Amazon.com
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
Book Description
With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller—over 1.5 million copies sold—is now a major PBS special.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series.
Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.
The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.
He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Very insightful, a worth while read.......2007-10-06
I highly recommend reading this book. Diamond provides compelling evidence for the disparity between civilizations. Any fan of history or just anyone curious about the rise of our current state will find a great read in Guns, Germs, and Steel.
guns,germs and steel.......2007-10-05
great perspective other than what we in western cultures traditionally have in in our relations with 3rd world countries
Dimly Focused.......2007-09-25
Though erudite and crammed with information, some of it a bit arcane, "Guns, Germs, and Steel"suffers somewhat from a blunted point of view. Is the author trying to tell us that some of our assumptions concerning the rise of cultural norms are over simplified? If so, he might have done so more forcefully with fewer words, more carefully selected facts, and perhaps a more lucid writing style. Do some societies prevail because their native tongue is more efficient and expressive than those employed by other cultures? Following that theme might have made for a more intriguing book. Are there some determinisms at work in every culture which inhibit the fulfillment of its destiny? Maybe the author thinks so, but the massive brush used to paint such a scenario causes the entire work to shimmy through a mass of frequently fascinating material without conclusions. The book's excessive length detracts from its compelling points: we live, some of the time, at the mercy of gigantic forces we do not control. Do genetics control our formation, or climate, or enormous economic systems? And who can give us convincing answers? Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists of course come to mind. But what of poets, seers, artists, and theologians? Maybe Jared Diamond knows, but by the time he finishes inundating us with facts, some slightly pretentious, it's hard to tell for sure. I had hoped this book's scope and claim would give convincing guidance. But because it lacks definite focus, it did not.
Guns Germs and Steel review.......2007-09-24
This is an excellent book, the hypothesis is very compelling and interesting. I watched the DVD in addition to the book and I was not disappointed at all. Worth the read!
A modern, scientific "just so" story.......2007-09-23
One of the most important books of our time; it single-handedly wipes out every justification for racism, and gets to the roots of why humans groups are where they are presently. An amazing synthesis of disciplines into one very readable explanation of how it came to pass that Europeans happened to be the ones that colonized the rest of the planet instead of some other group. The most clear example I've ever seen of why archaeology, and all the social sciences are not only important but vital to modern people. The better our understanding of the past the more likely we are to be able to let go of the emotionality that keeps us at each other's throats. A modern "just so" story.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
|
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Chinese
| Ethnic & National
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Irish
| Ethnic & National
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Japanese
| Ethnic & National
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Women
| Specific Groups
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Augustine, Saint
| ( A )
| People, A-Z
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Doctors & Medicine
| Humor
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Lawyers & Criminals
| Humor
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Love, Sex & Marriage
| Humor
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Assyria, Babylonia & Sumer
| Ancient
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Early Civilization
| Ancient
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ancient
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Historiography
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Asian American
| United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Asian American
| Poetry
| United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
French
| Erotica
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Victorian
| Erotica
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Epic
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
German
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Russian
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Spanish
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Chinese
| Classics
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Conspiracy Theories
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
War on Drugs
| Crime & Criminals
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
English (All)
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Arabic
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Armenian
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Czech
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Greek
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Hungarian
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Japanese
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Korean
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Norwegian
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Persian & Farsi
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Polish
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Portuguese
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Romanian
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Russian
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Swedish
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Turkish
| Foreign Language
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Science
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Online Research
| Genealogy
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Native American
| Earth-Based Religions
| Religion & Spirituality
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| History & Philosophy
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
History of Science
| History & Philosophy
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Magic & Wizards
| Fantasy
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
Sailor Moon
| Popular Characters
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Pilates
| Exercise & Fitness
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
History
| Fashion
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
-
History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
-
Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America: Lost History And Legends, Unearthed And Explored
-
Before the Pharaohs: Egypt's Mysterious Prehistory
-
They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies
ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Amazon.com
From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers the same material as every science book before it, it reads something like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without a plot). Each longish chapter is devoted to a topic like the age of our planet or how cells work, and these chapters are grouped into larger sections such as "The Size of the Earth" and "Life Itself." Bryson chats with experts like Richard Fortey (author of Life and Trilobite) and these interviews are charming. But it's when Bryson dives into some of science's best and most embarrassing fights--Cope vs. Marsh, Conway Morris vs. Gould--that he finds literary gold. --Therese Littleton
Book Description
One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.
In
A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In
In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds.
A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
From the Hardcover edition.
Download Description
Bill Bryson is one of the world's most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journey—into the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. It's a dazzling quest, the intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this insatiably curious writer attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Or, as the author puts it, "...how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." This is, in short, a tall order.
To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the world's most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people, like himself, made bored (or scared) stiff of science by school. His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. How do we know what is in the center of the earth, thousands of miles beneath the surface? How can we know the extent and the composition of the universe, or what a black hole is? How can we know where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?
On his travels through space and time, Bill Bryson encounters a splendid gallery of the most fascinating, eccentric, competitive, and foolish personalities ever to ask a hard question. In their company, he undertakes a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only this superb writer can render it. Science has never been more involving, and the world we inhabit has never been fuller of wonder and delight.
“Stylish [and] stunningly accurate prose. We learn what the material world is like from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy and at all the levels in between... brims with strange and amazing facts... destined to become a modern classic of science writing.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Bryson has made a career writing hilarious travelogues, and in many ways his latest is more of the same, except that this time Bryson hikes through the world of science.”
PEOPLE
“Bryson is surprisingly precise, brilliantly eccentric and nicely eloquent... a gifted storyteller has dared to retell the world’s biggest story.”
SEATTLE TIMES
“Hefty, highly researched and eminently readable.”
SIMON WINCHESTER, THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“All non-scientists (and probably many specialized scientists, too) can learn a great deal from his lucid and amiable explanations.”
NATIONAL POST
"Bryson is a terrific stylist. You can’t help but enjoy his writing, for its cheer and buoyancy, and for the frequent demonstration of his peculiar, engaging turn of mind.”
OTTAWA CITIZEN
“Wonderfully readable. It is, in the best sense, learned.”
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Customer Reviews:
Everything about everything and nothing.......2007-10-15
Bill Bryson takes us on a layman's journey through the great adventures, arguments, and in-fighting of the last 400 years of scientific discovery, learning, and development. He explains in a superficial way what is important in chemistry, physics, geology, biology, mathematics, and anthropology, but his real strength is telling us about the brilliant but bizarre characters who did the heavy lifting.
