is an easy book to read, especially if you do not skip any of the aside comments. You may need to skip parts on the first reading, and come back to it later to cover all of it. However, I think you will definitely feel a sense of achievement after reading it. You may gradually develop wisdom about how to live your own life after reflecting on the human condition covered in such detail over such vast time periods by the book.
This will help every student of art, music, political science,.......2007-01-11
history, religion and literature understand how it came to be and why it was so important.
Barzun is one of the 20th century's greatest literary minds and writers and this proves it all. From country to country, decade to decade, each person is tied to those he met and influenced.
The book containes > and
< symbols with the page numbers so that one can look forward or back to see what is being referenced.
I have read it 3 times and still come back for more.
Good first time around; improves with re-reading.......2006-12-11
I bought and read this book when it came out, and have just read it again -- five years later. It was good the first time I read it, and it gets better the second time around.
Jacques Barzun brings a life of study, lecturing and thought to this whirlwind review of the past half-millennium of Western culture. His opinions are strong, and he is not reluctant to take strong positions, particularly in the latter part of the book which cover the period of his own life (he was 80 when he wrote this book). For the most part I agree with his opinions, and even when I don't I have to admit that his arguments are well articulated and demand an equal measure of rigor from the reader to refute them.
I'm not sure this can really be called a history -- it is more a reasoned dissertation of a point of view. If you want a chronological description of the events of the last 500 years you should probably look elsewhere. But it is certainly fun to read, stimulating, at times infuriating; in its style it is 19th century (it makes me think of Michelet), but in its language it is articulate late-20th century. Jacques Barzun is, I believe, a French immigrant to the United States, so it is a Euro-centric view of development -- and in Prof. Barzun's view, Western culture underwent a fairly linear development and growth (with many reversals all the same) until the early 20th century, when it all began to fall apart...
A final word about Prof. Barzun's writing style. He writes extraordinarily well; it is difficult to imagine that his mother tongue was French. I wish I wrote English as well as he does.
I can heartily recommend this book. It gets better every time. I look forward to re-reading it in 2011.
An epiphany.......2006-11-25
I must confess it was amusing to read the faint praise of multicultural critics on the inside cover, seeing that Barzun excoriates the same politically-correct elites that are in large part responsible for the decline in historical rigor. What is less amusing is that decline itself, and the decline of objectivity and reason in western society on the whole, just as we face new civilizational threats.
If we have often wondered why so many historical works are unreadable, Barzun provides the answer. The targeting of history by ideologues has led to either revisionist trash or pedantic nitpicking by parochial scholars. There was a time, however, when history was read by the mainstream to the same extent as novels or other literature, where synthesis was placed at a premium, where sweeping scope was not frowned upon as naive. With "Dawn", Barzun provides just such a synthesis, and does so with consummate skill and prose so beautiful, the work should serve as a model for future endeavors of a similar stripe.
As the work progresses, it emerges that Barzun is, above all, a teacher. Here is not only a cultural history that emphasizes unappreciated actors and themes, but an urgent recommendation for future exploration. The smart footnote style, inline cross-references and reading suggestions, as well as the callouts of notable quotes operate smoothly to enhance the clarity of ideas. Barzun has a knack for capturing what is interesting to readers and, moreover, for anticipating gaps in the reader's knowledge. Only through a lifetime of scholarship could a work of this depth and scope be successfully executed.
In the end, one is left with a touch of sadness when the last page of "Dawn" is turned -- left, that is, with the poignant realization that Barzun is in his 90s and that he, along with other icons of his generation like Bernard Lewis, will leave shoes behind that today's second-rate revisionists and pedants cannot fill. In this respect, "Dawn" can at least be a monument to the vestiges of a once-great civilization, a lasting admonishment to declining standards even as our values, the "better angels of our nature", disappear.
The Uses of History.......2006-11-23
Given the wonderful reviews below, it would be vain to summarize the structure of this magnificient book. Instead, I'd like to tell you what I think `Dawn to Decadence' can do for you.
