Category: Books & Reviews

Literature, culture, fiction, non-fiction, writers, authors and the craft of writing.

The Emperor’s Handbook

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus was considered the last of the “Five Good Emperors” of the Roman Empire. He lived 121-180 CE and died while on campaign in Germany. Like many Roman thinkers of his day, he followed the popular Stoic philosophy and his writing became an important document in the late Stoic phase of classical antiquity. While he ruled, Marcus Aurelius kept notes – written in Greek – about his thoughts and beliefs, as a guide for his own life and behaviour, applying his Stoic beliefs to his everyday life. These thoughts were never intended for public reading or publication such ……… click below for more ↓

A Treasure Trove

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Marketing / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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A recent trip to Toronto to see family and friends – and celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary – also netted me a treasure trove of books, thanks to the proximity of a new/used BMV bookstore to our hotel. And, of course, Susan’s patience while I browsed the shelves. Several times. I managed to find a dozen books (well, to be fair I found many more I wanted, but restrained myself to buying only a dozen). These included: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller (hardcover, Norton & Co., 2012). I actually started reading the ……… click below for more ↓

Coffee with Cicero

Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Can you imagine what it would be like today to be able to meet the Roman philosopher, Cicero, for coffee and spend an hour chatting? Or meeting up at a local pub and settling down to a beer or glass of wine? How great would that be to spend an hour with one of the world’s great thinkers? What would you talk about? What wouldn’t you? Just imagine having the opportunity to share your thoughts on politics, religion, justice, philosophy, morals, friendship… the scope of what Cicero wrote about means you can talk about almost anything. Okay, maybe not our ……… click below for more ↓

Translating Montaigne

Books & Reviews / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now5 Comments

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With two printed versions of Montaigne’s essays (translations by Donald Frame and M. A. Screech) and a couple of online editions available to me, I thought I might offer some examples of how individual translations have captured Montaigne’s writing and let you judge which you think is clearer and crisper for reading today. I chose, somewhat at random, some lines from Book 1, Essay 50: Of Democritus and Heraclitus. It’s a reasonably short piece. I will give it in its entirety once, then offer selected sentences as marked in bold, below, from other translations for comparison. (You can read some ……… click below for more ↓

Common Sense

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When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. Thomas Paine, 18th century political activist and political philosopher, wrote that line. It struck me as particularly cogent in light of modern politics and the rise of fanatic, fundamentalist organizations: people who give themselves over to ideologies or to any monolithic cause lose their liberty because they stop thinking for themselves. They allow others to do the thinking for them, rather than question matters for themselves. This is true, of course, at all levels, local to international. We should never allow partisan politics to ……… click below for more ↓

Taoist Lessons for Politicians

Books & Reviews / Faith / Municipal Politics / Politics / Translations & translatingLeave a comment

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Those who look down upon this world, will surely take hold and try to change things. So begins verse 29 of the 4th century BCE Chinese classic (Jonathan Star translation*), the Tao Te Ching. That verse suggests that those who feel themselves superior to the world and to others, who feel their actions, thoughts, views and beliefs are above those of others, will attempt to impress their own rule on others. And, as the verse continues, they can only fail in their attempts to control things. Control slips from their fingers.** There’s a lesson here in verse 29, that winds throughout the book. It’s not simply for ……… click below for more ↓

Sonnet 103

Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, So begins Shakespeare’s sonnet number 103 (I started rereading the sonnets recently because, well because it’s Shakespeare, damn it all, and what other reason would anyone need?). It’s a sentiment I well know. The impoverished Muse thing, I mean. There are three dozen pieces in draft mode I’ve started here, then hesitated, and left incomplete. Unable to pull the threads together into a coherent tableaux because my muse is busy somewhere else. I have numerous unfinished stories, novels and even two books in progress on my hard drive. And a basement full of ……… click below for more ↓

Machiavelli and Xenophon

Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / Philosophy / PoliticsLeave a comment

