Antiquity

Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World
© 2003 Norman F. Cantor
256 pages

Perhaps western history is all Greek to you. In that case, Norman Cantor's Antiquity may shed a little light on the subject. It is a brief work, scarcely over 200 pages,  and in it Cantor reviews the primary roots of Western civilization (Greece, Rome, and Judaism), as well as more material considerations like the role of cities.  Civilizations of the middle east also appear through the Jewish connection.  This book has a curious organization, and one of its chapters eschews narrative altogether: instead, Cantor presents the debates within early Christian thought as a lively conversation involving St. Augustine and a few others.   Although the book is intentionally pitched as a survey for the historically illiterate, Cantor doesn't shy away from probing a little more deeply when he can --  exploring the meaning behind classic architecture, for instance, the common emphasis on rationality and restraint that linked Greek aesthetics and philosophy. (Of course, they can't help but be linked, considering that aesthetics was considered one of the branches of philosophy, along with ethics and metaphysics.)   Cantor holds the Roman empire in especially high regard, declaring that it was the most harmonious and stable multiethnic society in history. 

Although I enjoyed this quick romp through the ancient and classical world well enough ,  it has its quirks -- the unusual approach to reviewing Christian thought, for instance, and the fact that Cantor believes that imperialism and  plutocracy  were passed down not by human nature, but by the classic heritage.   I'm preee-eety sure they had war and imperialism in China, Africa, and...oh, everywhere else.  Those who have a serious interest in repairing historical blind spots can probably find better works.

The Egyptians

The Egyptians
© 1997 Barbara Watterson
368 pages

"We stand where Caesar and Napoleon stood, and remember that fifty centuries look down upon us; where the Father of History came four hundred years before Caesar, and heard the tales that were to startle Pericles. A new perspective of time comes to us; two millenniums seem to fall out of the picture, and Caesar, Herodotus, and ourselves appear for a moment contemporary and modern before these tombs that were more ancient to them than the Greeks are to us. " (Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage) 

The Egyptians surveys the entire course of Egyptian history, from ancient settlements to the 1990s, in a mere 300 pages. Were this not ambitious enough, Watterson does not limit herself to mere politics, but includes separate sections on religion, architecture, law, and economy.  The approach is reminiscent of Will Durant's symphonic history. Pyramid-like, The Egyptians is bottom-heavy:   two-thirds of the book is devoted to the ancients, with the Roman, Christian, Islamic, and modern periods sharing the last third together. The scale is immense, as it has been Egypt's fortune or misfortune to be an combatant or an object of interest to nearly every great power around the Mediterranean. Egypt's longevity is such that she has been conquered by two wholly different Persias, an epoch apart.  In the beginning Egypt was star of her own story, an insular union of two kingdoms fixed on the Nile; after outside invasion by the Hyksos, Egypt overcame her conquerors and became an empire in her own right. The land of the Nile would go the way of all empires, however, falling to Persia, then the Macedonians and their successors -- Rome, Constantinople, the caliphate, and Turkey. Through history Egypt has also been the plaything of other empires, like the French and British. Even Hitler attempted conquest, while trying to rescue Italian pretensions of a resurrected Rome.  Aside from a brief interlude during the Islamic civil wars, Egypt had to wait until the 20th century to be ruled by her own people again. Despite the generations of new reigning powers and the trauma they inflicted --  Ptolemies are utterly horrifying in their abuse, what with one king marrying his sister, then his niece, then murdering his own child and sending the body to his sister--wife to taunt her --  Egypt endures. Given the chaos of Egypt in recent years, such resilience is a hopeful sign.  