* First, and maybe best, you get to spend 802 pages worth of your reading time in the company of a man who has thought long and hard about who we are and has the grace and talent to share it. Jacques Barzun is very good company.
* You'll get to expand your knowledge of your ignorance. How wonderful to be prompted to look at the size of what you don't know! It's the first and in many ways, most luscious step in learning.
* You will lose your sense of what is `human nature' and begin to see a lot of what you thought was part of the human condition as really a piece of human construction. To take one example, the splendid essay on Montaigne reminds us that the very idea of an autonomous self had to be invented and that idea had to struggle against earlier, humoral theories of human nature.
* You will see (and perhaps never forget) a vision of the future in which the tedium of the technological, television era is rolled back by a return to earlier pasttimes and forms. Family poetry readings after dinner? Chamber music on the village green?
In spite of the title, this is a resoundingly optimistic work. It's not too much to say that it will leave you a changed person. I envy any one who gets to read it for the first time and I think I'll distract myself from that envy by reading it again now for the second time.
--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from Kunati Books. ISBN 9781601640005
Book Description
For too long, the history of contact between China and the West has been portrayed as a one-sided encounter: Europeans were said to have discovered China, while Chinese responses to the West went largely unnoticed. In this book, D. E. Mungello dispels the myth that China was a silent partner in the dialogue between Eastern and Western civilizations. Although they did not reciprocate in sending ships, cultural emissaries or religious missionaries westward, neither did the Chinese passively accept Europe's enthusiastic embrace of their culture, arts, and manufactures. Aspects of Western art, science, and religion made significant inroads into Chinese culture, which are only recently coming to the attention of Western historians. And at a time when the West is once again setting its sights on strengthening ties with China, Mungello's work offers crucial historical perspective. It reminds us that the political and economic dominance of the West is actually characteristic of only the past two centuries, prior to which it was China that led the world in terms of economic and political development, and in the sophistication of its high culture and technological achievement. This concise and well-written text will make a wonderful addition to reading lists in East Asian or Chinese History classes, as well as courses on World History. Visit our website for sample chapters.
Customer Reviews:
The Tao of China rising !.......2007-08-24
Prof. Mungello wrote this comprehensive book on the intercourse of China and West in culture and religion in a highly readable text.
Between 1500-1800, China was a powerful country. Catholics dreamed of converting China into a Christian country. However, it was Chinese influence to Europe to bring about Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. He showed that missionaries sent back Tao Te Ching, I Ching and Confucius teaching to the European educated to help bring about the Enlightenment Movement.
What would happen when China is Christianized and the West goes Taoist Way?
By 1800, China was still in its glorious satisfaction while European Powers underwent industrialization. Britain unable to balance the trade deficit pushed opium and war on China. The 1997 Hong Kong Hand-over concluded the last British Imperial chapter in history. China was at its nadir at 1900 Boxer Movement with eight foreign countries invaded Peking.
Napoleon said, "When China wakes, it will shock the world". History affirms the Tao in East and West, strong and weak, grandeur and decline, war and peace. Prof. Mungello presents the readers the historical background to understand the modern China. A number of Westerners see Deng's reform with market economy lead to China rising as a world threat. Reading this book will help open up their horizon.
Will US wage war on China in the billions of dollar trade deficit as their British cousins did in 19th Century?
Must for whoever that are interested in Chinese studies.......2003-01-28
Dr. Mungello has done a great job in presenting how the (Far) West met with Chinese culture over the period of 1500-1800. This book was written in easy and non-technical language. As a Chinese that has learnt Chinese history all through my school years, I am intrigued to read simialar materials presented from a Western perspective in simple English.
Dr. Mungello noted that the Chinese in Song Dynasty mistook the picture of Virgin Mary as Guanyin (Chinese Goddess of the sea). A three-story high statue given by Portuguese to Macau, China shortly before 1999 was meant to be Guanyin but it certainly looks like Virgin Mary. What went around has come around:) Thanks for writing such a good book and I enjoyed it very much.
Not too shabby.......2002-11-06
I think Mungello has done a wonderful job in reconstructing the meeting between China and the Western world.
