A worthwhile undertaking for serious students of medieval Europe and/or Christian history.
Sweeping exploration of how the Christian Europe of the late Middle Ages came to be.
In his latest book, Heather, chair of medieval history at King's College, London, takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through eight centuries and across the length and breadth of Europe (and beyond) to understand the rise of Christendom, which the author defines as “that part of the world where official Christianity exercised a dominant hold on the totality of the population.” By the 12th and 13th centuries, this “dominant hold” was certainly in place across the continent, but just how that situation arose over centuries has not always been properly explained by historians. In this fresh, prodigiously researched approach, the author uses relatively newly found sources to delineate the development of these historical progressions. First, Heather acknowledges Christianity’s failures in the course of its expansions. Second, he explores the diversity of Christian thought and practice through these years. Finally, he examines the reasons why people made the religious choices that they did. Heather divides the book into three eras: imperial Christianity under the influence of late Rome; post-imperial Christianity, when society reordered itself in the wake of the fall of Rome’s influence; and a new imperial Christianity under the Carolingians. Throughout, the author finds ways to turn conventional wisdom on its head—e.g., “At least as important…as the Christianization of the Roman Empire—a traditional topic of historical analysis—was the Romanization of Christianity.” Heather introduces a host of little-known characters who played an outsized role in Christianity’s spread, including Ulfilas, “the Apostle of the Goths,” who crafted a Gothic language translation of the Bible while also diplomatically assisting in the weakening of the western Roman empire. “From the time of Constantine onwards,” writes the author in conclusion, “the Christianization of Europe was closely linked to the exercise of power at every level.”
A worthwhile undertaking for serious students of medieval Europe and/or Christian history.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780451494306
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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