Alan Macfarlane: ‘This is a book which synthesizes a lifetime of reflection on the origins of the modern world. Through forty years of travel in Europe, Australia, India, Nepal, Japan and China I have observed the similarities and differences of cultures. I have read as widely as possible in both contemporary and classical works in history, anthropology and philosophy.’
Alan Macfarlane: The world of the British Empire and my up-bringing will no doubt strike most people, whether in Africa, South America or China, as extraordinary even now. It is likely that in another century it will seem a magical and different world even to the British. My own childhood nearly sixty years ago is starting to take on a magical unreality – a foreign country where they do different things for different reasons. If that is so for me, how much more will it be for my great grandchildren or my friends from China or Japan?
Poetry has been a long-standing tradition in the natural sciences, and Victorian scientists, in particular, had a wide-ranging education that fostered a powerful affinity with the Muse.
Today Europe is undergoing a dramatic crisis; it is in the process of sacrificing a generation, a generation of young people, who do not believe in the future.
Jon Lauck: Iowa’s agrarian heritage and orderly farms and its generally rooted character also help explain Iowa’s political culture.
An Empire’s Silence. [Staff report, Feilding (New Zealand) Star] – To-day is Armistice Day, and, at the King’s command, the tribute of two minutes’ silence was generally observed from 11 o’clock throughout the British Empire. In Feilding, the steam whistles at the factories and the bells rang out to give notice of the silent tribute […]
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Martin Sorrell: So was Apollinaire the lone innovator? Was there anyone comparable writing in English? As Tim Kendall points out, it took David Jones, who’d served in that war, nearly twenty years to produce work such as “In Parenthesis”. Apollinaire, on the other hand, wrote both spontaneously and experimentally, out of the here and now. Take “Flare”, a poem of erotic charge – even yearning.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Drew Moore: Some people find community, even spiritual transcendence, in softball leagues, yoga, and book clubs. Their church is the outdoors, the gym, and the living room parlor. My church frequently changes. An overgrown, thicketed, nineteenth-century cemetery on a West Virginia farm, a courthouse, a Baltimore street of gentrified row houses—these are my churches.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Herbert Spencer: The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of working good or evil to their descendants.
Abulafia’s book is much more than an account of the vast, faceless forces of history. This is a people-driven narrative of social upheavals and the making and breaking of empires. The deeds and aspirations of individuals or groups of struggling refugees or seafaring merchants propel this story through its often tumultuous course. If Abulafia enables us to take the long-view of history, it is always presented through the eyes of gifted, flawed people not unlike ourselves.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Considering the Archimedes palimpsest’s filthy, abused condition upon arrival at the Walters in 1999, and its mysterious travels of nearly 800 years, including a stretch in the hands of forgers, it’s a surprise the irreplaceable relic is much of anything. But thanks to more than 10 years of painstaking conservation efforts, the palimpsest now looks, well, hardly new, but certainly pretty good for all it’s been through.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
As Koslofsky very reasonably argues, almost all the work on the public sphere has concentrated on locations and institutional forms, and has neglected time. Coffee houses were open all day, of course, but it was at night that they came into their own. As the London pamphlet Character of Coffee and Coffee-House claimed in 1661, “they borrow of the night”.
Sunday, 11 September 2011
“I asked him to name two actors that from his viewpoint represented the two towers,” said Toth. “One of the names he gave me was Gary Cooper. I was dancing around the Internet and somehow came upon Cary Grant. It all just fit together and answered itself and gave a little bit of a human persona to it.”
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
During the famine of 1941–1942 under the German occupation, when some three hundred thousand people died of starvation in the greater Athens area alone, what kept many people alive was a knowledge of wild bulbs and greens, of knowing that even the ubiquitous and humble nettle is nutritious, and tasty, when properly prepared.
Over the course of the work’s seventeen-year career, during which time it was seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans, Bullard’s panorama was never exhibited anywhere in or near New York City itself.
