The Art Dealers, Revised & Expanded: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works

Book Description

This book, a collection of reminiscences with fifty-five fine art dealers, works to correct misconceptions and shed light on the dealer's intricate, fascinating, and difficult profession.

Customer Reviews:

The Art Dealers: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Ar.......2002-11-28

This book sheds real light into how New York based art dealers from the 1940s to the 1980s lived, worked and thought about art. There are many interesting anecdotes, opinions and brief biographies inside this book filled with short essays about some 25 dealers who hepled shape the world of art as it is still known today.

Formulaic Padding.......2002-10-31

This is a mere formulaic padding of the prior edition of this book. There are a few new chapters. In some cases, these chapters address dealers who have come into prominence since the 1985 edition. Other dealers given equal attention were added for reasons that shall remain mysterious, as they address players never known or soon to be forgotten. The original chapters related to figures such as Sydney Janis and Leo Castelli have some historical interest. The new chapters tend to be shorter and tend to suffer from a narrow focus on the personal background of the dealer and the editors' apparent effort to prompt the dealers to speak to art world issues that may have been new or compelling in 1985 (e.g., the "new" role of auction houses) but which are certainly capillary today. The upshot is that I learned quite literally nothing about the contemporary art market.

Book Description

Introduction by Allan Gurganus. Photographic historian and researcher Cheryl Moch has compiled hundreds of contemporary and vintage photographs and literary passages that perfectly evoke the various emotions and images associated with "home." Like Algonquin's highly praised OUT ON THE PORCH, Cheryl Moch's FEELS LIKE HOME conveys a nostalgia for the homes we grew up in, or perhaps always hoped for. And it evokes longing for the homes of our dreams, the ones we might someday find. "FEELS LIKE HOME reminds us of the magic of photographs that draw us into other people's worlds."--San Antonio Express-News.

Customer Reviews:

Introduce poetry to a new generation.......2007-06-02

Wonderful book! Great art, excellent selection of poetry, and a great way to introduce a classic art form to a generation that generally requires a more "visual" stimuli. Perfect for anyone from 8 to 80.

Average customer rating:
Don't Whiz on a 'Lectric Fence Prepack: Grandpa's Country Wisdom
Roy English
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0879058773

Book Description

Whether you're a rural homesteader or an urban dweller, Grandpa's good ol' country wisdom offers all the true advice, observations, and witticisms you'll ever need. For everyone weary of city-slickered self-help, Roy English serves up over 140 country bites of reality such as these: "Don't go huntin' with a fella named Chug-A-Lug." "Life is like juggling pitchforks; everyone knows when you mess up." "Trouble is a private thing; don't lend it, and don't borrow it."

Average customer rating:

Save your money

Very Disappointing

Great insight into how professionals use the Waves Plug-ins

Waves Plug-Ins CSi Master (Csi Master)
John C Hughes
Manufacturer: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
Recording & Sound | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Operating Systems | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Computer Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Audio Plug-Ins CSi Master (Csi Master)

The S.M.A.R.T. Guide to Mixing And Mastering Audio Recordings (S.M.A.R.T. Guide To...)

Audio Plug-ins Csi Master: Cool School Interactus, Advanced Digital Audio Training

The S.M.A.R.T. Guide to Recording Great Audio Tracks in a Small Studio (S.M.A.R.T. Guide To...)

S.M.A.R.T. Guide to Becoming a Successful Producer/Engineer (S.M.A.R.T. Guide To...)

ASIN: 1592002315

Book Description

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced user, Waves Plug-Ins CSi Master will help you understand the functionality and operation of key Waves plug-in processors. This training and tutorial CD-ROM covers basic concepts, button and element definitions, and production techniques, and includes before and after audio examples. If you prefer the “show me” style of learning, then CSi Movie Tutorials are for you. Sit back and watch a DAW pro show you the ins and outs of driving plug-in processors in sound production. Cover plug-ins from the Waves Gold, Platinum, Native, Renaissance, Broadcast, Maxx, Transform, Masters, and Restoration bundles.

