1 comments about Centred in Truth (Volumes 1 & 2).

1. Swami Nitya-swarup-ananda (1899-1992) was a famous and brilliant monk of the Ramakrishna Order who founded and developed the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Calcutta, India. Centered In Truth is an outstanding two volume testament to his life and wisdom. Volume One (654 pages) presents his fascinating biography, including two visits to the United States. Volume Two (474 pages) is collection of his personal writings, commentaries, reminiscences, and memorial lecture programmes in his honor. Shelley Brown became a Vedantist in 1953 and began a spiritual dialogue with Swami Nitya-swarup-ananda that continued until the day he died and therefore is the perfect choice for presenting this great man's life, thought, and accomplishments to a western readership. Highly Recommended.

5 comments about I Give You My Life.

1. Easy to read and clearly written autobiography of a woman, who's life led here from nazi prosecution during the second world war through many intermediate states to finally becoming a buddhist nun of theravada buddhism. The english translation of the german original does not seem (to me) to be as good as it could be, but this should not be a reason not to read it. One might like to know, that half of the book describes Khema's regular life and that spiritual features are only showing up rather late. After she described so many details of her regular life, I was missing more information about her spiritual struggles after she became buddhist up to the point when she gained deeper meditative insights. The entire story is written from a very detached point of view. Maybe a buddhist ideal, but rather caused by Khema's experiences during the war. Nevertheless, the book is a great reading and one learns a lot about her times, herself and how a spiritual life can turn regular life upside down.



2. i've read some of her other instructional books and have always found them to be very helpful . that sort of piqued my interest in the person itself , which is why i bought this book .

   i hadn't quite expected to read about someone with such a florid history . i half expected her to be someone with a dreary life bordering on the mundane . she's really compressed a great deal into that life of hers .

   more importantly , she speaks of herself in a matter of fact manner . it is this detached manner that i found enlightening . i recommend this book to others because i think its inspirational . which one of us doesn't need some inspiration every now and then .




3. Ayya Khema (1923-1997)played an important role in the ongoing revival of Western interest in Buddhism. Her autobiography "I give you my Life" (1997), completed just before her death, tells the story of the development of her commitment to Buddhism and spirituality and of her decision at age 55 to become a Buddhist nun. Each chapter in her brief book is introduced by a verse from the Dhammapada, a seminal Buddhist scriptural text consisting of short poems, which illuminates in a telling way the portion of her life under discussion.

   Ayya Khema ("Ayya" is an honorific title for Buddhist nuns while "Khema" was the name of a nun during the Buddha's lifetime) was born Ilse Kussel in 1923 in Berlin to a prosperous, assimilated Jewish family. The family fled Germany before the Holocaust and Ilse, as a teenager, travelled by steamer to Glasgow, Scotland before joining her family shortly thereafter in Shanghai. She married in her late teens and travelled to California with her husband where she worked in a bank, had two children, and appeared settled into an American middle-class life. As a result, she tells us, of a deepening sense of spiritual unrest, she divorced her husband and married a childhood acquaintance named Gerd, whose family had also fled the Holocaust. She and Gern lived a wandering type of life in South America and Asia, where her husband was an engineer. The couple ultimately settled in Australia, bought a farm and raised shetland ponies. This marriage too ended with Ilse's, continued search for spiritual wisdom and her growing interest in meditation. Ilse became a Buddhist nun at the age of 55, helped establish three Buddhist convents in Sri Lanka, Australia, and Germany, became a meditation master, worked ceaselessly to revive the Buddhist order of nuns, and wrote prolifically about Buddhism.

   Ayya Khema lived an inspiring and full life on many levels and she tells her story well. Apart from her decision to become a nun, I learned a great deal from her willingness to make a radical change in mid-life. It is important to see how people may change and develop throughout their lives, and I was moved to see this realized in Ayya Khema's story.

   In many ways, Ayya Khema's autobiography radiates sincerity and purpose and fulfills its goal of speaking directly to the reader. This is especially true in her introduction and in the sections of her book following her ordination where she explains what the Buddhist path has meant to her. The final pages of the book, written when Ayya Khema knew she would soon die, have a rare immediacy and poignancy.

