2021/06/18

Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition: Berry, Wendell: 9781582431413: Amazon.com: Books

Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition: Berry, Wendell: 9781582431413: Amazon.com: Books

Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition Paperback – May 1, 2001
by Wendell Berry  (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars    76 ratings
176 pages
“[A] scathing assessment . . . Berry shows that Wilson's much–celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to science . . . Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today.” —The Washington Post



“I am tempted to say he understands [Consilience] better than Wilson himself . . . A new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism.”—The Christian Science Monitor





In Life Is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world.


Editorial Reviews
Review
"A new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism." -- Colin C. Campbell, Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Wendell Berry is the author of fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was recently awarded the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Louis Bromfield Society Award. For over forty years he has lived and farmed with his wife, Tanya, in Kentucky.
From The Washington Post
"[A] scathing assessment... Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today."

Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars    76 ratings

Wendell Berry
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Biography
Wendell E. Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be ushered into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Guy Mendes (Guy Mendes) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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4.4 out of 5 stars

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S. Nachalo
5.0 out of 5 stars society ended and no one noticed
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016
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“We are not getting something for nothing. We are getting nothing for everything,” the epigraph with which Berry opens Life is a Miracle, is apt and concise. Modern society appears miraculous, the product of man's industry and ingenuity. It looks (and is advertised largely as) a kind of perpetual motion machine, powered by little other than human inventiveness. Attentive observers have noticed that appearances are, as usual, deceptive: we are living on fossil fuels, energy created over eons by geological processes, and in a matter of decades, we've used up more than half of what's available. But there are problems even greater than the depletion of our main energy sources, destroying our ability to perpetuate our society and culture without much notice from anyone. We (and many other animals) have been passing our knowledge and ways of life the old fashioned way (and the only way) from parent to child as long as we've been on this planet without giving it a thought, but it appears that this simple and irreducible aspect of our species existence can be interrupted. When this happens locally, tribes and cultures die. It's not clear whether it is possible for this to happen globally, but it seems that this is the direction we are heading. Globalization and the “market economy” have been at work disrupting and destroying local cultures and replacing them with a universal mono-culture known to its practitioners and captives variously as “capitalism," "market economy," or “democracy” in the west, “communism” or “socialism” elsewhere. Whatever name it goes by, its effects on the living beings and the environments they inhabit is the same.

Life is a Miracle is about this process, the loss of the ability to perpetuate the culture we've built over millenia. Wendell Berry looks to science for a culprit, because science is our culture's founding myth, governing paradigm, and much more, and he picks E. O. Wilson's Consilience as the book through which to analyze the subject. The choice is appropriate for a number of reasons: Wilson is a mainstream scientist, and in Consilience, he tackles questions like ethics, religion, art, and culture in general- necessarily, since his stated goal is to bring the different disciplines together into a working whole. He is also a conservationist, as is Berry.

Science approaches all questions as problems to be solved, and all unanswered questions as questions yet to be answered. “(Consilience) reads as though it was written to confirm the popular belief that science is entirely good, that it leads to unlimited progress, and that it has (or will have) all the answers.” (p. 24) This means that mystery, an essential and critical part of human culture, is an impossibility: Wilson attributes it entirely to human ignorance. Without mystery, reverence and propriety are impossible, leading to a society governed by profit and raw power as we've arrived at today, whether the power is cloaked in the accoutrements of “democracy,” “socialism,” or more transparent forms. What Wilson calls “consilience” turns out to be an invitation (or an ultimatum, taken more broadly) for religion and the arts to take on the goals and methodology of science, an impossibility if the words mean what we all think they mean. “Like a naïve politician, Mr. Wilson thinks he has found a way to reconcile two sides without realizing that his way is one of the sides... One cannot, in honesty, propose to reconcile Heaven and Earth by denying the existence of Heaven.” (p.99)

The crisis we face can't be solved with more science or technology, since these are part of the cause. We have to address the way we think and talk about the world and ourselves.

The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power (along with a lot of expertish pomp) but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to convey any respect or care or affection or devotion toward it. As a result, we have a lot of genuinely concerned people calling upon us to “save” a world which their language simultaneously reduces to an assemblage of perfectly featureless and dispirited “ecosystems,” “organisms,” “environments,” “mechanisms,” and the like. It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced. (italics in original) (p. 8)

Berry's solution to this crisis, if there is to be any solution to it, is for scientists, artists, and religious people, whether they can work together in the end or not, to root their work in local considerations and return to such considerations at their works' end, as well as, ideally, throughout the process.

Directly opposed to this reduction or abstraction of things is the idea of the preciousness of individual lives and places. This does not come from science, but from our cultural and religious traditions. It is not derived, and it is not derivable, from any notion of egalitarianism. If all are equal, none can be precious. (And perhaps it is necessary to stop here to say that this ancient delight in the individuality of creatures is not the same thing as what we now mean by “individualism.” It is the opposite. Individualism, in present practice, refers to the supposed “right” of an individual to act alone, in disregard of other individuals. (p.42)

Any new invention or idea or practice should, in the end, be weighed on the merits of its impact on our communities. “Suppose we learn to ask of any proposed innovation the question so far only the Amish have been wise enough to ask: What will this do to out community?” (p.134) Obviously, most people don't have the benefit of living in anything resembling a community, so we would have to break up the corporate capitalist society into local communities first.