Customer Reviews:

Save your money.......2007-03-01

This is a clear example of what an instructional or tutorial video should NOT be: a gentleman rephrasing the plugs' manuals and RANDOMLY moving faders and buttons to "illustrate" their function. No suggestions about when and why you would want to use each plug, or which parameters you could adjust to obtain X result. Nothing. It's like a teacher just reading aloud a text book to his class.

As for the "interactive" part: you get none at all (unless you consider "interaction" choosing which chapter you want to watch at any given point in time).

You're better off just reading the Waves manuals and experimenting with the plugs yourself. This video does not provide one single bit of information that you could not get yourself this way.

On top of it all you get an annoying voice-over that sounds utterly self-conscious, forced and fake, more like a radio host or commercial announcer than someone trying to help you learn.

All in all, a very poor product.

Very Disappointing.......2006-02-11

It pretty much is like someone reading a manual to you and showing you on video. There is really not much about using the plugins or techniques in using the plugins that you don't get from the manuals. It justs shows features and describes features. The product manuals you get with the plugins are much better as you can go through them at your own pace. These videos race through product descriptions much like sales demos describing features of the products.
A real waist of money.

Great insight into how professionals use the Waves Plug-ins.......2005-12-07

This is a great product to get an initial feel of how to use the Waves plug-ins. While it does cover most of the details of using the plug-ins, it's not really as comprehensive as a book. It was interesting to see how a professional sound engineer would use these valuable tools. There were some really good tips.

Pros:
* Covers the user interface quite well
* You can listen to the effect of changing a parameter on the music
* Professionally produced with nice voiceover

Cons:
* Sometimes the choices of which parameter was changed to demonstrate an effect seemed random or not well explained.

* Since there are many user interface similarities between the plug-ins, sometimes it seemed a bit repetitive to see the same features discussed in every plug-in.

Customer Reviews:

Unsung Heroes of the Vietnam War.......2007-02-04

It can be argued that, as a nation, America rushed to forget about the experience in Vietnam. As a result, many heroic acts often went unsung. John Burnam's moving book takes the reader back to a difficult time in our history to share the unique stories of a special group of heroes-- the Vietnam dog handlers and their canine partners. Burnam's conversational accounts of incredible war time situations is both eye-opening and hair-raising. Sadly, the reader also learns the chilling truth about how our government and military callously forgot the dogs of Vietnam. Their handlers, however, never forgot. Soldiers like Ron Aiello(US Marine Corps Scout-dog handler) never forgot how the dogs often saved soldier's lives. (You can read how Aiello's own life was saved by his female German shepherd partner, Smokey, on page 281.) In 2000 Aiello founded the U.S. War Dogs Association and spear-headed the drive to honor the Vietnam war dogs and their handlers with a bronze sculpture that now stands in Holmdel, New Jersey. Readers may also be surprised to learn that military dogs continue to protect and save lives today in Afghganistan and Iraq. The chapter on the rescued Iraqi dog recruited by Special Forces Sergeant First Class Russell Joyce for sentry duty ("Fluffy") is uplifting and inspiring.

Burnam's book is a great read. His telling of his relationship with his partner "Clipper" is poignant and ultimately heart-wrenching. The personal accounts and military details also make it an interesting historical record. But perhaps more than anything, it is a moving tribute to some very special heroes who's bravery and good deeds should never be forgotten.(And don't forget to read with a box of tissue--you'll need it!)

A gripping tale of one man's journey in a distant land, during difficult times.......2005-11-30

I was thoroughly enthrawled and entertained while reading this well-told story. It is precise, matter-of-fact and compelling. I highly recommend this book to anyone who owns a dog, loves animals, or wants to see what it was like to be an infantryman during a very trying and difficult war. Mr. Burnam tells it like it was, and shows what it means and what it takes to be a dog-handler during the Vietnam war. Good book.