   Most autobiographies conceal as much about their subject as they reveal, and Ayya Khema's autobiography is no exception. The book gives a good picture of the externals of Ilse Kussel's life but, I thought, too little of what was going on inside. I found myself wanting to know more about Ilse's two marriages and the reasons for their failures. There is a brief discussion of Ilse's attempt to recover her spirituality through Judaism, and I would have liked to hear more. Beyond references to the suffering of life and to the inevitability of change, I would have liked more detail of Ilse's early study of spiritual texts. And I would have liked more details on the course she pursued during her meditation retreats and on what it was she learned from the Indian and Buddhist masters she reveres as her teachers.

   This autobiography shows effectively Ilse Kussel's transformation into Ayya Khema. It shows what was important to Ayya Khema when she became a nun and how she worked to realize herself as a Buddhist nun. We see Ilse Kussel/Ayya Khema througout her life as an intelligent strong-willed and determined woman. I still do not fully understand, after reading this inspiring story, the internal process by which Isle Kussel became transformed into Ayya Khema.




4. Ilse Kussel's, life covers over half of this autobiographical book, the remainder is the life of Ayya Khema; both lives are well worth reading.
   
   The 'death' of Ilse (and the birth of Ayya Khema and the love for the children) is connected with letting go of her two children. She writes beautifully:
   
   "My love for them did not depend on their being alive; on their living the way I wanted them to; on from their side, feeling connected to me, on their being grateful to me, or on their being 'well-behaved'. All that no longer mattered."
   
   This for me is the highlight in the book; what follows in the life of Ayya with her teaching and with the establishment of various monasteries and centres was made possible by this kind of detatchment.



5. I have read all of Ayya Khemas other books and many of her Dhamma talks on Buddhanet.net but this book is written from the heart of Ayya Khema descibing her and her family's incredible journey from Nazi Germany to Shanghai, to US then to South America and finally her journey to the far east and back to Germany where she established Buddha Haus. This is such a well written book that I simply could not put it down and felt her genuine sense wanting to give us her life on every page. I felt connected to sister Khema from the first to last page. I highly recommend it. Floyd in Idaho

5 comments about Descartes's Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe.

1. I'm a Mechanical Engineer with enough Mathematics and Philosophy study in my past to have a basic understanding of Descartes. I went into the book with no knowledge of Aczel, the secret notebook, or of the details of Descartes life. With that said I found the book to be great. I walked away understanding much more of Descartes' life and studies. I feel the secret notebook was addressed fairly well through out hinting that it existed through Descartes' fear of publishing. We know the secret notebook is lost to time and very little of it is known, so I'm not sure that we can expect the detail that some reviewers are demanding. All in all I liked it. Fine, if you are a mathematics or Descartes scholar you will not learn much here. But for 99.9% of the population, you will learn of a great Mathematician and Philosopher. Thanks Aczel.



2. When one reads a book titled "Descartes's Secret Notebook," one expects a few things: a) information about Descartes, b) information about the secret notebook. But Aczel does a slipshod job of presenting both to us.
   
   First, information about Descartes. What biographical information we can find within this book we can find on the internet in greater abundance and depth. I see no reason to buy this book if a) there are many points of inaccuracy with regard to facts in this book, b) what can be found here can already be found on the net.
   
   Second, the secret notebook. We expect to see the links between Rosicrucian teachings and Descartes's notebook, but what we find is the links between Descartes' life and Rosicrucian teachings, and that between Leibniz's beliefs and Descartes' notebook. So Aczel does not offer us what he promises when he claims a connection between the notebook and Rosicrucian teachings.
   
   Besides, why should I buy this book when it is a poor summary of a 1987 article by Pierre Costabel? Aczel should be ashamed.
   
   And if the Wikiproduct report at the bottom of this page is true (and evidence suggests that this is so), then Aczel should be as ashamed of his lack of integrity as he should be at his lack of scholarship.



3. It's no surprise that this book wasn't published by an academic press, because no peer review process could possibly have permitted Aczel so completely to misrepresent the contents of Descartes' `secret notebook.' When he purports to be describing the theorem Descartes discovered, Aczel is actually describing work that was done by Euler more than a century later.
   
