Eleven Trucking Songs

Inspired by A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, which  alternated between writing about driving big trucks and listening to country music....here are eleven country songs about driving trucks!  There are more out there,  but I've collected these over the years. The ones I've chosen touch on various aspects of the trucking life -- adventure, loneliness,  camaraderie, and danger. 

1. "Eastbound and Down",  Jerry Reed

East bound and down, loaded up and trucking

We're gonna do what they say can't be done

We got a long way to go, and a short time to get there

I'm eastbound, just watch ol' Bandit run!

This will easily be the most recognized song on this list, as it was written for and used in Smokey and the Bandit, a movie about two truckers bootlegging Coors, trying to get away from an indefatigable and utterly obscene Texas sheriff.   It's a fun song to sing driving through country backroads.  Note: the video above uses the music from the movie, set to clips from the movie itself.

2. "Six Days on the Road", Dave Dudley

Dudley's voice gives this song a lot of...oomph.  His delivery is that of a 20th century cowboy, full of guts and black coffee.  A rock version of this was done by a trucking band in 1987.

The ICC is a checkin' on down the line
I'm a little overweight, and my logbook's way behind
But nothin' bothers me tonight
I can dodge all the scales all right
Six days on the road, and I'm gonna make it home tonight!


3. "Roll On", Alabama
This song about the wife and children of a driver who spends most of the week away, but calls in nightly until he goes missing during a wintry storm, always resonated strongly with me as the child of a driver.

It's Monday mornin', he's kissin' Mama goodbye

 -- he's up and gone with the sun

Daddy drives an eighteen wheeler, and he's off on a Midwest run

Three sad faces gather around Mama, askin' when Daddy's coming home

Daddy drives an eighteen wheeler, and they miss him when he's gone 

Ah, but he calls `em every night, and tells them that he loves them

He taught `em this song to sing --

"Roll on, highway, roll on along -- roll on Daddy, until you get back home."

4."Big Wheels in the Moonlight", Dean Seals
A song about the youthful craving for escape and adventure that leads many to driving.

I came from a town that was so small, 

you look both ways you could see it all

All I wanted was some way out -- every evenin' I'd slip into town

Stand around by the caution light,  watch the big trucks rollin by

For me, it was a beautiful sight....big wheels in the moonlight.

5. "Speedball Trucker", Jim Croce
Croce wouldn't be described as a country singer, but his "Speedball Trucker" and "Rapid Roy" aren't out of place in its ranks.

One day I looked into my rearview mirror
And coming up from behind
Was a Georgia state policeman
And a hundred dollar fine
He looked me in the eye as he was writin' me up
He said, "Driver, you been flyin --
" -- ninety five is the route you were on, it was not the speed limit sign"


6. "Tombstone Every Mile", Dick Curless

Lamenting a stretch of road in Maine notorious for claiming the lives of drivers. Included here in part for its age, and in part because driving is often dangerous work -- especially in winter, or working around mountains.



7."Bud the Spud", Stompin' Tom Conners
Canadians have truck drivers, too!  And...they sing about potatoes.

It's Bud the Spud! from the bright red mud

Rollin' down the highway smilin'

The spuds are big on the back of Bud's rig

And they're from Prince Edward Island!

It is the most exciting song about potatoes you will ever hear.

8. "Chicken Lights and Chrome", Jesse Watson

Not an old song, but sharing the pride some drivers (particularly owner-operators) have in their rigs' physical appearance and maintenance.  Chicken lights refer to the string of lights that run the length of rigs -- or at least, their trailers. As a bonus: the lyrics include "A trucker's favorite song is Alabama's 'Roll On'".

9. "Roll On, Big Mama",  Joe Stampley
A fun, rowdy song about the joys of driving.

The feel of the wheel delivers me
From a life where I don't wanna be
And the diesel smoke with every stroke
Sings a song with every note
And ramblin' is the life I chose
Sittin' here between the doors
The yellow line keepin' time
with the things that's runnin' through my mind

10. Convoy, C.W. McCall

This is the other big trucking song people know,  and even though it's silly enough that I almost didn't include it here, I will still enthusiastically sing it if it comes on the radio.

We laid a strip for the Jersey shore and  prepared to cross the line
We could see the bridge was lined with bears, but I didn't have a dog-gone dime
I said "Pigpen, this here's the Rubber Duck -- we just ain't gonna pay no toll!"
So we crashed the gate goin' 98, an' I said let them truckers roll -- ten-four! 