A look into the life of a war dog and handlers.......2005-11-24

War dogs have been used in military actions for many years. This is the story of author John C. Burnam's experiences as a dog handler in Vietnam. These dogs saved countless lives as their keen senses of hearing and smell alerted their handler to danger long before the handler would have become aware of it. And, of course, many of the dogs also lost their lives in the line of duty. This is a very personal look at the special relationship between dog and handler and the brotherhood of all those who were dog handlers in a military action. Filled with pictures taken during the Vietnam action, it includes the sad story of the abandonment of thousands of dogs at the end of the war. For anyone who has an interest in the ways dogs have helped military actions, the bond between handlers and dogs, the courage and dedication of war dogs, or just the recent history of war dogs Dog Tags of Courage is a recommended read.

Average customer rating:

Another Thought-provoking treatise

An Urgent Wake Up- A Must Read

Important subject, important writer, mediocre book

The US and Europe - common problems, common interests

EUROPE: ALL IS NOT LOST, YET

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God
George Weigel
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Federal Government | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Philosophy | Theology | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Sociology | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam

God's Choice : Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church

Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, And the Splendor of Truth

ASIN: 0465092667
Release Date: 2005-04-05

Book Description

One of America's foremost public intellectuals argues that Europe's abandonment of its spiritual and cultural roots raises urgent questions about democracy's future around the world - including the United States

Why do Europeans and Americans see the world so differently? Why do Europeans and Americans have such different understandings of democracy and its discontents in the twenty-first century? Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist "cube" of the Great Arch of La DŽfense in Paris with the civilization that produced the "cathedral" of Notre-Dame, George Weigel argues that Europe's embrace of a narrow secularism has led to a crisis of morale that is eroding Europe's soul and threatening its future-with dire lessons for the rest of the democratic world.

Weigel traces the origins of "Europe's problem" to the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth-century European intellectual life, which set in motion a historical process that produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, the Gulag, Auschwitz, the Cold War-and, most ominously, the Continent's de-population, which is worse today than during the Black Death. And yet, many Europeans still insist-most recently, during the debate over a new EU constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously-informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. Precisely the opposite, Weigel suggests, is true: the people of the "cathedral" can give a compelling account of their commitment to everyone's freedom; the people of the "cube" cannot. Can there be any true "politics"-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God? George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is "No," because, in the final analysis, societies are only as great as their spiritual aspirations.

Customer Reviews:

Another Thought-provoking treatise.......2007-08-31

George Weigel has written another well thought out counter to the prevailing mindset. His argument was well thoughtout, well reasoned and fair. I am a great admirer of Weigel and this book has done nothing to reduce my opinion of him and his work. The book has an important point and is well worth reading and I recommend it for anyone who wants a proper view of Europe and where it has been and where is going.

An Urgent Wake Up- A Must Read.......2007-05-30

Weigel, a brillant researcher and biographer, pens a text here that reads like a novel. Unfortunaely for us, it is all true.

With a master's stroke Weigel lays out the case explaining with smart examples, how Europe has surrendered it's moral center while it's soul is being digested piecemeal by a new wave of evangelization- ISLAM.

The civilization that gave us libraries, universities and the Cathedral of Notre Dame as examples of greatness bestowed on man by God, has crumbled into the society that refuses to acknowledge their Christian past. Hence, the cube- France's modern answer to the Cathedral.

Declining birth rates,mass attendance and increasing abortion and euthenasia give way to millions of devoted believers with families of six and immigration from the Middle East in record numbers. While one side refuses to push their God on anyting, the other invokes Him as the reason for everything.

By the conclusion of Weigels book, the reader will understand how there will be more practicing Sunnis in Amsterdam then Christians and referendums for Sharia to replace common law without the Xenophobic label many hide behind.

Important subject, important writer, mediocre book.......2007-03-15

This is another book about how Europe is committing suicide by not having children. It is written by one of the most important American Catholic writers of our time. Weigel's general argument is that, by rejecting the Church, Europe is destroying itself.

I am a great fan of Weigel's other books. His bio of John Paul II is a classic, which contributed a great deal to bringing me back to the Church. I also tend to agree with the thesis of this book. I think that Europe is going to hell, because of its aggressive secularism.

