Customer Reviews:
Cream of the Crop.......2006-07-09
I read Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" way back yonder and was impressed with it. This work far surpasses that book and is one of the most lucid I have read about the giants of astronomy. This book ought to be required reading!
A Masterwork.......2006-01-23
Koestler has written a superb summary of the early history of science. The views expressed are certainly partial but it is almost impossible not to be transported by Koestler's prose into a world inhabited by Aristotle, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. It is a wonderful exploration of the progress of science and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history and philosophy of science.
A GREAT INTELLECT, PERHAPS, BUT A HIGHLY PREJUDICED ONE!.......2005-10-04
Arthur Koestler was touted throughout his life by many for his courage, insight and style, qualities he exhibited in works such as Darkness At Noon. But in this book, he appears more interested in swiping at great scientists with a broad axe than in providing unbiased insight regarding their works and achievements.
He has a special enmity for Galileo, whom he accuses of arrogance, ego-centricity, outright falsehoods, and a wide range of various admirable qualities. The author uses Galileo as a poster boy for everything he dislikes or mistrusts about scholars, stating "... scholars have always been prone to manias and obsessions, and inclined to cheat about details; but impostures like Galileo's are rare in the annals of science." He launched into this tirade simply because Galileo was mistaken in his theory of the cause of tides, almost ignoring the fact that Galileo was correct about everything else.
Keep in mind that Koestler wrote this in 1958, 320 years after Galileo's trial and 35 years BEFORE the Catholic Church admitted that Galileo was correct about supporting Copernicus.
Several books have been written since that treat the Galileo situation in a much more enlightened manner, especially Galileo, Science & The Church and Galileo Heretic. Both are at least as readable as Koestler, fare more broad-minded and much more intellectually honest.
Finally, I found it both amusing and frustrating that much of Koestler's attacks on Galileo et al is based on their arrogance and self-confidence; I have never read a text more arrogant in its tone than this one, and Galileo, Kepler, Newton and the rest possessed far greater qualifications for their statements and opinions, in the scientific arena, than Koestler. As someone pointed out, Koestler was a great advocate of ESP, a belief that still retains far less evidence of its existence than the most imaginative conclusions and theories of Galileo and the rest.
If this is Koestler's best example of intellectual honesty and perception, the rest of his works are surely easily dismissed.
How did I miss this book?.......2005-05-09
How did I miss this masterpiece? Perhaps, because it is not referenced in all the histories of astonomy and cosmology I have read; it gets short shrift from the academics. Koestler was not an astronomer. Thank heavens! May we have more such amateurs!
This is the best history of asronomy and one of the wisest books I have ever read. . Koestler applies his knowledge, his life, his experiences, to this topic, and places the astonomy of each period beautifully within the context of the politics, religion and philosophy of the time. And shows, with crystalline clarity, how one (philosophy) could pollute the rest.
It is the best written book I have ever read on a scientific topic. On almost every page, the eloquence, intelligence and skill of Koestler illuminates a point obscured or ignored in other treatments. He brilliantly shows how astonomy suffered the same decline as the other sciences and technologies, for the same reasons, and puts this in the context of a collapsed Grecian and a collapsing Roman world seeking refuge in religious obscurantism for 1,200 years.
He laments the same point Carl Sagan makes in "Cosmos"; Plato and Aristotle cost us a thousand years of technical progress..Sagan points out that the people who built the medieval cathedrals lived in housing and health conditions worse than the Greeks. Koestler wryly observes that we were delayed the benefits of Satellites and Hydrogen bombs for the same interval.
He treats evenly with all the icons we have learned to revere. Copernicus was a coward and a lecherouos churchman, who opens his great book with a clumsy lie. Kepler was almost a raving lunatic (for good reason). Galileo is described as one of the truly offensive and annoying men of science, rarely giving credit, treated better than he deserved by the Church, and finally caught up by his defence of a book which he probably did not read. Amazingly, Galileo was no astonomer at all; just one who happened to do some early telescopic observations, and then attempted to establish a monopoly on observations for himself.
My eternal thanks to Owen Gingerich for his reference to this book. The jury is out, in my mind, on the other two volumes of his technical triptych, but this is an undoubted masterpiece.