Life is a Miracle elicits some hysterical reviews on Amazon, as one would expect with books that challenge our most basic assumptions about ourselves and the world. I expect that if it were more widely read, the greater part of our country would be foaming at the mouth over this book. God I wish it were. This is likely one of the most important books of the decade, or century, or however long we plan on living miserable lives governed by anti-human precepts.
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Joy S. Frady
4.0 out of 5 stars A Helpful Corrective for Our Times
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2016
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This book is a response to E.O. Wilson's "Consilience", a book which purports to bring all academic disciplines under the rubric of scientism. Berry strongly objects, pointing out the slippery slopes abounding in academia and culture when scientific pursuits are given preeminence. Berry is at his best in this book when he critiques the university system, particularly its penchant for specialization and the funding streams within which mitigate against the good of the community. This book was written at the turn of the 21st century and it is apparent to this reader that in the intervening years the problems Berry addresses have gotten worse. Berry's theme of community may be the most important and most needed theme for our world today, as we live in an isolated, divided culture where ideologies are at war.
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Anders Martinson
5.0 out of 5 stars A challenging, thought-provoking, and valuable piece of writing
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2009
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Having read many of Wendell Berry's work I can say that this is probably not to use as your introduction to his writing. Better to start with a collection of his agrarian essays. This is one of his most difficult essays to come to terms with, and a review that attempts to analyze it would almost work in opposition to the (anti-reductionist) points Berry tries to convey.

In a way I think Berry made an error in choosing his subtitle. The use of the word superstition is unnecessarily inflammatory, and the word against distracts the reader from the fact that Berry's work in general and this essay in particular focus largely on things that he is for.

A casual approach to this book could leave the reader unfamiliar with his other work feeling that Berry is a Luddite polemicist. A more careful reading of the, somewhat uncharacteristically, dense prose here will reveal Berry's thoughtful passion for what it means to be human. One needn't agree with every point Berry attempts to make in order to use this book as a way to simply stop and think.

In the chapter A Conversation Out of School Berry quite plainly asserts that science and art are not inherently at odds with one another. He clearly sees limits in what science can help us know and accomplish, but he doesn't dismiss entirely the pursuit of empirical knowledge. This is a provocative and challenging piece of work, but well worth the effort.

Reasonable people can disagree. Read it with an open mind and see where the discussion takes you. The very fact that it has led to pointed discussions on all sides of the issue just among these reviews shows that it touches on crucial issues for our society and world.
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Greta S. Hyland
5.0 out of 5 stars First Wendell Berry Book
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2014
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Wendell Berry has come up often enough over the last couple of years that I finally had to buy one of this books. I have to admit, I was kind of put off by the reverence that his readers showed when talking of him, but once I read his book, I could understand the fanfare. This book is clearly written, thought provoking, and one that made the most compelling argument for the limits of science...and I am a science buff. I have since ordered two more of Berry's books. I know I will return to my highlights in the book over and over again.
9 people found this helpful
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Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
by Wendell Berry
 4.19  ·   Rating details ·  1,063 ratings  ·  132 reviews
"[A] scathing assessment…Berry shows that Wilson's much-celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to science…Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today." --Lauren F. Winner, Washington Post Book World

"I am tempted to say he understands [Consilience] better than Wilson himself…A new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism" ---Colin C. Campbell, Christian Science Monitor

"Berry takes a wrecking ball to E. O. Wilson's Consilience, reducing its smug assumptions regarding the fusion of science, art, and religion to so much rubble. --Kirkus Reviews

In Life Is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world. (less)
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Paperback, 176 pages
Published April 19th 2001 by Counterpoint (first published 2000)
Original TitleLife Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
ISBN1582431418 (ISBN13: 9781582431413)
Edition LanguageEnglish
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Werner
Mar 18, 2008Werner rated it really liked it
Recommends it for: All readers who care about serious questions
Shelves: other-nonfiction
Wendell Berry is a well-known author of prose and poetry; sometimes a college teacher of English (a field in which he has a graduate degree); a Kentucky farmer who tills land that's been in his family for several generations and who advocates for sustainable farming practices and environmental stewardship; and a public intellectual who thinks seriously about important social and philosophical issues. To date, this is the only one of his numerous books that I've read (though I definitely intend to read more!); but I've now read it three times, most recently because I've long really wanted to review it, and felt that because of the depth and complexity of the thought, it deserved a review written with the benefit of the freshest possible engagement. Even so, it will be a challenge to summarize it within the scope of a review.

Berry is a classical Christian believer, whose faith shapes his view of the world and universe around him and undergirds his thought. Moreover, in the present book, he's making the case that human life in the world is essentially miraculous, and that it has an inescapable spiritual dimension. That said, however, he does not base his arguments here on appeal to religious authority as such, nor present them in narrowly "religious" terms. Rather, he's arguing for a basic philosophical position, and a basic way of living in the world on the basis of that position, that can be shared by persons of a wide variety of faiths, and even by persons who have no specific faith as such, but who approach the natural and human world from an existentially humble perspective that recognizes the mystery and complexity of the universe and values individual humans, communities, and natural spaces. For this reason, although I originally shelved the book with "Christian life and thought," I think "Other nonfiction" would be the more accurate classification --not because his thought isn't Christian, but because he's writing from the perspective of philosophy, not theology, and writing to all of his fellow humans who share the common graces of conscience and ability to reason.