11. "Driving My Life Away",  Rhett Atkins
Another fast song, but one which the title nearly says more than the lyrics -- though the verses hint that driving is just constant racing and getting nowhere,  with the singer wondering if there's something better out there.

Bonus: "Truck Driving Man", Jimmy Martin.  Martin is an early country legend, the king of bluegrass.

The Age of Napoleon

The Age of Napoleon
© 1975 will Durant
870 pages

Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me – or didn’t.  Will and Ariel Durant intended for Rousseau and Revolution to be the final volume in their epic history of Western Civilization, but grew bored waiting for the Grim Reaper to show up and claim them.  They decided, therefore, to scratch an itch, and devote a final volume to Europe in the age of Napoleon.  No individual has ever dominated a single volume in this fashion; even Charles the Fifth,  in The Reformation, would disappear  in chapters chronicling Persia and Arabia.   But Napoleon’s story encompasses not just France and England, but Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria,  and Russia.  The emperor does move backstage at times – in the chapters on  English poetry and novels, for instance – but he is never completely gone.  This final volume manages through Napoleon’s person to be just as comprehensive, but more tightly bound.

The Durants open with a more involved chronicle of the French revolution that concluded Rousseau and Revolution, this one making more obvious that the revolution was a slow but quickening crumbling of royal legitimacy that collapsed into the chaos of revolution after a few sudden shocks.  The king’s decision to attempt to escape France in fear of his life was one such shock, demonstrating that he was and remained an actor – not a prop.  From here, the Durants follow the Wars of the Coalitions, as the various nations of Eurrope fell in to and out of alliances with or against France, with the enmity between England and France being the only fixed point.  In 1807, with Napoleon  enjoying one of his greatest triumphs – the subjugation of Prussia, and the pretended friendship of Russia –  the Durants pause to cover  both French and English culture, including one hundred pages on English poetry alone.   They then alternate  sections on the culture of Germany, Russia, Italy, Iberia, etc and sections on the Napoleonic wars as they encompassed these regions.

Related to this volume’s unusual dominance by one person is the unusually heavy amount of military coverage here. The Durants typically dispatch wars in  a few sentences, concerned with them only as a background to  the social or political events that develop as a consequence.  There’s no getting away from battles and Napoleon, though, even considering the energy he poured into the political administration of France and Europe, and the long-term effects that energy would have.  The result is not a military history, however; there are no maps of battles.  Instead, the Durants treat the readers with their usual balance of literature, science, economics, etc.   there is a section on Jane Austen, for instance.  Another prominent author, Germaine de Staël,  maintained a long rivalry with Napoleon; she wrote a celebratory survey of German culture that pined for more amity between France and the Germans, and was present in Russia when Napoleon drove towards Moscow.  Beethoven, of course, merits a full section of his own.

Napoleon reliably described himself as a Son of the Revolution, even though his policies ended some revolutionary dreams.  His concordant with Rome, for instance,  re-established the Catholic Church in France, albeit in a corralled form. That was a far cry from the total secularization (or de-christianization, depending on the revolutionary), dreamed of by many – those who redrew the calendar and butchered France's artistic legacies,  those who in a just heaven will be consigned to  war forever with the whitewashing Puritans and the sculpture-smashing Wahhabis,   as well as others who would destroy art and heritage for ideology. Napoleon did apply much of the revolutionary, modernizing spirit to those parts of Europe he conquered  -- overwriting their ancient laws and traditions with constitutions from his own pen.   Although Napoleon kept faith with some of the past as convenient -- his concordant with Rome, for instance -- the Durants observe that in his army and state,  merit reigned, allowing even commoners to advance.

Although the Napoleonic wars have never been of great interest to me, the Durants' volume created an actual enthusiasm in me about the subject. As usual, I was impressed with their critical but forgiving evaluation of Napoleon, whom they regard as one of the singular men of history.  His reputation owes not just to his role in closing the violence of the revolution, or in his spectacular battles -- but pouring so much energy into his work, and being so successful in combat and in administration, that he transformed Europe,  planting seeds that would flourish throughout the 19th century. A century after his final defeat at Waterloo, an even greater war -- one spurred by changes Napoleon wrought -- would be harrowing the soil of France in blood, bones, and cannon once more.

