A few things, but one of them Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. It's more of a daily read, not a through, hour plus long read. You can see I have it opened on a stand, and for about thirty minutes I read. The book is really more a philosophy of history than a history. So far it's very enjoyable. I feel like such a scholar! However, that is what I am reading, along with War and Peace, but I will leave that until next time.
Regarding the book, I agree with Toynbee that history is not based on nations, so much as universal nature. At least I gather that from a brief skim of Wikipedia. It is important to understand history on more than a factual level, such as when the Declaration of Independence was signed, or when Lincoln was assassinated. It is important to not only know the, let us call it local causes and factors, but the universal, archetypal factors that contribute to such a thing. The assassination of Caesar weighs in obviously, but that is merely a comparison. The question is the tyranny or perceived tyranny of Lincoln's leadership; for in these things it does not matter if he was truly a tyrant, anymore than it matters is Caesar was. Brutus thought Caesar was, and John Wilkes Booth thought....well, you see what I am getting at, and that seems to be what Toynbee wants us to understand about history.
This books is massive--the book I have, as you can see, is huge. It was published in twelve volumes, and this is all of them. Much of it is pictures though! Yay! A picture book! Seriously, but the images are a means to convey the philosophy. Relative paintings, icons, photographs of the matter that is at hand.
If you like history, Toynbee is a must. His work is massive, but you need not read it in his entirety. It can be there on your bookshelf to make you look smart. Or une simple décoration! No, a thing you look at from time to time if nothing else.
--B.
PS...Also reading, though I may have to put it down for other things, Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome. I think it is a book more akin to Toynbee's idea of the study of history.
No comments:
Post a Comment