Reviews (11)

this book will be an inspiration to anyone who reads it.
This book is a story of a woman with remarkable focus on the things in life that really matter... She was able to discipline herself so that she could accomplish her goals in such a short period of time and yet she seemed to be so relaxed in the quest itself over time.A must read for zen students.

zen with a heart
this book is one of my favorite books in my library . this diary of an irish american searcher of zen cuts to the heart. ive read the book and have the abridged book on tape. though the tape is a shorter version of the book mare winningham brings the words alive with an irish charm. this book gives an insiders look at the heart zen as it is practiced in a japenese zen monastery. it is not only eyeopening it is enduring.

An Irish voice
What moves me very much is the lilting, playful, droll voice of Maura O'Halloran. You would imagine that the Irish character and the Buddhist tradition are poles apart. Maura's passion whirls them together in an instant.
This book is a good companion indeed.

As simple as a....b.....c.............
This book is a lovely tale of a life well lived. It is told in simple, clear prose. These pages describe what it means to be fully alive to reality. Maura shares with us what Zen is all about as a lived experience, rather than some abstraction, which, I suppose, is the only way it can be demonstrated. The book is full of quiet, irreverent, good humor, which is one of the qualities of Zen if I understand it correctly.

Maura tells us a lot about Zen in this book. More importantly, she tells us in poetic prose what it means to be fully attentive and absorbed in the present. What I take from this book is that living a good life, after the fog has lifted, is as simple as a...b...c.......
I

overstated
This is a book which reads more like a hagiography than a journal. Maura O'Hallaran's both time in training and understanding were, for want of better words; brief and comparatively small. She may well have been embarrassed by the book herself if alive today. ... Read more

Book Description

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is now recognized as one of the fathers of modern philosophy and political theory. In his own time he was as famous for his work in physics, geometry, and religion. He associated with some of the greatest writers, scientists, and politicians of his age including Ben Jonson, Galileo and King Charles II. A. P. Martinich has written the most complete and accessible biography of Hobbes available. The book takes full account of the historical and cultural context in which Hobbes lived, drawing on both published and unpublished sources. It will be a great resource for philosophers, political theorists, and historians of ideas. The clear, crisp prose style will also ensure that the book appeals to general readers with an interest in the history of philosophy, the rise of modern science, and the English Civil War.A. P. Martinich is a Professor of Philosophy and the author or editor of nine books, including The Philosophy of Language (1996), Philosophical Writing (1997), and The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge University Press, 1992). ... Read more

Reviews (1)

As Close to the Standard Edition As It Gets
One, if not the first, in a series of biographies of European philosophers by Cambridge University Press, this volume more than holds its own and is bound to becomne the standard text on the life of Thomas Hobbes.

Deftly written and extremely well researched, this is a volume not only for the scholar of English philosophy or history, but for the well-read layman as well. Martinich presents his subject chronologically, as any good biography should, with brief stopovers for analysis of each Hobbes text both philosophically and within the historical context against which it was written. Martinich is most unusual in that he does not take his own words as the last ones on the subject; there are pages on his disagreements with other writers on interpretations of both the life and thought of Hobbes, which makes this volume both unusual and valuable to any understanding of its subject.

Pricey, but strongly recommended, especially if one has any of the other volumes in the Cambridge series. If possible, wait for the paperback . . . but not too long, for there is much about Hobbes one will miss. ... Read more

Book Description

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants among the pantheon of Western philosophers, and one of the most powerful and influential in contemporary philosophy. Taking account of the most recent scholarship, Manfred Kuehn allows the reader to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy.Manfred Kuehn was formerly Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. A specialist on German philosophy of the period, he is the author of numerous articles and papers on Immanuel Kant. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

A clear view on one of the greatest masters
Superb, biography !!! In which the writer seems to heading for a definitive biography on one of the greatest masters that ever touched a Philosophical matter. Kant has earned the reputation as a very complicated thinker. I have read a few of his works and I can do nothing else than agree in this.

After I read this book I really seemed to understand his philosophy much beter. I feel I have a good idea about what were his major concerns and what was it that he tried to solve and prove. I have a good idea now about what the Critique Of Pure Reason is, such as other works as the other 2 Critiques & Groundworks.

If you want to read the works of Kant himself, make sure you pick this one up first and learn it by heart. Its as best as any introduction can get on his work, A truly homage to a great master.

There are besides that plenty of details about his personal life. His love for Frederik The Great, plenty of stuff from his students, how they thought about him, and what kept him occupied in his free hours. And there we get a very different Kant than the one that went into history for so far.

This is modern, but it doesn't rock.
This book is an interesting guide to what we now know about Kant's life, and a scholarly summary of what he might have meant in his own time and place. Kant was the philosopher selected by Nietzsche for section 193 of THE GAY SCIENCE: "Kant's joke. Kant wanted to prove in a way that would dumfound the common man that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of the popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for popularity." (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, p. 96). In TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, Nietzsche named Kant in his explanation of "How the `true world' finally became a fable:" (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, pp. 485-6). "Any distinction between a `true' and an `apparent' world ~ whether in the Christian manner or in the manner of Kant (in the end, an underhanded Christian) ~ is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life." (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, p. 484). What set Nietzsche apart from the scholars of his own day, at least as long as he was considered sane, was his willingness to display a sly contempt for the kind of clarity which any functioning society demands, which suggests that Nietzsche had some different ideas. If anyone who wrote philosophically at the level of Kant could still be understood well enough to be called "an underhanded Christian," it is ironic that a more modern philosopher would consider Kant "an embodiment on a large scale of what is wrong with philosophy" for the opposite reason: "Suppose he had not insisted on certainty, necessity, and completeness!" (Walter Kaufmann, DISCOVERING THE MIND, VOLUME ONE, GOETHE, KANT, AND HEGEL, p. 195).

One of the things that makes philosophy interesting is the range of ideas which it offers to anyone who is trying to think of something to say about his enemies. Fichte was a contemporary of Kant, in trouble with the authorities from 1997 to 1800 when he was suspected of being an atheist because he thought a moral world order provided a more godly deity than the underhanded Christians of his day were used to. This was very close to the end of Kant's life, and Kant's circle of friends consoled themselves with ideas like: "The name `Fichte' means pine, and bad proofs were sometimes called `proofs of pine.' Furthermore, to `lead someone behind the pines' could mean to be deceptive. Some of Kant's acquaintances agreed." (Manfred Kuehn, KANT, A BIOGRAPHY, p. 391).