Nonetheless, this book was disappointing to me. The argument is lightweight. I agree with it, because I agreed with the thesis BEFORE I read the book. If I was a skeptic, though, he would not have persuaded me. He does not show the connections between the loss of religion and the ways that Europe is falling apart. He basically just reviews how Europe is falling apart, note that they have rejected God recently, and says, bingo. Not a very persusaive way to argue.

On this subject, Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, is far better. Steyn is much more of an unbalanced bomb-thrower than the carefully responsible Weigel, but, on this one at least, Steyen did his homework and thought his argument through better.

The US and Europe - common problems, common interests.......2006-11-24

The US-European dispute over Iraq masks more than it reveals

On September 12, 2001, the front-page headline of Le Monde famously read `Nous sommes tous americains'. Four years later, such sentiments sound either quaint or ironic, as the Atlantic Ocean seems to have widened considerably since. But did the often painful debate over the war in Iraq really result from the fact that Europe and America have fundamentally parted ways strategically, and even ideologically and culturally? More and more, a wide swath of Americans and Europeans would answer, yes. In many ways, the very publication of George Weigel's The Cube and the Cathedral is an indication of this. The volume is aimed a wide educated audience, and is representative of a new le divorce sub-genre of American non-fiction (most of which consists of worthless exercises in France-bashing).

A flashpoint of this debate has been the rather unfortunate terminology set down in Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power (2003): basically, 'Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus'. Kagan argues that the 'power gap' between America and Europe arises as both a cause and consequence of an 'ideological gap.' Put simply, Europe believes that all the world's problems can be solved by a World Court, economic redistribution, and collective security organizations; America does not. This premise is accepted not only by American Republicans, but also by the blithest of Euro-philes (e.g., Mark Leonard, who argues for `the power of weakness').

George Weigel, an American Roman Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul II, seems to have been spurred to write The Cube and the Cathedral after most of Western Europe refused to support Operation Iraqi Freedom. But then, unlike his neoconservative colleagues (including Kagan), Weigel has a far more passionate attachment to the continent, and calls up much of his inspiration from western European and Slavic thinkers. Weigel criticizes contemporary Europe in an effort to inspire them - and America - to reconnect with what he most admires of their shared European past.

Weigel conceives his critique through the architectural metaphors of Paris' Notre Dame (1260-1345) and La Grande Arche de la Défense (1982-1989), a minimalist cube in the corporate district large enough to contain Notre Dame in its hollow inner-sanctum. Weigel first asks, who were the Frenchmen who built `the cathedral'? What constituted this culture whose central monument emphasized communal worship and the contrasts of stone and glass, support and lightness, unity and hierarchy? Weigel then looks across town, and asks, who are the Parisians who constructed the Grand Arch? What constitutes this culture which builds a 'monument to human rights' as a kind of über-corporate headquarters? (The Arch, by the way, was dedicated on the bicentennial of the French Revolution by François Mitterand.)

Weigel's more central question is, despite the Grand Arch's pretensions, `which culture would better protect human rights? Which culture would more firmly secure the moral foundations of democracy?' The question cuts right to the heart of the faith that it is only after tradition and religion have been abandoned that ethical societies can be forged and individuals inspired to flourish. Of course, Weigel's architectural metaphor is flawed within the context of the book. For what is `the cube' but a French attempt to outdo American corporate culture? Put another way, what is about, say, the architectural landscape of Huston, Texas, that leads it to be the stronghold of the 'faith-based' values - in typical Republican dumb-speak - which Weigel so admires?

This quibble aside, Weigel's critique is most piquant in his look at Europe's fundamental failure to create a vital culture on the most basic of levels, as expressed by, in the words of Niall Ferguson, the greatest `sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death'. As of 2004, no western European nation comes close to replacing its population: Germany's birth rate is 1.3 children per woman; Catholic Italy and Spain, 1.2 and 1.1 respectively; France's is slightly better by dint of its expanding immigrant population. This genocide is tragic in that it is both silent and entirely self-inflicted. It might be tempting to blame it all on feminism, self-absorbed consumerism, the welfare-state tax burden or careerism, but all of these explanations are insufficient. What one witnesses in post-war Europe is a culture that, for all of its undeniable achievements, simply does not believe in its future.