You wont learn anything here that they dont teach college freshmen about technology but you will meet completely wacky characters like Sir Isaac Newton. This 17th century genius was unimpressed with the state of mathematics, so he invented his own (the calculus) and then neglected to mention it to anyone else for 27 years. Then came Crick and Watson who discovered the helical pattern of DNA despite having not been biologists, in fact, Crick was an American prodigy best known for appearing on radio game shows as a youth. Bryson abounds with additional tales of the strange workings of Fahrenheit, Kelvin, Einstein, Planck, etc.
This book is great fun. I have read all of Bryson's other books on travel and language, many were best-selling, and this thing is near the top. I listened to the author's reading in the abridged audiocassette. One could almost see Bryson lighting up when he gets to the parts where we poor mortals have no clue. According to Bryson, no one knows why the earth's magnetic fields change every 600 million years (we are overdue for a reversal), or what really happened to the Neanderthals, or if global warming will cause the next ice age (we are also overdue here).
too many errors, no online corrections.......2007-10-14
I think the reason this book won the Aventis and Descartes prizes is because the prize committees may have hoped the book could engage people who might otherwise read only travelogues, and interest them enough to read about cosmology and evolution. That is a worthy goal, but unfortunately the book's errors are too many and too distracting. If the book's website included a page for corrections, I could recommend it, but currently the closest is Wikipedia which only reports corrections that have already been published elsewhere.
An Amazon reviewer (Michael J. Edelman) noted the issue of inaccuracies, but was criticized for not providing specific examples, so I will provide two. I should note that, unlike some of the book's defenders, the author is completely unpretentious and acknowledges that his original manuscript included "many hundreds" (page xi) of errors that were corrected with the help of more learned reviewers. He adds, "Goodness knows how many other inky embarrassments may lurk in these pages yet...." Quite a few actually, but rather than call them "embarrassments" I suggest he should list corrections on his website. I will confine my examples to obvious errors of math and internal inconsistencies, and will leave the deeper scientific misunderstandings to experts.
On page 15, "seven one-thousandths.... Lower that value very slightly - from 0.007 per cent...." Bryson is off by two orders of magnitude: seven one-thousandths is 0.7%, and 0.007% is seven hundred-thousandths (7/100,000). The context is the narrow range of livable physics, so the specific order of magnitude might not matter to the light reader looking to be entertained by something "science-y," but it is jarring to the more literal reader hoping to learn about science.
On pages 20 and 21, "As for Pluto itself, nobody is quite sure how big it is.... If you set it down on top of the United States, it would cover not quite half the lower forty-eight states." Then, on page 22, "On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea...Pluto would be...about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn't be able to see it anyway." If you look at a picture of earth taken from space, with North America showing, you can see that North America would remain clearly visible even if you scaled the whole earth down to the size of a pea. Even the area of the American states east of the Mississippi River would remain visible to the naked eye. In contrast, a sphere of soil the size of a pea would typically hold millions of bacteria, each invisible. The sizes of peas and bacteria can vary, so I cannot calculate exactly how many orders of magnitude this error entails, but it is as jarring as the one on page 15.
The text starts on page 9, so that's at least two glaring inconsistencies in the first 13 pages. There might be more that I overlooked. If the first 13 pages are a representative sample, the 422-page text likely contains more than 60 errors of that type alone, not counting deeper scientific errors that others have reported but I might be unable to detect.
Everyone makes mistakes, but some authors and publishers are better than others at acknowledging them and making accurate information readily available. A print book cannot be recalled and updated readily, but it should go through better fact-checking before publication, and afterwards it is easy to publish a companion website with corrections. Unfortunately the website for this book lists only praise, and links to buy more copies of the book.
Bryson is a story-teller, most famous for travelogues that can be more about entertaining experiences than specific facts, and this book seems to be his travelogue through the world of science. That might explain the inattention to detail. His memoir of growing up in Des Moines, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," is much better because the candid hyperbole becomes part of the fun; he doesn't expect you actually to believe that anyone in his family really came from another planet.
I received this book as a gift, and have tried to read it, but I don't expect to finish because if my knowledge of science were good enough to catch all the errors I wouldn't need to read it, and as it is I don't want to spend that many hours becoming possibly more misinformed than I am. More recently, Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" covers much of the same ground better, is very readable and often entertaining, and is backed by his website with feedback from all quarters; Dawkins is an experienced science author, and his polemic includes more reliable science and has already earned more Amazon sales despite being published only last year. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" might make a less challenging gift, but the errors and lack of corrections unfortunately undermine its value.
A Short History of Nearly Everything.......2007-10-13
This is the best book I have ever read. Everyone should read it to get an idea of up to date information in the science world. Many of my older friends are still thinking about this subject in the 50 years ago thinking. As you can see from my orders I have bought several of these books to give away as presents.
Essential.......2007-10-09
Easily one of the most important books I have ever read.Bryson's wonderful writing and style allow you to enjoy learning fascinating and complex information. Beautifully written and crammed full of priceless information.
Cant wait to read it again.......2007-10-09
The most gripping and enthralling book I have read this decade. My girlfriend has a similar view.
Stick with the first couple of chapters which can be a little heavy going, and then after that, you cannot put it down.
A great way to learn - from an fairly objective point of view - so many important topics. Also gets you thinking for yourself. Some of the stuff is just damned amazing to read about, though you might never have thought so - like the Volcano under Yosemite, the evolution of humans, the secret lives of microbial lifeforms.
Superbly well written in a friendly, entertaining style. Like a one of your more interesting friends regaling stories over dinner. Complete with tidbits of gossip about the main characters.
Read it!
Book Description
Classical archaeology promotes the view that a state's evolution reflects general, universal forces. Norman Yoffee challenges the model in this book by presenting more complex and multi-linear models for the evolution of civilizations. Yoffee questions the definition of the prehistoric state, particularly that which heralds "the chiefdom" as the forerunner of the ancient state and explores case studies on the role of women in ancient societies.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent discussion of recent change in archaeological theory of state development.......2007-07-20
This is a superb book, but it really isn't quite what I had expected from the title. I had expected a more cut and dried account of early state development in a variety of world venues as extracted from recent archaeological studies. Certainly the more recent technological developments in the procedural side of archaeological endeavors has produced abundant new results, as the new research on Mellart`s old site at Catal Hoyuk indicates.The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk
Instead the author Norman Yoffee, a professor of Near Eastern Studies and Anthropology at the U of Michigan, gives a very thorough account of what has transpired with respect to the theory and practice of archaeology particularly in the field of interpretation of research results. His focus, as the title indicates, is on city, state and civilization development, and he presents considerable amounts of new information on a variety of cultures.