Everyone should read it.......2003-01-09
Fascinating account of the history of astronomy through the discovery of classical mechanics by Kepler, Galileo and Newton. We may see it as the history of the replacement of religious-based dogmatism by what physicists today call the Galilean approach: the discovery and consequent mathematical description of nature throughy repeated, identical experiments or observations. This is the book that wheted my appetite for the history of physics. For the serious reader, there are also Julian Barbour's Absolute or Relative Motion and Fred Hoyle's history of Copernicus's contribution. Of interest as well, if less exciting, are Galileo's Dialogues.
Customer Reviews:
A historical fact about this book...........2001-05-05
I wrote the first review here of _The Sleepwalkers_.
Since a subsequent reviewer has mentioned Broch's "political activities", perhaps it is relevant here to quote something his son (H.F. Broch de Rothermann) told me: "There are many persons who could have done for the United Nations what my father did, but there is no one who can write the novels which for that reason [i.e., because Broch spent his time and energy on the UN instead of writing...] went unwritten."
Trilogy of the Disintergration of Values.......2000-12-27
Broch's Trilogy is the chronicle of the evolution of Germany in particular and the whole Europe in general between the years 1888 and 1918. The philosophical focus of the trilogy should be searched for in the third novel, Huguenau or the Realist and within that in the essay 'Disintegration of Values", which is allegedly written by a Bertrand Mueller, who according to Broch himself is the same Bertrand who appears in the first two novels of the trilogy. The essay on disintegration of values closely follows Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. In fact not before we understand Weber's theory of modernity and the role of the protestant reformation in the rise of modern Capitalism can we appreciate the full vigor of Broch's narrative. In ten separate parts, Broch explains masterfully the notion of style of an age, the relation of plastic arts with the the style, the concept of inner logic within each indididual value-system and the effect of it on the life of the individual. The third part of the novel, the realist, is the culmination of the trilogy as such. It is where all the characters meet and it is there that Broch uses all different narrative modes. A certain air of inevitablity is prevalent in Broch's narrative of the disintegration of values, which, in turn, appears to follow a certain Hegelian Historicism. This third novel of the trilogy consists of five separate parts, three of which are stories taking place in a German city near the Belgian borders and the other two are the story of the Salvation Army Girl in Berlin, which is Bertrand Mueller's journal and then his essay on the disintegration of values. It is Broch's wonderful technique to combine all five narratives as one by integrating the story of Huguenau in the essay, as though Mueller, omnisciently and from afar comments on the life of the people in this small and remote town. Bertrand Muellr, therefore, is Broch's own alter ego. He, along with Broch, is the author of Disintegration of Values. Reading The Sleepwalkers with patience is a joy. Loiter around every page, every line, every word, read them again and again and let them shine their light upon your eyes.
The Absolute Novel?.......2000-11-15
Born in Vienna in 1886, Broch is considered one of the great names of 20th Century German literature. Critics will place him in a pantheon that includes Joyce, Musil, Kafka, Mann, and Proust. Son of a well-off Jewish textile manufacturer (at an early age he converted to Catholicism), Broch had thirst for high intellect. Eventually he gave up his academic plans, his future as an industrialist, in pursuit of literature, through which he would deal with ethical questions and realms of experience rejected by the Vienna Circle of logical positivists. Likewise he devoted his life to the study of mass psychology and politics.
"The Sleepwalkers" (published when the author was 40) is a trilogy, a three-dimensional work with one underlying philosophical unit. The first book, "The Romantic" portrays 19th century realism with von Pasenow as main character, a Prussian aristocrat clinging to ethical values considered outdated. The second book, "The Anarchist," portrays the accountant Esch who is in search of a "balance" of values in unstable pre-war Germany. Both characters will meet in the third book "The Realist," and will find hope in a fanatical religious sect, which foresees the coming of a Redeemer (fascism, Hitler). They will be defeated by Huguenau, an army deserter and opportunist, representing the new ethical standards of a society free of values or to put it correctly "with no values." There are several parallel plots, a number of alienated characters, and cumbrous symbolism. To make things a bit more complex and elaborate, there are 16 chapters of poetry, and 10 chapters (Desintegration of Values) of sound and intensive philosophy.