I was most interested in examining this book because it considers an early work, included in Kant's THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1755-1770, on Emanuel Swedenborg, DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER ILLUSTRATED BY DREAMS OF METAPHYSICS. The existence of the work itself, like Freud's summary ON DREAMS (1901), drawn from Freud's on INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (1900), shows a strong affinity for the kind of thinking about Christianity which is much closer to a modern understanding than most people would expect from the contemporaries of Kant and Swedenborg. Kant might be much more modern than Swedenborg because he willingly states a conclusion, as "a matter of policy, in this as in other cases, to fit the pattern of one's plans to one's powers, and if one cannot obtain the great, to restrict oneself to the mediocre." (p. 174). Anyone who would consider this book mediocre ought to reflect on the scholarly norms that preclude this kind of writing from exhibiting the outrageous emotional tricks which are usually displayed in rock 'n' roll, movies, state lotteries, election campaigns, or exciting books. It is the scholars who live in a separate world, and Kant will always be a great example of how it can be done.

An Excellent Biography
Kuehn has taken on a handful with this project, yet the outcome is superb. This is a careful and scholarly text. Contrary to what one of the reviewers commented here, I think the book was an interesting and entertaining read. I highly recommend this biography to anyone with even the slightest interest in Kant (or his contribution to Enlightenment Philosophy). And it would make a great text for an Introduction to Kant course (just as Monk's bio on Wittgenstein is often used in intro courses).

We sometimes think of Kant as having lived a boring and dull life--that he was in fact as mundane and interesting a person as the schedule he kept (shop owners in the marketplace would often set their clocks to his daily walks). But the picture of Kant that Kuehn provides us with here is radically different. Sure, Kant lead a regular and ordered life, but Kuehn breathes accurate life into pedestrian images of Kant that we may have learned in school (or in textbooks).

Philosophical fears and stereotypes
This is the first new biography of Kant in many years, and there seem to have been good reasons for that. One, which Kuehn tactfully does not discuss, is the postwar political situation of Kant's hometown. Another, he admits, is that there is a stereotype of Kant as having lived a dull, boring life; and further, he also admits, there were earlier and quite successful attempts to cover up aspects of Kant's life that earlier biographers found distasteful. And the trouble with this biography is that in spite of all the author's efforts, these earlier assessments really turn out to be quite correct. Kant really did lead an extremely meager, restricted, spartan life even by the standards of that time and place, and this was by his own choice. Starting as a young child, his life was devoted to study, first as a student and then without a break, as a professor. His only recreation consisted in conversing and eating with friends. Koenigsburg did offer other opportunities. As Kuehn correctly points out, it was then a busy commercial city, on a popular trade route along the Baltic, and at the time a strong English connection. In addition, it was the administrative capital of eastern Prussia, second only as a government center to Berlin, and with a busy social season. It was especially noted for its musical culture - but Kant couldn't play an instrument, sing, or even enjoy listening. He couldn't dance. He wasn't interested in sports or nature. He walked daily, but only for exercise, in the same place and at the same time - in fact, the "Philosopher's Walk" remained a tourist attraction well into this century. He didn't go to church, and his near-atheism almost cost him his job. He didn't belong to the then popular Freemasons or any similar group. He lived most of his life in rented rooms, and when he did buy a house, barely kept it up (unlike his fussy bachelor friends); he didn't garden or own a pet. He seems, in fact as in stereotype, to have been nothing but a talking head.

Kuehn avoids psychoanalytic jargon, and for once this is regrettable, as it would be appropriate here. Kant was clearly an obsessive-compulsive, whose life was lived by constantly making up maxims, or rules, for himself, and which he then turned into a philosophical system. He did eat with friends, but he both amused and disgusted them by obsessing about his food, his digestion, and the - er - end products. (Freud definitely had a word for that.) Better known is his obsession about time, which Kuehn traces to his English friend Green - but it took the German philosopher to turn the personal eccentricity of the English merchant into a universal maxim. He really did get up at 5 a.m. and teach his first class at 7, during the winter prior to dawn, and the neighbors really did joke about setting their clocks by him.

He had a pathological fear of travel, and never went more than about 100 miles from Koenigsburg, although his investments in Green's firm would have allowed him to travel with the maximum style and comfort then obtainable. Not only did he never voyage by ship, but he never visited Berlin; when the Prussian government offered to triple his salary if he would switch to a larger and more central university, he refused. This had some odd effects - he taught physical geography, although he had never seen a mountain, and anthropology, although his acquaintance with non-white humans may have been equally lacking. This did not stop him from firmly stating as a scientific fact that non-whites were of different and inferior biological races.

Nor was travel all he was afraid of; to quote Kuehn, page 116, "Kant, who never married, and who-as far as we know-never had sex,..." - which did not stop him from stating that all sexual activity aside from marital procreation was morally unacceptable. Kuehn does hint once or twice that he may actually have been homosexual, but draws back before ever quite using the word.

Does it matter? Arthur Koestler once wrote that if Descartes had kept a poodle, it would have saved the human race a great deal of suffering. In the same vein, one can only think that if Kant had ever spent a vacation in Paris, it would have greatly improved both his life and his philosophy. Certainly anyone studying Kant after reading this book will have to ask rather dubiously which parts of his system really have an abstract value and which are merely rationalizations of his own neuroses.

Should you buy this book? If you are interested in - or assigned to study - Kant, philosophy, or German cultural history - the answer is yes. The more casual reader who just wants a good biography should be warned, however, that Kuehn assumes a considerable amount of background knowledge, and that it might be preferable to start with a more elementary summary.

Sublimely boring
I expect from the biography of a philosopher or artist not only critical rigor but entertainment and anecdote. A good biography should read like a good history: the people, places, and events should be rendered in multiple dimensions. I also expect good self-assured writing that does more than simply present the "facts."