To begin with, in his chapter entitled, The Evolution of a Factoid, he covers neo-evolutionism and processualism in archaeology and discusses what these theories attempted to do and why they failed. He notes that archaeology has been, at least in the US, a sub-department of anthropology in most university settings. According to Professor Yoffee, this history created a perceived need to justify archaeology as a "legitimate" subject of study, particularly scientific study, by adopting some of the theories and research modes of the parent department. While this was productive of a healthy and vigorous field of enquiry, especially in the first half of the 20th century, over the years since that time, new questions which are not well answered by the old theories have arisen which challenge how the past is interpreted and demand a new framework to explain them.
To illustrate both the issues that highlighted the need for restructure and his own suggestions for a new theory, the author looks at various interpretations of social/political development as viewed from earlier perspectives and why they do not work. He notes especially a general failure in definitions, particularly in that of pre-state societies formerly termed "chiefdoms." He also clarifies rudimentary definitions of "state" and "civilization," particularly the difference between them and what each says about a particular society.
In proposing his own theories of state development and archaeological interpretation of data, ie. social evolutionary theory, he uses information drawn from the Mesopotamian region (of which he has personal knowledge), Egypt, the US Southwestern and Mississippian cultures, the Maya, and early China. This makes for a colorful and enjoyable illustration of the author's theme. His use of Santa Fe Institute's multidisciplinary research on complex systems and self organizing criticality, etc. was particularly interesting, as I had read a recent book Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos which included archaeology in the SW in this way. His citation of Per Bak and his "sandpiles" how nature works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality (Copernicus)certainly suggests that the author is very well read and enjoys a cross-disciplinary perspective. (From the latter, since other specialties can be daunting to tackle, one can presume he is also both curious and courageous.)
My favorite chapter is "New Rules of the Game." In the section "The Game of Archaeological Neologisms," the author notes that it has become fashionable to create new "types" of archaeological enquiry. As he writes: "The basic rule of the game was to proceed down the alphabet adjectivizing the common noun 'archaeology.'" He cites a number of examples, including "analytical archaeology," "behavioral archaeology," "cognitive archaeology," "demographic archaeology," "economic archaeology," etc. and notes that, "Having found a suitable modifier to 'archaeology,' the idea was to write a book on the neologism, hold a conference on it, or at the very least contribute an article to a jounal with the neologism as its title (pp. 181-182)." Since I have discovered this trend myself in my reading, I found his assessment very amusing and aware. My favorite of this type of book is Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods.
Those who are looking for a procedural book will be disappointed, since the author specifically states that this is not possible in so short a volume nor is it his intension. One book that covers this topic from the perspective of the geology of riverine sites, which are the focus of some of the author's illustrations, is Alluvial Geoarchaeology: Floodplain Archaeology and Environmental Change (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology), which, though fairly technical, covers considerable information regarding fluvial sites, their interpretation and their problems. Some of the type sites in this book are the same as those used by Professor Yoffee. In general, texts on procedures in archaeology are difficult to recommend, because the discipline has gotten very specialized; as the author himself notes, it requires more than one book to cover the subject.
For the non-professional interested in the topic of how cities, states and civilizations developed, this might be more than you bargained for. While the author does an excellent job of discussing the developmental trajectory from "bandishness"--to use his term--to state, his main objective is to clarify theory. Certainly if you have not studied anything of the areas that he discusses, the book will make an acceptable starting point, since he describes his type models adequately but not dauntingly so. Furthermore, the presentation on theory will give the beginner a better feel for what can and cannot be said about a past society from its material remains, something not always clearly noted in more general discussions on ancient society.
For those who, like myself, have taken archeology and anthropology some time ago and want an update, this is a superb book, since it covers a lot of ground. It makes one realize how much even the Past has "changed." I will make a point of saying, however, that the author has an incredible vocabulary, both professional and personal, and there are places where a good dictionary will be helpful--and this from a person who is considered to have a good vocabulary herself!
For the student, the book certainly provides a good overview of the changes in archaeological theory over the past century. The type societies are well described and the bibliography is extensive and thorough. Because of the nature of the topic, however, many of the citations are drawn from 20th century books and journals (including one from my history master's advisor, Tom B. Jones). With some exceptions, the range of topics in the bibliography focus, as would be expected, on the author's main theme, so they may or may not be a good starting point for a course research paper; whether they are or not will be determined by the subject of your paper.
Misleading Title.......2007-05-29
[...]
It contains very little material on it's nominal subject; almost all of the content is of the form "So-and-so theorized such-and-such, but This-other-fellow contradicted him, saying this-and-the-other."
Actual facts, raw data, etc. are very sparse.
If a history of the academic squabbles in the fields of archeology and historic anthropology is what you're after, by all means, get this book; I'm sure you'll be delighted. If you're actually interested in the evolution of early civilization, look elsewhere.
Customer Reviews:
Stone, Bronze, Iron and then what?.......2007-02-15
Laszlo claims we are just now moving beyond the Iron Age and what comes next is not clear. The worse things get, however, the more people will work for improvement. What we need is general agreement that all should live "in a way that allows all other people to live as well." Unbridled consumption is the way to global destruction. Like David Korten (The Great Turning), Laszlo optimistically looks to all those who meditate, eat wisely, recycle, etc. as the vanguard of the new age.
The World at the Crossroads.......2007-01-23
I very rarely review more than one book by the same author, but in this case it is absolutely justified.
In the 1960s the Club of Rome was one of the first organizations to declare that there were "limits to growth." Today that seems so obvious, but then the very idea stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition.
There are still plenty of people who are convinced that either there is no problem, or that we are going to innovate our way out of any potential difficulties.
Many other experts are now of the opinion that we have left everything too late, and that we are on an inevitable downward path toward oblivion.
In Ervin Laszlo's new book, he acknowledges the seriousness of our situation, but is one of the hardy band of pioneers who see the problems as a "decision window" where we face not only the danger of total global collapse, but also the opportunity for renewal of the world.
We all of us need to change the way in which we see the world and then to take action.
Or else we shall probably not be here that much longer.
This message is indeed very positive.
According to the author, we just need to wake up. And this book outlines a precise map for doing exactly that.
Highly recommended.
How to build a more sustainable world........2006-09-24
THE CHAOS POINT: THE WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS predicts we have seven years to avoid global collapse and promote strategies for renewal - and tells how the modern world will change in that period of time. Chapters maintain we're at a critical junction in history and comes from the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory: THE CHAOS POINT builds upon his principles and surveys trends, how to head them off, and how to build a more sustainable world.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
The Chaos Point.......2006-09-10
I found this book to be profoundly important for all to read at this time in history. It is a true wake-up call to everyone, certainly in the U.S., but also for the whole planet. A must read.