And now, dear readers, what's next in Will Durant's Story of Civilization?

C'EST FINI! 

Rousseau and Revolution

Rousseau and Revolution
© 1957 Will and Ariel Durant
1092 pages

"...little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

Edmund Burke, on the execution of Marie-Antoinette

In the tenth volume of Will Durant's  Story of Civilization, we now approach the latter half of the 18th century.  This is an age of titanic personalities, in every field.  Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia,  Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Bach, Schiller, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Voltaire -- what an age to be alive in!    For those unfamiliar with Durant's epochal series, his approach was a symphonic history that covered politics, economics, religion, architecture, music,  and literature. This particular volume opens with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's critique of reason, and -- amid all the politics -- examines the influence of the Romantic reaction on the arts and politics, ending with the storming of the Bastille.

This is an age of enormous change; the industrial revolution has spread beyond England, and its social consequences are brewing political revolution, especially in France. It is an age of war, like most ages; Russia, Austria, and Turkey bicker incessantly over the Black Sea, and western Europe sees several wars of succession. The most influential conflict, however,  is the Seven Years War. This saw most of Europe allied against Prussia and England, with from some instability on Russia's part. While the consequences in Europe were minimal,  this was the war that made England an superpower.  While everyone invaded (and was rebuffed by) Prussia, the English chased the French out of  both India and North America, creating an incredible global empire.  The Seven Years War would set the stage for the American War of Independence, removing as it did America's great opponent on the continent, and pressuring the British to make the colonies pay for themselves via taxation.

Although the Enlightenment has already provoked its reaction in the form of the Romantic movement in the arts, the 'age of reason' itself is not yet spent: it is only now beginning to enter some subjects, like economics.  Irreligion among the intellectual caste is de rigeur, although in the Protestant north, a few individuals (Boswell and Gibbon, for instance) get their subversive kicks by embracing Catholicism, if only temporarily.  Writers like Voltaire and Rousseau write constantly of novel approaches to old problems: Emile, for instance,  is ostensibly about the proper education of a human being. (A curious subject, given that the author sent his own children to an orphanage on their birth.)  In the decline that which had been sustaining public morality, the Church and faith in general, people tried to find new ways of justifying a moral life. Some, like the Marquis de Sade, didn't bother; they rejoiced in the fact that without God, all things were permissible. Much of the philosophy here, skeptical as it was of the old authority, also rebelled against reason; this was an age of Feeling, of sensibility -- hence a larger role here for literature, theater, and other arts in the history. Rousseau in particular is used to epitomize the beginning of the romantic age, for his writings condemned cities, civilization, and material learning as corruptive elements leading the inherently good hearts of men astray. (Burk's comment about sophisters and economists almost echoes him there.) His emphasis on humanistic morals, however, did not make him a traditionalist; he regarded the Church with suspicion because it threatened patriotism, being an institution which transcended nations. (This was an age of French literature, Italian opera, and German music -- every nation had something to be extremely proud of.)  Rousseau is most remembered for his political philosophy, which emphasized the 'will of the people'.  While sometimes cited as an inspiration for the American revolution, Rousseau did not believe that representative legislatures truly served the will of the people; that had to be effected through full democratic assemblies, and so genuine democracies must remain small.   Rousseau's emphasis on popular will  and republics put him at odds with Voltaire, who distrusted the populace and smiled upon enlightened kings. In general, Durant noted, the revolutions of the 19th century would follow Rousseau in politics and Voltaire in religion.

Rousseau and Revolution is, like  all of the books in Durant's series, formidable in its size but not in its writing. Durant, when he shows his personality, is utterly amiable. He is not as personal with his pen here as he was in The Age of Faith or The Reformation, but at times we witness the human being behind the pen, mindful that he is not writing of abstractions but of real people. He cautions the reader to never lose sight of the individual people whose lives were creating what we perceived as larger trends. Accordingly,  Durant writes not just of big things -- the epic novels, the epic personalities -- but of passing affections, like fashion and frivolities, the concerns of the flesh and blood creatures who then walked abroad. The Durants are gentle and humane authors, students of the very history they write, forgiving of their subjects' sins and excesses.  We'll see if that lasts throughout the French Revolution, for this book ends with the storming of the Bastille.

We move now to Napoleon and the end of civilization; or at least, the end of Will and Aerial Durant's Story thereof.

