[rpaid]

Highly recommend this book by historian William Manchester. He examines the medieval mind and draws a contrast to the Renaissance’s embrace of reason. 

[AdamSchmitz]

I second this recommendation. This book was great and gives a glimpse into a world without maps, books, or, most importantly, reason.

[RobertBarnes]

I went to Amazon and perused through the book: it is all over the map, pun intended!  If you have ADHD and like your topics to come fast and hard then read this book!   Maybe it gets better in the chapters they do not show.

[TonyWhite]

I agree with this recommendation. The book gives a very clear presentation of the psychology and sense-of-life of the time, e.g., that it was a “wild and licentious age” to use Dr. Peikoff’s phrase from his History of Philosophy lecture series (if I recall it correctly).  The book is not that strong on the intellectual history of the time; instead it focuses on the changing attitudes and psychologies of the time.

[EdPowell]

I heartily recommend this book as well.  In addition, all of Manchester’s works are phenomenally well written.  I particularly enjoyed his three volume masterwork biography of Winston Churchill, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Volume 1: Visions of Glory, Volume 2: Alone, Volume 3: Defender of the Realm.”  Extremely readable, exciting, and moving all in one.  His memoir of his service in WWII, “Goodbye Darkness” is a remarkable look into the war from a single soldier’s point of view.  Finally, his biography of Douglas MacArthur, “American Caesar” gave me a new appreciation of the greatest general in American history, though he is seldom credited as such.

[CedarBristol]

I will eventually read all of Manchester’s work.

The Arms of Krupp is a great look at how European culture, Steel, and warfare changed from the 19th to 20th centuries.

Disturber of the Peace is a biography of HL Mencken, who I don’t think I will like that much as a writer when I get around to reading him, but the story of his life is the story of what was happening intellectually in America through the teens and twenties. It’s interesting that the Baltimore Sun newspaper brought up Mencken, William Manchester, and David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire

One great point Manchester makes in American Caesar, and again in the Krupp book is how the need to justify the loss of life in war distorts the historical understanding of it. Because MacArthur took some key objectives in the South Pacific with no loss of life, those victories get a lot less ink than Guadalcanal or some other place, and Macarthur’s achievements overall get celebrated less than they deserve because he lost fewer lives in the process

[editorandwriter]

Re: Cedar Bristol’s post 105113 of 10/25/14

Try Mencken’s Chrestomathy (his best picks of his work, a collection published late in his career); for example, his take-down of Veblen. Mencken is a brilliantly imaginative stylist, often funny, and although a mixed bag philosophically. he offers a lot to like. 

/sb

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