According to Broch, "sleepwalkers" refer to a gap between the death of an ethical system and the birth of another, as much as a somnambulist finds himself in a state between sleep and awake. The novel reflects the disintegration of values in Germany between 1880 and 1920, the psychological distress and disorientation of interwar Germany in which Nazism set its foot. Broch views the Renaissance as the starting point of disintegration of a unified Christian world into a multifaceted society with no ethical roots.
This is a massive piece of literature, one that wil be viewed as lenghthy and boring if the reader is not willing to go beyond the "first layer of the onion peel;" it requires patience and perseverance. For any reader who wishes to crack down on Broch's literary work, "Hermann Broch" by Ernestine Schlant is a good suggestion.
truly outstanding.......1999-09-26
Even better than 'Death of Virgil'. A book that can stand up to Musil and Joyce: a masterwork of stylistics and ideas.
One of the best modern books written.......1999-03-03
Sleepwalkers has shaped up to be one of my most favorite books of all time. Broch acutely depicts the dangerous tendency of modern human behavior to become corrupted and blinded by the world around it. His philosophy describes the 20th century completely as it slowly evolves and matures through each of his stories.
A must read for anyone interested in modern works.
Book Description
First published in the US in 1990, the year after the uprising of Chinese students at Tiananmen Square, The August Sleepwalker collects all the early poetry of Bei Dao, China's premier poet, now living in exile. The August Sleepwalker is an extremely popular book (30,000 copies sold in China in one month) which was quickly banned by the Chinese government. The collection includes all of the poems Bei Dao published between 1970 and 1986. Bei Dao has lived in exile since the Tiananmen Incident. He is widely esteemed as one of contemporary China's most significant writers. His work is experimental, and subjective, while remaining passionately engaged in the individual's response to a disordered world.
Customer Reviews:
A poet of both nature and the human world.......2005-12-05
"The August Sleepwalker," by Bei Dao, has been translated into English by Bonnie S. McDougall. She also contributes an introduction and a preface. McDougall notes that Bei Dao is the pen name of Zhao Zhenkai, who was born in Beijing in 1949. McDougall adds that he was one of China's "underground poets of the seventies," and that he was "in involuntary exile abroad" at the time she wrote her preface (1989). I found this to be a compelling volume of poetry. Bei Dao's work is often quite sad and haunting, and at times very passionate and beautiful. Particularly interesting is his use of parallel structures in his poems. He uses a rich variety of different parallel forms; this structural diversity brings a continual freshness and vitality to the book as a whole.
Bei Dao makes frequent use of nature imagery--a mountain range, a snowflake, lightning, wild geese, the "rustle of wind through the grass," etc. At times his work has a haiku-like quality. But he also uses very concrete phenomena from the human world in his poems: a lavatory wall, the wail of a fire engine, "a silent cigarette." His voice in some poems sounds like that of an iconoclastic prophet--a tragic outsider who remains engaged with humanity and who challenges us to look at the world with a fresh new perspective. His imagery is often quite startling; consider such lines as "a baked fish dreaming of the sea" and "piles of endlessly bickering books."
Some standout poems in the collection are as follows. "Hello, Baihua Mountain": an invigorating poem with great nature imagery. "You Said": interesting use of dialogue within one of his parallel structures. "The Artist's Life": beginning with the line "Go and buy a radish," this poem has a satiric, even absurdist flavor. "Resume": another poem with a strong satiric flavor. "Language": a critique of language and rational thought. "Smiles, Snowflakes, Tears": evoking a sense of wonder and beauty, this poem reminded me of Pablo Neruda's "Book of Questions." But my favorite poem in the collecton is definitely "The Orange is Ripe." With a particularly well-crafted parallel structure, this poem appeals to both the senses and the emotions.