Hank Williams

Hank Williams: The Biography
© 1994 Colin Escott
320 pages

"You don't have to call me Mister, mister --  the whole world calls me Hank."

Hank Williams is the legend of country music. I'd heard of him long before I ever heard him;  my father (who stopped listening to country in the 1970s) took me to visit his grave in Montgomery back in the early nineties, and Williams was a constant Presence in the music I grew up on,  haunting the singers of pieces like "Midnight in Montgomery" and "The Ride".      Hank Williams: The Biography renders a thorough and sober account of Williams' life,   one that appraises the man without romanticism.   It is exhaustively detailed, utilizing interviews with those who remember the "Lovesick Blues boy", and also features some commentary on Williams' musical craft.

Part of the legend of Hank Williams' life is that he died young and tragically -- alone, in the back of his car,  his heart destroyed by a mixture of alcohol and haphazardly-dosed medicine   Easily the most surprising aspect of The Biography is that Williams' chronic alcoholism was not the result of his fame and fortune, but something he fought with for most of his life.  From the time a thirteen year old Hank raided some loggers' booze hoard buried in the woods,  the young singer would have bouts with the bottle. He did not drink constantly, but  once he started on a bender he was hopeless for weeks. Time and again he submitted himself to sanatoriums,  especially when he needed to focus on his career, but every time he would stumble.  Although there was no shortage of excuses -- constant strife with his wives, the pressure of the road, the constant agony of spinal disease --    Williams' problems were only amplified by his success,  not created by them.

Williams was a genuine country boy, the son of poor strawberry farmers who lost everything they had in a fire,  a man whose first memories were of living in a boxcar. The Williams moved from place to place in search of a living:  after his father was stuck in a VA hospital, the family got by selling peanuts and taking in boarders.  That's where Williams got his start singing and selling , down in a little town called Georgiana.  Hank was a sickly boy, born with a spinal disease, and that diminished his ability to take part in the roughhousing and hard labor so common to southern men. He could sing, though, and after the family moved to Montgomery he began promoting school shows -- something that would grow into a career.  From schoolhouses to bars,  Williams became a local star who grew into a southern icon -- and after his death, a national figure.  His success was partially his own,  from his ability to turn his constant troubles, particularly with his wife,  into plaintive songs rendered in simple melody that resonated in the hearts of his country audiences.  Although Williams would mature as a writer in his brief window of fame,  his re-use of old melodies retained a sense of familarity.  He also owed success to his domineering mom, however, who opened her home to his band and who personally sold tickets at early concerts. (His wife Audrey, though she tried to use him for her own ill-conceived musical career, was also a forceful personality who replaced his mother as a manager of sorts after they moved from Montgomery to Shreveport.)  

Escott mentions that Williams came along at just the right time when radio was allowing hillbilly music to reach larger audiences, and become of interest to popular   musicians: indeed,  many of Williams' songs were performed by men on the national stage, like Tony Bennett.  Although Williams' financial success came from record sales -- concerts were hit and miss when he was on a bender -- he seemed to think of himself primarily as a songwriter, and was drafting lyrics even on the night his body surrendered to a bad mixture of painkillers and booze. Escott also notes coldly that Williams died at just the right time:  his back pains had only increased as time wore on,  as had the stress of performing on the road, and despite steady record sales his career seemed to be stalling and on the verge of sinking when he perished.  Instead of living to become a forgotten washout, a star that blazed briefly before being eclipsed,  Williams became a tragic figure.

As a history of Hank Williams, this appears to be the definitive work, and pads the detail with humor. (One favorite: Escott comments that if everyone who claims to have been in the car with Hank the night he penned "I Saw the Light" was, he would have needed a touring buss to accompany them. Escott also describes Audrey's show house as a tribute to what bad taste and good money can accomplish.  Another lady is described as being someone who, if she had been born a canary, would have still sung bass.)  

(Photo taken by me, Sept 2012. Downtown Montgomery.)

When the wind is right, you'll hear his song, smell whiskey in the air
Midnight in Montgomery,  Hank's always singin' there...

(Photo taken by me, May 2017. Georgiana.)