Good introductory book.......2000-04-14
University Profs take note: Although I had to read this book because I was in the author's class at Baylor, it really is a good introductory book. Dr. Mungello is one of the world's top Sinologists and did his graduate work at the U. of California at Berkeley and I am privelaged to be one of his students.
Half of the book is focused at the West meeting China, and the other half is China meeting the West. It answers the questions: What did the West reject and accept from China? What did China accept and reject from the West?
Book Description
This magisterial book provides an analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the twelfth-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in which the vibrancy of Western intellectual culture enabled it to stamp its imprint well beyond the frontiers of Christendom.
Customer Reviews:
Dry and uninsightful, but somewhat useful nevertheless.......2005-01-01
My interest in obscure and esoteric subjects frequently leads me to read books written by academics, with whom I am sympathetic, since I am one myself. So it is unpleasant for me to concede that most academics can't write for beans. The current author's work is a nearly perfect example of this very sad fact, which says so much about the waning intellectual vigor of our age. The title provides a sufficient clue that this is a dry and plodding tome, and this impression is confirmed by each and every page, on which lengthy and opaque sentences coil about one another in pointless complexity without ever giving birth to a new idea or an important insight. The most challenging aspect of this book is not the subtle but intriguing new ideas its author places before us - since there are none of these to think about. Rather, the difficulty arises from the fact that the author's style is as unappealing as a cardboard sandwich.
Instead of new insights, she gives us only an exhaustive (and exhausting!) summary of the major books and intellectual traditions of the Middle Ages. And although she provides a slim but marginally satisfactory historical context, she never places medieval influences in new relationships that clarify their importance. Instead, this book grinds on like some college term paper on steroids. It is full of citations, paraphrases and summaries, but it is completely unstained by original thought. This underscores the dark side of academia's culture: "publish or perish".
Among its flaws, the book reflects a surprisingly poor understanding of the world that preceded 500AD, and the author's grasp of Christianity -- an omnipresent medieval theme -- is brittle and impoverished. Oh, the facts are there, all right, but there is no deep understanding of them. Also, the visual arts are not discussed at all -- a major flaw that must reflect the author's failure to recognize their relevance. And although science is mentioned, the author does not understand it well, so she can not fully appreciate its effects. This is an extremely serious shortcoming.
Still, the book has value. Having read it, I feel much better prepared to delve into the source material, whose scope I now better understand. And the author's summaries of medieval literature are among her best. She has an authentic gift for appreciating literature and for sharing her enthusiasm with her readers. As a result, I look forward to reading these works, which would not otherwise have interested me.
Finally, do not be deceived by the fact that a few commercial "reviewers" have said that this book is an "important intellectual achievement". These claims tell us more about the publishers' need to recoup their costs than about the book's merits. There is absolutely nothing in this book that will noticeably alter the world of ideas. And the alleged "central thesis" -- that our modern age stands upon the Middle Ages more than on the preceding Roman world -- must surely be a joke. To her credit, the author devotes almost no attention to this preposterous claim, and so I doubt that the reviewers actually read the book. After all, no thoughtful person can fail to see that the ancient world profoundly influenced the Middle Ages, which in turn influenced the Europe that emerged from them. As a result, these influences are intermingled, and there is no conceivable method by which the modern influence of Cicero, for example, can be separated from that of Ockham. In fact, the metaphor underlying this "thesis" is broken. Intellectual traditions do not stand upon a foundation as a building does. Instead, they are a river whose water inseparably mixes the contribution of its many enriching tributaries. We can appreciate them all, without pretending that one is the "foundation" and the others are not.
Fascinating and well-researched work.......2001-03-07
Colish's book is a tour-de-force in the Yale Intellectual History of the West. Her thesis, that the foundation of the Western intellectual mindset and tradition really began in earnest in the Middle Ages rathern than Greek antiquity is an interesting one, and one for which I beleive she gives good arguments. The way she suggests that the ideals of Greece were filtered through Rome and Latin Christianity befire they reached "Euorope" as we know it today comes off convincingly. For her, it is a matter of the development of ideas counting for more than their sources; as a historian, she knows that things didn't have to turn out the way that they did. Colish fleshes this out very nicely in the section of the book where she gives an evenhanded and scholarly account of the parallel cultures of the Latin West, Byzantium, and Islam. Her work in this volume shows that she has thought long and hard about these issues, and her conclusions deserve close attention.