A Better World or Hell on Earth.......2006-08-27
This is a well written book by an author with an outstanding international reputation. The condition of the earth and human culture today is at a critical crossroad. Conditions may either get better for most of the people on the planet or they may become so bad that human life here may be destroyed.
This book should receive world wide publicity with encouragement for as many people as possible to read it. Then we need to insist that our leaders begin immediately to take steps to choose the best action for the welfare of all humans and our planet.
Amazon.com
Nonzero, from New Republic writer Robert Wright, is a difficult and important book--well worth reading--addressing the controversial question of purpose in evolution. Using language suggesting that natural selection is a designer's tool, Wright inevitably draws the conclusion that evolution is goal-oriented (or at least moves toward inevitable ends independently of environmental or contingent variables).
The underlying reason that non-zero-sum games wind up being played well is the same in biological evolution as in cultural evolution. Whether you are a bunch of genes or a bunch of memes, if you're all in the same boat you'll tend to perish unless you are conducive to productive coordination.... Genetic evolution thus tends to create smoothly integrated organisms, and cultural evolution tends to create smoothly integrated groups of organisms.
Admittedly, it's as hard to think clearly about natural selection as it is to think about God, but that makes it just as important to acknowledge our biases and try to exclude them from our conclusions. It is this that makes Nonzero potentially unsatisfying to the scientifically literate. Time after time we've seen thinkers try to find in biological evolution a "drive toward complexity" that might explain all sorts of other phenomena from economics to spirituality. Some authors, like Teilhard de Chardin, have much to offer the careful reader who takes pains to read metaphorically. Others--legions of cranks--provide nothing but opaque diatribes culminating in often-bizarre assertions proven to nobody but the author. Wright is much closer to de Chardin along this axis; his anthropological scholarship is particularly noteworthy, and his grasp of world history is excellent. Unfortunately, he has the advocate's willingness to blind himself to disagreeable facts and to muddle over concepts whose clarity would be poisonous to his positions: try to pin him down on what he means by complexity, for example. Still, his thesis that human cultures are historically striving for cooperative, nonzero-sum situations is heartening and compelling; even though it's not supported by biology, it's not knocked down, either. If the reader can work around the undefined assumptions, Wright's charm and obvious interest in planetary survival make Nonzero a worthy read. If the first chapter's title--"The Ladder of Cultural Evolution"--makes you cringe, the last one--"You Call This a God?"--will make you smile. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
In his bestselling
The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.
In
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound,
Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.
Customer Reviews:
Nice job!.......2007-09-09
The book could have been better organized, the tone was somewhat grating, and some of the ideas fell flat, but I still rate this 5/5 stars, because in one book the author makes a convincing case that cultural evolution is inexorable and that with enough time it is inevitible that evolution would produce a species capable of culture. Way to go!
Antidote Against Fear.......2007-08-04
This book deserves more exposure to create momentum towards more positive interaction among different religions, societies, cultures and nation states.
It's a good antidote against the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) used to isolate, stigmatise and demonise.
Robert Wright is also contradiction in terms, since his demeanor is quite negative while he talks of positive change being manifest in history. In his own words, "grim inspiration" is what he offers...you can download the video of his TED talk.
He's also probably one of the few proponents for evolution who actually dare to make some argument for the existence of a higher being.
Most evolutionists are just as fundamentalist in their denial of a higher being (in the context of a "beginning" and the free will of intelligent beings), as many Christians are horrified at discussing evolution (in the context of biology). Both sides seem to have a compelling need to believe, their reasons or their faith, to the total exclusion of the other.
It will benefit society as a whole if you read this book.......2007-03-20
This is an excellent book. Basically the premise is that natural selection tends to favor non-zero sum activity on both a biological and cultural level. Wright is not only a visionary thinker but also a great writer and teacher. This stuff could be very hard to grasp, but he does a great job of making the subject easily accessible to anyone with a decent understanding of natural selection.
Specialists and scientists can assuredly point to specific examples that contradict Wright's theory, but as a whole it seems like a pretty solid theory with alot of supporting evidence throughout history. Things are never black and white, so nonzero-sumness may not be the end-all-be-all explanation for the arrow of history, but it sure seems like a pretty large piece of the puzzle. The great thing about it, like natural selection, is that it just makes a whole lot of sense. Understanding the inter-related nature of the world might be the real key to our progress/survival as a species, and Nonzero is as good a place as any to start.
On a side note: to truly maximize the enjoyment of this book, go to Wright's website Bloggingheads.tv and watch one of his dialogues. He has a very dry personality that can be incredibly witty at times. I could hear his voice while reading this book and it made his quirky little jokes infinitely more amusing.
PS it's nice to know that some Presidents actually used to take an interest in books like this.
What about the environment?.......2007-01-04
Mr. Wright knows how to write, of course. His witty and off-handy way of explaining things and of finding connections hidden to most other mortal beings is almost unparalleled (if that were the only aspect to rate, it would be a 5). However, I found most disturbing the fact that he seems to dismiss or not address (on purpose?) the effect his (quite well argued) linear o destined history has had on the environment. He tells a lot of stories on how humankind has evolved from hunter/gatherers towards capitalism and not once (or perhaps only once) says he something about the dire consequences this has had oh-so-many-times on natural resources, biodiversity, cultural diversity, etc. Perhaps we are doomed (blessed?) to become all capitalists, but we should not succumb to a Greek-tragedy type of historicism. Mr. Wright: how much are we able, according to your hypotheses, to control our fate? If we are going to be capitalists, let us hope we will be able to develop at least a type of capitalism, that, contrary to your book, will have in mind that this is the only planet we have (sorry for the cliché, but its true!) and that the trend we are following will destroy it utterly sooner than later, no matter what.
The End of History ?.......2007-01-04
At one level, this seems like an unfashionable foray into old, well-worn territory: History has a direction and, yes, something like a purpose; the nation-state will crumble in favour of supra-national government; the material superstructure of society changes the way we think and interact. Marx might well be turning in his grave. But to buttress his seemingly unscientific propositions, Wright marshalls an impressive array of very scientific arguments and evidence. The whole approach taken by the author is - at least to a non-expert layperson like me - quite startling: He sees cultural evolution - which include material advancement and information technology - as a LOGICAL AND NECESSARY OUTGROWTH OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION ! And the dynamic by which this is achieved? The logic of non-zero summness, ie, interactions resulting in equal gain; the growing complexity of a globalised world is tending towards positive gains for all. Is this, then, the End of History ?