While this is a short book (153 pages), addressed to general intelligent readers rather than academic specialists, not burdened with scholarly apparatus and expressed in as clear a style as possible, and although it is a relatively quick read, it's not AS quick as one might initially expect. The content is pithy, and covers a lot of ground at short length, but significant depth. Berry illustrates and supports his points with examples from literature, especially Shakespeare (the first chapter has an extended discussion of King Lear --which I have never read-- and the book's title comes from Edgar's words to his suicidal father, "Thy life's a miracle...."), references to history and current events, and quotes from other serious thinkers. While he's primarily concerned with the concrete and practical side of life, he necessarily addresses some significant abstract ideas that bear on how we approach the concrete and the practical; the writing demands thought and attention. Full engagement with it can be demanding.

Published in 2000, the book is a specific response to the 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson, much-honored Harvard Univ. biologist, secular humanist philosopher (and avowed "environmentalist") and general pillar of the intellectual establishment. In that book (which I admittedly have not read; I believe Berry represents it accurately and that his numerous quotations from it are not out of context, but in any case the viewpoint Berry describes is a common establishment party line that most readers have already encountered frequently) Wilson argues for the equation of "science" with positivist materialism and denial of the existence of anything not empirically material, for the ability of Science thus defined to ultimately explain all of reality, and for the reorganization of all human knowledge and academic disciplines into a supposedly "consilient" whole subordinated under the overarching philosophic guidance of this super-competent Science. Berry begs to differ; but while he develops his own position in response to Wilson's, his book has value, IMO, as a positive statement on its own terms, not simply as a refutation of Wilson (so it can be appreciated on its own terms whether you've read Wilson or not).

To summarize some of Berry's main positions in capsule form, he maintains: that human knowledge is not solely rationally deductive-empirical, but can be intuitive, emotional, and/or the product of wholistic experience over time that's not reducible to mathematical formulas or "data;" that organisms and machines are two distinctly different things, and that the former, and the world and the universe generally, are not properly conceived by trying to reduce them to the latter; that the "scientist" is not a detached observer of the "environment" but a part of it, and that the instant you set up a false dichotomy between the two you're fatally undercutting any genuine commitment to the "environment;" that humans are not mechanically or chemically determined but have genuine free will (not the "illusion" of it), which means that we make choices, and that if we don't, appealing to us to make environmentally-friendly choices makes no sense; and that while the proper goal of all sciences and arts is the healthy flourishing of humans and their communities, the goal of science as practiced in contemporary academia is maximizing the profits of the wealthy corporations that pay for the research, with results generally inimical to human flourishing. He devotes a chapter to the concept of "propriety," which he defines as "the fittingness of our conduct to our place and circumstance" (and which has a wealth of applications to present-day behaviors); and he emphasizes the importance of commitment to the local and particular, rather than grandiose subordination of the local and particular to 'globalized" operations. But there's much more content, and more food for thought, here; I've only scratched the surface rather briefly!

My read of the book this time, and writing of this review, was of course in the shadow of the current pandemic, a situation that heightens and accentuates the urgency of some of Berry's themes. The virus is a "problem" that many people are looking to Science to "solve;" but of course science had a great deal to do with creating the "problem" and the conditions under which it's spread, and deified "Science" isn't going to give us moral and spiritual resources for getting through the "problem," explaining it or making sense of its consequences in anything but a reductionist sense, or helping us decide what sort of social reality we want to build or rebuild in its aftermath. Those are things that don't call so much for technical expertise as for virtue, faith, wisdom, and community. A blog post written 20 years after this book was, and which doesn't mention Berry or this book, may seem an odd thing to link to in closing; but that's what I'm going to do, because I think Billy Coffey's conclusion there puts in simple words much of what Berry is saying here. https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog... . (less)
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David
Aug 05, 2012David rated it really liked it
As a scientist and a university faculty member, I found some parts of this essay stinging. Nevertheless, I found, on the whole, much of the commentary cogent and useful. At first, this essay seemed like some form of Luddite treatise. But what actually emerged was a well thought out challenge to the primacy of science in the modern world. Although the author issues this challenge directly at the Ecologist E. O. Wilson, in response to Wilson's thesis entitled Consilience, Wendell Berry rarely misses an opportunity to broaden his attack against Science (with a capital S). Nevertheless, I found the points of attack well articulated and rarely gratuitous.

In sum, this text made me (actually, allowed me) to look at science from a fresh perspective. Such opportunities are rare, when one has been in a given field for many years. For this, I am indebted to this author. (less)
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Karson
Feb 04, 2008Karson rated it really liked it
Wow. I didn't think the whole thing totally ruled, but there are certain quotes that are probably going to stick with me forever. He just has a different point of view than i have ever been exposed to. He really values the particular. Particular places, particular people, particular animals, particular things. This is across the spectrum from me. Like most Americans I value big, novel things. I think big trips rule, big mountains, big states, even big animals. I like moose more than birds. Mountains more than streams. Adventurous trips more than everyday life. I want to love particular "mundane" things, and Berry knows a lot more about that then I do. He'd rather stay one place his whole life and fully appreciate its depth and richness, than briefly skim all the world without a deep understanding of any one place. The particular and mundane scare the shit out of me, but this guy revels in it. Holy crap. (less)
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Jon
Dec 19, 2008Jon rated it it was amazing
Gotta give this one 5-stars just for sheer audacity. Berry takes on modern science and its materialistic and mechanistic world view, and he has E.O. Wilson and his book Consilience in his sights. Berry suggests that something is lost when we only focus on the reductionist perspective at the root of modern science. We are, he is suggesting, more than can be explained by modern science, and he suggests the dominance of the modern scientific paradigm represents a threat to those ineffable or irreducible characteristics that make us uniquely human.