Writers like the American environmentalist, Bill McKibben, cogently argue that a reduction in population is beneficial in that less people offers the prospect of smaller communities with lightened ecological impact. But such arguments collapse in the face of the reality that not only do modern economies and social programmes rely on sustained populations, but that, in Weigel's words, `Demographic vacuums do not remain unfilled'. As of today, 20 million Muslims reside in Europe - most of them having arrived legally. The question must be asked, how European will Europe be when, for example, the majority of teenagers of the coming Dutch generation will be of Middle Eastern ancestry?

Many would dismiss this discussion as `racist', and claim that these new Europeans will become valued citizens (and there is no reason why this could not be the case). However, Muslim immigrants who entered Europe en masse in the second half of the twentieth-century have on the whole lacked inclination towards assimilation and espouse little in the way of loyalty towards their host nation. Weigel expresses appropriate alarm at these developments, but then, any kind of real definition of what modern European citizenship should be is seriously lacking, and deserves to be fleshed out here. As citizenship based solely on race is equally impossible and undesirable - would exclude Arabs who seriously want to become European -, it is all the more important for conservatives to base citizenship on allegiance to a nation. Such distinctions allow the Right to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of, on the one hand, hateful racism and, on the other, the "citizens of the world" globalarchy expressed by free-marketers, liberals, and Europhiles alike.

In this line, Weigel is certainly justified in excoriating the EU-constitution writers who avoided even facing this problem. Leaving the door open for Turkish EU-membership, they instead indulged in a concept 'tolerance' which amounts to little more than indifference. Could the EU constitution, which does not acknowledge the continent's Christian heritage, truly `give an account of why Europeans should be tolerant and civil[?] Why not?' [my emphasis] The point is well made, but the obvious counter-example is the remarkably secular Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution, and, in the end, it is difficult to fully accept that a nation must avow Christian faith to act ethically.

Still, viewed within its proper context, Weigel's Catholic tinged notion of a kind of 'Christian Union' seems to reveal a crucial historical aspect of the EU overlooked in the current Euro-phile/Euro-skeptic debate. Whatever kinds of reconstructed Trotskyites support the EU now, one must not forget that the devout Catholics Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann were two of the most important in envisioning the project. It should thus be less surprising that Pope John Paul II actively supported Poland's membership in the EU. For them, a European union, on a very basic level, represented a new Christendom - certainly a Christendom in tune with secular modernity, but a Christendom nonetheless. The current state of the EU is all the more depressing in that such sentiments are now completely absent in the way that `Europe' is conceived by supporters and detractors alike.

Unfortunately, Weigel is less insightful in his discussions of twentieth-century European culture and current foreign affairs. In Weigel's analysis, Europe's catastrophes arose from a deep and lasting cultural breakdown at the gateway to the twentieth-century: `World War I, the Great War, was the product of a crisis of civilizational morality, a failure of moral reason in a culture that had given the world the very concept of moral reason'. The source of this crisis is, for Weigel, intellectual, and consists of the usual suspects: Comte's positivism, Feurbach's and Marx's messianic socialism, and Nietzsche's embrace of `the will to power'. The rest was inevitable.

This is not a particularly original argument and amounts to a gross oversimplification of late nineteenth-century thought, particularly in the case of Nietzsche. But even if one were to grant the point, Weigel's true problem is his complementary claim - sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit - that America has represented a moral alternative. Weigel certainly does not deny the influence of Nietzsche, Marx & co. in American life, but still wants to imagine that America has tread a different, more dignified path into modernity.

One could take issue with Weigel on a variety of fronts - for example, the appalling death of civility in America represented by Wal-mart, mega-churches, and uncentered suburban sprawl. But this is also a weak argument on the political level as well. It is certainly easy to bemoan Europe's fraction into extremist `-isms' in the first half of the twentieth-century. But it is more difficult - and thus all the more pertinent - to look critically at militant universalism in American foreign policy stretching across the entire century, what Claes G. Ryn (a Catholic political scientist more perceptive than Weigel) has called, "America the virtuous'. That is, if one is to argue that the First World War resulted from Europe's spiritual tragedy, then one must be equally skeptical of an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who claimed that Americas national interest lay in `a war to make the world safe for democracy'.