The Seven Wonders

The Seven Wonders
© 2012 Steven Saylor
332 pages

A few years ago, I read through the Roma sub Rosa series in which a first-century Sherlock Holmes named Gordianus the Finder made his living investigating murders and other sundry mysteries which were in great supply during Rome's transition from republic to empire.  The Seven Wonders marks the return of the Finder, or rather his beginning as a freshly-togaed young man touring the world with his tutor, Antipater of Sidon -- a poet who fakes his own death, and not just to get out of town. Although Gordianus will encounter mysteries in every city he visits, the greatest intrigue is in his own camp. The stars of The Seven Wonders are the wonders themselves, as Saylor's story is a fictional travelogue of the ancient world. Today, of course, only one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" remains standing, the Great Pyramid. The others have been lost to natural disasters or human neglect. In Gordianus' day,  most of them dominate the landscape of their cities. The Colossus of Rhodes has already fallen from earthquakes, but even partially submerged it's magnificent -- and the Hanging Gardens, though largely a pile of rubble, are a very impressive pile of rubble protected by the staggeringly beautiful Ishtar Gate. Gordianus invariably arrives in each city just as something special is going on: the Olympics, for instance, or a fertility festival.   The Seven Wonders is a cultural tour of the classical world punctuated by death, theft, and skirt-chasing. (Gordianus was a responsible family man in virtually every other Roma sub Rosa series, but here he's young, knows no fear, and is randy as a goat in springtime. He even manages to be seduced by a goddess while sleeping in the Great Pyramid.)   I daresay the novel is more enjoyable for the setting than the actual mysteries, since most of the time the reader is kept clueless until Gordianus reveals what he's been noticing and mulling over without letting the reader know. Had the work been longer, the mysteries might have been more enticing -- but 300 pages is brief considering the scope of his travels.

The Seven Wonders is enjoyable enough, though nothing on the order of Roma or Empire.

A History of the World in Six Glasses

A History of the World in Six Glasses
© 2006 Tom Standage
311 pages

A toast to human enterprise! Pick your poison -- beer, wine, rum, tea, coffee, or Coca-Cola. Three are alcoholic, three are caffienated: all were the stuff of empires, and the story of those empires is one Tom Standage is intent on telling. He begins with beer and wine in Mesopotamia and Egypt and moves to wine in Greece and Rome. The focus then shifts to Europe and the rum-fueled Age of Discovery that saw European nations expand across the world and remake it in their image. While distilled spirits ran the high seas, the intellectual minds of Europe stayed keen with coffee from Arabia. British and American imperialism are charted through Asian tea and Coca-Cola, respectively.

The result is light popular history that succeeds based on the author's lively tone and the perspective, which takes the lofty subject of World History and brings it down to the tavern table, supplying readers with both interesting tales about their beverage of choice as well as a greater appreciation for the role those drinks played in world history; some of the connections Standage reveals surprised even me. The importance of each drink varies; some are material, like the beer which was tied to agriculture, the basis of society, and the tea which drove British foreign policy and led to the opium wars. In the case of wine and coffee, the relevance is more ethereal: Standage champions wine-wet symposiums as an instrument of Greek excellence.  The section on Coca-Cola is an odd duck, the only one to mention a brand name. Perhaps this is because Coca-Cola succeeded like no other brand,  but it still sits oddly, and its chapters almost read like history with product placement. Standage is delightful to read, but his narrative isn't quite as thorough as I might have liked.There's no mention given to Coca-Cola's connection to the spread of fast food restaurants, for instance, though I had no idea how instrumental the Second World War was to its success.

Light, but fun; I'll probably be trying Standage's similar work, An Edible History of Humanity.


Related:
The Coffee Trader, David Liss
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, Wayne Curtis

Our Oriental Heritage

The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage
© 1935 Will Durant
1048 pages

"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation."  (Opening sentence.)

Our Oriental Heritage is the introductory volume of a greater work, an eleven-book set covering prehistory to the last days of Napoleon. Judging from the preface, Durant initially planned to write The Story of Civilization as a five-volume set that went beyond Napoleon, even approaching the 20th century. This first volume begins in prehistory, Durant spending time to comment on the evolution of civilization's economic, political, moral, and mental elements before beginning his trek proper with Sumeria. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Judea, Persia, India, China, and finally Japan follow. Although the majority of his subject nations have passed away into extinction, the latter three civilizations are still extant, and Durant follows their story up to the 'present day'.