   One of the `Featured Reviewers' at this site says Aczel "has a talent for explaining mathematical ideas and formulas that might seem daunting to the lay reader." But how can the `lay reader,' including this reviewer, assess how good well he's explaining the material unless he is already familiar with it? Otherwise, an `expert' like Aczel can fabricate his story, the `lay reader' will never be the wiser.
   
   In about 1750 Euler proved that if you count up the number V of vertices of a convex polyhedron, the number E of edges and the number F of faces, then V - E + F is always equal to 2. This is the theorem Aczel attributes to Descartes in the last 2 chapters of his book, a book which is otherwise just a rehash of old biographies of Descartes.
   
   What Descartes actually proved is this: take the same convex polyhedron, calculate the angle deficiency at each vertex and sum these up - the answer is always 8 right angles (720 degrees). What's an angle deficiency? It's the sum of all the plane angles that meet at a given vertex, subtracted from 360. Let's take the octahedron as an example: at each of its vertices, four equilateral triangles meet. So the angle deficiency is [360 - (60 + 60 + 60 + 60)], which is 120 degrees. Since an octahedron has 6 identical vertices, the sum of the angle deficiencies is 6x120 = 720 degrees, or 8 right angles. The octahedron is only one particular case; this works equally well for any convex solid figure. Try it yourself for a cube, where 8x90 = 720.
   
   Well, these two theorems are certainly very different results, but in the late 1800s, after Descartes notebook was re-discovered, people realized that you could deduce Euler's theorem from Descartes theorem. As a result, in the early 20th century some French chauvinists renamed Euler's formula for Descartes.
   
   There is no evidence that Euler ever saw Descartes notebook, although Aczel fabricates a `fact' to make it seem like he did. There is no evidence that Euler ever visited Hanover.
   
   Now the real facts would make a really good story for a popular math book. A real master of the genre, like William Dunham, Simon Singh or Eli Maor, would explain both Descartes' theorem and Euler's theorem to their audience and then demonstrate the logical equivalence of the two.
   
   Aczel is apparently incapable of doing this, or at least was unwilling to do the real work that it would involve. Instead, he describes Euler's theorem where he claims to be describing Descartes' notebook. Specifically, he claims that Descartes counted the edges of a polyhedron, which he most certainly did not. Euler was the first person ever to consider the edge of a polyhedron as an item of mathematical interest, so that he actually had to coin a Latin word (acies) for it.
   
   As is well documented in other reviews: (1) most of this book is a re-hash of various biographies of Descartes and 90% of it has nothing to do with `secret notebook,' and (2) it is absolutely loaded with factual errors about mathematics and the history of mathematics.
   
   What's much worse is the tiny portion that does cover the notebook itself is an amazingly inaccurate and even dishonest misrepresentation of what Descartes really did. Shame, shame, shame.



4. I've enjoyed several other Aczel works: Fermat's Last Theorem, God's Equation, Mystery of the Aleph, and I struggled mightily to get through this one, but it's just too dull. Blah, blah, blah, then this clown wrote to that one and said meaningless things; blah, blah, blah, these phrases from this ancient manuscript appeared in this person's letters, proving he was influenced by it. Blech.



