Netherlands Books

This is the place to start when you are looking for information about the history of science in the Netherlands. This book is a combination of new work and 're-cycled' material from older books, including Van Berkel's overview of Dutch Science from 1985, 'De voetsporen van Stevin'. Although the quality of the presented work is high, so, unfortunately, is the price; almost two hundred dollars is outrageous for such an essential work (especially when you realise that the technical quality of the volume is mediocre: normal paper, no color reproductions), but regrettably typical for this publisher; so most people will have to go to the library to read this work.

This combined two volumes (the revolt of the Netherlands and The Netherlands in the 17th Century). It is simply wonderful--well written, deeply researched, and ably presented. European history at its finest.

I have just finished this delightful book, "The Low Countries". I am not an academic, but rather a former international banker who lived in the proximity of the Low Countries (3 years in Germany and a year in London) before spending 10 years in the Far East, during which time I occasionally also had Dutch bosses and colleagues. I have long been intrigued but the differences in personalities of Cologne and Frankfurt where I lived and The Netherlands and Belgium so close by, yet found no history books that really helped me get my arms around their complex, interconnected histories. This book not only did this, but with an occasional sly humor that I came to look for with delight.

Purchased to learn a bit about my family heritage, this book exceeds all expectations! Claiming to be "Holland seen through the eyes of a modern Dutch artist," every page reveals large colorful pictures of the many attractions of this unique land, featured on heavy quality art paper. Every picture includes paragraphs detailing various customs, traditions, folklore & other interesting facts. The book begins with a brief, well-written history and geography lesson for the Netherlands enthusiast. Spend hours traveling to see the stunning architecture of castles, churches, bridges, windmills, and relax in tulip fields and waterways without ever leaving your chair! A great coffee table or waiting room attraction to spark conversation or alleviate boredom.

This books really tells it like no other guide book. I would recommend it above Let's Go and others. It thoroughly reviews the ups and downs of hostelling in these countries. Obviously, the main attractions are the cities of Brussels and Amsterdam, and it covers the hostels there superbly, but if you want to explore the real local towns of these countries and you want to do it on a budget, this book describes the lesser known areas of these countries which you can see by staying at hostels. No other guide book lists every hostel available to the independent traveler. It's loaded with social criticism as well. And it's funny!

Forget Rick Steves, his books are for older folks. If you're young and hip, you'll enjoy these far more!

This is a detailed study of an illuminated manuscript of the late 15th century. The primary value of the book is the reproductions of the complete manuscript which are of outstanding quality. They rival those of much more expensive facsimiles. The beauty and craftsmanship are evident on every page.

Eric Inglis' commentary demonstrates a concerted effort to produce a detailed analysis of the artistic milieu which created this beautiful work of art. The commentary also provides a basic background to those who are new to such works of art. Readers interested in medieval art will find this a wonderful introduction to a facet of the medieval book arts.

This book is a brilliantly researched work of great significance to the literature of 20th century housing in Europe. Part of four great housing movements of the 1920's including Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin along with Amsterdam, together they tell an important story of housing by and for people. One of the best parts of this book is the guide at the end which shows all of the most important projects on a map with detailed information about each including the number of units, the architects and the housing society responsible for each. This will be come a classic in its field.

Want to see the original drawings for the Red-Blue Chair? Or find a little-known fact about one of designs of Gerrit Rietveld that normally would require examination of an original or a long conversation with someone from Christies? And then, maybe, actually build the piece yourself? This is the book to get. It's not enclyclopedic, though, so make sure that what you are interested in is present in the 50-or-so works here. Also has some terrific old photographs of the workshop, original installations, lines, and advertising.

Including a lengthy and life-long interview, some sermons given shortly before publication, other documents and correspondence, as well as a Scriptural and poetical selection, etc., this seemingly slim volume contains conprehensive and comprehensible material from throughout the life of this great Catholic theologian, the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx, rendering much difficult and technical material more accessible to the layman, explaining many doubts, clarifying concerns and misunderstandings, and making this great and warm and human heart and soul blessed by God with a mighty intellect and love for God and the Church closer to us all.

The sermons here transcribed are especially helpful, as they were delivered shortly before publicaiton. One of these sermons beautifully (as always with this great and Catholic Theologian) declares his deep Faith in the Resurrection, with his profound attempt at explanation of this Faith.

A few people, beating a long dead horse, continue unfairly to question unjustly this profound Catholic soul, yet his works will live on long after us who are here and now. His great trilogy beginning with Jesus: An Experiment in Christology and continuing through Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, when the dust has settled and God continues whatever form of ecclesiology and apostolic succession a future humanity finds most significant in a future millenium through the on-going Pilgrim process of Ecclesiogenesis -, the prodigious theological work of the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx will be gratefully received and respected as has been his fellow Dominican St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province) (5 Volume Set) once the outraged controversy from the Angelic Doctor's own contemporaries had long been forgotten and we could learn to catch up with Aquinas enough to declare him the "official" theology, comprehending in part his intent, elaborate and minute methodology and his labor's true significance for understanding our Faith. Thus shall come to Father Schillebeeckx. The bookburners cannot win, as one fictional one did so tragically and painfully and Pyrricly and temporarily in the semiotic philosopher Umberto Ecco's great novel The Name of the Rose: including the Author's Postscript.

