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Recent
Past Books
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Date
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Title / Brief Description
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Author
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January 23, 2012
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“The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods
to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce
Them as Truths.” In this work
synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of
science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how
humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first
and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer
argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the
senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and
then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots
of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen,
and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain
begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those
beliefs
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Michael Shermer
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December
12, 2011
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"Dune"
(The Dune Chronicles, Book 1), Dune is to science fiction what The
“Lord of the Rings” is to fantasy. This Hugo and Nebula Award winner
is frequently cited as the world's best-selling science fiction
novel. Set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar
empire where planetary fiefdoms are controlled by noble houses that
owe an allegiance to the Imperial House Corrino,
“Dune” tells the story of young Paul Atreides
(the heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and the heir of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of
the desert planet Arrakis, the only source
of the "spice" melange, the most
important and valuable substance in the universe. The story explores
the complex and multi-layered interactions of politics, religion,
ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the forces of the Empire
confront each other for control of Arrakis
and its "spice.”
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Frank Herbert
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November 7, 2011
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"Crisis
Economics," Roubini, a professor of
economics at NYU, was greeted with skepticism when he warned a 2006
meeting of the IMF that a deep recession was imminent. Along with
economics historian Mihm, (A Nation of
Counterfeiters) Roubini provides an
in-depth analysis of the role of crises in capitalist economies from
a historical perspective. With thumbnail sketches of nineteenth and
twentieth century economic thought from Smith, Keynes, and others,
they provide a context for understanding financial markets and the
ways in which bankers and politicians relate to them. The authors
also offer a theoretical context for understanding the current
economic crisis and for using it as "an object lesson... in how
to foresee them, prevent them, weather them, and clean up after
them."
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Nouriel
Roubini
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October 17, 2011
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"The Origins of
Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the
French Revolution," by Francis Fukuyama. The evolving tension
between private and public animates this magisterial history of the
state. In his hominids-to-guillotines chronicle of humanity's
attempts to build strong, accountable governments that adhere to the
rule of law, international relations scholar Fukuyama (The End of
History) advances two themes: the effort to create an impersonal
state free from family and tribal allegiances, and the struggle—often
violent—against wealthy elites who capture the state and block critical
reforms (Parts III through V).
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Francis Fukuyama
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September 12, 2011
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"The Origins of
Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the
French Revolution," by Francis Fukuyama. The evolving tension
between private and public animates this magisterial history of the
state. In his hominids-to-guillotines chronicle of humanity's
attempts to build strong, accountable governments that adhere to the
rule of law, international relations scholar Fukuyama (The End of
History) advances two themes: the effort to create an impersonal
state free from family and tribal allegiances, and the struggle—often
violent—against wealthy elites who capture the state and block
critical reforms (Parts I through II).
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Francis Fukuyama
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August 15, 2011
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“Zeitoun.”
Through the story of one man’s experience after Hurricane Katrina,
Eggers draws an indelible picture of Bush-era crisis management. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a
successful Syrian-born painting contractor, decides to stay in New
Orleans and protect his property while his family flees. After the
levees break, he uses a small canoe to rescue people, before being
arrested by an armed squad and swept powerlessly into a vortex of
bureaucratic brutality. When a guard accuses him of being a member of
Al Qaeda, he sees that race and culture may explain his predicament.
Eggers, compiling his account from interviews, sensibly resists
rhetorical grandstanding, letting injustices speak for themselves.
His skill is most evident in how closely he involves the reader in Zeitoun’s thoughts. Thrown into one of a series
of wire cages, Zeitoun speculates, with a
contractor’s practicality, that construction of his prison must have
begun within a day or so of the hurricane.
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Dave Eggers
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July 11, 2011
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“The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” From a single, abbreviated life
grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most
crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same
life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has
fashioned in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” a fascinating and
moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in
laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in
Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of
Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30
in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her
knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide
one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could
survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa
cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for
countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio.
Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and
frequently poor health…Skloot doggedly but
compassionately gathered the threads of these stories… that asks the
questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?
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Rebecca Sklott
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June 13, 2011
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“To
Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme
Tourism.” If you've ever wondered how a frat boy would fare in
the Congo, then Thompson (Smile When You're Lying) has written the
book for you. It's not just the Congo either; the former Maxim editor
and extreme tourism expert also slogs across Mexico City, India, and
Disney World. Along the way, he encounters elephant penises,
eight-year-old boxers and naked gurus who climb into the shower with
him. Thompson's stated reason for his extreme tourism is that
Americans have grown soft, and he must prove his travel writer
toughness by going places he doesn't want to go.
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Chuck Thompson
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May 16, 2011
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"Starship
Troopers." Juan Rico signed up with the Federal Service on
a lark, but despite the hardships and rigorous training, he finds himself
determined to make it as a cap trooper. In boot camp he will learn
how to become a soldier, but when he graduates and war comes (as it
always does for soldiers), he will learn why he is a soldier. Many
consider this Hugo Award winner to be Robert Heinlein's finest work,
and with good reason. Forget the battle scenes and high-tech weapons
(though this novel has them)--this is Heinlein at the top of his game
talking people and politics.
