Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Recovering from Historical Amnesia

Cicero: "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."
Churchill (not Ward): "Study history. Study history."

Where to start? Read Paul Johnson.

4 comments:

  1. Sadly, one of his best, The Birth of the Modern, is out of print. Happily, we live in the age of half.com. Maybe not so happily for authors' royalties.

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  2. Jeff:

    Ouch, that link hurts! Buy the new copy of Truth Decay, of course!

    I know a used book store with three copies of "Birth," so I better get one!

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  3. I did, out of affection for the Curmudgeon. The Birth of the Modern is one of those rare books that you can pick up and open to a random page and start reading - and find yourself still reading an hour later.

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  4. I read Modern Times about a year ago. Very interesting book, and I learned a plethora of new words! (Plethora was not one of them. My favorite, though, was degringolade.)

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