What have you read lately?

[apl68]

France, Fin de Siecle, by Eugen Weber.  A vivid, impressionistic survey of life and attitudes in French society around about the last decades of the nineteenth century.  Weber's Peasants Into Frenchmen, which stands out in memory from my huge masses of grad school reading, told the story of how French peasants, trapped in medieval-level deprivation and brutishness until well into the 1800s, were eventually freed to live and act more like human beings by the blessings of industrialization.  France, Fin de Siecle broadens the scope to the whole of French society.  Again, most people in France are portrayed as living as little better than animals until they could benefit from things like mass literacy, consumer culture, leisure time, and leisure travel.

Weber seems to have intended for his studies to serve in part as correctives to a view of the industrial revolution that emphasizes the era's excesses and abuses.  He emphasizes just how hard life was for most people before industrialization.  Once industrial society got past the "dark satanic mills" phase, industrialization unquestionably benefited almost everybody.  Today, now that we're all too well aware of the catastrophic effects of industrialization upon our planet's environment, there's a tendency to wish that the whole thing had never happened.  It's still useful to have this corrective--to be reminded that all of us today are products of industrial society who wouldn't honestly want to live in a world where industrialization was not.

That said, Weber belongs to a school of historians that has seriously over-corrected in presenting such a dire view of pre-industrial society.  Ordinary people in largely pre-literate societies usually showed up in the documentary record only when they were in trouble with the law or experiencing some kind of disaster.  This can create a skewed idea of what their lives were like.  It's not unlike the way people whose only knowledge of other communities or regions or segments of society comes from news reports can get the idea that nothing good ever happens there.  I've said in the past that I appreciate studies of early ways of life that take a more humane and balanced view.  For France in the period under study, I have yet to find such a study.  The closest I've found is Pierre-Jakez Helias' memoir of rural Breton society, The Horse of Pride, but that was from a couple of decades later.

Weber writes impressive social history.  It's just good to bear in mind that he probably still misses a lot.

[hmaria1609]

Seeing A Perilous Perspective by Anna Lee Huber
New and #10 in the "Lady Darby Mystery" series

[apl68]

Otherlands:  A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.  Now here's an ambitious book!  Each chapter tries to provide a vivid snapshot of what life and the environment were like at some point during one of Earth's past geologic periods and epochs--Pleistocene, Pliocene, Cretaceous, Permian, etc.  There are descriptions of what the geography and weather of the time were like, what the plant and animal life were like, how these are related to today's life forms, etc.  Writing it involved producing a fantastic synthesis of knowledge from many different disciplines and specialties.  You have to admire a mind that can do that.

We obviously know a lot more about these past periods of geologic history than we did when I first started to become aware of them as a kid.  Of course most kids love dinosaurs, but there was soooo much more than dinosaurs in the past.  Fans of dinosaurs and other fossil creatures forget that each of our favorite extinct species were merely parts of whole bygone ecosystems.  Halliday tries to correct this by giving a fuller picture of each of these periods.  It's informative.  And also pretty mind-boggling.  Still more mind-boggling is the realization that we still as yet have surely found only a few examples of the countless life forms that have lived on Earth over the years. 

Reading detailed natural history, of either present or distant past, always reminds me that there is so much more to God's creation than we can ever wrap our little minds around.  Finishing Halliday's book last night reminded me of God's question in Job 38:4:  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?  Tell me if you understand!  Who fixed its measurements, or stretched out a measuring line across it?  Where were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone?"

We have a lot more fossils to study than ever before, and we can extrapolate an extraordinary amount of plausible (though continually revised and reconsidered) detail from them.  Yet still, how much do we really know?  Not much compared to the original Architect of the whole thing.

[mamselle]

Psalm 139, also.

M.