Kuehn's biography of Kant does almost none of these things. True, it's well-steeped in Kantian philosophy (though it's very careful and conservative in this sense), but it deeply disappoints in all other areas. If I wanted an explication of the Kantian system, I would not read a biography. I read a biography to learn how the man dressed, what kind of food he ate, his romantic passions, his anxieties, etc.. I expect the majority of a biography on Kant to be somewhat irrelevat to his philosophy. But we get none of these details with Kuehn. And even when we get something approximating them (like Kant's childhood) they're presented in the drollest most unbearably boring style.

I'm surprised that so many reviewers on this site like this book. Kant does seem to have a rather dry anglo-American analytic following, but I can't imagine any of them bothering to read the book in the first place. Pinkard's Hegel biography (in the same series) is what a fine biography should look like. I prefer the Kant I find there over Kuehn's. ... Read more

Book Description

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization.In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt.The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment.Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Sure, Jacques...sure
There are certain books that are cornerstones in your life. This is one of mine. A lot of the Romantic self-centerdness that marks my character can be traced directly back to this guy. But then again, whatever my expansive vision and love of variety and the vagaries of human nature can also be traced back to this cynical, but at the same time genial soul.

Rousseau, like Voltaire and Diderot, his contemporaries, could look upon his fellow man and himself with both a frown and a smile. He claims at the outset of the work that he is going to show you himself as he honestly is, warts and all. Don't believe him! But don't turn your back on him either, or dismiss him as a liar! You would be denying yourself the company of one of the most charming alluring reconteurs in all of literature, should you do so.

Monsieur Rousseau absolutely loves talking about himself. That sounds like a recipe for boredom, I know. But the trouble is, he's got such a fascinating subject. He knew everyone who was anyone in the 18th century. The women, in particular, were the actual movers and shakers of fin de siecle France. They were figures who presided over literary salons when there actually were literary salons. Madame de Stael is only one matron who looms large in the account. France was basically ruled by powerful and cunning women in that era. Rousseau was there, mentally recording every intimate bon mot and detail.

Then there is his infectious, expansive nature to win you over! Try as you might, self centered as the man is, you can't help liking the guy! He is the ultimate Romantic, in the best sense of the word. He believes in his soul that mankind is noble, that we were put here on earth to enact a divine plan for the benefit of all. That the French Revolution would show a different, Hobbesian side to his theory doesn't really diminish his optimistic, humanistic influence on the Romantic movement and ultimately 19th century literature, in general. He's one of those seminal figures without whom Goethe, the Romantic poets, Blake, Emerson, Whitman, etc. wouldn't have been possible.

This is a great book. Liar, hedger, whatever, you really will get to know this character in all his colors, subterfuges, moods, etc. Love him or hate him, you will have to admit that he's like no one you have ever met. Unfortunately.

BEK

Ummm...
"Rousseau is not one of the world's most famous political and social commentators..."

?!?!?!?!?!?

C'mon, New Jersey -- I think a bit more respect is due to the man who brought you the Social Contract...

Anyway, read this book.

Wonderful Story, Insightful Philosophy
Rarely have I read such a relevant and sophisticated thinking in a book centuries old. While Rousseau is not one of the world's most famous political and social commentators, his impact and the quality of writing should convince everyone to read his book. In Confessions, he gives a wonderful literary performance, running the gamut from humorous cultural commentator to serious political theorist. It is just a wonderful book to read.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in 18th century France, to a middle class family that was wealthy enough to give him a chance at schooling. Rousseau has an amazing ability to find sponsors to fund his education and continued way of life. The man is quite the rogue however, and he is constantly running from town to town, getting in some outlandish situations. The narrative includes plenty of social critiques, anything from the effect of religion on society to the class system. Through Rousseau's social life, you see deep into the world of Bourbon era France. A clever mind can pick up on satirical and damning indictments the young Rousseau makes on the existing system, as he becomes aware that rather drastic changes are needed. Of course, the story also takes us through Rousseau's sexual adventures, which make for fun reading alone.

With all the frivolity of the narrative, it is important to remind ourselves of the importance of this book. Rousseau and his philosophy, outlined in Confessions, was one of the driving forces behind the French revolution, especially among the Jacobins. It is said that Robespierre claimed his allegiance to Rousseau in the moments leading up to his execution. While one can doubt Robespierre's real allegiance to the true ideals of Rousseau, it does highlight the emphasis many French intellectuals put on Jean-Jaques. To the modern reader, the philosophy of Rousseau can teach us all a lot about government and the nature of its relationship with the people. A great book.

TIMELESS philosophy...
this is a classic tell-all, coming of age story in 1700's europe: rousseaus' mother dies at an early age, and through his imagination and melancholic pursuits, and once his father's hands-off approach ensues, he is left to seek beauty and justice elsewhere.

rich with detailed observations of life, people and his place in the world, it is a wonderful introduction to the man rousseau.

persecuted for later writings and publishment of his philosophy, i.e. the social contract, among others (and much like de sade and huxley} he still found a small niche of support in his time.

other related authors/books i would recommend: the first man, albert camus; aldous huxley; mario vargas llosa.

Average
I found this book to be Average. The writer is honest in his confessions I'll give him that, but I lost all interest in the reading after about 100 pages. Missing spirituality, not compelling. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Book Description

As a spiritual autobiography, Kierkegaard's The Point of View for My Work as an Author stands with such great works as Augustine's Confessions and Newman's Apologia pro vita sua--but with a difference. It is neither a confessional autobiography nor a defense. It is an author's story of a lifetime of writing, his understanding of the common aim and comprehensive coherence of the maze of his greatly varied pseudonymous and signed works.

In an earlier work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard acknowledged his authorship of the series of pseudonymous works that began with Either/Or. With the imminent publication of the second edition of Either/Or, the pseudonymous series would come full circle, and Kierkegaard again intended to cease writing. Now was the time for a direct "report to history" on the authorship as a whole. In addition to the resulting Point of View, which was published posthumously, the present volume also contains the companion pieces Armed Neutrality and On My Work as an Author, a contemporary substitute for the postponed Point of View.

