“I think, therefore I am” is only the beginning of the story.
The work of the French rationalist is best understood within the politics of the 17th century, as cogently presented here for the non-philosopher.
Born in 1596, Descartes reached adulthood at the start of the Thirty Years’ War, the bloody European conflict rooted in religious clashes between Protestants and Catholics. Born Catholic and educated in the Jesuit tradition, Descartes spent some time seeking a suitable career—perhaps as lawyer, perhaps as engineer. As the latter, he traveled throughout Europe as a military consultant, although Grayling suggests provocatively that Descartes may have served as a spy. The discovery of clandestine activities, the author argues, may explain why Descartes absconded to the Netherlands (tolerant and out-of-the-way) in 1628 and began his purely intellectual investigations. Yet, in the charged atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation, to be a man of science was no small risk. A decade earlier, Galileo had been excommunicated for publishing evidence supporting the Copernican model of the solar system. Descartes, mindful of these difficulties and a devout Catholic, sought to separate matters of faith from matters of reason. For the scientific revolution to continue, he needed to wipe the slate clean and start over, and thus he conceived his Method of Doubt. Much of his life in the Netherlands was taken up with the careful and measured working out of his ideas on mathematics, logic, optics, physics, medicine and many other areas of rational inquiry. He also slept ten hours a day, lingering in bed until noon, and had an affinity for cross-eyed women. After the publication of his work, Descartes was arrogant to a fault in defending his ideas. Perhaps too vain in later years, his commission to personally tutor the Queen of Sweden led to his death from pneumonia one Scandinavian winter.
“I think, therefore I am” is only the beginning of the story.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8027-1501-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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