Funny story: The first time I listened to Hank Williams knowingly was after hearing my childhood preacher rail against country music for its sad songs and use of alcohol, using "There's a Tear in my Beer" as his example. Naturally I had to give it a listen,

Some songs:
"Lovesick Blues", the song that made his career.
"Lost Highway", my personal favorite

Related:
Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class,  Bill Malone

Real Music

Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church
267 pages
© 2016 Anthony Esolen

In his book Out of the Ashes: Restoring American Culture,  Anthony Esolen devoted an entire chapter solely to music. Here he does one better! To sing is to pray twice, wrote St. Augustine, and Real Music demonstrates that emphatically. There is nothing quite like the musical tradition in Christian liturgy; a newcomer to an Anglican or Catholic church may first appreciate the mere sound of the organ or harp, but when time is invested in these services -- when one attends throughout the year, for several years -- the real beauty and power of its hymns, offertories, anthems, etc. reveal themselves. These hymns are not merely pretty lyrics put to pretty music, but are themselves poetic articulations of the Church's theology and scripture. The Christian music tradition can do much more than make a listener feel "nice"; hymns can fill the soul with beauty and the mind with poetry. Esolen attempts to convey this experience not over a course of years, but into one book, devoting different chapters to distinct areas of the tradition. He here covers Eucharistic hymns, hymns of glory and penitence, hymns celebrating life and challenging death. Esolen does not merely present hymns to the reader and comment on their theology; he guides the reader through how the hymns' very meter and grammar strengthen the meaning. This book is a treasure for Christians who love traditional hymnody, or who have heard it on the wind before and yearn to know more about it.

Miseri

My podcast and lecture time this week has been devoted to a series of lectures on southern literature and the like, all at least an hour long. This Wednesday being Ash Wednesday, however, and the start of Lent, I thought I would share little music. Specifically, a piece by Allegri called "Miserere", which puts Psalm 51 to music.  It's a favorite piece of mine not because I can follow the words, but because the soprano part has several moments of exquisite glory.  (One of the first of which is around 1:48- 2:05 in this video).

The Psalm is one of repentance, and is rooted in the story of David, Nathan, and Bathsheba. As it goes,  King David spied a beautiful woman bathing from the roof of his palace, while all the other men were off at war.  Enraptured, David sent for the woman and pursued her as a lover despite her being married to one of his captains. When she revealed she was pregnant, David realized his reputation would be destroyed -- and so he attempted to sully it further, by calling for Bathsheba's husband Uriah to return from the front. David then encouraged Uriah to spend some family time with his wife, but Uriah refused; how could be he comfortable in bed with his wife when his men were out on the lines?  Uriah persisted in this noble refusal even after David got him liquored up, so the king sent  Uriah to the roughest part of the lines out of desperation. There he died, David married Bathsheba, and everything stayed hush-hush.

Until....a preacher named Nathan showed up and delivered to David a sad story about a rich man who wanted to entertain some guests, who so decided to seize his poor neighbor's pet lamb and kill it for dinner, rather than departing with any of his own stock.  David, incensed, roared that the man should be put to death, at which point Nathan replied....thou art the man.  Enter the Psalm.  I've linked to the full version there, but here's a small portion:

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being;
    therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Fill[b] me with joy and gladness;
    let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.
9 Hide thy face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right[c] spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from thy presence,
    and take not thy holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,
    and uphold me with a willing spirit.

 

10,000 Sing "Ode to Joy"

How incredible this is to watch; the look on the conductor's face is utter rapture.  While this video has nothing to do with books, aside from the complementary nature of literature and the other arts, including music, it was too glorious -- exquisite, even -- not to share.

Don't Get Above Your Raisin'

Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class
© 2002 Bill C. Malone
432 pages

Friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song, and he told me that it was the perfect country-and-western song. I wrote him back and told him he had not written the perfect country and western song, 'cause he hadn't said anything at all about Mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin' drunk.  (David Allen Coe, "You Never Even Call Me By My Name")


Don't get above your raisin', stay down to Earth with me -- Bill Malone never quotes the song that serves as the title of his book, a history of country music in its southern context...but its spirit is ever present. Using the lives of country's most passionate and storied performers, Malone reflects on the tradition and finds it a lovable mess -- alternatively humble and bragging, pious and rowdy.  Malone's deep familiarity with the tradition, and his love for it, are obvious. He doesn't simply treat readers to a barrage of chronology, but rather examines how certain aspects of the genre have evolved throughout  the last two centuries, so tumultuous to the South.

