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Title: Intimate History of Humanity, An by Theodore Zeldin ISBN: 0-06-092691-0 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 10 January, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascintating, inspired, insightful
Comment: This book is a rich, thought-provoking assimilation of human experience, addressing inumerable topics whilst maintaining a fascinating, coherent whole. Topics include "How people choose a way of life, and how it does not truly satisfy them", and "Why there has been more progress in cooking than sex". For me what reading really did was to fire my imagination to look afresh at what it means to be human. In the introduction Zeldin argues that too often we look in terms only of the immediate past, and of our near surroundings, rather than considering the experiences of all individuals throughout history. He takes detailed conversations with individuals about their personal experiences to show in context the significance of the "silent", intimate battles of history, from which he argues we have as much to learn and draw from as from our more well-documented, public history. Zeldin writes that the book should represent the starting point, with each chapter including a bibliography on the many topics touched upon. I found this book extremely readable and succinctly expressed, and as absorbing as any novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: Extraordinary...
Comment: What a wonderful and intelligent book to read agian and again. Theodore Zeldin discusses in 25 chapters the past, the present and the future.
He has a different subject for each chapter analyzing the issue in his simple and challenging form, and he pushes the reader to get smarter...
Some of the chapters are: How men and woman have slowley learned to have interesting conversations, how some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness, how respect has become more desirable than power, how humams become hospitable to each other, and why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives. These are just some of the titles in the book, and as you can see the subjects are just enchanting in every way, and it drives the reader to get involved in every way, and make his own beliefs and thoughts.
one of the best books for sure...
Rating: 2
Summary: Whose humanity?
Comment: Theodore Zeldin announces his project in a brief preface. It bristles with the energy of ambition. We sense that we may be about to launch into something truly revolutionary:
"I want to show how, today, it is possible for individuals to form a fresh view both of their own personal history and of humanity's whole record of cruelty, misunderstanding, and joy. To have a new vision of the future, it has always first been necessary to have a new vision of the past.... Instead of explaining the peculiarity of individuals by pointing to their family or childhood, I take a longer view: I show how they pay attention to--or ignore--the experience of previous, more distant generations, and how they are continuing the struggles of many other communities all over the world ... among whom they have more soul-mates than they may realize."
The 25 chapters that follow bear titles like "How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them," and "How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them." Each chapter begins with a portrait of one or several people in the contemporary world--usually French women--focusing on a particular life problem, or a creative attempt at solving such a problem. Zeldin follows this portrait with a brief history of that problem, or of a clearly related phenomenon.
For instance, the first chapter opens with a portrait of Juliette, a domestic servant who feels trapped in her job, in her social class, and by the unbridgeable distance between her and potential friends. This portrait is followed by a history of slavery--not a linear history, but a selective highlighting of relevant themes and moments in the history of slavery. Zeldin emphasizes that not all slaves have been so involuntarily, nor is there such a great difference between those who are enslaved forcibly and those who are enslaved by their own lack of imagination. The overall effect is that we gain a stronger sense of kinship with medieval Slavs and others whose history is contrasted with Juliette's, as well as a stronger sense of our own agency in determining how we might fit ourselves into the patterns of history.
This first chapter is one of the strongest in the book, and I summarize it as an example of Zeldin's project at its brightest. Throughout the book, Zeldin writes with admirable compassion, as well as with an unapologetic earnestness that would read as idealistically naïve if it weren't for the intelligence and determined sincerity of his prose. These qualities made me want his project to succeed, and yet by the hundredth page I had already almost given up on it.
I had hoped to find a deep history of psychology and morality, a revelation that our preoccupations, passions, and needs, and the consequent values that they engender, have a long genealogy that is far from transparent. Such a history might help to disabuse us of the feelings of necessity and immutability that hover about our frustrations. However, rather than present us with a rich diversity of psychological and ethical concerns, Zeldin is keen to impose modern values and preoccupations on that past, dictating the morals we are to learn from his histories rather than allowing us to draw our own lessons and conclusions.
I believe the lack of relativism is quite intentional. Zeldin is inspired by the universalism of the Enlightenment, and speaks admiringly of the Declaration of the Rights of Man as being a declaration not just for the French people, but for all people. He wants us to see that all humans share a great deal, that people of different eras and cultures are not so different from us. Applying liberal values and contemporary emotional preoccupations to times past may foster a greater sense of kinship, but I think it is also deeply misleading. If our aim is to understand people of other cultures, we must make a determined effort to understand them as they understand themselves. How useful is a feeling of kinship if it is based ultimately on misrepresentation?
A further unfortunate consequence of Zeldin's imposition of liberal values on the past is that, despite an impressive range of examples, the book becomes repetitive. An exhortation toward open-mindedness can be given quite thoroughly in twenty pages. If a book of 472 pages returns again and again to a very basic set of themes, without elaborating on them or moving beyond them, it becomes tiresome no matter how many engaging historical anecdotes it contains. Despite the staggering breadth of Zeldin's reading, despite the range and diversity of the lives he portrays, this book ultimately makes for a disappointingly narrow read.
And while it is hard to fault the impressive range of material that Zeldin leads us through quite comfortably, certain choices narrow the breadth of the book even further. His justification for interviewing French women almost exclusively (he doesn't seem to register that almost all these women are also white) reads as a half-hearted apology for Francophilia. While we do get the occasional glimpse into the rich cultures of India, China, and Japan (less so with cultures with less sophisticated literary traditions) most of his anecdotes draw from the history of the Christian and Muslim West. While it would be unreasonable to demand a deep knowledge of all aspects of world history (though a project this ambitious would seem to require it) there are moments that the need for a non-Western point of contrast or comparison is sorely felt.
Zeldin wishes to speak for all humanity, but he succeeds only in speaking of all humanity, and even there his effort is lackluster. In truth, he only speaks for those of us in the modern West, and in addressing our current preoccupations with a therapeutic aim, his book reads as much like self-help as it does like a history.
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Title: Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin ISBN: 1587680009 Publisher: Hidden Spring Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The French (Kodansha Globe) by Theodore Zeldin, Philip Turner ISBN: 1568361572 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Rituals of the Imagination by Tom Moore, Thomas Moore ISBN: 091100503X Publisher: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Woman the Hunter by Mary Zeiss Stange ISBN: 0807046396 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture by Susan R. Bordo ISBN: 0887064116 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: July, 1987 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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