Our Oriental Heritage is epic history: not only is the timeframe at hand vast, but Durant's approach is to tackle politics, religion, science, art, drama, and artisanry all together, giving his story depth as well as breadth. Despite the abundance of information, his presentation is never confusing. Sections are clearly delineated, and I enjoyed Durant's writing style: he's approachable, but dramatic, often waxing on eloquently about a particular poet, ruler, or philosophy. There's also occasional humor --  dry, of course, as historian humor tends to be.

Throughout Durant's work, civilizations rise and fall like waves crashing on a beachhead: they are born, he says, in stoicism, and perish in epicureanism. Those words are used chronically throughout the book, fading only in the last two general portions. I don't rightly understand that characteristic of his writing. While the misuse of epicureanism is understandable (being common, and objectionable only to people familiar with Epicures) as referring to powerful, rich states that grow sedentary in their success, slowly rotting inside before falling to a more youthful power,  'stoicism' always seemed out of place. He used it most often to refer to newfound religions or philosophical approaches that were puritanically moralistic.

Durant's place in all this seems a bit odd: while he approves of progress and prosperity, they reach their height during these epicurean periods which involve a worship of the intellect and the decline of emotionally-charged elements of civilization, particularly religion. He habitually mourns this decay, thinking of religion as a means by which people put their persistent tendency to believe in the supernatural to use -- strengthening individual characters, offering consolation to the suffering, and strengthening society and social order. Thus he tacitly approves of the vibrant religion of those who finish the decadent civilizations off and establish their own, all the while sadly recounting the horrors that the conquerors visit upon the vanquished. (Hinduism is the only religion in his book that doesn't attack the beliefs or artifacts of other civilizations, apparently because it co-copts them. Buddhism doesn't die in India: Hinduism simply absorbs it.)

As I cannot comment intelligently on much of the content (being wholly ignorant of some of his subjects, particularly early India and China), I can only say that I enjoyed reading the work, quirks included, and that I think my understanding of part of the human story improved for having read it. The book's age is somewhat problematic for the reader looking for a work like this: in Durant's world, the "present day" is the early 1930s -- and much has changed since then. Hitler has been the chancellor of Germany for two years and is swiftly turning it into a totalitarian nightmare;  Great Britain is the master of India, and Imperial Japan has annexed both Korea and a northern province of China, operating it as the puppet-state Manchukwo. Durant speculates on whether Japan and the United States will fight over their competing economic interests in the Pacific: he thinks they will, in all likelihood,  for economic competition has driven war throughout human history. Although old scholarship isn't necessarily bad scholarship, in the nearly eighty years since this book first saw publication, archaeological discoveries or linguistic breakthroughs might have added context that makes Durant's summaries inaccurate. An inconsequential example of this is Piltdown Man, which Durant references in tracking prehistorical hominids across Eurasia: Piltdown Man is a hoax, one not exposed until the 1950s.

There are undoubtedly other books and series written in the subject of ancient history or general surveys,  probably some written within the last decade with up-to-date scholarship. Are there better books in this subject? That I can't answer, not having read any series to recommend this book over. As said before, I did enjoy the book and do think myself edified for having read it. Durant's distinguishing characteristic, I imagine, is his decision to give a history that does not discount one thread of human life for another -- instead, he pursues economics, politics, religion, philosophy, drama, literature, and the like all with equal diligence. That approach is why I decided to start reading the series, it is why I will continue in it, and it is why I think the book worth your investigation if the subject is of interest to you.

Related:

• The Story of Civilization on Wikipedia, which contains a detailed table of contents. 
• The Outline of History, H. G. Wells. I have not read it, but it's on my "Eventually" list.