difficult but great.......2003-09-09
dao's poetry may be difficult for the reader of conventional poetry to comprehend at first, but any sustained concentration on his verse reveals what he is really doing: rather than creating poetic stories or boring political drivel, he is creating images and sensations of the imagination, things that can only 'be' because of the word. if one were to categorize him permanently, which i would be hesitant to do, he would fall into the surrealist camp. he is a poet of the inner world rather the outer. there is a pessimism in his poems that some will find repulsive, others attractive. great stuff
Book Description
By "the most original, tactile, luminous voice in Russian prose today" (Joseph Brodsky), Sleepwalker in a Fog is a collection of seven stories and a novella set in contemporary Russia. Here is Denisov, who fears his greatest accomplishment in life will be the treatise he wrote and tore up. He is betrothed to Lora, an incessant talker who dreams of having a fluffy tail. We also read of Natasha, who searches Leningrad and her memory for her lost love; of Dmitry Ilich's elaborate seduction of Olga Mikhailovna; and more. In the tradition of such writers as Gogol and Chekhov, Tatyana Tolstaya transforms ordinary lives into something magical and strange.
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
Customer Reviews:
a few true gems in this collection.......2007-03-25
I first came across one of Tolstaya's stories in the New Yorker,
and was amazed by her style. There is no western writer I
know of who writes in such fluid, fantastic and yet earthy prose.
The closest I could come is Bohumil Hrabal, but that is only a very
distant resemblance. While the writig is breathtaking, I found
the longer stories in the book somewhat difficult to get through -
they are composed of a series of tightly knit anecdotes and tales
which flow from one into another. I believe that Russian literature
is notoriously difficult to translate, and that may have something to
do with it. Nevertheless, stories like "Serafim" and "Most Beloved"
are fantastic. I am looking forward to her new book, "The Slynx".
An Inbreathing Book.......1997-09-28
Russian literature has always been about ethics. I really can't find any other universal feature that makes Russian prose, both classical and modern, so singular a phenomenon. Command of language? Incredible as it is in the works of Russian classics, it's not unique among the world literatures, and anyway is mostly lost in translations. Universal comprehensibility? Not at all; unlike Shakespearean plays that are set in some vague pan-European context, Russian novels are always tightly bound to Russia's very own religion, mentality, and history that are scarcely known in the West. What remains, and what really sets Russian literature apart, is its moral imperative---the impossibility for a Russian writer to show any disdain or ridicule towards those dispossessed, fragile, or helpless. Deep thrilling compassion and frantic pursuit of justice are characteristic of both the Russian classic novels of XIX century and the modern short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya.
"Breathing" is perhaps the best one-word description of Tolstaya's prose. It's not the suffocated gasping of Dostoyevsky, not the gentle crystalline air of Chekhov, not even the powerful storm of consciousness of Leo Tolstoy (whose great-grandniece is Tolstaya). Winds, airs, puffs are transfusing the fabric of these delicate pieces of prose; words and images are streaming, curling, twisting in long yet weightless sentences. Tolstaya's winds smell like sea, like childhood, like love; she makes us remember that the word "spirit" is derived from the Latin stem meaning "air." Reading this book is like breathing freely outdoors after endless hours in a stuffy room...
Customer Reviews:
Dancathons.......2002-02-19
There's something mesmerizing and addictive about watching people on the fringe of existence, people pushed to the edge, people in dire straits or even close. In the 1920s and especially during the Great Depresssion of the 1930s, dance marathon fads played on this morbid fascination we have for people with hard-luck stories, people down on the luck, people at the end of their rope.
With uncommon depth and insight, Frank M. Calabria analyzes audience responses to these weird spectacles, the painful agony of the competition, and the abusive treatment by walkathon show organizers and their emcees. This 1993 book also includes a wonderful collection of period photographs. As a former psychology professor, Calabria is qualified to present what is surely a unique analysis of the increasingly tortured conditions of contestants' emotion state as a dance marathon progressed.
Reading Calabria's book, I suffered from an interesting paradox: throughout the descriptions of sleep-deprived, hypnotic exhaustion endured by the wretched "dancers," I found myself alert and eagerly turning to the next page.