Fortunately we do not have to wait for (and indeed we cannot physically wait to see but from Heaven) what future generations of Catholics will receive and comprehend, as this brief volume makes much which is not now understood very clear, including not only a complete biographical interview and an excellent comprehensive inrtoduction, but also discussing several points of theology within their historical context.

For example much background noise has arisen around the poorly understood term transignification. A few have whittled this word down to an easily digestible monosyllable of sign, having limited their experience and understanding of sign to, for instance, that of a concrete physical highway road sign which indicates the way to go to a certain destination using alphanumeric and graphical symbols which are not in themselves the way but only point out the way. Thus the sign to Cincinnatti is not in reality the road to Cincinatti.

This is very far from the true meaning of transignification, which comes from the Lacanian and semiotic and philosophical terms for signification, signifiers, signified, etc. The closest we may come in our common parlance is the word significant, which has itself lost much of its precision, power and, well, significance.

Thus a certain few stimulate and excite themselves to a great and delightful (for them) fever pitch by purposefully misunderstanding and mistinterpreting the true meaning of this term, inventing by their own dim and deceitful lights heresy where none exists.

I refer them therefore to pages 23 and 24 of this present volume where in the midst of interview questions regarding his post-Conciliar audience with Pope Paul VI, Father Schillebeeckx takes the opportunity to discuss this very term. Throughout this bascially biographical interview, Father Schillebeeckx humbly and passionately takes the light off himself and turns, as a great Domincan teacher and preacher, to explaining points of theology and of Faith, making of this interview something far more than originally intended.

Thus we here read (please remember the rough English translation cannot accurately reflect the Reverend Father's own words, nor are the footnotes his): "The Pope told me, 'I am truly content with what you said in your lectures at Domus Mariae on the Eucharist.' At that time I was defending transignification. The encyclical Mysterium fidei had just come out (this was Spetember 1965) and I began my lecture by praising the encyclical. I said that I was against transignification understood as pure symbolism and that transubstantiation(13) is a transignification in an ontological sense(14). The Pope told me: 'They've reported you've become one of us.' I didn't understand what he meant; I had the sensation of not having been clear. Why should I have become 'one of us?' I am one of the Church. Who are these 'us?'

"I certainly had observations to make on the encyclical, but I expressed them blandly. I had observations on transignification as pure symbolism. For me, transignification was ontological, something quite different from a physical transignification. Someone tried to explain the expression used by Paul VI as meaning that the Pope was not opposed to my ideas on the Eucharist.

"However, I didn't think this a very happy expression. He encouraged me to continue my research, expressed himself content with the lectures. I wanted to defend myself by saying something about my theology, but he wouldn't let me. At the end of the audience he took out a rosary from a drawer and said, 'Take it to your father.' And what about my mother? He gave me another one. Then he called the secretary who brought in the photographer. That was the end of the audience.

"At the door I met the Benedictine abbot Basil Hume, who was to become Archbishop of Westminister. He said to me, 'Fr. Schillebeeckx, keep going as you are. (pp. 23,24)"

The footnotes referred to state: "(13) transubstantiation is the transformation or conversion of the bread into the body and the wine into the blood. Transignificaiton is the transformation or conversion of the bread into the body and the wine into the blood. Transignification is a radical transformation of the ultimate meaning of what the bread is after cnosecration. Before consecration the bread is nutrition for the body, whereas after consecration the bread is totally spiritual nutrition. Transfinaliztion: the bread is bodily nutrition but the aim of the consecrated bread is a spiritual nutrition, a gift of Christ the saviour. Transignification and transfinalization are concepts nearer to the modern mentality. With these terms Schillebeeckx seeks to give a better expression to the anthropological significance of the eucharistic presence in relation to that of the believer and the church. The ultimate destination of the bread changes profoundly with consecration.

"(14) After the consecration the reality of the bread is something different, specifically the body of Christ."

So that settle it then. For the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx transignification is ontological. Case closed. Read this book.

For those few of you who slept through your Philosophy of Theology 101 course, I refer you to the excellent The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, specifically in its article on ontology, where this is described as a pre-Conciliar neo-Scholastic concern for the ground of all being based in God, to summarize very roughly and imperfectly. Thus for the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx, who celebrates this November 93 years of a rich and fruitful life in the Lord's service, remember him please in your prayers, who was trained twenty years before the Council (thus pre-Conciliar) in Dominican seminaries (thus Scholastic as Aquinas), ontology is a major concern. The Reverend Father Schillebeeckx here states as clearly and as strongly as he can that transignification is in no way a mere roadsign but a full and comprehensible expression in modern post-Kantian terminology of the very Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Transignification is ontological means that the Host is no longer significantly bread but is truly the Body of Christ.

This is really a wonderful book. It's very well written, and has an exciting storyline, which isn't usual for historical fiction a lot of times. Marjorie Bowen, painted a picture of William III of Orange, that I will never forget. The book is immensly powerful and I highly reccomend it!!