5. The very fact that the German polymath Leibniz sat down to transcribe pages of a "secret notebook" written by Rene Descartes could send chills up the spine of any fan of these superstars of the Enlightenment, and indeed that is exactly what happened to me. I was so intrigued by the title that I pre-ordered this book and waited for it to arrive in Japan with a kid on Christmas eve kind of feeling. But after I devoured it in one sitting, I found myself wondering how this mishmash of potted biographies and wobbly argumentation (Descartes was in such and such a city at the same time as such and such a reputed Rosicrucian was passing through the same city, therefore Descartes was a Rosicrucian), could add up to a book to be taken seriously. I learned that Descartes might have been poisoned, that he might have fathered a child by a mistress, that maybe he routed a boat-load of pirates all by his Popeye self, which would have made him a considerable scrapper if it were true. Leibniz comes in for an even more nebulous portrait as he glides through the pages, a mere excuse for the plot to ramble on. Finally, at the end of the book we're allowed to look over Leibniz's shoulder as he decrypts and transcribes (in record time!) an equation that would later be rediscovered by Euler, the great mathematician and associate of Gauss, the Beethoven of pure math. Yes, this is remarkable stuff, but it's really not explained in enough depth before Aczel attempts to stretch the significance of Descartes' discovery into a hyper-Einsteinian cosmological intuition of the nature of the dimensional structuring of the universe itself--a truly breathtaking, and--a truly unwarranted--leap. Add to this mix the halting, spavined style that hobbles the narrative and you have what resembles a one trick pony of a book that will leave you hoping for a Native Dancer to canter by some day.

No comments about The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall.

3 comments about His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy).

1. As a Peircean supporter of personal inquiry I can't in good conscience write a traditional "review" like the Kirkus one which dominates this page. I write to encourage everybody to disregard the Kirkus comments and explore His Glassy Essence (and their own, in turn) for themselves.

   Having read the correspondence between Ketner and Percy in Thief of Peirce, I know that Percy commissioned Ketner to write this volume. That said, I believe that Charles S Peirce, Walker Percy, and Kenneth L. Ketner are all speaking to any person whose interests run toward open-minded, evaluative, and exploratory inquiry into Life. What better way to discover your own Way than to see it in the life of another, namely Peirce.

   Personally, I have no doubt in my heart that Percy would be pleased with Ketner's first installment of the life of CS Peirce. But, by all means, don't take anyone's word for it --- be Percy's sovereign wayfarer, pick up a copy of HGE, and discover Peirce's transformative power for you own self!




2. For me the book, "His Glassy Essence," has been invaluable. Ketner has pulled together information about Peirce's early life that I could not possibly have gotten to on my own. Since I am not attached to any institution, I do not have access to any unpublished documents. I am not sure I would have been able to find the information Ketner has laid out in this book even if I had such access. He has pulled together a great deal of information from diverse sources and put these scattered pieces together in chronological and contextual order.

   This book has been immensely helpful to me for coming to understand the provenance of Peirce's pragmatism. Now, it is obvious to me that there was no abrupt beginning to the development of Peirce's pragmatic theory. Now that I know of his early exposure to qualitative discernment and aesthetics, I can identify these as central to the evolution of his theory of abduction-something I have suspected all along, but had been unable to nail down because of the lack of a chronological and contextual framework for Peirce's early life.

   The author did a fine job of referencing information, providing page by page notes at the end of the book. These references were noted in such a way that they do not interfere with the reading of the text--which unfolds in a story-like way, enabling me to see how Peirce fit within his context. The biographical and temperamental information concerning Peirce's father, for example, fleshed out the cultural and familial milieu in which he was raised-seemingly as a crown prince of the intellectual world for which his father was a sort of king.

   Although there are minor discrepancies (such as a brother who seems to have been left out)and occasional confusions when following the story line, I think that this book is going to be very useful for anyone wanting to know about the early Peirce. I am finding "His Glassy Essence" especially useful as a reference tool. I suspect that other independent researchers, like myself, who are working with Peirce's ideas, but do not have access to unpublished materials by or about him will find this book useful as well.




3. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 -1914) was an eccentric American genius and the founder of the philosophy generally known as pragmatism. A difficult, erratic, and sometimes violent man, he was denied in his attempts to secure an academic position and spent the last several years of his life in near isolation at his home, called Arisbe, near Milford, Pennsylvania. Peirce may be America's most significant philosopher. Yet he never produced a book. His reputation, insofar as it is based on his written work, is based on essays he wrote throughout his life and on large manuscripts which his admirers saw through to publication beginning shortly after his death.