Country is as the name implies a tradition of music created and sustained by rural populations -- farmers first, and now people who live and play in the backwoods.  Its beginnings mix traditional romantic ballads, dances, and religious music.  Religious music is an especially strong influence on country, the stuff of lullabies and tent revivals that created generation after generation of musicians and singers.  In religiosity, the South remains stridently Protestant, but there's no puritanism to be found in country music. Inst ed, piety and partying mix together freely --  with no better witness than Hank Williams, who penned "I Saw the Light" and died an early death, plagued by depression and substance abuse.  The tangled, wonderful messiness of country  envelops more than religion. Country songs simultaneously embrace Mama's hearth and home, while celebrating rambling men and the freedom of the open road. Politics, too, finds contradictions -- zealous law-and-order mixed with praise of rowdy outlaws who give the Man what-for.  Not for nothing are truckers and cowboys, the ramblers who come home eventually, so popular -- as are repentant sinners who will invariably go chasing cigareetes, whuskey, and wild, wild women.  Additionally, Malone delves into the connections between country and its daughters, bluegrass and political folk, as well as the changing country-dance scene.  There's also a good chapter on country's connection with comedy in general, focusing on the Grand Ol Opry and Hee Haw, mentioning people like Andy Griffith and Jerry Clower.

Malone's piece is a labor of love, though with most others his age he despairs of the way country music headed in the 1990s, with more synthesizers and less fiddles.  That trend has certainly continued,  Taylor Swift's seamless transition into pop being an obvious example.  There are many traditionalists in the ranks, though.  Travis Tritt is quoted as sneering at Billy Ray Cyrus, who dressed in a body shirt  and 'turning country music into an ass-wiggling contest'.   Considering the posterior antics of Cyrus' daughter Miley, who does more than wiggling,  I suppose apples still don't fall very far from trees.  Still, Malone looks for the best even in then contemporary music, and concedes that every genre is in constant motion.

Don't Get Above Your Raisin' surprised me. I knew it would be a history of country music, but -- even as someone who grew up with country, who loves and collects the older artists -- Malone shared artists and stories I'd never heard of. Who knew that square dancing was borrowed from French aristocrats?  If you have any interest in country music at all, this book is worth picking up just for the discography in the back,  where Malone lists all of the albums and songs he's been referencing throughout the text. I've been able to find a lot of older artists via youtube's "also reccommended" feature, but this kind of shortcut is welcome!

.

Civilisation: A Personal View

Civilisation: A Personal View
© 1959 Sir Kenneth Clark
359 pages

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion -- poetry, beauty,  romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. (John Keating, Dead Poet's Society) 

In the mid-20th century, in the wake of a war that destroyed much of Europe and created a new tension between the capitalist West and the collectivist East that threatened to put paid to the rest of the world, Sir Kenneth Clark wondered: we are facing a new dark age?  Having posed the question, he returned to study the aftermath of the last dark age, Europe after the collapse of western Rome in hopes that it might offer an answer. Civilisations, he writes, compose political histories of themselves -- but it is the unofficial histories, the evidence they leave behind them, that really speaks. So to study the revival of Europe, to ascertain whether the 20th century west has again lost its vigor, Clark studies the book of art. Civilisation: A Personal View is a sweeping history of western art, primarily visual with a musical interlude.  A political history reveals the ambitions of its author, or patron; but the arts sweep across the human spectrum.  Lavishly illustrated with scores of full-page color photographs, most of the subjects Clark addresses are glorious sights that strike Awe into the heart of the viewer. They are churches, town palaces, sweeping vistas -- but there are the humbly but artfully-built homes, and the scenes of humbler life, too.  Although Clark comments on the evolving technical aspects of art -- the growing skillfulness at depicting man through the middle ages, for instance, from rudimentary figures with helpful "Image of a Man" labels, to the stunning life-like portraiture of the Renaissance -- he is more concerned with the spiritual import of the art. This means more than scenes of religious devotion; Clark believes that civilizations perish because they are exhausted, as though they were tired of being living things. Great art -- art that looks toward the future, that is intended as a lasting monument -- is one sign of life. For Clark, truth, beauty, and goodness are intermingled, though great monuments are not in themselves evidence of moral greatness.  After a lingering look at Byzantine glory, Clark addresses mostly north-western Europe: Britain, France, and Germany.  There is no discounting the book's richly satisfying content, however, for want of geographic range.