We are, he is suggesting, more than machines:

"The most radical influence of reductive science has been the virtually universal adoption of the idea that the world, its creatures, and all the parts of its creatures are machines--that is, that there is no difference between creature and artifice, birth and manufacture, thought and computation" (p. 6).

In response to that model he suggests that, "life, like holiness, can only be known by being experienced" (p. 8), and that "Our daily lives are a daily mockery of our scientific pretensions" (p. 33). And again, "Directly opposed to this reduction or abstraction of things is the idea of the preciousness of individual lives and places" (p. 42).

The book does bog down a bit in the middle, but then there will be a line like this to catch your attention:

"To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think" (p. 103).

Or this:
"'Survival value', it seems to me, must deal in minimums, since any species dependent upon maximums would be too vulnerable to survive. The human race has survived because of its ability to survive famine, not because of its ability to survive feasts" (p. 110).

Or this:
A work of art says what it says in the only way it can be said. Beauty, for example, cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fat; it is not a quantity (p. 117). (less)
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M.G. Bianco
Feb 15, 2018M.G. Bianco rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction
One of the best book of essays from Wendell Berry that I've read. Intriguing and compelling at every point, he hits his biggest home run (for me) when he considers the different kinds of knowledge and then the distinctions between art and science, and the necessity for both to work together from a common ground.

For those of you who have heard his speech on Wallace Stegner's idea of the "boomers" and "stickers," he elaborates on that more in this book as well. (less)
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Evan
Nov 06, 2008Evan rated it it was amazing
Berry continues to astonish me. This is not a fast and easy read; you have to work and pay attention. But Berry writes as a prophet of our times and has put his finger on a core - maybe the root - cause of dis-ease in our century.

He writes a critique of rationalism and scientific thought that we need to pay attention to.

A few memorable passages:

"For a while I proposed to myself that the only things really explainable are explanations. That is not quite true, but it is near enough to the truth that I am unwilling to forget it.

"What can be explained? Experiments, ideas, patterns, cause-effect relationships and connections within defined limits, anything that can be calculated, graphed or diagrammed. And yet the explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable. Explanation is reductive, not comprehensive; most of the time, when you have explained something, you discover leftovers. An explanation is a bucket, not a well.

"What can't be explained? I don't think creatures can be explained. I don't think lives can be explained. What we know about creatures and lives must be pictured or told or sung or danced. And I don't think pictures or stories or songs or dances can be explained. The arts are indispensable precisely because they are so nearly antithetical to explanation." (p113)

"The time is past, if ever there was such a time, when you can just discover knowledge and turn it loose in the wold and assume that you have done good.

"This, to me, is a sign of the incompleteness of science in itself - which is the sign of the need for a strenuous conversation among all the branches of learning."

"In our present economic predicament, ethics, ecology, environmental law, etc. won't as specialties have much corrective force. They will be used to rationalize what is wrong." (p145)
(less)
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Joel
May 18, 2011Joel rated it really liked it
Wendell Berry: my constant antidote to graduate school.

Berry dislikes scientific reductionism, argues for the uniqueness of art and religion as ways of knowing, being, doing, etc, and adds some important objections to the "scientific" enterprise as it is carried out today: it is essentially colonial, imperialist, and in bed with a number of environmentally destructive forces.

He also comes down pretty harshly on the way academic disciplines are organized and the way universities are run. This makes a lot of sense to me, but leaves me with some questions about how to proceed with my own chosen field. I am so surrounded by people who do research and scholarly publishing as their livelihood that I forget it's something I've never wanted.

Berry writes in another book, Standing by Words:

"If one wishes to promote the life of language, one must promote the life of the community—a discipline many times more trying, difficult, and long than that of linguistics, but having at least the virtue of hopefulness. It escapes the despair always implicit in specializations: the cultivation of discrete parts without respect or responsibility for the whole."

I'm knee-deep in theory about language and social worlds, yet too much of it, in the end, for me feels like a spinning out into nothing. It is not too late, perhaps, for me to imagine getting much more involved with language and literacy teaching at local, grassroots levels. For all our talk about the Local, currently fashionable ideas in applied linguistics seem rarely to be produced by scholars who are genuinely committed to living and working in a place, rather than an archipelago of universities.

Obviously, this book has provoked thinking beyond its subject. Which I suppose is another thing it has going for it. (less)
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2021/06/17

도서출판 모시는사람들 :: Editor's Pick - 동학 입문자를 위한 책

도서출판 모시는사람들 :: Editor's Pick - 동학 입문자를 위한 책

Editor's Pick - 동학 입문자를 위한 책


도서출판 모시는사람들은 1994년 시작했고 출판사의 이름을 달고 정식으로 책을 출간한 것이 1997년입니다.
그동안 출간한 책이 2021년 6월 기준, 거의 400종에 이릅니다.