[ergative]

Otherlands:  A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.  Now here's an ambitious book!  Each chapter tries to provide a vivid snapshot of what life and the environment were like at some point during one of Earth's past geologic periods and epochs--Pleistocene, Pliocene, Cretaceous, Permian, etc.  There are descriptions of what the geography and weather of the time were like, what the plant and animal life were like, how these are related to today's life forms, etc.  Writing it involved producing a fantastic synthesis of knowledge from many different disciplines and specialties.  You have to admire a mind that can do that.

Does this book include pictures? Artists' renditions of what's being described? In other words, will I miss much if I get it on kindle?

We obviously know a lot more about these past periods of geologic history than we did when I first started to become aware of them as a kid.  Of course most kids love dinosaurs, but there was soooo much more than dinosaurs in the past.  Fans of dinosaurs and other fossil creatures forget that each of our favorite extinct species were merely parts of whole bygone ecosystems.  Halliday tries to correct this by giving a fuller picture of each of these periods.  It's informative.  And also pretty mind-boggling.  Still more mind-boggling is the realization that we still as yet have surely found only a few examples of the countless life forms that have lived on Earth over the years. 

I was very struck by this when I was in Moscow some years ago for a research trip and I spent a free day at the museum of paleontology. It's a superb museum, and what struck me the most was the number of exhibits that were not at all dinosaurs, but instead enormous crocodile things, or other massive prehistoric creatures that were utterly unfamiliar to me. I had done my time with dinosaurs when I was little, but I'd never realized how much else there was until I went to this museum.

[FishProf]

It's a superb museum, and what struck me the most was the number of exhibits that were not at all dinosaurs, but instead enormous crocodile things, or other massive prehistoric creatures that were utterly unfamiliar to me. I had done my time with dinosaurs when I was little, but I'd never realized how much else there was until I went to this museum.

In my Dinosaurs class, this is a recurring topic, and I have a lecture specifically on "That was NOT a Dinosaur".

[ergative]

It's a superb museum, and what struck me the most was the number of exhibits that were not at all dinosaurs, but instead enormous crocodile things, or other massive prehistoric creatures that were utterly unfamiliar to me. I had done my time with dinosaurs when I was little, but I'd never realized how much else there was until I went to this museum.

In my Dinosaurs class, this is a recurring topic, and I have a lecture specifically on "That was NOT a Dinosaur".

I feel like there should be a class called 'Not Dinosaurs, But Equally Awesome'.

[apl68]

Otherlands:  A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.  Now here's an ambitious book!  Each chapter tries to provide a vivid snapshot of what life and the environment were like at some point during one of Earth's past geologic periods and epochs--Pleistocene, Pliocene, Cretaceous, Permian, etc.  There are descriptions of what the geography and weather of the time were like, what the plant and animal life were like, how these are related to today's life forms, etc.  Writing it involved producing a fantastic synthesis of knowledge from many different disciplines and specialties.  You have to admire a mind that can do that.

Does this book include pictures? Artists' renditions of what's being described? In other words, will I miss much if I get it on kindle?

Each chapter has a map of what Earth's land masses looked like during that period, and a black-and-white illustration of one of the life forms being described.  There's some weird, wild stuff pictured there.  I couldn't help being curious about a lot of the other things it described as well, but it's not really meant to be an illustrated guide.

[apl68]

It's a superb museum, and what struck me the most was the number of exhibits that were not at all dinosaurs, but instead enormous crocodile things, or other massive prehistoric creatures that were utterly unfamiliar to me. I had done my time with dinosaurs when I was little, but I'd never realized how much else there was until I went to this museum.

In my Dinosaurs class, this is a recurring topic, and I have a lecture specifically on "That was NOT a Dinosaur".

I feel like there should be a class called 'Not Dinosaurs, But Equally Awesome'.

I've always been kind of partial to the mammoths and mastodons and other creatures that lived not so many thousands of years ago.  Ross D.E. MacPhee's End of the Megafauna:  The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals is a great illustrated guide to these animals.  Great renderings of predators, proboscids, glyptodonts, and lots more.  It was in that book that I learned about a fossil turtle that is officially known as a "Ninja Turtle." 