   Professor Kenneth Ketner, the author of this "autobiography" of Peirce, is an acknoledged authority on Peirce's life and thought. He calls this book, "His Glassy Essence" an "autobiography" because it is based in large part upon a selection of Peirce's writings and letters arranged to tell the story of his life. As Professor Ketner states, however, the book is also in part fiction. It includes three fictitious characters, the narrator, Ike, a writer of mysteries, his wife Betsey, a nurse, and Roy, a Harvard PhD in philosophy who allegedly knew and studied with Peirce. The story line involves Ike taking an interest in Peirce based upon an old box of Peirce's papers that Betsey has inherited. Roy comes into the story to provide information about Peirce and, not accidentally, some excellent discussions on the nature of philosophy.

   The mechanism creaks at times. The story line is artificial although Roy has many insightful things to say in commenting on Peirce. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the account of Peirce because many of his letters and essays seem to be melded together from sources written at different times and places. Ketner's protestations notwithstanding, it is difficult to be convinced of the accuracy of the account presented here as scholarly biography. Finally, this book covers essentially only the first 28 years of Peirce's life (with forwards to his death and to some of his subsequent writings.) There are two promised sequels which are to continue the story through the remainder of Peirce's life.

   For all the difficulties, I came away from this book with a better understanding of Peirce and some inkling of the development of his thought. Peirce's own distinctive ideas beging to be developed only in the last third or so of this book. The earlier sections deal largely with Peirce's years in college when he was deeply under the influence of Kant.

   The book makes a good case that Peirce's work is narrowed unduly when he is viewed simply as one of the first American pragmatists. He was in fact a philosopher in the large manner concerned about science, about logic and categories in an expansive sense of these terms, and about God. He was an empiricist in the broadest sense that William James developed with his term "radical empiricism". I also see strong parallels in the account of Peirce given in this book to Husserl's phenomenology.

   Peirce tought the distinction between knowledge, or the accumulation of facts, and wisdom and meaning which cannot be learned from the books. He developed the philosophy of signs called semiotics and invented a personal and highly idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, including terms such as "Cenopythagoreanism" (see page 342) which stretch the casual reader' patience and may stretch the more serious reader's mind.

   This book gives an excellent picture of the philosophic mind, in the person of Charles Peirce, and of the serious and consuming nature of philosophic inquiry. It is not a book to read for a full account either of Peirce's life or his thought. It does capture something of the spirit of the man and the thinker.

   Readers who want a historically based account of Peirce and his times might enjoy "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand. Ketner's book is cited in the references for Menand and it covers much of the same ground, Peirce's life, his relationship to his father, the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, the metaphysical club which met briefly at Harvard in the 1870s, the effect of the Civil War on American pragmatism, and much else. The distinctive value of Ketner's book, I think, is that for all its problems it will allow the reader to see Peirce from the inside out.

1 comments about Singing in the Fire; Stories of Women in Philosophy.

1. Great collection of essays by established women philosophers (from both analytic and continental traditions). To this phd student in an analytic program, this book has been a godsend. It's both encouraged me (because some things *have* improved) and validated some of my own experiences (because some things haven't changed). What I took home from this book--women who succeed in philosophy do so because they learn to immerse themselves in their work and to negotiate the conflicts between their personal and professional identities.
   
   A big thanks to Linda Alcoff for this.

2 comments about Three Women in Dark Times: Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.

1. I am no philosopher, but have read the works of the three women who are the subjects of the book.
   I was hoping to put the three lives into the context of the intellectual and social world they lived in, and how and why they made their individual decisions on philosophy, religion, and their approach to the questions posed by both Nazism and the feminist movement.
   But little detail is given about the intellectual life. We are told the names of their mentors: but not any details of what these mentors taught (a major flaw for the non philosophy student who is not familiar with Heddiger etc.).
   At the same time, except for some fine passages on Simone Weil, there is little detail on the inner lives of the women: we see only the outline of their parallel lives, often mixed together in a confusing manner. Arendt's affair with her professor, a subject recently treated in detail in a recent Atlantic magazine article, is given one sentence. Stein converts, with no more detail on her inner life than one could read in a blurb in the Catholic encyclopedia.
   In summary, the author fails to provide details for the novice to understand the lives of these women, but does not go into sufficient depth for a philosophy student to learn anything new.
   However, the passages on Simone Weil are an exception to my criticism. I did learn a lot about both her writings and why she thought and wrote her famous letters.



