Art History Books

For those interested in the embroidery details, it is done with fine silk threads, hand dyed, on various fine fabrics, some of which are so fine you can see through them. Much of the interesting texture and effect is from what they call random stitch embroidery, in which the scenes are depicted by various colored stitches .5 cm (1/4 inch) long running in various random directions, yet they all come together to make the image. Other parts of the images are done by carefully controlled stitch direction to give crisp images. They pick up the light and are quite luminous, some are displayed as screens with light coming from behind. Only the enlargements in the book give a sense of the beauty and amazing technique of the actual pieces.

Oh, and the book is good too. Definitely a 5 star quality coverage of the work, with background information, as described in other reviews. But the work itself is beyond 5 stars. (In the gallery they were priced around the $10,000-$150,000 range, some took several years to complete.)

Howard Rheingold, former Editor of the Whole Earth Review and one of the pure-gold original thinkers in the Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly circle, lays down a serious challange to both decisionmakers and software producers that has yet to be fully understood. Originally published in 1985, this book was a "must read" at the highest levels of advanced information processing circles then, but sadly its brilliant and coherent message has yet to take hold--largely because bureaucratic budgets and office politics are major obstacles to implementing new models where the focus is on empowering the employee rather than crunching financial numbers.

This book is a foundation reading for understanding why the software Bill Gates produces (and the Application Program Interfaces he persists in concealing) will never achieve the objectives that Howard and others believe are within our grasp--a desktop toolkit that not only produces multi-media documents without crashing ten times a day, but one that includes modeling & simulation, structured argument analysis, interactive search and retrieval of the deep web as well as commercial online systems, and geospatially-based heterogeneous data set visualization--and more--the desktop toolkit that emerges logically from Howard's vision must include easy clustering and linking of related data across sets, statistical analysis to reveal anomalies and identify trends in data across time, space, and topic, and a range of data conversion, machine language translation, analog video management, and automated data extraction from text and images. How hard can this be? VERY HARD. Why? Because no one is willing to create a railway guage standard in cyberspace that legally mandates the transparency and stability of Application Program Interfaces (API). Rheingold gets it, Gates does not. What a waste!

It's also a pretty entertaining read, though I think the author gives a bit too much credit to von Neuman.

The novel feature of the book is the way in which past interviews are brought up to date and the interviewees give their opinions on the differences between what they predicted and what happened.

The writing is excellent and very accessible. The interviewees come across as very normal people (which indeed they are) but it is very easy to forget they were still amongst the movers and shakers of computing in the late 20th century.

I think this book is a valuble work for those who see technology are more than just a vehicle for making money.

In a world of cultural confusion and everything goes, he makes you sit back and realize that if the modern pagans succeed in erasing Christian influence from society, all that will follow will be the muck and mire our ancestors fought so hard to escape from.

Society today in its "Post Christian" age is already showing signs of marked decline. how sad they have not realized that the good old days were not prechristian.

Areas covered: Morality, Women's Rights, Charity, Hospitals, Health Care, Education, Labor and Economics, Science, Politics, Art, Music, Literature. Very comprehensive and leads to further study.

In spite the claims of some today that Christianity oppresses women, the historical record shows just the opposite. Women were oppressed in almost every culture prior to the coming of Christianity. By elevating sexual morality, and by conferring upon women a much higher status, the Christian religion revolutionised the place and prestige of women.

The way Jesus treated women was in stark contrast to the surrounding culture. In Roman law a man's wife and children were little more than slaves, often treated like animals. Women had no property rights and faced severe social restrictions. Jesus of course changed all that. The way he treated the Samaritan woman was one remarkable example. And this was not lost on the early disciples. We know from the New Testament documents that many women exercised various leadership roles in the early church. Indeed, during this period Christian women actually outnumbered Christian men.

Admittedly there were some anomalies later in the church's history, when chauvinistic and anti-feminine views were allowed to re-enter parts of the church. But such aberrations must not detract from the truly revolutionary elevation of the status of women achieved by Christianity.

Consider also the issue of health care. Prior to Christianity, the Greeks and Romans had little or no interest in the poor, the sick and the dying. But the early Christians, following the example of their master, ministered to the needs of the whole person. Soon thereafter the institutonalisation of health care began in earnest.

For example, the first ecumenical council at Nicea in 325 directed bishops to establish hospices in every city that had a cathedral. The first hospital was built by St Basil in Caesarea in 369. By the Middle Ages hospitals covered all of Europe and even beyond. In fact, "Christian hospitals were the world's first voluntary charitable institutions".

Care for the mentally ill was also a Christian initiative. Nursing also sprang from Christian concerns for the sick, and many Christians have given their lives to such tasks. One thinks of Florence Nightingale, for example, and the formation of the Red Cross.

Education, while important in Greek and Roman culture, really took off institutionally under the influence of Christianity. The early Greeks and Romans had no public libraries or educational institutions - it was Christianity that established these. As discipleship was important for the first believers (and those to follow), early formal education arose from Christian catechetical schools. Unique to Christian education was the teaching of both sexes.

Also a Christian distinctive, individuals from all social and ethnic groups were included. There was no bias based on ethnicity or class. And the concept of public education first came from the Protestant Reformers. Moreover, the rise of the modern university is largely the result of Christian educational endeavors.

As another example of the Christian influence, consider the issue of work and economic life. The Greeks and Romans had a very low view of manual labor, and so it was mainly the slaves and lower classes that were forced to toil with their hands. The non-slave population lived chiefly for personal pleasure. In these early cultures slaves usually greatly outnumbered freemen.