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Robert Heinlein
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April 11, 2011
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"The Other Brain:
The Scientific and Medical Breakthroughs That Will
Heal Our Brains and Revolutionize Our
Health." What's wrong with neuroscientists? Only 15% of
the human brain is composed of
neurons, yet all of contemporary brain research is focused on
neurons. What is the other 85%? Long dismissed as the mere "glue" of the brain, the new science of glia
and the role it may play in human cognition is presented in
this book which offers a more complete understanding of how the
brain works. Written by a neuroscientist who is a leader in brain
research, The Other Brain is written for the
non-scientist to help us understand in simple, easy
terms just how important these non-neurons may be in helping us
think.
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R. Douglas Fields
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March 14, 2011
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"The Rise and Fall of Alexandria:
Birthplace of the Modern Mind."
Most of us take if
for granted that two cities, Athens and Rome, completely dominated
the classical world," opines Justin Pollard and Howard Reid.
"In fact, there was a third city that, at its height, dwarfed
both of these in wealth and population as well as in scientific and
artistic achievement. " That city was
Alexandria, the Greco-Egyptian capital of the Ptolemaic empire. The
authors call the city "the greatest mental crucible the world has
ever known," the intellectual foundation upon which the later
Renaissance forged the minds of modern men. "The Rise and Fall
of Alexandria" is a delightful and informative read that
effectively waves the banner of an unappreciated aspect of the
Western legacy.
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Justin Pollard/Howard
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February 7, 2011
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"Night of the
Gun." David Carr's weekly "Media Equation" column, in
The New York Times, is one of the most lucid and transparent of its
news columns. Carr stands at the respected top of his profession. Twenty-one
years ago he was at the bottom, not just of a profession but life as
well. At 31 he was fired in brilliant mid-career from a small but
vigorous Minneapolis paper. Ten years of wild partying and a hellish
downward spiral from pot and alcohol to cocaine and then to crack had
caught up with him. "The Night of the Gun" is Carr's record
of downfall and climb-back; both are told unsparingly, the first with
grisly detail, the second without complacency. The climb was perilous
all the way, and it remains perilous still. In essence, Carr tries to
connect the seemingly ruined "That Guy" with the seemingly
saved "This Guy."
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David Carr
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January 10, 2011
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"God
Is Not Great." Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists,
delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same
contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political
commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes
him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the
dock...Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring
practice with believers....this is salutary reading as a means of
culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false
comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against
fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are
better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground
glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated
despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence
that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into
barely disguised misanthropy.
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Christopher Hitchens
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December 6, 2010
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The
Financial Lives of the Poets: A Novel (P.S.). From
"Bookmarks" -- Walter's wildly funny, heartrending novel is
a clever meditation on the American Dream gone horribly wrong.
Readers will be rooting for Matt, "a likable everyman"
(Christian Science Monitor), even as he commits one painful error
after another. Walter's writing crackles with energy, and though he
seems to come close to treating some serious topics (drug use,
infidelity, mental illness, and bankruptcy) superficially, his
affection for his characters and his shrewd assessment of the Priors'
financial and familial collapse circumvent
that danger. His free-verse poetry, however, interspersed within the
narrative, received mixed reviews. Praised as one of today's best new
voices, Walter has penned a scathing indictment of contemporary
America.
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Jess Walter
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November 15, 2010
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Kitchen
Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Most diners believe
that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras...was created by a culinary artist of the
highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth
is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain...
is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral
degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks,
sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood
pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an
expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the
culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious
sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. He is obscenely
eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine
storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen.
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Anthony Bourdain
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October 19, 2010
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Getting It
Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism. Did the Washington
Post bring down Richard Nixon by reporting on the Watergate scandal?
Did a cryptic remark by Walter Cronkite effectively end the Vietnam
War? Did William Randolph Hearst vow to "furnish the war"
in the 1898 conflict with Spain? In Getting It Wrong, W.
Joseph Campbell addresses and dismantles these and other prominent
media-driven myths--stories about or by the news media that are
widely believed but which, on close examination, prove
apocryphal. In a fascinating exploration of these and other
cases--including the supposedly outstanding coverage of New Orleans
during Hurricane Katrina--Campbell describes how myths like these can
feed stereotypes, deflect blame from policymakers, and overstate the
power and influence of the news media.
Dr. Campbell
attended our meeting and posted the additional thoughts on his
blog: http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/books-and-banter-club-discusses-getting-it-wrong/
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W. Joseph Campbell
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September 20, 2010
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The Death and
Life of Great American Cities. Thirty years after its publication,
“The Death and Life of Great American Cities” was described by “The New
York Times” as "perhaps the most influential single work in the
history of town planning....[It] can also be
seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of
literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and
the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still
be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and
appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and
writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued
that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful
architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully
epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the
humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable,
indispensable.
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Jane Jacobs
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August 16, 2010
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The
Spectator Bird.