Supplementary entries taken from Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers document the context and the development of the writings on the authorship as a whole. In addition, they disclose Kierkegaard's considerations as he wrestled with decisions about publishing the three works and other works that were the "fruit of the year 1848 ... the year of my richest productivity." ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Probably the place to start in reading Kierkegaard
The greatest challenge for any newcomer to Kierkegaard is finding the best place to gain an overview. In my opinion, this is the finest place to start. In the main work in this collection, THE POINT OF VIEW (the book also contains some smaller pieces on his Authorship), Kierkegaard sets out to explain his purposes and strategy in writing the books constituting what he calls his Authorship. Students of Kierkegaard generally refer to these books as his Pseudonymous Authorship, because in all of these he writes none of them under his own name, but employs a variety of fictionalized authors, who represent a particular point of view that is not that of Kierkegaard himself. The Pseudonymous works are contrasted with what has become to be known as Kierkegaard's Second Literature (a descriptions attributed to Kierkegaard scholar Robert L. Perkins), which comprises his edifying works and his later religious works, most of which were published under Kierkegaard's own name, though with a couple of his greatest later works published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.

Some of these works, such as EITHER/OR I, contain writings on a variety of aesthetic topics. Many of the books deal with either ethical or religious topics, though the latter never from within a religious perspective. Kierkegaard's main argument in the POINT OF VIEW is that from first to last he was, even when writing on aesthetic topics, a religious author. The Pseudonymous works all presuppose a theory of stages, which Kierkegaard describes as moving from the aesthetic to the ethical and into the religious (the precise prepositions, according to SK, being of the utmost importance).

It is not clear that Kierkegaard had a precise understanding of all this at the moment he was writing the first of his Pseudonymous works, but it is unquestionable that he moved to this point of view fairly early on. This little volume is, therefore, a wonderful introduction to Kierkegaard's most famous works, and remains one of the most fascinating reflections by a great writer on the nature of his own work ever written. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

clear and illuminating
Excellent discussion of Russell's philosophical logic.Discussion of epistemology is a bit less lucid. Highly recommend overall. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Coming to Understand Who We Really Are
I live in the Pacific Northwest. We are experiencing a rather intense conflict over whalehunting by the Makah Indian Nation. Many non-Indian (and some Native) environmentalists and animal lovers oppose the whalehunt, mainly on the grounds that it sets a poor precedent to restart it after a 70-year hiatus, and that it makes a mockery of attempts to preserve the natural environment. Some, in my opinion, have been particularly disrespectful of tribal elders and customs, publicly stating that the whaling traditions of the Makah are long since dead, and that since Indians now live in modern housing and hold down jobs like the rest of us, whaling is no longer relevant to the native culture.

The Makah insist that whalehunting is part of their treaty rights, and for others to pick and choose which rights they are allowed to exercise is similar to allowing another nation to decide which articles in the Bill of Rights Americans should be allowed to enjoy. They see whalehunting as an important part of their cultural heritage, which they are seeking to preserve. They, too, however, have spoken as if blind to the efforts of environmentalists over the past four decades to preserve and protect whales and their habitats so that whalehunting could even be a question.

Both groups share something in common: anger and grief. Environmentalists grieve for a time when whales freely roamed the seas, when Pacific Coast forests covered the landscape, when the Puget Sound region was not simply a slash of highways and cheaply built (but high-priced) housing developments, when cities and towns were not choked with garbage. Certainly, global warming and the pollution of the seas - neither of which can be attributed to the Makah - have accounted for more whale deaths than the Makah could ever accomplish. But still, for them, the hunted whale - the single whale that the Makah are likely to catch and kill each year using ancient technology - is a symbol of a world gone awry, of a vanished world (which may or may not have ever existed) in which humankind and the natural environment were locked in harmonious and continuing embrace. And while they are in grief, they haven't learned how to mourn.

The Makah are angry, too, though many are slow to display it to outsiders. They are angry about having their lives and culture wrenched away by invaders, but perhaps more so by the lure of modernity upon their young people. They seek to recapture a rich and ancient culture, rooted in the earth and sea and sky, but which most of them, like the environmentalists, have never really known. They grieve for a past which they know, deep down, they will never be able to fully recover, a world for which a single, lonely hunted whale has become a symbol.

Dealing with anger and with grief - for oneself and for the world - is the common thread that runs through Joanna Macy's compelling memoir Widening Circles. Having first met Joanna in 1977 at the protests against the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant (I make a cameo appearance in the book as the kazoo-playing pamphleteer and Sanskrit scholar), and later as her first publisher, I have watched with awe as Joanna has sought ways to transform our anger and grief into power, the personal power that gives our lives meaning even as we are stretched in our personal, political, and ultimately spiritual struggles.

Joanna's life spans five continents, and she is no stranger to grief and anger on any one of them. It has been an unusual life -- from New York French-speaking schoolgirl raised by an abusive father and long-suffering mother to CIA intelligence officer; from wife of a Peace Corps director in India and Africa to student of Buddhism and systems theory; from motorcycle-driving scholar of community development in Sri Lanka to futurist - Joanna has an uncanny ability to step back from the everyday fray of our frazzled lives and focus on who she - and we - really are, or can be.

Indeed, one of the things Widening Circles is really about is identity. Joanna's many travels, coupled with untrammeled curiosity about her world, has allowed her the luxury of finding identity, in the present moment as her Buddhist teachers would instruct her, but also in the lives of others, in the past and in the future, and well beyond the limits of her own skin.

And this is the gift Joanna has given us. Environmental problems are, at their core, human problems, questions of who we really are, and how we organize ourselves as a community and as a society, and ultimately how we see ourselves. When our grief and anger control us, we become prisoners of our little selves, and despair, when unexpressed, constrains us to a narrow focus upon the immediate, the here and now. Joanna's life work is truly an invitation to all of us to widen our circle, or in the words of William Blake, "To see the world in a grain of sand/And heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour."

Whales, too. Read the book.

