This book is as impressive as a picture of Hieronymus Bosch.
It is a gripping portrait: plague, famine, the Big Schism, a Turkish advance. The power elite of the Church and the State are in danger. They are looking for scapegoats, like women (witches), Christian sects (e.g. the Bundschuh), jews and muslims and for a revival of the Christian message through writings and sermons about the Antichrist and the Last Judgment.
A very broad panorama containing eschatology, witch-hunt (Malleus maleficarum), dreams, behaviour of ordinary people during plagues, wars or famine, mutinies, staples and a big gap between the haves and have-nots.
A masterpiece.
Monumental bibliography.

Christinity has always been more cocerned with fear and disgust than with joy and redemption. This weighty tome analyzes Christian pop-culture from the plague to the industrial era, including many disturbing examples of "death poetry" written during Europe's famous flea-borne epidemic. Highly recommended - the perfect gift for the literate goth-rocker in your life.

This book is as impressive as a picture of Hieronymus Bosch.
It is a gripping portrait: plague, famine, the Big Schism, a Turkish advance. The power elite of the Church and the State are in danger. They are looking for scapegoats, like women (witches), Christian sects (e.g. the Bundschuh), jews and muslims, and for a revival of the Christian message through writings and sermons about the Antichrist or the Last Judgment.
A very broad panorama containing eschatology, witch-hunt (Malleus maleficarum), dreams, behaviour of ordinary people during plagues, wars or famine, mutinies, staples and a big gap between the haves and the have-nots.
A masterpiece.
Monumental bibliography.

Surely, we can't talk and think enough
about the state of mankind!
But these are hazardous waters! Where should we begin
and where do we want to go from there? So, Having
Gould and Eco as guides seems like a clever start!

According to the book, the hebrew language has
no exact present tense?? The infinitely brief, the
very essense of the present, is not to be found - it
can be neither fixed, nor measured. It is therefore
completely justifiable, grammaticale speaking,
to leave out the present?

Yet, obviously, it is from the present we look at the
past and towards the future.
Stephen Jay Gould is always a pleasure to listen to -
and the right one to put time into perspective.
For a palaeontologist, like Gould, 7000 years
(timespand of human culture) is really no more than
the twinkling of an eye. So all we know is really in
the present - which hardly exist!

From this position we look out into concepts like
the eternity - which we obviously really can't grasp.
And into ourselfes were e.g. DNA was discovered as recently
as 1953. Mystery upon mystery.
So, we struggle to discover instances of regularity and
to fit them together with the help of stories. We throw
in a little religion "were religions do not
ask questions, they answer them". Still we are far
removed from any real "understanding".

And that is what these conversations are about.
With Umberto Eco and Stephen Jay Gould - it is
of course an ok read. But only an appetizer.

-Simon

Conversations About the End of Time is a a discussion of questions and answers given by four thinkers. Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau all answer questions and are given a chapter in this book to espouse their respective answers.

Just think of a coffee table discussion, of a one on one discussion and you get to read the answers on questions of import. Each answering these questions with their respective insights and down-to-earth style. Each having their respective life experiences to draw from to unravel perplexing questions.

With fascination you read the thought-provoking answers. The answers will suprise some, others may be right inline with what you'd expect, but nerver boring... challenging, educational, lucid and erudite are more what you'd expect and you are not dissapointed.

This book reads fast and the questions are cogent with the general topic. Each respective thinker answers in a style of their own and the reader does not feel irrelevant. This is an interesting book in that questions asked make the reader think as well.

I found the book to be highly interesting and it has a fascination woven throughout the text captivating the reader.

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I'm talking about that Darwinian theory of Natural Selection you keep telling as if it were true. It is "differential reproductive success". So then that means I need at least 2 different things to call some event NS. So then I ask myself what do these 2 different things have to do with each other? So then I say well either they influence each other's reproduction some way, or they could as well be in different environments. So they must influence each other's reproduction some way. So then I ask, what ways can the one influence the reproduction of the other?

+/- increase reproduction at cost of the other +/+ mutual increase of each other's reproduction -/- mutual decrease of each other's reproduction +/0 and so on -/0 0/0

but what you do, is pretend like there are only +/- relationships. You ignore all other type of relationships with NS. Your natural selection theory is false, for being unsystematic in describing the relationships between living beings. You make teachers into liars by it.

Even though mirrors are a commonplace of everyday life and an essential part of modern technology, suprisingly little has been written about them, making this charming little book a welcome addition. It might more accurately have been subtitled "A history of the mirror in France" since it concentrates almost exclusively on that country. Subjects include the manufacture of mirrors, their use in decoration, art, literature, theology, and most especially their psychological effect on self-image - and of course their erotic implications. The author says virtually nothing about optics or technology, and the illustrations are few and poorly done. This is not a must-have book, but if you are interested in mirrors, French culture, or cultural history, it is worth reading, and would be an appropriate gift for the mirror-obsessed individual in your family.