Thus there was no such thing as the dignity of labor in these cultures, and economic freedom was only for a select few. The early church changed all this. Jesus of course was a carpenter's son. Paul was a tentmaker. And the early admonition, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat" was taken seriously by the early believers. Thus work was seen as an honorable and God-given calling. Laziness and idleness were seen as sinful.

The idea of labor as a calling, and the idea spoken by Jesus that the laborer is worthy of his wages, revolutionised the workplace. The dignity of labor, the value of hard work, and the sense of vocation, soon changed the surrounding society; the development of a middle class being one of the outcomes. The development of unions is another result. Indeed, the works of Weber and Tawney, among others, records the profound effect the Protestant Reformation has had on work and modern capitalism..

Other impacts can be noted. The commandment against stealing of course redefined the concept of private property and property rights. And the protection of workers and workers' rights also flows directly from the biblical worldview. The early unionists were Christians, and concerns for social justice in the workplace and beyond derive from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Other great achievements might be mentioned. The Western political experience, including genuine democracy at all levels of society, equality, human rights and various freedoms, all stem from the Christian religion, along with its Hebrew forebear. The rise of modern science has been directly linked with the biblical understanding of the world. The many great achievements in art, literature and music also deserve mention. For example, how much poorer would the world be without the Christian artistry of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach, Handel, Brahms, Dante, Milton, Bunyan, and countless others?

The bottom line, as Schmidt notes, is that if Jesus Christ had never been born, to speak of Western civilisation would be incomprehensible. Indeed, there may never have been such a civilisation. The freedoms and benefits we enjoy in many modern cultures are directly due to the influence of this one man. Schmidt deserves an enormous amount of gratitude for this sterling collection of information and inspiration. Christians have made many mistakes. But they have also achieved many great things, all because of the one whom they follow.

Broad in its scope, the book intentionally creates a panoramic view describing Western Cultures dependence on Christian pre-suppositions and practice for its development. Through real-life historically verified stories and instances, the "Good News" is convincingly shown to have been truly good.

One cannot read Tacitus's description of early Christians experiences in the Roman Empire which Dr. Schmidt cites without gasping in wonder at their fervent faith: "Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as nightly illumination". The lesson: Christians who don't live for this world should be the best at transforming it for the better (as the Church did with ancient Rome).

In the book of Colossians, the Apostle Paul writes "All things were created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." To see Christ incarnated in human lives and institutions is the major achievement of "Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization" (a clever title that "transforms" the common term of "Under the Influence" from a drunk driving inference to a highly persuasive and winsome connotation.)

In reading this book, I sensed Dr. Schmidt's strong "Sociological" perspective (he is a retired Sociology professor). Sociologists are trained to see the "whole" of issues (i.e. society). In the book's instance, such an approach provides a context in understanding many of the facets (religious,historical, scientific, political/legal, economic, psychological, familial/sexual, and artistic etc.) implications of the Christian message and how this message influenced the day-to-day lives of those who have lived during Christianity's tenure (which sadly is passing).

I have a few caveats about the book. Occassionally, Schmidt seems to ascribe Christian beliefs to influential figures in history where such conviction of these indidividual's is questionable (Issac Newton is a good example). While Schmidt acknowledges that Isaac Newton's orthodoxy has been questioned by some, I don't think he has come to grips with the contrary evidence. Schmidt suggests that figures such as Newton, Da Vinci, and others of this questionable faith ilk, still were heavily influenced by Christian though and values.

Another caveat I have about the book is that Schmidt does not really ask and answer where we go from here as Christians. It is an important step to understand Christianity's high beneficent history (credit should go to Dr. Schmidt in that he does not whitewash Christendom's practical failures to live up to the ideals of Christ). But, where do we go from here is a essential question that must be addressed, perhaps in a future book.

Finally, Schmidt's critique of rock and roll music was surprisingly weak. He acknowledges in the book that music is not his forte. His lack of musical understanding, combined with a legalistic aversion to the rock beat, came across to me as being unconvincing (and) ignores the fact that rock and roll orignated in the Christian community through both Negro Spirituals and Anglo-American folk music that draws from hymns such as Amazing Grace. The fact that Rock and Roll is a genre that has been torn so successfully from its Christian base and conformed into an demonic den for licentiousness and rebellion, would seem to me to be a good reason for it to be reformed and returned to its rightful progenitor; the Church. I would assert this should be true for all of the Arts.

In conclusion, that Christianity transformed civization for the better is historically documented beyond a doubt by this tome. That Christianity can still "transform" culture seems to be a thesis "Left Behind" by Schmidt (this coincidence is intentional. The best-selling books in the Chrisitian marketplace today, the LaHaye/Jenkins series, postulate that Christianity will no longer produce culturally significant advances).

Do not leave this book behind. There is much to consider. By truly understanding Christianity's rich historical legacy may we capture a vision for her glorious future.

Great for understanding the differences between an historiated initial and an inhabited initial - or between an antiphonal and a gradual.

Most of the representative images are in color and are well chosen to illustrate the definitions. Perhaps their only drawback is their small size due to the size limitations of the book itself.

A great companion while reading to "Medieval Illuminators & their Methods of Work" by Jonathan J.G. ALexander or "A History of Illuminated Manuscripts" by Christopher De Hamel.

Reading Sun Tzu is a bit like reading Shakespeare. You can read it, but can you understand it? "Understanding Sun Tzu on the Art of War" allows you to fully appreciate and synthesize what Sun Tzu is all about.

If you are interested in Sun Tzu philosophy, or if you are interested in life strategies, Robert Cantrell's book is a must buy.