The War on the Poor by Éric VuillardTranslation by Mark PolizzottiOther Press, 2020 I have been reading a few books about the Peasants’ War of 1524-25, a somewhat timely endeavor since we’re at the 500 year mark of the war’s culmination. I was going to post on one book I thought extremely well done and […]
Month: 1 year ago
At the risk of sounding like I’m shilling for yet another PBS show, I highly recommend Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy currently on PBS. Narrator Yo-Yo Ma describes du Pré as the “greatest instrumentalist of the 20th century.” While obviously a debatable opinion, her virtuosity on the cello is not. Some of the descriptions […]
This book tells the story of Cicero and his rise to prominence as a trial lawyer, from his debut in the courts in the late 80s BC to his death nearly four decades later. Cicero’s successful defense of many influential men accused of murder, extortion, and other crimes earned him wealth, favors to call in, […]
Phocion (402–318 BCE) won Athens’s highest public office by direct democratic election an unmatched forty-five times and was officially honored as a “Useful Citizen.” A student at Plato’s Academy, Phocion gained influence and power during a time when Athens faced multiple crises stemming from Macedonia’s emergence as an international power under Philip II and his […]
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres Sunday, March 23, 2025 on PBS. More about the show can be found here. I thought the first season of Wolf Hall, which covered Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, extremely well done. I didn’t read those books until after seeing the show and […]
This book is decidedly not a work of scholarship, stubbornly not. It offers a holistic interpretation of Plato’s Symposium, as is conventional among scholarly books, but departs by presenting it as a series of musings, beginning with the puzzles of the dialogue’s various parts, long perplexing to me, and ascending therefrom in the direction of […]
The sky is our songand we begin with Zeus, for men cannot speakwithout giving Him names. The streets are filled,the sea and its harbors are flooded with Zeus,and in Him we move and have all our being.For we are His children, and He blesses our racewith beneficent signs, and wakes man to his work,directing his […]
This is a study of the study, the personal workspace where we think, read, and write. I argue for the following: Transhistorically, our inner lives are shaped by our interior spaces. Historically, the studiolo was created in the Renaissance. Conceptually, the studiolo is a pharmakon, a cure or poison for the soul. In its highest aspirations, the studiolo, as […]
I’ve been reading Andrew Hui’s The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries and the pictures in the book include plates showing Montaigne’s chateau tower and the inscriptions in the tower library. All of which reminded me of Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House in Carmel. I toured it twice when living near it and enjoyed both […]