Book Description
Containing an Attempt to Recover and Reconstitute the Lost Origines of the Myths and Mysteries, Types and Symbols, Religion and Language, with Egypt for the Mouthpiece and Africa as the Birthplace. Vol. I, Physical Beginnings; Totemic Typology and Customs; Origin of the Myth in a Twofold Phase of Fact; Origin of Language in Gesture-Signs and Involuntary Sounds; Darkness the first Adversary, Deluder, or Devil, typified as the Serpent Serpent Wisdom Origin of Elementaries; The Mount and Tree as Feminine Types of the Birthplace Tree as Giver of Food and Drink Unity of Cross and Circle Various Forms and Meanings of Cross; Mythology the Mirror of Prehistoric Sociology Sut, Horus, Mother Trinity Origins of the Triads Male and Female and of the Trinity Survival of the Mythical Types in the Dogmas of the Final Religious Phase. Vol. II, Astronomical Nature of Mythology Sun God Eden Culmination of the Kronian Creations in the Mythical Nirvana; Gods as Intelligencers in Time True Gods Keepers of the Covenant The Fall Doctrine of the Gnosis Christian Doctrine of Degradation; Assyrian Deluge Legend Lost Atlantis Pyramids and Towers; Modes of Identifying Time by Various Seasons and Keeping them as Festivals; Pre-Christian Christology.
Customer Reviews:
The books of Gerald Massey.......2007-01-04
This along with his *A Book of Beginnings* and *Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World* constitute a major work that took Massey most of three decades to write. There is nothing so important as these books in demonstrating the origin of all the world's languages and cultures in the birth place of Egypt in Central Africa. Massey was the 9th Chosen Chief of what is known as the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in Britain between 1880 and 1906. And it was during these years that he was working on these volumes. He was an evolutionist, a consumate scholar, philologist, and great savant. These books are filled with the most amazing insights. A Book of Beginnings scientifically demonstrates the origins of the British Druidic and ancient Hebrew traditions in the ancient Egyptian. It also delves into the most ancient levels of the Egyptian in the lake region of Central East Africa at the source of the Nile. These books are not for casual reading. They are fraught with detail and demand careful reading. They cast a bright light on the great world tree of cultures and languages whose tap root is in Central Africa. Massey traces the development of Egypt so far back that it makes the past two thousand years look like it was just the other day. For anyone trying to understand the origins of the great African cultures, the British culture, the Jewish culture, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all other cultures as well as all of the world's languages, these books are to be regarded as a gold mine. For anyone studying the great Bardic tradition, these books belong among those that are to be considered indespensible. Massey is a major figure. All of his work is published by BCP (Black Classics Press).
The beggining of CLARITY!! You must pass this way........2000-10-25
Gerald Massey is 'the' most under read "seer"/researcher dealing with history, religion, typology,... I mean what doesn't he deal with directly or indirectly?
If you are trying to find the reason or essense of cultural/religious/societal practices then this two volume set is a must. Massey does for History & Understanding what Athur Young does for science (The Reflexive Universe), he makes the developement of Kemit accessible and understandable.
The writings of Gerald Massey will probably be the most dense material you have read in your life! Sometimes what he covers in one page another author would have taken 10. The book is the 2nd of 3 main books (6vols) and in my opinion should be read first! I read "Light of the World" first and understood it (I thought). When I read Natural Genesis and reread the others...they all opened up and revealed way more insight.
Lastly, I think for the establishment of the time Massey would presently be akin to a (more radical) Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn...along the religio-socio-historical side. Hope that helps some.
Book Description
An introduction to a new way of looking at history, from a perspective that stretches from the beginning of time to the present day, Maps of Time is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings.
Cosmology, geology, archeology, and population and environmental studies--all figure in David Christian's account, which is an ambitious overview of the emerging field of "Big History." Maps of Time opens with the origins of the universe, the stars and the galaxies, the sun and the solar system, including the earth, and conducts readers through the evolution of the planet before human habitation. It surveys the development of human society from the Paleolithic era through the transition to agriculture, the emergence of cities and states, and the birth of the modern, industrial period right up to intimations of possible futures. Sweeping in scope, finely focused in its minute detail, this riveting account of the known world, from the inception of space-time to the prospects of global warming, lays the groundwork for world history--and Big History--true as never before to its name.
Download Description
An introduction to a new way of looking at history, from a perspective that stretches from the beginning of time to the present day, Maps of Time is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings. Cosmology, geology, archeology, and population and environmental studies--all figure in David Christian's account, which is an ambitious overview of the emerging field of "Big History." Maps of Time opens with the origins of the universe, the stars and the galaxies, the sun and the solar system, including the earth, and conducts readers through the evolution of the planet before human habitation. It surveys the development of human society from the Paleolithic era through the transition to agriculture, the emergence of cities and states, and the birth of the modern, industrial period right up to intimations of possible futures. Sweeping in scope, finely focused in its minute detail, this riveting account of the known world, from the inception of space-time to the prospects of global warming, lays the groundwork for world history--and Big History--true as never before to its name.
Customer Reviews:
Surprisingly interesting.......2007-03-10
David Christian had a great ambition with this book: to write the history of everything there has ever been. In other words, it describes not only human history but also natural history from the very first beginning. Of course, I had read this on the cover but I had not quite anticipated how elaborate and detailedly the author would describe the formation of the cosmos from the moment of the big bang. I had expected the book to go rather briefly through this part of history and to move on quickly to human history. But I was pleasantly surprised because this first part of the book turned out to be the most fascinating part, as far as I am concerned. The rest of the book is quite interesting too, I must add. The plan and ambition of this book are great, the way the author has worked them out, too. If you liked THE HUMAN WEB by JR McNeill and William H. McNeill, you may like MAPS OF TIME even more. If you admired A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME by Stephen Hawking, you may admire this book just as much.
mother of al books.......2006-10-12
The book is not always easy, but well worth reading. It debates the different theories about life, the Universe and everything, through zooming in. The first part is about the big bang en the formation of stars, than follows the geological processes that formed the earth, the evolution of live, humans and our history. It ends with the 20 th century and possible futures. What I liked most about this book, was that it did not present a clear story, but gave the facts, and the different theories (different stories) that might come with those facts.
It was for me the book at the center of my expending library, because it comes with a extensive bibliography from which I'm now selecting books about the different parts of the big everything to continue reading.
The best book I've read in years (and I read a lot of (non)fiction books, about a large variaty of subjects).