(Published in EarthSpirit Magazine)

A life worth living
I read this book because I had already found 'World as Lover, World as Self' to be inspiring. Joanna Macy's combination of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology seems to 'fit' for me, but here it is her sheer humanity that impresses most. In this memoir she is not afraid to lay open her weaknesses as well as her strenghths, her questions as well as her answers. While her story ends in Bodh Gaya, the Indian site of the Buddha's awakening, what struck me most was the distance Macy had travelled to get there - a whole lifetime of journeying, and seventy years of a dramatically changing world to negotiate. A common thread through many of these years is Macy's opposition to the nuclear military/industrial complex, from her two years employment with the CIA and its culture of 'tough-mindedness' (p.65), to her visit to the people of Novozybkov, poisoned by Chernobyl, her insistence on the need to recognise, express and work through grief is constant. Her ability to guide people through despair to empowerment is a highly significant contribution to the world. To read the story of her life is to see how it can be possible to live without cynicism and with hope intact in the nuclear age. Since I had not read 'Coming Back to Life', Macy's nuclear guardianship project was new to me, and I found it extremely brave and moving. Another thread that runs through Macy's life story is the development of an authentic spirituality. Macy says 'the widening circles of my life have not had as their center the Big Papa God of my preacher forebears. I walked out on that belief when I was twenty'. (p. 277) Despite leaving formal Christianity, she tells of how she 'failed as an atheist' and of her many adventures with Buddhism. These range from the intellectual adventure of studying 'dependent co-arising' to the practical adventures of being thrown out of Sri Lanka and, later, trying to smuggle herself into Tibet illegally. Macy seems too much of a free spirit to sign on the dotted line of any religion, and she is able here to critique as well as praise aspects of Buddhism as she has encountered it. A quote on the back cover of the book is worth repeating: 'A gem for all young people seeking to create a life of meaning, passion and purpose'. I would endorse this, and widen it to include the not-so-young. Its interesting that much of what Macy is known for today was achieved only after her fortieth birthday...

Engaging journey.
Joanna Macy is an activist, a Buddhist scholar, and the author of many worthwhile books, including one of my favorites, WORLD AS LOVER, WORLD AS SELF (1991). Her inspiring memoir shows that a life of engaged spirituality is not only possible, but an adventure.

The title of Macy's autobiography is taken from a Rilke poem: "I have lived my life in widening circles/ that reach out across the world." Joanna was born into a Protestant family on May 2, 1929. Her abusive father was "controlling" (p. 24) and "reclusive" (p. 25). Her mother was oppressed. Joanna's childhood was "lonely" (p. 16). She enjoyed Presbyterian "Quiet Time" (pp. 36-37). After attending a foreign language school, Lycee Francais de New York, she enrolled in Wellesly, and majored in Biblical History (p. 46), before "walking out." Then, at 21, Joanna received a Fulbright scholarship that allowed her to study in France, where she read French existentialists Camus and Sartre. It was on a half-price student trip to Marrakech, however, that Joanna's life took a turn: "I had walked New York and Paris in search of myself," she writes, "but here in Marrakech I was walking inside my own body" (p. 61).

Upon returning to the U.S., Joanna then worked for the CIA for two and a half years (p. 65) prior to marrying her husband, Fran, in 1953. They had three children, Chris, Jack, and Peggy, before travelling to India in 1964, Tibet in 1965, and Africa in 1966 with the newly-created Peace Corps. At 36, after driving to Dharamsala to meet the Dalai Lama (singing "Hello Dalai" along the way), Macy experienced Buddhism: "I had turned inside out," she recalls, "like a kernel of popcorn over the fire. My interior was now on the outside, inextricably mixed with the rest of the world, and what I had tried to exclude was now at its core" (p. 122). Macy realized then that she was only present about 5 percent of the time, living her life "in absentia" (p. 105). "For this wasting of my life I had only myself to blame" (p. 115).

"At forty," Macy writes, "my mind was an eager horse" (p. 128), and she enrolled in the graduate religous studies program at Syracuse University, where she studied Buddhism and general systems theory. In her fifties, Macy participated in liberation Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and the entered Tibet illegally at age 58. In more recent years, she has become well known for her anti-nuke activism, and for leading workshops on despair and empowerment, deep ecology, and nuclear guardianship practices.

Macy's fascinating memoir offers inspiration to anyone, regardless of age, interested in travelling a more meaningful path, or widening the circles of their own life.

G. Merritt ... Read more

Book Description

Henry David Thoreau is generally remembered as the author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience," a recluse of the woods and a political protester who once went to jail. To his contemporaries he was a minor disciple of Emerson; he has since joined the ranks of America's most respected and beloved writers. Few, however, really know the complexity of the man they revere--wanderer and scholar, naturalist and humorist, teacher and surveyor, abolitionist and poet, Transcendentalist and anthropologist, inventor and social critic, and, above all, individualist.

In this widely acclaimed biography, the eminent Thoreau scholar Walter Harding presents all of these Thoreaus. Scholars will find here the culmination of a lifetime of research and study, meticulously documented, while general readers will find an absorbing story of a remarkable man. Writing with supreme lucidity, Harding has marshaled all the facts so as best to "let them speak for themselves." Thoreau's thoughtfulness and stubbornness, his more than ordinarily human amalgam of the earthy and sublime, his unquenchable vitality emerge to the reader as they did to his own family, friends, and critics. The new afterword evaluates new scholarship about Thoreau. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Probably the finest biography of Thoreau
This is probably the best biography of Henry David Thoreau, the most individual of American essayists. Walter Harding is one of those academics who not only knows his subject backwards and forward, but treats him with reverence. Yet this is not a mere hagiography. Thoreau's life is put into the context of the mid-18th century, and the reader develops a much greater understanding of why Thoreau wrote what he did, who he was, and why he became such an important American voice.

A Wonderful Life
If you like the writings of Thoreau, you will love this biography. Thoreau really comes to life and Walter Harding does a great job at aquainting us with Thoreau as if he were our neighbor or close friend. You will love all the stories of his childhood, his many excursions and his never ending desire for knowledge of nature. Also, at the end Harding dicusses Thoreaus's sexuality, which for me was a burning question throughout the book. There is no better biography out there written on Thoreau.

Good book on a brilliant man
This book looks at Thoreau's life in depth. The first few chapters try to show how Thoreaus young life shaped his older years. Always complicated both in his young and old years. This book also gives great details of Thoreaus many excursions, and the many people with whom he graced with his presence. If you in interested in Thoreau, it would be in your best interest to buy this book, it's the link between his life and his work.

An ecclectic repose of a great man.
I've alway's been in the habit of reading about the life of an author before acually reading his works and this book has covered all the bases of an incredibly intelligent man. His prose of description was in depth, and at the same time it showed views of alot of his friends in a town full of intellects. It makes you feel like you were there living Concord enjoying the scenes on Walden with thoughts from a perspective that the average person would not usually pull from any kind of methodical observation.