But Weigel reduces the Catholic tradition of `just war' theory to a moral obligation and license to save the world at gunpoint (although in op-eds, he uses the conservative-sounding language of `advancing the cause of world order'). But he fails both to reveal American interventionism's ethical foundations, as well as to offer any compelling reasons why Europeans should support the noble cause. In the end, Wilson's defeat of the German Empire ensured the sustainability of Bolshevism just as Bush's overthrow of Iraq has galvanized Islamic violence.

In turn, beyond shear policy failure, a proper understanding of America's 'just wars' overturns most of Weigel's oppositions. Today, President Bush's most fervent supporters are evangelical Christians, groups who claim to be not only the most conservative, religious, 'real' Americans, but hold that it is the military's duty to expand universal values abroad. America has her own form of decadence, but it is something that cannot be measured by church attendance as Weigel would like.

Weigel's book was published before the seismic shift in European politics following the `non'-vote in France and the Netherlands rejecting the E.U. constitution. Interestingly, the 'non-coalition', if it should be called that, included not only the nationalist Right but, perhaps to a greater extent, a faction of the socialist Left. In turn, in Germany, it is not just the Right-wing Junge Freiheit that warns of `the dictatorship of the Bureaucrats', but the social-democratic Der Spiegel. Furthermore, while the current state of the American two-party system offers no choice for the real Right, in Europe, this is increasingly not the case. And yet Weigel's deprecation of Europe and sanctification of American `conservatives' offers no space to consider these developments.
Despite these criticism, as a popular book that brings questions of philosophy and national character pressingly to the fore, The Cube and the Cathedral deserves to be read. Perhaps, most of all because, despite himself, Weigel leaves one with the impression that Europe and America fundamentally share the same problems and interests. Both of which are centered on the question of the very possibility of retaining communities, nations, spirituality, and dynamism in a world not only of mass immigration, but of consumerism, economic efficiency, universalism, and self-satisfaction.

A crucial case study in survival and triumph mentioned by Weigel is Poland. In the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, Poland existed solely as a plot of land to be divided and traded between the great powers. The twentieth-century brought far worse horrors. Is it not then a miracle that Poland played as significant a role as any in bringing the Soviet Union to an end, and afterwards emerged unified as a nation and people? Weigel is right to find the source of the Poles' enduring strength in their culture. Even accounting for terrorism, Americans and Europeans face nothing even resembling the direct threat to survival experienced by the Poles. And yet, their shared culture is no less at stake.

EUROPE: ALL IS NOT LOST, YET.......2006-11-13

Anyone wanting a quick way to assets the general merits and intellectual muscle flexed in the book should glance at the chapter headed `Two Ideas of Freedom', contrasting the secular and sacred versions of Freedom with luminous brevity. However, the general easy-reading contemporary nature of the prose will be better gauged from the later chapter `The Cost of Boredom', which sums up why white post-Christian Europe cannot be bothered to procreate with sufficient vigour to stem its population decline, and our `postpolitical wilderness' of rule by faceless bureaucrats.

As an American theologian and the biographer of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel is well placed to speak with perspective on Europe's current problems. The main thrust of the book is a critique of atheistic secular humanism (ASH) and its many virus variants which have infected the Euro-Russian continent. The emphasis is on the 20th century, and picks up the root philosophical and cultural causes of World War I and II, and the rebellion of the `Les Soixante-Huitards' (1968 riots) with remarkably fluent and coherent reference to Western European history as far back as the High Middle Ages of Aquinas and Occam (1200-), and glancing reference much further back. The Cube is the intellectual symbol of the sterile closed-universe ASH viewpoint, the architectural colossus of 'La Grande Arche' of Paris, being an open cube of white marble and glass about 40 stories tall and 348 feet wide. The cathedral is the rather more famous church of Notre Dame, which despite its ancient complexities and beauty in spire and tower, would `fit comfortably inside the Grand Arch'. This current edition is dated 2005, and probably just missed the rioting and looting and epidemic of car-burnouts that afflicted France that year.