그간 출간한 책들을 분야별로 골라 차근차근 소개해 드리려 합니다.
그 첫 번째로 동학, 그중에서도 동학을 처음 접하시는 분들을 위한 입문서와 동학 경전, 고전에 관한 책들을 소개합니다.
----------------
동학 입문서


『표영삼의 동학 이야기』, 그리고 『표영삼의 동학혁명운동사』

저자인 고(故) 삼암 표영삼 선생(1925~2008)은 ‘최후의 동학인’, ‘걸어 다니는 동학’으로 평가받아 왔습니다.
평생을 동학 연구에 몸바쳐 온 학자이며, 몸소 실천하고 수양하는 천도교인이었습니다. 그의 연구와 실천은 도올 김용옥 선생에게도 많은 영향을 끼친 바 있습니다.

이 책은 삼암 표영삼 선생의 저작선 제1권과 2권입니다.
제1권인 『표영삼의 동학 이야기』는 동학의 역사와 사상, 수행 방법에 관한 것을, 제2권인 『표영삼의 동학혁명운동사』는 지역별 동학혁명 전개 과정에 대한 글을 담고 있습니다.

이 책이 갖는 장점 중 하나는, 쉽다는 것입니다.

사람들이 동학에 갖는 부담감에는 '동학 = 동학농민혁명'이라는 선입견과 함께 한자와 옛 문체에서 오는 난해함이 많은 비중을 차지합니다.
저자는 특유의 이야기체로 쉽게 써내려 갔습니다. 동학과 천도교에 사전 지식이 전혀 없는 사람도 그리 어렵지 않게 읽을 수 있습니다.
또 다른 미덕은 발로 뛰어 쓴 글이란 점입니다.
사료나 역사적 정황에 의존해 쓴 것이 아니라, 수십 년간 직접 현장을 답사한 체험과 직접 채집한 증언을 기반 위에 사료로부터 얻어지는 정보를 추가하여 써내려 간 글입니다.
그의 글에는 책상 머리 맡에서 만들어진 글과는 다른 생생함이 담겨 있습니다.

『표영삼의 동학 이야기』
표영삼 지음 / 신영우 감수
448쪽 / 20,000원

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『표영삼의 동학혁명운동사』
표영삼 지음 / 신영우 감수
448쪽 / 20,000원

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천도교경전 공부하기(증보2판)

이 책은 초판에 해당하는 『천도교경전 공부하기』(2007, 274쪽, 15000원), 그리고 『천도교경전 공부하기(개정판)』(2010, 784쪽, 30000원), 『천도교경전 공부하기(증보판)』(2013, 808쪽, 30000원)에 이은 네 번째 책입니다.
여러 차례 개정을 거듭해 온 만큼 더 풍부해지고, 더 다듬어졌습니다.
동학·천도교의 주요 경전인 동경대전, 용담유사, 해월신사법설, 의암성사법설의 원문을 충실히 담아내고 중요한 어구에 주석을 달아 풀이와 공부할 때 착안해야 할 점을 제시하였습니다.
특히 이 책은 이론·학술적인 접근보다 신앙·정서적인 접근의 방향을 취하고 있으며, 전체 경전에 대한 충실한 해석으로 동학 경전 공부를 처음 시작하려는 이들에게 지침서가 되어 줄 것입니다.


『천도교경전 공부하기』(증보2판)
라명재 주해
848쪽 / 33,000원

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Sandor Katz - Wikipedia

Sandor Katz - Wikipedia

Sandor Katz

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Sandor Ellix Katz
A color image of Sandor Katz, a man in a loosely worn purple plaid shirt and cargo pants with grey hair and two shade of grey mutton chop sideburns and mustache. He is standing at a table in which he is making sauerkraut. He has one hand in the bowl and is making a circular gesture with the other.
Sandor Katz doing a fermentation workshop at the Monticello Heritage Harvest Festival, 12 September 2015
BornMay 20, 1962 (age 59)
Known forFood writer focusing on DIY fermentation
Notable work
Wild Fermentation (2003)
The Art of Fermentation (2012)

Sandor Ellix Katz (born May 20, 1962) is an American food writer and DIY food activist.

Work[edit source]

A self-described "fermentation fetishist", Katz has taught hundreds of food workshops around the United States, and his book Wild Fermentation (2003) has been called a classic,[1] "the bible for people embarking on DIY projects like sourdough or sauerkraut",[2] and "especially notorious for getting people excited about fermenting food".[3] He was named one of Chow magazine's top "provocateurs, trendsetters, and rabble-rousers" in 2009.[4]

Personal life[edit source]

Born to a Jewish family with origins in Belarus, Katz grew up in New York City on the Upper West Side.[5] He is openly gay,[6] an AIDS survivor,[7] and began his fermentation experimentation while living in a rural, off-the-grid Radical Faerie community in Tennessee.[2][8]

Popular culture[edit source]

Katz was the subject of the 2009 punk rock song "Human(e) Meat (The Flensing of Sandor Katz)", a satirical vegan response to Katz's 2006 chapter on "Vegetarian Ethics and Humane Meat" in The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.