The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation: the Beginning of our Religious Traditions
© 2006 Karen Armstrong
469 pages

I looked forward to reading this book, and my expectations were met. Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation is a historical narrative detailing the creation of four of the most influential religious and philosophical traditions to date -- Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, transcendental monotheism in Israel, and rationalism in Greece. She begins by examining the state of the "axial peoples" who lived in a time of transition -- when cities were becoming civilizations, and the thoughts of a few becoming the codified belief-systems of a few. The book is both a history book in its own right and one on the formation of these religious and philosophical traditions.


She begins where civilization began -- the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates -- and moves to Iran before focusing on the first axial people, the Indian "Aryans". Beginning with the chapter "Ritual", Armstrong devotes a single chapter each to a number of themes that may sum up the growing traditions -- detailing thoughts on knowledge, suffering, cosmic unity, and the like. Each of the four civilizations gets its due in every chapter, although some traditions may dominate a given theme: the teachings of Buddha, for instance, are covered in more detail than the others in "Suffering". The book ends with comments on how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each built on parts of those traditions, connecting ancient religions to more contemporary ones. (Armstrong's treatment of Israel reminded me of Isaac Asimov, and like him she makes a distinction between early Hebrew monotheism (which he called "Yahvism") and Judaism. The book's ending chapter. Also in the interests of connecting the old with the new, Armstrong summarizes her books and emphasizes the common themes that connected the axial traditions -- particularly empathy for all humans.

Armstrong writes quite well, creating a compelling narrative that seems to be quite well-informed. She keeps her various chapters and sections-within-chapters connected to one another in such a way that the reader doesn't lose focus, but instead keeps her thesis in mind. I enjoyed the book very much. I think I may obtain a personal copy sometime in the future.

This Week at the Library (2/8)

Last week's reading was primarily nonfiction, as half my reading pertained to the classes I'm going to be taking. The other two books -- Theories for Everything and The Mammoth Hunters -- were unrelated to my classes. The first book I read was The Mammoth Hunters, which is third in the Earth's Children series. The author, Jean M. Auel, continues to tell the story of Ayla to us. This book concentrates on character development primarily because there's little else to concentrate on; the first book had to explain the culture of the Clan to the readers, and the second had to introduce and explain the "Others" by way of telling Jondolar's backstory. Jondolar's people -- the Zelandonii -- are not that different from the people Ayla and Jondolar live with in this book, the Mamutoi. Because of this, the book focuses on how Ayla fits in with the Mamutoi. Their camp is quite different from the camp of the Clan, as they are a completely foreign culture to her. Throughout the book she adapts and picks up an additional love interest. The conflict between her and her two suitors builds throughout the book. The effect for me was ruined because I accidentally read the first page of this book's sequel and knew how the conflict was resolved. This book series has more romance than I am accustomed to reading through, but given that most of my reading is nonfiction and science fiction, that's not all together suprising. I thought the book's ending was rushed, though -- and very anticlimactic. I was expecting a bit more drama, but…nothing. The book just ends in a sort of a "bythewaythisistheend" fashion. I knew what was coming, though, and I suppose it was wise of the author to not bother dragging the conclusion out out.

Theories for Everything would constitute the bulk of my reading for last week, and would be the reason I didn't finish The German Empire on time. Theories is an overview and history of science. It isn't dull, but there is a lot of material to be covered and it took me a while. Theoriesis one of those books I wish I had in my private library, because it's a handy resource that I'd like to return to again. It's a bit like a popular science book and a bit like a science textbook. The book has multiple authors, experts in their respective fields. I found the book to be most enlightening, especially the chapter on medicine. I didn't know much about medicinal history, and had no idea that there were competing theories in that field as well that caused contention throughout the course of history. The book increased my appreciation for Hippocrates, which is saying something since I already liked him a good deal. The book does a good job of informing the reader, and no technical knowledge in any of these fields is required. The only chapter that didn't hold my attention was the one on brains, which is interesting given how much I loved reading Phantoms in the Brain a month or so ago.

