I enjoyed Martin Puchner’s The Written World so much I decided to read his new book, Culture: The Story of US, From Cave Art to K-Pop. Puchner takes the reader around the world in this wide-ranging survey of world cultures.
My favorite chapter is Chapter 13: George Eliot Promotes the Science of the Past. I learned a lot about Mary Ann Evans (aka, “George Eliot”) that I didn’t know. I didn’t know she translated the works of German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. I discovered she read Hegel and incorporated some of his ideas about History into Middlemarch (1871). And I learned she wrote an essay entitled “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” that I will have to track down and read.
If you’re in the mood for a breezy tour of thousands of years of cultural development all over the world, Martin Puchner’s Culture is your ticket. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface: How culture works — xi
Introduction: Inside the Chauvet Cave, 35,000 BCE — xii
Queen Nefertiti and her faceless god — 1
Plato burns his tragedy and invents a history — 23
King Ashoka sends a message to the future — 36
A south Asian goddess in Pompeii — 53
A Buddhist pilgrim in search of ancient traces — 70
The Pillow Book and some perils of cultural diplomacy — 87
When Baghdad became a storehouse of wisdom — 105
The Queen of Ethiopia welcomes the raiders of the ark — 123
One Christian mystic and the three revivals of Europe — 140
The Aztec capital faces its European enemies and admirers — 164
A Portuguese sailor writes a global epic — 185
Enlightenment in Saint-Domingue and in a Parisian salon — 206
George Eliot promotes the science of the past — 227
A Japanese wave takes the world by storm — 246
The drama of Nigerian independence — 266
Epilogue: Will there be a library in 2114 CE? — 287
Acknowledgements — 305
Notes — 309
Index — 337
You sold me. I’ll check my local Public Library for this.
Dan, a peripatetic guy like you will enjoy this wide-ranging book!
It is an enviable patch to be able to till. Have you picked up how he pronounces his surname?
Todd, here’s how you pronounce his surname: https://www.howtopronounce.com/martin-pucher
Looks great. Hope my library has it.
Patti, I was enthralled by this book and all the new facts I learned!
Nah, that’s a pass for me. Too many books, too little time. All week I dread looking at my email because I keep getting notices from the Brooklyn Public Library that an ebook I’ve reserved is ready to be checked out. Why do they all come at once?
Jeff, I know that feeling. I dread going to the Library to find FOUR books came in at the same time. That just happened to me last week!
Too many books and not enough time …
I thought the name was familiar so I looked him up on German wiki.
Yes he’s a German, studied near where I live in Konstanz and then went on to the USA to have a career, switching universities regularly.
His name is pronounced poo-ch-ner but I think the German “ch” sound doesn’t exist in the English language, just as we don’t have the “th”.
Wolf, thanks for the pronunciation guide!