Bibliography[edit source]

References[edit source]

  1. ^ "An interview with underground foodie hero Sandor Katz"Grist Magazine. 17 May 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2009.
  2. Jump up to:a b "On the Hunt for Wild Yeast: Chatting with home fermentation expert Sandor Ellix Katz"CHOW Magazine. 18 March 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  3. ^ "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: An Interview with Sandor Ellix Katz"Healing the Earth radio. 15 August 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2009.
  4. ^ Lessley Anderson (2 November 2009), The CHOW 13: Sandor Katz, p. 10
  5. ^ "Pickling Pioneer Preaches Gospel of Fermentation"The Scroll. 19 September 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  6. ^ Sandor Katz (2006), The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Chelsea Green Publishing, p. 95ISBN 1-933392-11-8
  7. ^ Katz, Sandor. "Who Is Sandorkraut?".
  8. ^ Winborn, George (30 May 2008), "Fermentation Fervor" (PDF)Just Out, p. 43[permanent dead link]

External links[edit source]

2021/06/16

Klein, This Changes Everything (book) - Wikipedia

Spirit Bodymind Gender Ecology Peace Scapbook: Klein, This Changes Everything (book) - Wikipedia

Klein, This Changes Everything (book) - Wikipedia

This Changes Everything (book) - Wikipedia

Amazon.com: Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (Audible Audio Edition): David Christian, Jamie Jackson, Recorded Books: Books

Amazon.com: Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (Audible Audio Edition): David Christian, Jamie Jackson, Recorded Books: Books

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything 
Audible Logo Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
David Christian (Author), Jamie Jackson (Narrator), Recorded Books (Publisher)
4.4 out of 5 stars    692 ratings


A captivating history of the universe - from before the dawn of time through the far reaches of the distant future. 

Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? 

These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. In Origin Story, Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we've come to know as "history". 

By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together - from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond. With stunning insights into the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring, Origin Story boldly reframes our place in the cosmos.
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Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible narration with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of AUD11.01 after you buy the Kindle book.
Kindle from AUD 18.83
Audible Logo Audiobook
AUD 0.00
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Listening Length 12 hours and 23 minutes
Author David Christian
Narrator Jamie Jackson
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date May 22, 2018
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States
Matt Mansfield
5.0 out of 5 stars The Evolution of Our Collective Learning
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2018
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If you enjoy traditional history in terms of investigation, analysis, and debate about specific events and people, you will likely not be satisfied by David Christian’s 2018 work, “Origin Story: A Big History of Everything”.

As the author, a historian with extensive teaching credentials at Macquarie University in Sydney, University of Vermont, San Diego State University, to name some, has pointed out: “… in a globally connected world, there are so many local origin stories competing for people’s trust and attention that they get in one another’s way.”

This is the impetus for Christian to write a “big history” from a much broader perspective of human experience and coincidently to co-found with Bill Gates of Microsoft origin, the Big History Project, a free online syllabus about this topic.

The premise of “Origin Story” is there is a relentless struggle between basic components of the universe: evolution of more complex structures and entropy, the general tendency of matter and energy to return to a simple, disorderly state. And humans are part of this process.

Presumably our capacity for collective learning with an evolved emphasis on precise copying and communication is a unique trait distinct from other living forms. Consequently, we are more self-aware and able to accept responsibility for our impact on the biosphere, for however long we will experience big life.

The author defines the rise of complexity in terms of ”thresholds”, or events when the flow of recorded or theorized experience gained complexity: birth of the universe; first stars glow; new elements created; our sun and solar systems form; earliest life on earth; earliest form of human species; end of last ice age and earliest signs of farming; fossil fuels revolution. The last and future threshold touches on the sustainability of a world order.

An imaginative twist to putting these thresholds and timeline in perspective is dividing the estimated number of years by 1 billion: the “big bang” was 13 years, 8 months ago, while the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 24 days ago, the Roman and Han empires 1 minute ago and the fossil-fuel revolution 6 seconds ago.

The book is divided into four sections: Cosmos; Biosphere; Us; The Future. The writing is conversational and comfortable to follow while providing a level of detail and terminology without overwhelming technicality.

Christian carefully reminds that several chance occurrences, besides the much-discussed “Goldilocks zone”, created opportunities for life, as we know it, to evolve. Geo-thermal core, plate tectonics, critical balancing between carbon, oxygen and other elements, the evolution of DNA beyond RNA, the role of prokaryotes – all are presented in fascinating detail.

One area the book might have explored more was the evolution of the pre-frontal lobe or cortex in the human brain. This is a more recent development and seems to be a major, if not decisive, distinction between humans and other species and a likely basis for self-awareness and consciousness.

As a complementary material for the first two sections, you might want to check out online NOVA’s “Australia’s the First 4 Billion Years’” four-part series that helps visualize some of Christian’s observations.

For the third section covering the rise and impact of complex human interactions beyond farming and hunting, the author references Samuel Noah Kramer’s 1963 work, “The Sumerians” (if it helps, here's the link to my Amazon review of Kramer’s work:
 https://www.amazon.com/review/R37UB92YMPN1U3/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8).

In the same section he makes several important references to Thomas Picketty’s 2014 seminal work, “Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century”, to underscore the human and social impact of the rapid industrial development (again, if it helps, here's the link to my Amazon review of Piketty’s work:
 https://www.amazon.com/review/R3QGVI29BM4HI/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8 ) .

The last section about the future seems more focused as a response to today’s political and social events while leaving aside some of the potentially more impactful long-range human developments: artificial intelligence, mixed reality and quantum computing.