The modern model.......2005-08-06
Intellectually stimulating, rapid-fire journey, the "powers of 10" movie specialized for history buffs. Some of the material I found superficial/generalized to be of substance, but the author acknowledges that can be the nature of Big History. An ambitious book which talks directly to ideas that most historians only philosophically discuss. A charge of inductive reasoning would not be far fetched, ie. cherry picking of facts to support prefigured models. Excellent overview of Big History and World History ideas and methods and themes. Annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter, and large one at the end of the book, are very good for further exploration, most book recommendations are recent (1990s and early 2000s). Despite criticisms learned some new and important perspectives and recommend it highly.
This book.......2005-02-24
I took his class last semester, and used the book. Fortunately it coincided with my views of the world, and I was able to finish the book and class with ease.
This book teaches you your spot in the universe. How people, matter, creatures and geography have lived and died, shaping the coils of history to bring you to where you stand today. This is the most scientific and coherent compilation of explanations we have today - Christian is able to see the bits and pieces of life that is around us, and put it together in a book. His theories that are scattered around the book are interesting in themselves.
Important book.......2004-10-12
This important book is so well written that, despite its broad sweep and intellectual distinction, it flows beautifully. The first chapters provide one of the simplest and clearest descriptions of cosmology I've ever read, perhaps even bettter than Neil deGrasse Tyson's in Natural History. Christian provides a marvellous theoretical framework for understanding history as playing out repetitive patterns, and the sweep of learning, while careful, is extraordinary.
Customer Reviews:
Slicing Humor..........2005-04-13
Slicing humor made me laugh out loud at times while reading it. My favorite subject was "Crawl-In"!!
No understanding of the value of the DARK!.......2004-07-26
This book has been written with the perspective of someone with a chronic lack of understanding of the value of the Dark. The author (or The Mission Control) proves to be very judgmental of the way we live on planet Earth, which is negatively polarized. The true mark of a highly evolved being, society, or organization is compassion. Compassion is not judgmental; it is a very profound understanding of both sides of a polarized reality, recognizing the value of both, Dark and Light, as learning tools in a soul's journey back to the Source. Taking sides with either of these two aspects of reality is detrimental to someone who's trying to grasp the "big picture". It's well known that the 5th dimension of our Universe is polarized to the Light. This book is a very good example of just that. But being "of the Light" is just as spiritually limiting as being "of the Dark" and only embracing both aspects takes one back up the dimensional latter towards reunification with one's soul and the Source. I gave two stars to this book for clarifying some concepts and terms that are widely used in today's New Age literature. Apply caution when reading this book for it radiates a lot of polarized energy that can make you easily hate the world you chose to live in and slow down your process of integrating and learning from both sides of our ever changing Reality. For more information on Compassion and a multidimensional perspective on the changes we are all going through, visit nibiruancouncil.com witch presents a 9th dimensional point of view on the subjects debated in E.T. 101.
DON'T PANIC.......2003-02-18
You may recognize that message from the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the original guide, that is, not the Douglas Adams book named for it). It's an excellent resource, of course, and I hope you still have your copy. But the problem is, you're not a hitchhiker.
If you arrived on this planet without an instruction manual -- which is extremely likely if you're a crawl-in (an entrant through the normal birth process) -- you're probably wondering just what the heck is going on. And you've probably been trying to figure it out for long enough that you've become _extremely_ distrustful -- justifiably! -- of the usual Earth-based sources of (dis)information.
Relax. The truth is, you're operating under deep cover. Your mission required you to forget a lot of stuff, but you forgot just a little _too_ much because -- like a lot of us -- you didn't read your manual before you embarked.
"If at first you don't succeed, read the instructions." You can stop beating your head against the wall; help is here, in the form of emergency reorientation from Mission Control.
What's the mission? Well, that's what Zoev Jho (the former Diana Luppi) wants to remind you of -- or at least just enough of it that you'll remember where to look for the rest of the answers. The heart of the matter is, you're here to help install direct lighting.
How do you know these instructions are meant for _you_? Simple: if you've read this far and this is still making sense, they are. (Oh, there are lots of other, more complicated tests. Maybe you read _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ and knew right away that the Combine was real. Maybe you watched _The Matrix_ and weren't surprised. It doesn't matter; once you've read the manual, you'll know.)
As another reviewer has already aptly commented, you're in the world but not of it. You are _not_ crazy. You are not alone. And you've got a job to do.
Don't forget to apply for a Creative License when you're done with reorientation. And let's be careful out there.
Here's your SIGN.......2003-01-25
Are you wondering what the heck is going on and Why I don't get it?? Here's your book, smart, funny and to the point, there are lot's of us out here that feel like there is just so much more and Diana has in a extremely readable manner put it all together. IF you understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he said "You are in this World, but, You are NOT of this World" then get a copy and clear up all those doubts.
I laughed every page - the message is "right on"!.......1999-04-28
This little book will perk you up when you think you are the only person in the world that 'just doesn't fit in'.
It puts down in words all the things you suspected about yourself. And gives you insight as to why you are out-of-sorts in this crazy world. The author provides some good advice in a hilarious manner on how to carry on. It truely is an instruction manual for life as we know it here on Earth.
Product Description
It is no longer news that the Western world is in a crisis, a crisis that has spread far beyond its point of origin and become global in nature. In 1927, René Guénon responded to this crisis with the closest thing he ever wrote to a manifesto and 'call-to-action'. The Crisis of the Modern World was his most direct and complete application of traditional metaphysical principles-particularly that of the 'age of darkness' preceding the end of the present world-to social criticism, surpassed only by The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, his magnum opus. In the present work Guénon ruthlessly exposes the 'Western deviation': its loss of tradition, its exaltation of action over knowledge, its rampant individualism and general social chaos. His response to these conditions was not 'activist', however, but purely intellectual, envisioning the coming together of Western intellectual leaders capable under favorable circumstances of returning the West to its traditional roots, most likely via the Catholic Church, or, under less favorable ones, of at least preserving the 'seeds' of Tradition for the time to come.
Customer Reviews:
A Spiritual Conscience for Modern Madness.......2007-09-26
The scholarly world is never too short of what is in vogue as `critiques of modernity' that another addition to this stock would have been redundant. Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World however, is not simply `another' of this but is distinguished by its profound wisdom, transcending conventional approaches that either diagnosed the symptoms and not the real disease or carried from an exclusively `philosophical' viewpoint, oblivious to the fact that `philosophy' itself is among modernity's offspring. Guénon's theme is sophia perennis, or primordial Wisdom, which seeks to resurrect the sacred metaphysics that lies at the root of the world's major religions.