The Middle Ages by Dorothy Mills is a splendid little history of the medieval era in Europe. Mills tells the story of history as if she's telling a story, and I enjoyed it considerably. The use of "Mohammedan" caught my eye; like "coloureds", it's one of those words that betrays the time in which the book was written. I checked out the book's copyright, and it was written in 1935. That makes it the oldest first-print edition book I've ever read; before this it was The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. "Mohammedan" is used to describe members of the Islamic faith, and they don't like it because it implies they worship Mohammed. Considering how some Muslims acted last year during the Danish cartoon controversy, I'd say the implication is justified -- but I would only use it to describe those Muslims who go apeshit when their prophet's image is depicted. Mills doesn't use the word pejoratively.

The last book I read this week -- and the one I didn't finish until this week -- was Michael Stürmer's The German Empire. It's not a long book; in fact it's small, short, and thin. It took me longer than expected to finish Theories, though, so I didn't finish the book until early this week. I need more background in German history to really appreciate this book; that the reader would have some knowledge about Germany's history is implied. I do have some background into German history (through The Complete Idiot's Guide to Nazi Germany, which had to establish how Nazism managed to take hold in an "enlightened" country), and the parts of this book that I was able to understand built upon that background. There were some parts of this little book that I didn't quite understand, but I'll keep reading on German history and one day return to this book and it will be old stuff.

Pick of the Week: Theories for Everything

That ends last week. This week I came to the library with a short list of promising titles. I like it when I can come with a list, because wandering around the library waiting for books to catch my eye is fairly hit-and-miss. Generally, books arrive on my list through shows like This American Life and friends' recommendations. This week's list:

[*]Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter. I heard an interview with President Carter and when he was asked a few difficult questions, he deferred to the book. I can understand that, because the questions he was asked were the kind that need explanations; explanations you don't want to leave at the mercy of an audio engineer who to produce an hour-long show. I decided to pick the book up; I've been meaning to read some of Carter's books for a while now.

[*]The Plains of Passage. This is fourth in the Earth's Children series.

[*]A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut is a name I heard a bit about after he died, and apparently he was this century's Mark Twain. I checked out one of his books a few weeks back -- Cat's Cradle -- but didn't really get into it because it was a bad week for reading and I wanted to be reading about history and science anyway. A Man Without a Country is one of his nonfictional works.

[*]The Truth (with Jokes) by Al Franken. I've forgotten how I came to want to read this book. I've never watched his show, as I grew up in a home without television. When I went to the library, I was able to find all of these except for The Truth (with Jokes). The library's webcat said that the book was there and checked in, but I searched and couldn't find it. I suppose it was on the reshelve cart or that some patron had it and was walking around with it. I wanted to read something by Franken, though, and so found myself looking for Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. The book's cover featured Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, George Bush, and Dick Cheney. I knew then that it was promising. I didn't like Coulter and O'Reilly when I was a conservative back in high school and I don't like `em now.

While at a computer terminal accessing the library's webcat, I noticed a familiar face in the Featured Books section. The Featured Books section of the library in my hometown is near the main desk, and they put books there every two weeks (I think that's the schedule) that relate to a particular theme. One week the theme is local history, another week it's the paranormal (kudos to my library for including Carl Sagan's A Demon-Haunted World among the books about alien abductions and such; gotta keep the voice of reason in there); the theme varies. I don't know what the theme was this week, but I saw a face I recognized from The Late Show with David Letterman. It was this guy named Don Rickles, and I remember him because he has a unique face and insulted Letterman throughout the course of the interview. I remember that he was supposed to have palled around with Frank Sinatra and that he included some stories in the book -- so I check it out. My reading for this week, therefore, is as follows.

1. A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
2. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
3. The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel
4. Rickles' Book by Don Rickles.
5. Our Endangered Values by President Jimmy Carter.