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:

Jeff Burton said...

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.

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

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!

Jeff Burton said...

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.

Jon said...

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.)