In addition to her excellent discussion of European Medieval intellectual thought, Colish goes into the vernacular literature and day-to-day culture of the Medieval world and proves again that the "Dark Ages" were anything but in some very important ways. Her treatment of theology in dialogue with Medieval law, science, and literature is nothing less than inspired: as a theologian, I found myself wondering how Colish, a historian, had found the time to track down all the relevant arguements, and how she had been able to explain such byzantine issues as the Nominalist controversy and lay-investiture in so clear a manner. Read this book (not really for beginners) in conjunction with or immediately following Cantor's Civilization in the Middle Ages, and you will have a firm grasp of the entire span of the Medieval era, its ideas, culture, politics, religion, and heritage. A wonderful book.
well-written and informative overview.......1999-01-04
As an amateur history-enthusiast I greaty enjoyed reading this book (twice) for its well-written and generally clear overview of how Western thought developed throughout early and later medieval periods. Starting with brief discussions of the Apologists and the Latin Church Fathers, the topics raised are discussed in a even-handed manner, although i cannot really judge the treatment of the theological debates. I found the latter (for instance on the Trinity) quite hard-going but that is not necessarily the authors's fault. After all, the subject is complex and deals with theological and philosophical subtleties that now hardly seem to merit the passionate debates and the importance attached to it then. At the same time it is clear that these discussions did have a major impact on European foundations and deeply shaped the further course of Western intellectual thought. The part on vernacular literature (Celtic, Old Norse, German, French and English) i enjoyed very much and i think it really added value. Interesting and useful also was the comparison with Byzantine and Islamic cultures. A very good point was the discussion on diversity that became the hallmark of European civilizations. I sometimes missed the economic/political/social context in which these intellectual developments took place, but again that is not necessarily meant as a criticism. Here one would need to take some other studies which would complement this one. The book sets out to show Medieval roots of Western thought and, i think, it does so very well. Useful and not only for beginners.
Book Description
Book Description
The West Transformed is a comprehensive, mainstream introductory Western Civilization or European History textbook. It covers a variety of fields of history including social history, but stresses traditional topics and a strong narrative. The development of civilization in the West is presented as a series of cultural, technological, social, and political transformations. A strong unifying theme focuses on the tensions between continuity and change in human affairs.
Customer Reviews:
A very good book.......2000-10-15
I used this book for my survey course in European history, and it was excellent. It is very descriptive and very interesting to read. It can be a little dense at times, but it is well worth the price.
A very good book.......2000-10-15
I used this book for my survey course in European history, and it was excellent. It is very descriptive and very interesting to read. It can be a little dense at times, but it is well worth the price,
An Excellent Textbook.......2000-10-15
This is the perfect text for a college-level introductory course in Western civilization or European history. It is vivid and descriptive. It can be a little dense at parts, but overall, a very good base for those interested in history.
Book Description
Take a fascinating look at western civilization that reveals the diversity and richness of the human experience! Explore Duiker and Spielvogel's brief, best-selling WESTERN CIVILIZATION: A BRIEF HISTORY, VOLUME II, SINCE 1500 and discover the common challenges and experiences that unite the human past¿and inform the future. The authors weave the political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military aspects of history into a gripping story that is as memorable as it is instructive. In each chapter, you'll find introductions and conclusions that give you a context within which to understand these disparate themes. And the authors include dozens of maps and primary sources--including official documents, poems, and songs--that enliven the past while introducing you to the challenges involved in interpreting history.
Customer Reviews:
Liked Vol. I better.......2006-12-27
I thought Vol. I was much easier to follow. Vol. II jumped from one event to another and not necessarily in order. For example, one paragraph talks about Hitler committing suicide; two paragraphs later the Holocaust is discussed. I found it hard to read.
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Early Civilization
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Western Civilization: Volume I: To 1715
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