I would read this book again and again for a distinctive and magnanimous outlook from one the most notable Thoreau scholars. ... Read more

Book Description

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest philosophers of our time. In addition, he engaged in a lifelong battle with the forces of injustice -- emphasizing the importance of practice as well as theory. His most effective weapon in this struggle was letters to newspapers and magazines, most of which are collected in this volume. Russell exposes the irrationality of leaders and defends the public against the evils of the time, from British conscription in World War I and fascism in the 1930s to McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. These 400 witty, acerbic letters show him brilliantly sparring with both ordinary citizens and the most powerful leaders of the day, touching on everything from war and peace to sexual ethics and religion. ... Read more

Book Description

Drag queen, junkie, alcoholic, commune leader-and, finally, Buddhist teacher: these words describe the unlikely persona of Issan Dorsey, whose story dramatically illustrates William Blake's essential insight, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." From his days as a gorgeous female impersonator in San Francisco in the 1950s, through the LSD experiences that set him on the Zen path for the next two decades, Issan Dorsey's life was never conventional. In 1989, after twenty years of Zen practice, he became Abbot of San Francisco's Hartford Street Zen Center, where he founded the Maitri Hospice for AIDS patients. Street Zen draws on a dozen interviews David Schneider conducted with Dorsey before his death in 1990, and the nearly 20-year friendship between them. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Great book!
I found this book extremely inspiring. The life of Issan Dorsey is a must read for anyone who has ever felt dragged down, left out, and mentally or physically ill. That should include everyone!

Inspired
I didn't know Issan Dorsey, but reading this book made me wish I did if only because he seemed a terribly interesting person and the course of his life is...well...amazing. I highly recommend it. As a gay man with an interest in Buddhism, this book was like a door opening.

Disappointing!
Badly written and superficial. A bad specimen of Buddhist or gay literature.

Brilliant
This work is so important to both the Buddhist community and anyone who has any inkling of how to create community. Isaan Dorsey was an example of the best teachings of Jesus and the best promises of Buddha. Kudos to David Schneider, et. al, for their exhaustive work and beautful tapestry. -TJ, Santa Fe, NM, USA

A wonderful read.
I agree to some extent with some of the earlier reviews, I felt the author wrongly at times treated Issan Dorsey's homosexuality as somewhat of an exotic freakshow. But over all the author did a wonderful job of portraying the heart and nature of Issan. My only criticism would be sensationalizing Issan's sexuality. The earlier criticism one reviewer made that the book was flawed because a heterosexual was writing about a homosexual is extremely simplistic. ... Read more

Book Description

When Bertrand Russell discovered an unresolvable contradiction in Gottlob Frege’s (1848-1925) logical system, the effect was calamitous, embittering Frege and overshadowing his important work in analytical philosophy. Frege’s student, Rudolf Carnap, took detailed notes of his lectures that show how Frege tried to address the contradiction and how he integrated his later doctrine of sense and reference into his exposition of logic. Reproduced in the original German with facing translations, these rare documents are published here for the first time. ... Read more

Book Description

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of the most famous and important philosophers of the twentieth century.In this account of his life and work A. C. Grayling introduces both his technical contributions to logic and philosophy, and his wide-ranging views on education, politics, war, and sexual morality.Russell is credited with being one of the prime movers of Analytic Philosophy, and with having played a part in the revolution in social attitudes witnessed throughout the twentieth-century world.This introduction gives a clear survey of Russell's achievements across their whole range. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Good survey of Russel's Work
Grayling has achieved a good survey of Russel's Work in the realm of logic and philosophy as well as his contributions to social, moral, political and educational debates. The selling point for me is the fact that he does it with so much brevity and crispness. Without going into the gory details of his philosophical and logical ideas, Grayling still strikes a good balance and makes for some intersting reading.

Highly recommended for people who'd like a quick introduction to Russel.

An elegant and marvellously readable account
Bertrand Russell thought and wrote about many things from highly technical logic to popular questions of politics and education. In the lucid, elegant and beautifully accurate prose for which he is well known (see his other books and his writings for the Financial Times Book Review, Prospect magazine, and elsewhere), the British philosopher A. C. Grayling gives a concise survey of Russell's entire range of thought. In the biographical first chapter Russell's life and works are summarised; in the next two chapters his achievements in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and general philosophy are described with succinctness and clarity; and in the final chapters his popular and political thought is explained, ending with an assessment of his achievement as one of the century's greatest thinkers. Because Russell is a founding figure in analytic philosophy, an understanding of his work provides an introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy also, so this little book is not only a highly pleasurable "good read", but an education in the basics of philosophy. ... Read more

Book Description

From his unique vantage point as a senior journalist with TIME magazine, David Aikman witnessed some of the most important world events and interviewed many of the prominent global power figures of his time. Aikman profiles six of these figures who embody specific virtues sorley needed today:Billy Graham (salvation),Nelson Mandela (forgiveness) ,Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (truth), Mother Treasa (compassion), Pope John Paul ll (human dignity), and Elie Wiesel (remembrance). ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A Life of Pure Engagement
David Macey's "The Lives of Michel Foucault" - 1993 is by far the best of the three significant biographies that have thus far appeared (there is James Miller's "The Passion of Michel Foucault" - 1993 and Betsy Wing's translation of Didier Eribon's "Michel Foucault" - 1991 all available on Amazon.com). For Macey, the "silence" of Foucault is something to be taken seriously, not as theoretically authorized avoidance of truth telling, but rather as the bewilderment of a man; a real man situated in his time and place, caught between different roles and self-conceptions. Macey tells Foucault's story clearly and without fanfare. What is truly scholarly helpful in Macey's telling is a rigorous archive of how Foucault, this most tenacious detractor of institutional power, was ironically the beneficiary of the French intellectual establishment, and how this retiring scholar proved remarkably proficient at seizing political moments for stepping up onto the public stage. Macey's intensive research and detailed textual elucidation provides the type of documentary support that is often lacking in James Miller's "passionate" book. Macey's book, is conversely, is a cautious account of Foucault's doings, written with expertise of a careful study and a sharp spirit of defensiveness, as might be expected from a biography that has been duly "authorized" by Foucault's surviving companion Daniel Defert. As opposed to Miller's very good biography that offered a portrait of Foucault the man and thinker - Macey's rendition pays attention to the day-to-day goings on offers the reader a more vivid picture of Foucault as a political activist. Macey painstakingly explores the early 1970s - when Foucault plunged into a life of sustained political involvement. I am grateful to all three biographers for making Foucault come alive as a person and more understandable as a scholar. Macey though, is really good at taking Foucault's anti-humanist perspective and developing it, not as a theme or explanation of Foucault's life but rather as a topic of study. According to Macey, no French theoretician has had a more recondite or permanent influence on American thinking then Michel Foucault. Foucault, who been dead for more than a decade now may no longer be the first name to be dropped at academic circles and seminars, but the terms he made famous, terms like 'discourse' and 'networks of power' - often misappropriated and dropped at a moments notice get a very good treatment in this book. Macey is really helpful in taking the often cryptic writing of Foucault and makes it accessible to the unfamiliar - and at times even familiar - Foucault scholar. According to Macey, the cult of Foucault, matured in its impact because Foucault and his cohort had intellectual claims beyond the reading of "texts." Going beyond the often dead ended practice of "deconstruction" practiced by such luminaries as Lacan, Derrida and Levi-Strauss.