All told, “Origin Story” offers a refreshing way to see our human experience. It may also make you wonder whether, one way or another, as TS Eliot wrote in his 1925 poem, “The Hollow Men”, it will all come to end “not with a bang but a whimper.”
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76 people found this helpful
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Jack Hicks
5.0 out of 5 stars For those who seek wisdom and perspective
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
“Origin Story, A Big History of Everything”, by David Christian, 2018 By any measure the last 75 years, in my lifetime, have seen the largest explosion of knowledge in Human history. For millennia humans have sought the wisdom of the gods; How the universe and humans came to be. I feel very fortunate to have witnessed this epochal achievement. Working as an engineer at the Cape I witnessed the first Pioneer spacecrafts and Apollo moon missions blast off. I sort of realized at the time that we were entering a new age of exploration and technological innovation, but I could have never imagined the discoveries yet to come; Billions of Galaxies discovered by the Hubble Space telescope, Black holes, Gravity waves, Robot vehicles roving on Mars, super computers in phones or the unlocking of the genetic blueprint of life. Almost every field from Astrophysics Physics, Quantum mechanics, Biology, Neurobiology, Genetics, Geology to Paleontology and Paleoanthropology has seen groundbreaking discoveries that have changed our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
Now comes an amazing new book that weaves this knowledge into a surprisingly readable 300-page narrative story of the universe for the last 13 billion years. Up till now to attain this updated knowledge you would have to read separate books or take separate courses in each of the above specialties. Christian takes us on an epochal journey from the first milliseconds of the big bang, the formation of atoms and elements to the structural formation of the universe. From there we are taken to the formation of chemical elements to the formation of the earth and the beginning of life in the form of single celled prokaryotes 3 billion years ago. Photosynthesis, Cyanobacteria, plate tectonics all play a role in making our planet unique in our solar system as the only place hospitable for life. Then evolve the Eukaryotes through a combining of more primitive cells to form a new type of oxygen breathing cell, which make all multicellular animals and us possible. With the evolution of large bodied animals comes the evolution of large brains and consciousness. With the appearance of humans comes sharing and generational transmission of information and technologies. This ability proves crucial to the development of globe changing events such as agriculture and the scientific revolution. Along the way to us there were all sorts of blind alleys, near miss encounters and apocalyptic disaster scenarios that didn’t completely play out just by good luck and serendipity. One such occurrence caused by volcanism, happened 70,000 years ago and brought the number of our species to just 10,000 individuals and almost to the brink of extinction. This makes our life and all life on earth as we see it now a miraculous and beautiful occurrence.
In a sense this book while conveying the history of the universe and human societies always emphasizes throughout the fact that energy flows, the laws of thermodynamics are the fundamental factors operating in the physical universe, biological systems and human civilizations. We learn “wealth never really consists of things; it consists of control over energy flows that make, move, mine and transform things”. Agrarian societies and empires could never bring wealth to a majority of the population because they could never produce enough surplus energy. They could only concentrate wealth in an elite ruling class of perhaps 10%-15% of the population. The discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels in the last 200 years, which are nothing more than reservoirs of ancient sunlight, has engendered a huge explosion in the energy, wealth available to human societies and made possible the almost sevenfold explosion of human population, middle classes and advanced western civilization. However, we learn here that the earth has undergone numerous mass extinctions caused by CO2 induced global warming, the last catastrophic one, over 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum that wiped out over 50% of all genera on earth. That event was caused by a huge explosion of volcanism emitted CO2. By burning fossil fuels and emitting huge quantities of CO2 in the same manner, are we at the beginning of just such an event? Christian emphasizes that we have reached a critical point in the evolution of life on earth where one species, us, now control the fate of our entire ecosystem. We can put into play our knowledge of how the universe works that we have assiduously garnered over the last several hundred years or we can ignore what we know, instead let greed and tribalism reign and plunge our planet into an unknown future of chaos and destruction where our very survival will be at risk. This must be one of the great turning points in history like the invention of agriculture or the discovery of fossil fuels where mankind has no choice but to utilize his innovative abilities and technologies to harness the sun’s energies directly. I don’t think I have ever encountered a book with more knowledge condensed into one place in such a readable form. You want wisdom and perspective? Read this! JACK
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Gary
5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough science
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2018
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This is a great read! You certainly won’t get through it in one sitting, but it is worth the time. I love reading science books, so this was an easy, entertaining book from that perspective.

But this is a history book as well. A big-history book. It kept my attention for the majority of the time and I learned a lot, but I confess to skimming through a bit of the pre-farming history. I may revisit that later.

The last part of the book discusses possible human species futures - the good and bad anthropocene. Two promising documents are referenced - one from the United Nations. The other being the Paris Agreement. Of course, every reputable scientist today recognizes the tragedies of Trump. That’s my obvious comment as this author rightfully keeps his political and religious views out of the book.

I highly recommend this book to those who appreciate the scale of the cosmos and our very small part in its grand scheme.
23 people found this helpful
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tkeithlu
3.0 out of 5 stars A bit too simple, a bit too slick.
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2018
Verified Purchase
Mr. Christian tries to present a smooth history and rationale for human beings as we are today. It's a monumental task attempted by few others. He has rather to pick and choose among competing theories for any number of topics to make it all work, and unfortunately presents those theories as fact, without concern for the uncertainties. It's an engaging read, and would be fun to assign to an anthropology class just to see what arguments ensued.
19 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries
Gazza
4.0 out of 5 stars Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
I bought Origin Story on the basis that it would be an updated version of Hendrik van Loon’s classic history: The Story of Mankind. Personally, I think it doesn’t live up to that volume. For one, it doesn’t have the same wit and humour in the writing as Loon. Nor does it have the childish sketching that accompanies Loon’s work that I have grown so used to, which is something that makes his work so endearing.