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Another piece posted on The Municipal Machiavelli this week; this time a short comment about Machiavelli and Xenophon, the ancient Greek writer who Niccolo referred to in The Prince and The Discourses: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/machiavelli-and-xenophon/ This recent post was sparked by a review of a new book on Xenophon aimed at the business-management reader: Larry Hedrick’s Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War. The review by Richard Feloni, on Business Insider, noted: Niccollò Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” a guide for the ideal ruler, made his name synonymous with a ruthless pragmatism based on the manipulation and total defeat of an ……… click below for more ↓

How to Run a Country

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I’ve posted a review of Philip Freeman’s book, How to Run a Country on the Municipal Machiavelli site, here: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/how-to-run-a-country/ Freeman’s work is a short (132 pages in a small format) book with a mix of English and Latin content derived from the writing of Marcus Cicero, thematically chosen around the topics of governance, politics and war. It’s billed as a sequel to his “How to Win an Election”, but I didn’t feel it lived up to that title. However, I hope it can help introduce an audience of modern readers to the Roman writer Cicero and spark some interest ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s cat and Descartes’ reality

Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“When I play with my cat,” wrote French philosopher and essayist, Michel de Montaigne, “Who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.*” That statement encompasses two very distinct paths of contemplation. First is one of animal sentience. The recognition that animals are conscious, that they are sentient creatures, with feelings and intelligence, not simply biological machines, is fairly new. Most of our modern awareness of animal intelligence and consciousness comes only in the last century (although the debate was opened in Darwin’s time). The 17th-century philosopher, Rene Descartes, believed animals were machines that ……… click below for more ↓

Tricks of the mind

Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / My Writing / Philosophy / Writing & FictionLeave a comment

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Reading involves bit of trickery. Mental trickery. It engages the imagination and fools us into thinking we are there within the book: nestled beside the author, or better yet, beside the characters. Immersed in the created world, floating through it like a ghost in a haunted house movie, or perhaps in the imagined flesh, interacting on the mental stage. We ask ourselves how we would play the scene, how we would decide, take action, engage the other characters. How would we behave at the dinner table with Becky and Rawdon? Would we defend Nancy from the rages of Bill Sykes? ……… click below for more ↓

The Beginning of the End

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Sixty years ago, the end began. It would take almost a full year for the Allies to batter the Third Reich into submission, but in the summer of 1944, the end was inevitable. All could see it. The combined might of the Allied armies was simply overpowering for whatever Germany had left to throw at it. But it was neither easy nor simple. So why didn’t Germany sue for peace, cut its losses and surrender, rather than face the prospect of ruin and devastation? Why did Germany continue its reckless, inhumane pursuit of terror and repression – even accelerating the ……… click below for more ↓

Great books: the academic view

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In the mid-1990s, journalist David Denby took on a personal challenge to return to Columbia University for a year to take two courses, both focused on reading the “great books” of the Western canon. The results and his observations – along with an entertaining bit of biography about his journey – is told in Great Books (Simon & Schuster, 1996). I was interested in Denby’s narrative primarily because, in looking through the table of contents, I noticed he commented on Machiavelli and Montaigne – two of my favourite writers. That made me want to read what he says about them, ……… click below for more ↓

Inanity and vanity

Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Michel de Montaigne wrote in his usual self-deprecating but sardonic way: If other men would consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I cannot, without making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well one as another; but they who are not aware on’t, have somewhat the better bargain; and yet I know not whether they have or no. Book 3, IX: Of Vanity That chapter is one of his longer pieces in The Essays, and like most others in ……… click below for more ↓

The First Dark Age

History & Biography / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The causes of the first “Dark Age” have long been the topic of debate among historians and archeologists. Many ideas and theories have been put forward; none have found universal agreement. It’s commonly referred to in scholarly circles as “The Catastrophe.” Earthquakes, drought, migrations (or the more popular single-people migration theory), volcanoes, barbarian raiders, climate change and systemic collapse have all been blamed for the sudden collapse of civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean over a short period of time. While any one of these may account for particular cities, or even a small geographical region, it is difficult to apply those ……… click below for more ↓

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