Foucault was shaping an enterprise in anti-humanist, anti-essentialist "discourse." In sync with many other strains in the thought of his continental contemporaries - with Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger were acknowledged as his primary influences while Althusser, Canguilhem and Barthes were included in the mix - Foucault's ideas about the essential constitution of civil society drew on a ardently anti-liberal attack on the Enlightenment. Far from being the light of reason to shed light and resolve problems surrounding the human condition, the Enlightenment according to Foucault replaced the ancien regime model of social marginalization and class demarcations with a better mousetrap of domination, which was simply a modernized technology of social control. It would no longer be possible to look to the obvious figures of sovereignty and privilege - embodied in king and counts - for the telling signs of "power." Power was beginning to make its way into the ordinary institutions of social life. The reigning king of the humanist project was still Sartre, who became the locus of Foucault's efforts. Sartre, according to Foucault stood for a tired philosophy of "Marxist humanism." Sartre did not see, in Foucault's view that humanism was inevitably the soiled result of the new technology of domination that sprang up with the Enlightenment. Sartre, according to Foucault, was the poster boy of the Enlightenment. Macey spells out how according to Foucault, Humanism was just the happy facade put on the medical and scientific lessening of the human being into an itemized, categorized and catalogued object of a detached "gaze" - recognition of this phenomenon according to Foucault should put to rest any ebullience for the communitarian didactic discourse of the Sartrean "politics of commitment." More openly then does Miller (or Eribon for that matter), Macey recognizes Foucault's ongoing struggle against Sartre's "gaze," against any other interpretative or evaluative power. What was really happening, Foucault posits was the construction of a "networks" of power - though one was not supposed to ask "'whose' power?" Power, this new social fixation with discipline and surveillance, became its own rationale according to Foucault. As I mentioned above, power was not to be found in leaders or social organizations or parties or in any given social structure, but was rather a kind of "discourse, " a set of terms or symbolic representations that connect, in an abstract way, the given instances of discipline and surveillance at work in social life. For Foucault, to fight a diffuse "power" was to be able to pick any point of attack in any institutional setting and do the work of social revolution. Foucault is not keen to lay out a recipe for such transgression but his strength is in critique. Macey's strength is making this often baroque author accessible - the Macey that I appreciate.

Miguel Llora

The best currently available biography of Foucault
david macey's biography of michel foucault is both the best researched and the most carefully analysed account of foucault's life currently available. While it lacks both the interpretative drive behind james miller's "the passion of michel foucault" (who reads foucault as a nietzscheian), and the treatment of friendships and specific themes throughout foucault's life given in "michel foucault et ses contemporains" (didier eribon's second work on foucault), macey is incredibly erudite, very well-balanced and a solid reader of foucault. macey recounts many more details of mf's life than any other account, and doesn't take foucault's self-reflective moments for granted as correct interpretations of his past actions and thought (Foucault gave tons of interviews, where he tended to reflect on his past works from his present perspective - so he could say that he had always been working on power etc, when this argument could undermine tensions and different trends in his work). he gives a solid, if long account of foucault's intellectual development, manages to place him in as much of a context as the biographical genre permits and, within this context, is mildly critical of his subject. macey is also a fun read. perhaps not as much as miller, but he certainly provides better balanced -and more interesting to read- accounts (than both miller and eribon) of foucault's works as well as of his life and homosexuality

nonetheless, there are important criticisms to be made. there's a certain elegiac tone throughout much of the book which is not totally appropriate to foucault's thought and perhaps even to foucault himself. this tone complicates the problem of writing a biography of a thinker without treating him through his own lens of comprehending "the subject," "the author," "the self" etc. in other words, the account is stylistically rather conservative, something that might lead readers to doubt the level of depth at which foucault is approached. and indeed, though the depth is considerable, the approach is too conservative to catch some of the more radical tones in foucault especially as regards his "post-modern" tendencies (foucault was suspicious of that term).

still, this is a very good biography and a good reading of MF, that mixes well his life and his thought. worth reading, even (especially) if you've read other accounts. it complements them well and improves on them considerably.

The mandarin philisopher ...
Eloqently and aesthetically written for writers, this is the book for those who delight in literature. The book transubstantiate the reader:Macey establishes a post-humous dialogue in which the reader uncovers the archeoalogy of Foucault, his experiences as a writer, politician and philosopher. The author takes the reader through the labyrinth at the centre of which Foucault lurks as a minotaur. It uncoils the myth of literature's wordily genesis in which writing is discussed extensively and given the authority of infinity, as an original force that was there from the beginning before things unfolded into the natural world of things. Foucault died from intellectual gibbosity-"inflammation of the cerebrum".