It is difficult to do anything like reviewing justice to this book at one reading, but one of the central themes is that `western Europe is committing a form of demographic suicide' (p.5), with a general greying of the population and coming universal pensions crisis due to a birthrate being less than the replacement rate. He might have added that Russia currently has an annual death-rate that exceeds the birthrate by 750,000, but his purpose does not extend to a proper vilification of communism. The root cause of our lack of reproductive enthusiasm is analysed to be spiritual nihilism, emptiness, and lack of purpose in life, having rejected the Christian roots of our historical culture. Its criticism of the purblind inability of the EU to see the problem, let alone grapple with it, will gladden the hearts of those who oppose this political con-trick that is the eurozone--despite the (to me) astonishing revelations he makes of the catholic Christians who were the architects of the whole scheme.

He is frequently at pains to trace the intellectual, cultural, and moral roots of western Europe (the eastern empire is sparingly but properly referenced, and not ignored as is so often the case). Recently the ruling EU elites totally refused to recognise the Christian heritage of Europe in the drafting of its 70,000 word constitutional treaty. Our roots apparently jumping from the classical civilisation of Greece and Rome to that of the humanist Enlightenment of Descartes and Kant (which merely extracted the parts it liked from Christian culture, and promptly forgot what it takes to develop and preserve them, which is a living faith in a Judaeo-Christian God.)

He invites us to contemplate a striking list of Christian scientists, artists, politicians, leaders, warriors, and philosophers--and asks us to imagine Europe [history itself, I would say. Just consider that we only discovered the gas oxygen about 225 years ago. We could not even begin to describe the chemistry of burning or human respiration before this], without their contribution. And this is a list which is so wide-ranging that it includes Milton, Mendel, Michaelangelo, Wesley and Wilberforce, while it omits Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Handel, and dozens of others.

The other main theme is euro `Christophobia', which is detailed in many ways, from the persecutory attitude to the Catholic Professor Rocco Buttiglione in his proposed place in the EU government, to the universal demand for tolerance which includes rather madly includes rigid intolerance of any discussion of the Christian religion or its place in influencing civic society. Altogether, this adds up to the best analysis of secularism that I have ever read.

The statement of the very obvious that is the underlying theme of the themes, is that western European civilisation was built by the Catholic church. There is more balance and a gentler tone here in the treatment of the subject, but the author is generally in line with Thomas Woods book, `How the Catholic Church built Western Civilisation'. Which is well paired with this one, before or after making little difference.

The only weakness of this book is that it understates its case. It would be easy to adduce more evidence of outright damage and incoherence of ASH in our literature alone (Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus), and then as a whisky chaser consider the intellectual flight from science. Professor Robin Dunbar's `The Trouble with Science', published in 1995 traces the problem in Britain back at least twenty years. And is still seen in the rapid and ongoing rejection of chemistry and physics in the school system throughout, from GCSE at 16, to university graduate, a trend which is steadily shutting down departments in these subjects as I write. My second reading of this book starts right now, and I can also see how it would help one or two of my friends, with Christmas about to hove into view. Read them and pray.

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.(Book review) : An article from: Journal of Church and State

Average customer rating:

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.(Book review) : An article from: Journal of Church and State
Francis J. Beckwith
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Church and State, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 816 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics wiithout God.(Book review)
Author: Francis J. Beckwith
Publication: Journal of Church and State (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 48 Issue: 1 Page: 218(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review) : An article from: National Catholic Reporter

Average customer rating:

The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review) : An article from: National Catholic Reporter
Mark S. Massa
Manufacturer: National Catholic Reporter
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by National Catholic Reporter on May 6, 2005. The length of the article is 1206 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review)
Author: Mark S. Massa
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 6, 2005
Publisher: National Catholic Reporter
Volume: 41 Issue: 27 Page: 17(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books