It won the 1977 National
Book Award. Joe
Allston is a retired literary
agent whose parents and only son are dead, and who
feels that he has been a mere spectator through life. Then a postcard
from a friend causes him to return to the journals of a trip he took
to his mother's birthplace to search for his roots; memories of that
journey reveal that he is not quite spectator enough. Winner of the
National Book Award.
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Wallace Stegner
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July 19, 2010
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The Cleanest Race:
How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters.
Examining North Korean books, news broadcasts, and films, Myers finds
that the country's supremacist propaganda can be traced to imperial
Japan, which sought to convince Koreans that they were part of the
"world's purest race." Myers acidly discredits Western
interpretations of North
Korea as "hard-line
communist" or "Confucian,"
noting the prevalence of maternal rather than paternal imagery and
the societal scorn for the former Soviet bloc. Esoteric cultural
markers-e.g., the heavy use of flashbacks in film and literature-are
mined for compelling clues to the North Korean sensibility. Myers'
greatest feat is his explanation of how the regime has maintained
power despite its failures in almost every area of governance-how it
has convinced average North Korean citizens that shipments of U.S.
food aid, for example, are actually reparations for past "Yankee"
crimes. A sharp and smart introduction to one of the world's most
secretive societies.
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BR Myers
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June 14, 2010
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Reality Hunger: A
Manifesto by David Shields. It's
a book which argues that fiction may be less relevant to our times,
and it uses many quotes by other authors to make its case as well as
illustrate how details from real life make writing richer than pure
fiction can hope to be. The author published novels years ago but has
more recently found the essay's ability to give insight into how another
mind things as a far more compelling story.
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David Shields
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May 10, 2010
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The Last of the
Wine. It is
Mary Renault's first novel set in Ancient Greece, the setting that
would become her most important arena. The novel was published in 1956
and is the second of her works to feature male homosexuality as a
major theme.
The book is a
convincing portrait of Athens at the close of the Golden Age and the
end of the Peloponnesian War with Sparta. The Last of the Wine
engages the mores and culture of Classical Greece, including symposia
(drinking parties), the treatment of women, the importance of
athletic, military and philosophical training among young men,
marriage customs, and daily life in war and peace.
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Mary Renault
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April 12, 2010
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It's News to Me:
The Making and Unmaking of an Editor. In this smart and savvy
memoir, Kosner tells of his life in the
news business. He traces his career in publishing, from his first
break in 1958 just out of college at the New York Post (where he
later schooled Pete Hamill) to his prickly relationship with
publishing icon Katharine Graham at Newsweek (she fired him) and his
meteoric rise running some of publishing's most stellar venues. As
editor of New York magazine and Esquire, Kosner
vaulted those magazines to their zeniths. And Kosner
was at the editor's helm of the New York Daily News the day the twin
towers fell. A scrawny smart-ass from Manhattan's Washington Heights,
Kosner has rubbed many a publisher the
wrong way, including Graham, Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman; yet
he was a consummate newsman and intuitive editor who helped shaped 40
years of New York journalism. Full of political and impolitic detail
and leaving no magnate undished, Kosner bridges the time between Remingtons, cold type and the blogosphere.
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Edward Kosner
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March 15, 2010
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The
Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American
University.
Why do professors all tend to think alike? What makes it so hard for colleges
to decide which subjects should be required? Why do teachers and
scholars find it so difficult to transcend the limits of their
disciplines? Why, in short, are problems that should be easy for
universities to solve so intractable? The answer, Louis Menand argues, is that the institutional
structure and the educational philosophy of higher education have
remained the same for one hundred years, while faculties and student
bodies have radically changed and technology has drastically
transformed the way people produce and disseminate knowledge.
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Louis Menand
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February 16, 2010
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Utopia. There were utopias before
this book that Thomas More wrote in the early 1500s, including
Plato's Republic. This, however, is the book that gives us the word
'Utopia.'
'Utopia'
is a radical document. It anticipates the modern idea of communism,
with private property at a minimum; it is generations ahead in the
idea of equality of the sexes and freedom of religion. This may seem
a remarkable statement from someone who will go to his death
supporting the Roman hierarchy, but in historical irony, had
religious freedom been respected in England at the time, More would
have had nothing to fear. This translation from More's original Latin
is modern and smoothly readable.
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Thomas More
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January 11, 2010
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A World Lit Only by
Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age. From Publishers
Weekly, using only secondary sources, Manchester plunges readers into
the medieval mind-set in a captivating, marvelously vivid popular
history that humanizes the tumultuous span from the Dark Ages to the
dawn of the Renaissance. He delineates an age when invisible spirits
infested the air, when tolerance was seen as treachery and ``a mafia
of profane popes desecrated Christianity.'' Besides
re-creating the arduous lives of ordinary people, the Wesleyan
professor of history peoples his tapestry with such figures as
Leonardo, Machiavelli, Lucrezia Borgia,
Erasmus, Luther, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Manchester (The
Arms of Krupp) devotes much attention to Magellan, whose
globe-straddling voyage shattered Christendom's implicit belief in
Europe as the center of the universe.
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William Manchester
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