Trueman Myaka Tel:0927 31 303 6466 Fax: 0927 31 303 4493 ... Read more

Amazon.com

Giordano Bruno, the subject of Michael White's The Pope and the Heretic, was a thoroughly modern intellect whose fate was to have lived during the late 16th century, a period characterized in large part by the Inquisition, the Church's monomaniacal suppression of what it deemed heretical thought. A "cerebral maverick," Bruno believed in and wrote about an infinite universe--something beyond Copernicus's heliocentric system, the human origins of the concept of the Trinity, and a possible amalgamation of Roman Catholic doctrine with those of ancient religions. His real crime, at least in Rome's eyes, was his belief in "free inquiry." White's biography is exemplary, in no small part because of his concise, crystal-clear discussions of the period's intellectual beliefs, the delicately tempestuous battle between papal and civil authorities, and his detailed, illuminating look at Bruno's trial and subsequent burning at the stake. The Pope and the Heretic is a trustworthy and enlightening entrance into the dizzyingly complex age of the Renaissance.--H. O'Billovich ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Unfocused and Unduly Light
I have a bad record of choosing books from the Airport Bookstores. I have made some really attrocious choices. This one is not that bad, but I could not recommend it to anyone. If I would have read the inside flap I would have realised that Michael White was the "Science Editor of British GQ Magazine" --- I did not know that anyone who read GQ would be even interested in Science, but if they are, there taste would be light to the point of idiocy, like this book.

The title is inane enough. It lured me in like a sucker... I was interested in reading the counterpoint of what would be two personalities --- the Pope and Bruno. But the Pope does not even really appear in the book.

The main problem is twofold:

1) Lack of any discernable organisation. The book is a mess. It is hard to put together any discernable record of the like of Bruno after I read this --- was he in Frankfurt first and then Paris? Maybe it was the other way around?

This means that White mixes everything up, chronology, main themes and the roles of people in the book. Ideas are not at all well developed. There is a sometimes peurile feeling about his writing style: when an idea is developed a little he switches to other things --- one feels that he is writing at times for the attention span of a 12- yr-old reader.

2) Weak development of themes inside the book. Scholastic ossification of the ideas of the Catholic Church is a great topic, but White's starts with a description of how Aristotle was always wrong on everything... and vaguely brushes him off as an almost personal hindrance to development of ideas. Such comic-book interpretations really show a lack of mastery of his subject.

White intimates a tremendous importance for the hermetic tradition, although he keeps this significantly nebulous (something that a reader of GQ or Omni might be interested in). As usual his work verges towards veneration for mysticism.

At the end of the day he should have marshalled his forces with more discipline and spent the time on making this into a serious work that it should be, and as Bruno deserves. It appears that he merely cranked this one out. He will pay for this as readers such as I will never buy another of his books.

Back to the Thompson Twins Mr. White!

About the man and his suffering, not his ideas
Michael White succeeds in personalizing the heretic monk Giordano Bruno, giving us a more complete picture of the man than we find in other sources.His book educates us about the social, political, and religious environment in which Bruno lectured and wrote.We also feel his suffering at the hands of the Inquisition.Unfortunately, we learn less about Bruno's ideas, which covered a remarkably wide range of speculations.We are given only shorthand versions.

White's writing is very readable, but one sometimes wonders if all of it is based on documented fact.For example, he writes that "A sudden hush fell over the room; the judges sat motionless.Bruno, his confidence clearly ebbing away, his energy almost drained, looked around the room once more, seeing the still faces, the eyes of witnesses quickly averted."How does White know all these details?Passages like this read as if the author were using literary invention to make the dry records of the Inquisition more interesting.

Avoid this fetid rehash.
This is a horrible book. I checked it out from my local library because I didn't have much faith in it, and I was sorry I even wasted my time reading it.

Who does this book serve? For those who know anything about Giordano Bruno, it is a waste of time. And those who don't know anything about him might be discouraged by how poorly-written this book is, and thus decide not to look further into Giordano Bruno or his philosophy.

Only the most titilating aspects of Bruno's execution at the stake are really described with any detail in this book. Michael White doesn't really explain anything about Bruno's complex philosophical system, based upon the Art of Memory and founded through the Renaissance perspective that ancient wisdom had more to offer than the modern knowledge of the time. Bruno intuited that the sun was the center of our solar system and that the earth was only one of an infinite number of planets, not through data compiled by looking through a telescope, but by reading ancient texts -- from Plotinus to Nicholas of Cusa and others -- and picked out the parts that made sense to him. He then syntesized these ideas into a coherent worldview that reflected his perception of the world around him. In the work On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, Bruno's discussion about images and ideas the humans construct in their minds and how they relate to the actual objects themselves can be seen as a precursor to semiotics.

If you are looking for a biography of Bruno in English, then read Giordano Bruno: His Life And Thought by Dorothea Waley Singer. It is out of print, but might be out there still on the internet. The writing is clear, it avoids sensationalistic descriptions of bloodshed (unlike Michael White), and has amore firm understanding of Bruno's philosophy.

If you are looking for inspired attempts to place Bruno's philosophical system within the context of other streams of thought in Renaissance Europe, then look into Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and/or The Art of Memory, both of which are by Frances Yates.

The main drawback with these books by Yates is that she thinks of everything as "Hermetic." Their are Cabalistic influences in Bruno's thought, and Yates doesn't always bring that out in her analyses. But there are other books available that follow up on the good scholarship in Yates, and question her bold enthusiasms when they overstep the evidence. Such works are Eros and Magic in the Renaissance by Ioan Couliano, the book by Hilary Gatti -- which analyzes how he operated as a scientist and not just a philosopher, and Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass by Nuccio Ordine -- which tries to place his theory of the path to wisdom through ignorance in a well-established tradition.

If you want to read Bruno's work itself, there are many of his works available in English, including the Rabelaisian and bawdy play, The Candlebearer, published by Dovehouse Editions in Canada, as well as his more philosophically mature dialogues, The Ash Wednesday Supper, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, and The Cabala of Pegasus.

In short, anyone expressing even the slightest interest in any aspect of Giordano Bruno should look elsewhere, and avoid this book by Michael White.

You'll Get More from an Encyclopedia
Take one of the most fascinating topics in Renaissance history and give it to the most inexperienced History Channel screenwriter -- you know: the ones who don't have too much to say, and consequently repeat every thin fact endlessly -- and you have this book. After having read it, I know no more than if I had read the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Giordano Bruno. I was not only uninformed but bored as well. The only reason I finished the book at all is that I couldn't believe that the author went so far with so little data.

Firstly, I would like to know more about Giordano Bruno's contribution to Renaissance thought. Although some Italian sources were referenced in the notes and bibliography, I am not convinced that White actually tackled them himself. Secondly, I would not have minded some more apropos quotes from Bruno himself -- even if it meant padding the book a bit -- anything but the endless repetition of a few basic biographical facts.

It