Book Description
In January and February of 2007, the Los Angeles-based video artist Doug Aitken projected a new work, commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art and the New York arts institution Creative Time, onto seven facades on and around MoMA's fabled West Fifty-third Street building. Sleepwalkers was both inspired by, and offered in opposition to, the densely built midtown environment; it integrated itself onto the surfaces on which it was projected, and it challenged viewers' perceptions of architecture and public space. The piece, which follows the trajectories of five characters as they make their way through nocturnal New York, explores Aitken's key recurring themes: broken and recombined narratives, the rhythm and flow of information and images, and the relationship of individuals to their environment. The viewer, as a pedestrian, a participant and a vital component of New York's energetic system, becomes part of the work, and of the interactive personal landscape that Aitken creates in and among the hard-edged concrete and glass language of Manhattan's architecture. In addition to documentation of Sleepwalkers, this publication contains an overview of the artist's work to date, with special emphasis on works since 2001. It also contains conversations between Aitken and a variety of artists, architects, writers and performers about different elements of city life, from the lit signage of Times Square to a taxi driver's eye view of the streets.
Average customer rating:
|
The Sleepwalkers
Hermann Broch
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
German
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
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| Books
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Death of Virgil
ASIN: 0865472009 |
Customer Reviews:
Great Book For All Ages!.......2006-05-07
This is a great book from R.L. Stine. I couldn't put it down. Characters and plot were well written. One of the better Fear Street books I've read and one of the most realistic.
TINA'S REVEIW.......2005-03-10
I liked this book but it wasn't one of R.L Stine's best. He has written better books. I liked this book because it is realistic. It talks about a teenage girl with a new summer job; her sister goes to a day camp. Their dad died and the mother is single and struggling.
Mary is a teenage girl who just got a new summer job at the hospital. What she does is she gets a signed an elderly person to watch over. Everyday she goes to Ms. Cottler's house and they eat, read stories, walk sometimes. Ms. Cottler owns a black cat named Hazel. One day Ms. Cottler was cold and needed a sweater, so Mayra went upstairs to get one out of her bureau draws. When she opened the first draw there was tons of black and white candles and they looked liked they have all been burned at one time! Hazel broke Mayra's beads that Walker; her boyfriend gave her right before he left for vacation. Walker was expected back any day know. Ms. Cottler agreed to rebead them. It took her a long time too. Stephanie came over, Links sister. Links is Mayra's X. Stephanie took Mayra's headscarf. Mayra found a lot of weird witchcraft books in Ms.Cottler's secret library when Ms. Cottler left to go see her dying sister. She also found a Birthday card saying Happy Birthday to Ms. Cottler signed from Stephanie and Link; they are her niece and nephew. That was when she suspected Ms. Cottler and Stephanie are witches. So Mayra decided to go talk to Stephanie about it. And when she did Stephanie was wearing Mayra's headscarf while doing witchcraft. Read to find out.
I think any reader would like this book because it seems like an average book for an average reader.
Enjoy
Very strange..........2004-12-28
I read this book and it was very strange. The girl starts sleepwalking and then she would have a dream about the lake on Fear Street. One night she was sleepwalking and found out that she wasn't dreaming she was in the water and she almosted drowned. She thought she was dreaming but it was real and it was pretty freaky too. This book is so good and very strange.
Prety Wired Book............2002-11-29
First of all it was a WIERD book.Great Charters and Plot, but not enough action!!!!!I was rellay dissapointed in the lack of Suspence!!It VAULED Dullness!!! And Was RICH in Long Boring Chapthers!!!But it HATED Suspence!!!And was POOR in Thrills and Chilles!!!You Should Skip this one!!!!
Why Is She Sleepwalking?.......2002-09-18
That's the question I asked myself when I read this book. I think this is a well-written book by R.L. Stine. It's full of mystery and that's the reason I liked it. I like to read thrilling and mystery books. Just like this one. This book is about a teenage girl named Mayra who starts working with a lady named Mrs. Cottler. Since that day, Mayra starts sleepwalking every night and having nightmares. She starts to think that Mrs. Cottler is the one who made her sleepwalk for all the weird things that Mrs. Cotter has in her house. For example some black candles. One day Mayra goes to Mrs. Cottler's room and she's like in a trance. Another day Mayra finds some books of sleepwalkers and witchcraft on Mrs. Cottler's room. Is Mrs. Cottler the person who is making Mayra sleepwalk every night? You'll have to read this book to find out. I recommend this book to everyone who likes to read thrilling books. You'll enjoy it.
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