I’m a big fan of Gertrude Himmelfarb who specializes in writing about the Victorian era. This new edition of The Moral Imagination features insightful essays on George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton, Charles Darwin, and others. I find Himmelfarb’s essays clear and concise. Her writing style is lucid. And Himmelfarb puts the ideas she discusses in these essays in historical context. You’re not going to read better historical essays than these gems! Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction
Adam Smith:Political Economist cum Moral Philosopher
Edmund Burke: Apologist for Judaism?
George Eliot: The Wisdom of Dorothea
Jane Austen: The Education of Emma
Charles Dickens: “A Low Writer”
Benjamin Disraeli: The Tory Imagination
John Stuart Mill: The Other Mill
Walter Bagehot: “A Divided Nature”
Lord Acton: The Historian as Moralist
Alfred Marshall: “The Economics of Chivalry”
John Buchan: An Untimely Appreciation
The Knoxes: A God-Haunted Family
Michael Oakeshott: The Conservative Disposition
Winston Churchill: “Quite Simply, a Great Man”
Lionel Trilling: The Moral Imagination
Notes
Index
Not my kind of reading. You are much more well read than I.
Maggie, Patti Abbott tells me that all the time!
And she has one of the great names, too.
Yes, Jeff, she can be proud of that name which probably was given her ancestor by an Austrian bureaucrat …
Often I have to smile at these Jewish names and what people made out of them – originally it probably was “Himmelsfarbe” i e sky colour.
Wolf, thanks for that translation!
Jeff, her name is distinctive and unforgettable!
Just realised that here one could/should (?) translate Himmel as heaven – that’s sometimes a problem for translation, we Germans have only one word there, so you have to know the context …
Wolf, translation is a tricky business.
This looks like something I’d call “a textbook from Hell”. If there was a college class associated with it, I’d run the other way. Just too cerebral for me, I guess.
The turkey just went into the brine an hour ago.
Rick, you would appreciate Gertrude Himmelfarb’s writing style. We’ll be up early tomorrow to pop the bird into the oven!
We made our cranberry Jello mold and chocolate pudding pie last night. The rest gets done today.
Patrick is falling down on the job. Not only is my info gone, but half the day yesterday GeorgeKelley.org was MIA.
Jeff, Patrick is on the case! Happy Thanksgiving to you and Jackie!