Guénon begins with the premise that the modern world as we know it corresponds exactly to the period of Kali Yuga (or Dark Age) in Hindu cosmology, similar to the Iron Age in Western traditional doctrine, a time when the forces of matter reign supreme and spirituality has been thoroughly eclipsed. In fact, history itself is a gradual process of declining spirituality and "progressive materialization", so that at the last phase of the human cycle (or the darkest of the Dark Age), mankind shall witness the abundance of material prosperity as has never been witnessed before, while simultaneously impoverished spiritually and utterly divorced from true intellectuality and hence truth itself.
Intellectually, this decline is especially evident in science and philosophy. Philosophy - `love' of wisdom - became wisdom unto itself; `physics' - the science of `nature' in its totality - became a science that deals with only a portion of nature; astrology degraded into astronomy; alchemy degenerated into chemistry; and all that was once meaningful and bound to truth transcending the domain of matter and the world of sensible experience is reduced to bare facts bereft of truth, meaning and purpose. It is no wonder that the modern man today feels alienated from the world, from each other and from himself. The ancient sciences were invariably bound to metaphysical principles found in the world's great religions, made possible by the eminently religious and theocentric character of the earlier people. Truth for them is one, just as God is One. The different orders and aspects of Reality are but reflections of this same, single and universal truth. Whichever angle the truth is approached, contradictions only appear at the surface so that `specialization' would eventually lead to the convergence of the various disciplines, which explains why the ancients were so adept at mastering several different branches of knowledge at the same time, insofar as mastery of certain basic laws underlying all of reality permits their application to many different domains.
Modernity by contrast, is built upon the spirit of opposition to religion (think of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment) and therefore hostility to metaphysics and truth. Once the ultimate Truth is denied, the ground is cleared for the manufacture of many different "truths", tending naturally towards relativism and nihilism that are so prevalent in today's world. Indeed, relativism is the logical outcome of rationalism, this in turn being the result of humanism and individualism, which of course, is the "determining cause of the present decline of the West." Descartes' rationalism, instead of raising man to transcend himself towards truth, seeks to drag truth down to the "purely relative and human faculty" of rational thought. The mental outlook that made this possible is materialism, "a conception according to which nothing else exists but matter and its derivatives." Now this is significant even symbolically, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, hence the source of strife and conflict.
This decadence even manifests itself in the social order - from the separation of religion from the state, the triumph of mediocrity over the wise (democracy), the spread of `mass education' (which compromises the uniqueness of each individual) to the rise of the cult of `originality' in the intellectual domain, for whom it is better to create a new error than repeat an old truth. All this are but manifestations of the same catastrophe - neglect of spirituality, hence the loss of unity.
Materialism is also tied to Western domination. The East has been traditionally religious, but in the face of (material) challenge and encroachment by the modern West, is now compelled to adopt the materialistic worldview to compete in this profane realm and in this regard, its religious past is certainly no guide. Where else would they seek guidance and `light', if not from the very civilization in which materialism organically springed forth? This is in fact how the present age fits neatly into that last phase of Kali Yuga as Guénon understands it, namely that the darkness of materialism will ultimately bring the whole world into its dominion (long before `globalization' and `end of history' became common lingo), marking finally the end of an era, i.e. the end of a human cycle, or Manvantara, where `the wheel stops turning.' This is when chaos, conflict and strife will erupt as never before, a time known in Christianity as the reign of the Antichrist and in Islam as the era of Dajjal.
There is a way out - for the establishment of a spiritual elite to lead the masses out of this darkness. This elite necessarily has to operate covertly, like a secret puppeteer when others could not see the strings, for the masses have become deeply entrenched in their materialism, which continuously creates in them more artificial needs for materiality than it can satisfy. In the West, the only institution capable of bringing about this change is the Catholic Church, which alone is in possession of the sacred traditional doctrine of Christianity. Yet even then, Guenon remains skeptical and calls for the Western world to summon aid from what modicum of true spirituality is left in the East, unadulterated by the `modernized' outlook that is fast making headways throughout the Orient.
The roots of modern world........2004-07-20
This book show us the roots of our modern world. This book is for those that, unsatisfied with the course os the modern world and it?s oppressive materialism, are looking for convincing explanations, out of the common political and economical vision. The author examines the deep factors that conducted our world to it?s present unbalance, demonstrating that, since the Middle Age, the Occident went further and further away, with increasing velocity, from the principles that ruled all the humanity until that momment. Principles that presume an hierarchy of values, from the highest (spiritual) ones to the basic (material) ones; principles that are within the essence of the traditional civilizations, that harmonize man and nature. We find examples of traditional civilizations with the north-american native tribes (as the Hopi and Sioux, among others); the Tibet, before the chinese invasion; the medieval Japan... Ren? Gu?non (1886-1951), with this book that is at once masterly and accessible, don?t give us illusions about the future of our civilization. Instead he provides us with new and wide horizons, with tools that enables us to evaluate and stand up to the great challenges of the modern world crisis. It's the best way to make a first contact with Ren? Gu?non and the traditional view.
Luiz Pontual (irget@reneguenon.net), director of Ren? Gu?non's Institute, April 9, 1999. See our site irget@reneguenon.net and buy our book at Amazon.com
Rene Guenon and the Crisis of the Modern World........2004-07-12
In perhaps his most important work, _The Crisis of the Modern World_, traditionalist thinker Rene Guenon outlines his philosophy and shows how the traditional outlook is opposed by modern developments. Guenon begins by noting that the modern world has brought about a crisis, conceived by many in terms of apocalypse and the "end times" (the coming dark age of the Kali Yuga in terms of Hindu cyclical cosmology), which can only be resolved by a return of the West to the traditional outlook. Taking off from what he had written earlier in a book entitled _East and West_, Guenon notes that the worldviews of West and East are profoundly different from each other, the East maintaining its traditions, while the West creeps towards degeneracy in the form of modernism and materialism. Much of this book is spent contrasting East and West, attempting to demonstrate exactly where the West has gone astray (both in its attempts to colonize the East and in its rampant materialism and modernism). In the East, three great traditions remain corresponding to the Near, Middle, and Far East respectively. These are the traditions of Islam, the traditions of India (especially Hinduism), and the traditions of the Chinese civilization. Guenon believes that only one possible source for traditional renewal remains in the West, and that is the Catholic (meaning "universal") Church, which he opposes to Protestant Christianity or modern day "rationalism", for example. Tranditionalism places an emphasis on both "primordialism" and universality, in line with its Vedantist roots. Guenon also notes several contrasting distinctions between the traditional viewpoint and that of the modern day (the Western materialist/"rationalist" outlook). Part of this involves the contrast between sacred and profane science. Modernists emphasize profane science, attempting to desacralize nature, and place their priority in both pragmatism and the material world. Such a view has come even to relegate metaphysical notions of truth to the realm of the purely pragmatic and utilitarian. Guenon also notes how the modern day world is dominated by a mass democratic levelling brought about by what he terms "individualism". It is this form of "individualism" which has led to materialism and an emphasis on pure pragmatics (quantity as opposed to quality), although he contrasts this to the more genuine view of the traditional man which remains opposed to the encroaching influences of force, through the state for example. Guenon sees much to criticize in the democratic development of the West, seeing in democracy a form of mass levelling. Opposing these developments within the modern world, Guenon calls for a new intellectual elite, who will serve to revive tradition where it is to be found. This revival also centers around the schism between East and West. In this sense, those among the "intellectual elite" must either opt to integrate the traditions of the East (which remain viable) into the West or attempt to restore genuine Western tradition (such as that which exists in a form of decline within the Catholic Church). Guenon remains a champion of the East and notes the Western bias and attempt to dominate the traditional East, citing several sources of this problematic, where he means by the West the modern materialist-driven West and not the traditional West. This book serves as an important introduction to the thinking of Rene Guenon, who is the father of the traditionalist school which also includes Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade, among others. It serves to highlight many of the contrasts which exist between the modern world (undergoing crisis) and the traditional outlook. Guenon notes that while there is a tendency for those among the traditional camp to despair, given the bleak outlook presented by the modern world (which may be destroyed in catastrophe given its false foundations), that this tendency should be overcome, particularly by those among his chosen elite. Guenon quotes several important passages from the Gospel accounts to illustrate his point. Truly the modern world represents the traditional Kali Yuga of the Hindu cycle, a dark age of rampant materialism, and a decline from the once golden age of spiritual tradition.
