A prospectively important work that misses its mark.
An exploration of a small German town that was a hothouse of art and thought until Napoleon’s army ended its few years as the epicenter of central European culture.
Looking back at 1799, Neumann accurately terms Jena “essentially the intellectual and cultural center of Germany.” (Think 18th-century Edinburgh, Vienna and Paris almost always, and Black Mountain College and Greenwich Village after World War II.) Neumann, a poet and philosopher who studied in Jena, focuses on the major figures who lived there in the few years before the battle that forced many of its residents to flee. They included poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, philosopher Friedrich Schelling, poet Novalis, philosopher Johann Fichte, and the multitalented brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. Other transcendently important men, including Goethe and Hegel, played important subsidiary parts, and wives and lovers were never absent from the scene. Neumann paints a broad portrait of a group of luminaries at argument, work, play, and love until the French forces’ decisive rout of German arms to put an end to the city’s brief time in the sun. The author relates this intriguing human story in a kind of informal, novelistic style, an approach that doesn’t fit the subject. In a tale centered on a few people who made profound contributions to Western culture, Neumann offers little about the works they produced or the significance and influence of their thought, fiction, poetry, and plays. There’s nothing wrong with portraying such people’s lives. But if they’re shown principally as squabbling, striving, ego-threatened, love-needy—that is, normal—humans whose often epochal achievements remain in the background, we might as well read about fictional characters. Lost in the book’s pages is consideration of the relationship, if any, between what these men wrote and the lives they lived. Readers, told of the leading figures’ significance, need more direct acquaintance with what they’re significant for.
A prospectively important work that misses its mark.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-17869-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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