Nonetheless, David Christian’s work is bang up to date with current science and knowledge and (like Loon’s ‘Story’) it reads particularly well.

I hope you find my review helpful.
8 people found this helpful
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J. Drew
5.0 out of 5 stars How we came to here,a fascinating tale of big history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
Most history books focus on recent events, military campaigns, kings and queens or political events. They also tend to focus only on events in the last 10,000 years or so. And most focus on events much more recently than that. What I loved about this book is that it starts with the moment the whole universe could be contained in a size less than the dot that finishes this sentence that began with all the light to the energy we needed to form a universe. The moment we now call the Big Bang occurred over 13 billion years ago. It uses this moment as the first threshold to explain the history of the origin of earth and moves through nine more thresholds to tell the story of how we got to here, right now. From this moment, it explains 4 forces including gravity, electromagnetic energy, and quantum mechanics that explain how everything comes together through simple laws of nature. But then explains how atoms work which then come together to form planets. And then 4 1/2 billion years ago, in a swirling dust cloud that formed our sun, shortly after all the planets of our solar system were born and we had the planet Earth. Then from planets and rocks, it then moves through life and mass extinctions (we’ve had at least 5 we know of - the last being the one to wipe out most of the dinosaurs [we still have some relatives of dinosaurs such as birds and chickens]). When it gets to Homo sapiens there is an Interesting moment when the human population was down to just a few ten thousand humans (enough to fill a moderate sized sports stadium) about 70,000 years ago. Our species came close to extinction, possible due to catastrophe that may have been triggered by a massive volcanic eruption on Mount Toba in Indonesia that pumped clouds of soot into the atmosphere, blocking photosynthesis for months or years and endangering many species. We survived and we now have 7.7billion people on the planet. However, all other species of upright ape have also become extinct. The threshold including timelines from billions of years and transformed into a 13 year time frame line to help us get an idea of the deep time is as follows (I always love using my arm to explain to people how much I would need to delete to wipe out the entire existence of humans who ever existed on this planet – it’s literally one swipe at a nail file across the nail of a finger of an outstretched arm or the removal of one layer of paint off the top of the Eiffel Tower):

THRESHOLD 1: Big bang: origin of our universe
13.8 billion years ago - 13 years, 8 months ago
THRESHOLD 2: The first stars begin to glow
13.2 (?) billion years ago - 13 years, 2 months ago
THRESHOLD 3: New elements forged in dying large stars
Continuously from threshold 2 to the present day
THRESHOLD 4: Our sun and solar system form
4.5 billion years ago - 4 years, 6 months ago
THRESHOLD 5: Earliest life on Earth
3.8 billion years ago - 3 years, 9 months ago
The first large organisms on Earth
600 million years ago - 7 months ago
An asteroid wipes oiit the dinosaurs
65 million years ago - 24 days ago
The hominin lineage splits from the chimp lineage
7 million years ago - 2.5 days ago
Homo erectus
2 million years ago - 17 hours ago
THRESHOLD 6; First evidence of our species, Homo sapiens
200,000 years ago - 100 minutes ago
THRESHOLD 7: End of last ice age, beginning of Holoceine, earliest signs of farming
10,000 years ago - 5 minutes ago
First evidence of cities, states, agrarian civilizations
5,000 years ago - 2.5 minutes ago
Roman and Han Empires flourish
2,000 years ago - 1 minute ago
World zones begin to be linked together
500 years ago - 15 seconds ago
THRESHOLD 8: Fossilfuels revoliition begins
200 years ago - 6 seconds ago
The Great Acceleration; humans land on the moon
50 years ago - 1.5 seconds ago
THRESHOLD 9 (?): The Future
A sustainable world order?
100 years in the future? - 3 seconds to go
The sun dies
4.5 billion years in the future - 4 years, 6 months to go

When it moves to the future, understanding the laws of nature to say what will happen to our planet and sun are easy to foretell. The mystery however, regarding the future, is it in the complexity and mystery of the nature of man. That is a much more difficult future to foretell. This is a wonderful book, and I look forward to thinking about this book a lot.
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One person found this helpful
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Paul K.
5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to know everything about how we got here, this is the book to start with.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2019
Verified Purchase
Origin Stories explains the Big Bang and keeps going. It’s the story of the ‘Goldilocks conditions’ needed to reach the 8 thresholds (Big Bang, stars, galaxies, molecules, life, humans, farming and the Anthropocene) that have defined our planet’s history. It makes me wonder at how we got here at all, whilst at the same time realising that ours is just one story within the unimaginable vastness of the universe. How many others might there be? In the introduction David says that as a child he could not make sense of things unless he could place them on some sort of map. This book is intended as the biggest map of them all, to provide a background timeline and context for everything that ever happened in our history. It’s big history. @bighistorypro @originstory #bighistory #booksthatfascinateme #booksiwantmykidstoread

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C Bridges
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 20, 2018
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A fascinating story brilliantly told. Will need to read it again as there is so much to take in.
4 people found this helpful
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Mr O L Rogers
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2019
Verified Purchase
Really good overview from the bing bang to the present.
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