[Harlow2]

This is one of my favorite threads.  I hope to at least dip into a couple of the readings discussed here this summer.

[apl68]

The House of Mitford, by Jonathan and Catherine Guinness.  When I was a kid I stumbled across a paperback copy of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death.  Although I don't recall being especially interested in either death or funerals, I found myself drawn in by this wittily-written account of a funeral industry much in need of reform.  Some years later, I learned that this Jessica Mitford was only one member of a British family noted for its colorful, articulate, and opinionated members.

Guinness and Guinness turn in an impressively detailed and researched account of the family--not only the famous sisters, but their forebears and others as well.  They strive hard to be fair-minded toward everybody.  Given that so many of the family's members became either Nazi sympathizers or Stalinist apologists, I think they're probably fairer toward their subjects than they really deserve.  In the case of some of the Nazi sympathizers, the work's restraint may perhaps serve as a bit of a corrective on some people who have been mythologized and sensationalized into something more wicked and significant than they really were (Leftists with a history of fellow-traveling have long tended to get off much lighter for their own embarrassing flirtations with evil regimes).  Only days ago I noticed a review on a new book that appears to have some pretty sensational-sounding claims about how half of Britain's upper-crust supposedly secretly wanted Hitler to win. 

Anyway, even with all the efforts at being fair and sympathetic, one comes away with the sense that many members of the family, of all political persuasions, could be real pieces of work at times.  The authors of The Mitfords say that the family's members tended to have a "Pelagian" outlook, meaning that they really didn't have much of a sense of sin.  Sounds about right, on the evidence provided.

Incidentally, the first few chapters are on the famous Mitford Sisters' grandfather, Algernon Bertram Mitford.  In some ways he's the most interesting of the bunch.  He was quite the diplomat and traveler, and became one of the first notable European observers of Japan after it re-opened itself to the outside world.  His Tales of Old Japan is still a leading source on Japanese society as it was before the radical changes brought about by the new openness.

[Larimar]

I recently finished A Heart Lost in Wonder by Catharine Randall, a brand new, shorter than I expected, biography of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, of whom I am a huge fan. This bio concentrates on Hopkins' progression of thought and the emotional and spiritual struggles he had with issues of theology, natural beauty, and art. I've read several other bios, so I knew that before Hopkins took his vows as a Jesuit, he took a trip to Switzerland with a friend, while he still could, because Switzerland had banned Jesuits. What this book got across that others didn't (at least to me) was how profound this trip, during which he did a lot of wilderness hiking and sketching, was for him; it pretty much planted the seeds of his concepts of inscape and instress, and contributed to inspiring some of his famous early nature poems. The book also claims that Hopkins at the very end of his life broke through the deep depression he experienced in Ireland, a claim which I had not seen before. I hope that the author is right about that.

Larimar

[Hegemony]

The House of Mitford, by Jonathan and Catherine Guinness.  ... Some years later, I learned that this Jessica Mitford was only one member of a British family noted for its colorful, articulate, and opinionated members.

You might be interested in the recent British TV show "The Pursuit of Love," adapted from the Mitford roman à clef by Nancy Mitford. Andrew Scott is a special treat in it, though the whole thing gives a very good idea of the Mitford idiosyncaisies. Available on Amazon in the U.S.

For a while I lived in a house that had formerly been occupied by the Mitfords. The local stories were something. There was still some Hitler memorabilia left over from Unity Mitford's fascination with Hitler.

[paultuttle]

Gone-Away Lake, by Elizabeth Enright. And its sequel, Return to Gone-Away.

It almost makes me want to live in upstate New York! (Under a huge plexiglass bubble to protect myself and my loved ones from the lake-effect snow, of course.)

[apl68]

Gone-Away Lake, by Elizabeth Enright. And its sequel, Return to Gone-Away.

It almost makes me want to live in upstate New York! (Under a huge plexiglass bubble to protect myself and my loved ones from the lake-effect snow, of course.)

I can remember seeing that one in a library when I was growing up, but never read it.