Guenon's Brilliant Analysis of the Modern World........2004-07-01
Rene Guenon makes an excellent case when he presents the ontologically corrupt nature of our time in his _Crisis of the Modern World_. Guenon's prose, as noted by other readers, translates horribly into English from the original French. Never before have I read "paragraph long" sentences and Guenon is probably one of the few authors who uses semicolons and colons more frequently than periods in his ultra-dense prose. His train of thought is difficult to follow but once concentrated upon closely it is apparent how insightful Guenon is explaining his subject. He was an early twentieth century advocate of the "perennialist" philosophy: all of the world's genuine religious faiths share a common root and esoteric teachings that have been obscured by the process of time. The modern world, whose historical origins lay during the Renaissance period, is the spiritual nadir of this time "cycle" according to Guenon's understanding of ancient Hindu mythology. It is marked by a decline in the role of spiritual élites, both exoteric and esoteric religious devotion, and by the subsequent rise in the study of material, empirical sciences, and the ascendancy of secular humanist philosophy and the replacement of objective, transcendent religion with sentimental moralism. Guenon's perspective is interesting because he defends the Catholic Church as Europe's sole remaining traditional body, despite dropping out of the Catholic fold. Guenon instead affiliated himself with Freemasonry and the study of Hindu texts, and who later in life moved to Egypt and converted to Islam in order to live in a more traditional (i.e. non-Western) society. Guenon decries the fact that the West has lost touch with its religious roots and is in the meantime corrupting the traditional eastern societies. He also notes how the current, anti-traditional Western advocates of democracy and thus majority rule "by the people" are in fact in the minority if the East and its views are taken into consideration. All mental activity and emphasis in the West have become geared to the external and purely rational, not toward the "intellectual" in the classic sense of the term. Consider the apocalyptic nature of the pro-sports phenomenon:
"There is no longer any place for intelligence, or anything else that is purely inward, for these are things that can neither be seen nor touched, that can neither be counted nor weighed; there is only place for outward action in all its forms, even those that are the most completely meaningless. For this reason it should not be a matter of surprise that the Anglo-Saxon mania for sport gains ground day by day: the ideal of the modern world is the 'human animal' who has developed his muscular strength to the highest pitch; its heroes are athletes, even though they be mere brutes; it is they who awaken popular enthusiasm, and it is their exploits that command the passionate interest of the crowd. A world in which such things are seen has indeed sunk low and seems near its end" (92).
The only hope for the West, Guenon notes, is for a spiritual elite, an initiated aristocracy of sorts, to guide society into the next "Golden Age." However, the forces of the modern world prevent such a naturally dispersed and alienated group from organizing and turning back the clock. Nevertheless, the modern world, built as it is on materialistic presuppositions, will experience a catastrophe (_Crisis_ was written in the 1920s before the first nuclear weapons were constructed) that will usher in the next "cycle," the "new heaven and new earth" according to the Gospel. With the proliferation of nuclear technology and the continuing Mideast conflict, Guenon remains to be proven wrong. I disagree with Guenon's rejection of Catholicism for shady esotericism, Hinduism and Islam, but overall he reveals the modern world for the false, temporal sham that it really is.
Decisive Counterstrike against this demented Brave New World.......2004-04-30
Dare to breathe in the fresh mountain air of this truly *classical* approach to existence. The post-Christian West has become a technotopic wasteland of whiny, anti-hierarchical weaklings addicted to an empty convenience-based life-style devoid of higher goals and concerns. Guenon reveals how the deviant modern world has traded the tiered functionalism of the Medieval civilization, in which all ideal human types might flourish according to their dharmic specificity, for the dysfunction of mass democracy and dysgenic egalitarianism, where inhuman bureaucratic collectivism thrives in proportion as all potential above-average natures are suppressed and forbidden from setting themselves against the leveled and mentally uniformized populaton of socially-engineered ethical nonentities. In the structurelessness of the modern world the masses become more and more uninhibited and a brutal centralism is all that can stem the inevitable chaos of a Christ-less subhumanity disdainful of its highest heritage and all transcendent distinctions.
As Guenon has so perfectly stated, "What [modern] Westerners call civilization, the others would call barbarity, because it is precisely lacking in the essential, that is to say a principle of a higher order."
The sheepfold shall grate, but true power can only come from submission to the Divine Logos, the superior cannot emanate from the inferior, the herd cannot confer what it does not possess.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17).
Books:
- H.P. Lovecraft: A Life
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- You Can Heal Your Life
- Sharpe's Enemy
- Empowerment in Chicago: Grassroots Participation in Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation
- Handbook of Income Distribution
- Korean Business Etiquette: The Cultural Values And Attitudes That Make Up The Korean Business Person
- Partner in Crime
- Investor Relations: The Art of Communicating Value--Four Basic Steps to a Successful IR Program &
- Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century
- Monthly Interest Amortization Tables
- The Rocky Mountain Berry Book
Collapse
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.)
Guns, Germs, and Steel
![Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0061234001.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (Science Masters)