2. This is not an easy book. It is a glance into the lives of 3 women, Hanna Arendt, Simone Weil, and Edith Stein, each of Jewish descent and, in particular, at the response each one made to Nazism. There is a review of each woman's life and her career. A lot of space is given to the education of these women, which is especially interesting since each studied under some of the biggest names in philosophy in the 20th century. It is not easy to follow, however, unless you have some basic knowledge of Heidegger, Jaspers, Alain, Husserl. But it is still interesting. Each of these women chose a different response (not just to nazism, but to the world, actually). Arendt became strongly Zionist, and an author of wonderful books; Simone Weil, strangely at odds with her heritage, but whose essays are marvels of clarity, chose a strange path of starvation (whatever the philosophical underpinnings, one wonders about anorexia); Edith Stein converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun, devoting her life to prayer (though still writing). Each of these responses is fascinating in its own right. I highly recommend this difficult, but rewarding book.

5 comments about The Lady Cornaro: Pride and Prodigy of Venice.

1. This book is a must-read for anyone who has studied under the Cornaro Window in Thompson Library at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. As you may know, the stunning Cornaro Window at Vassar celebrates Lady Elena Cornaro, the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D (University of Padua in 1678). This book describes Elena's life in 17th century Venice, including her relationships with her parents, teachers, and friends. It was refreshing to read a biography about a humble and formidable person. I highly recommend The Lady Cornaro - Pride and Prodigy of Venice.



2. Although it is unlikely to happen, Elena Cornaro really should be nominated one of the hundred most important people of the last thousand years. In this carefully researched and highly readable book, Jane Howard Guernsey has successfully reconstructed the story of the Lady Cornaro's astonishing achievements and raised the questions they invite. The author has added to the recoverable information about the life of "The Cornaro," as she was affectionately known to her fellow Venetians, valuable contextual details about the life and milieu of Venice and Padua and about her tutors and contemporaries. These details elucidate both the uniqueness of the opportunities granted her and the enormous stress under which she lived as she labored to do the will of her earthly and her heavenly fathers. (Professor Rizzo's more extensive review of "The Lady Cornaro: Pride and Prodigy of Venice" may be found in "Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature," Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 2000.)



3. I recently noticed that the popular "Book Lover's Page-a-Day Calendar" chose to include THE LADY CORNARO as its featured "star" for December 11, 2002.
   

   "You've probably never heard of Elena Cornaro," observes the calendar entry, "yet she holds a unique place in history. In 1678, she became the first woman in Europe to receive a Ph.D. Jane Howard Guernsey's book is the first full-length biography of this remarkably accomplished woman . . . an inspiring story."
   

   I believe that it is highly appropriate for THE LADY CORNARO to be included in a book lover's daily calendar described as "365 days of good authors, good books and good reading . . . the calendar of passionate recommendations." Truly, THE LADY CORNARO is an outstanding book, worthy of a passionate recommendation!




4. "This well-researched biography of the first woman to earn a university degree...conveys the majesty of the Italian baroque period and [the Lady Cornaro's] astonishing scholarship." (Donald Miller, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Senior Editor)



5. Here is a typical book that was written with a preconceived opinion. Biased. The author decided that Lady Cornaro was a prodigy and a genius and sure, she wanted to prove her point. However, after struggling with the text what I feel borders on disgust.
   
   First of all, Lady Cornaro was no prodigy. She was nothing but a poor, used child, an instrument in her ambitious father's hands. Thus the title of the book is wrong. It should have been dedicated to Gianbattista and life in the 17th century Venice.
   
   Among all the information, the least is said about Elena herself. I doubt her immense intelligence. We are said that she spoke a foreign language like a native. In a very short time and with no accent ? That is not possible if the person has never spent some time in the country where that language is spoken. That was true then just as it is true today. Having a native speaker as a teacher means nothing. And being able to translate works in early twenties from a language she started learning at the age of eight does her image of a genius more harm than good. Then "Elena's ability to foretell things was widely discussed, and there were numerous testimonies to the public's admiration for her." (p.193). Something is very wrong with this sentence. Now, suddenly, she is not just a scholar but also a clairvoyant!!!! The author did not mention this anywhere else in the book so it was not an important comment. But again, I have a feeling that she needed more proof for Elena's alleged superiority.
   Not one of her achievements (that we know of - we shouldn't forget that, unfortunately, she destroyed a large number of her writings) is unusual and grand. The fact that she was the first woman to get a university degree (funny how it immediately translates to a Phd!!!) means only that she had the CHANCE to defend her knowledge - something that was, as we saw, denied to other female scholars. The author says (exclamation marks!!) that the next woman to be awarded the degree got it more than 50 years later!!! That is no reason to applaud Elena. It is rather a sad information on the treatment and negligence of women. Who knows what potential was there in her siblings? Maybe they too would have become "geniuses" had Gianbattista invested equal time and money in their education. We should also be careful not to forget that he was a patron of several academies - of course they would love to see his daughter well educated as long as his coffers were available to them! Gianbatista's striving to get his sons in Libro d'Oro, his immense enthusiasm and political goals, propaganda tool that Elena was in his hands, finally costed her her life. But that propaganda made her famous.

3 comments about Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon.

1. While the book starts slowly with what seems to be an overly detailed account of Bacon's family and their activities, it is a clear headed and balanced account of a man who achieved fame across the centuries, as well as in his own time---but never great virtue, character or happiness in his own life. It is quite readable, and even engrossing in the second half. Scholars will appreciate the careful documentation and extensive reference to sources and supporting materials.



2. A powerhouse of academic scholarship, this book is the most tedious and boring biography I have ever read. Too many pages on Bacon's political career, too little on his scientific achievements.



3. This book is in many ways superb. The writing is smooth, the judgments intelligently based on evidence, the archival research prodigious. But it leaves one with oddly little sense of Bacon the man. Partly that's because the authors don't speculate, confining themselves to the historical record. That's a great virtue, but it also means we never get a sense of Bacon's relations with his wife, or even his sexuality. We hear about his chronically poor health, but not what his symptoms suggest to a modern doctor. Also, the authors don't examine Bacon's writings in any sort of detail. This is definitely a "life and times", not a "life and letters."
   
   The authors rarely step back to give an overall picture. There are no scene-setting panoramas, no authorial intrusions to explain why, for example, they decided to go into such detail about the activities of Bacon's brother Anthony. One gathers that the authors believe Anthony and Francis were working closely together, but I would have liked to have their thinking explained more fully. (Although Anthony is practically the main character of the first quarter of the book, his death is mentioned only in passing.)
   
   These criticisms reflect my occasional irritation with the book, but they don't detract from the authors' tremendous achievement. If the authors had included everything I missed, the book would have been quite a bit fatter, and that would have been a negative, too. As it is, the book is (just barely) small enough to be read without risk of injury, unlike so many other modern biographies.
   
   The book contains a great deal about Bacon's political activities, as another reviewer has noted. That's because a great deal of Bacon's life was occupied with political activities. If all you want to read about is Bacon's scientific works, you shouldn't read a biography of their author. In the case of Isaac Newton, there is practically no difference between the life and the scientific work. But in Bacon's case, there is not only a difference but a dichotomy. He was a successful lawyer and politician who also happened to kick-start the Scientific Revolution.
   
   To summarize, Hostage to Fortune provides all the details, but not the outline. My advice would be to familiarize yourself with the basic course of Bacon's life and his achievements before reading this book, so you can fully appreciate its richness.

2 comments about The Time of My Life: An Autobiography.

1. An interesting book, a bit too long, and a very bad text-formatting job. One would expect much better from MIT press.



2. This autobiography is only `a factual account of external things'.
   It is a summing up of the author's travel experiences and symposia reminiscences.
   It contains only very superficial sketches of his family life and professional career and nearly nothing about his philosophical work or about discussions with colleagues.
   There are no emotions, no comments on political or social events, on war or peace. Nothing.
   
   I cannot recommend this book.
   
   For an introduction to the work of Quine, I recommend an interview with Bryan Magee published in `Talking Philosophy: dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers.'