Drury University Books

Painting The Word is a truly outstanding guide to Christian paintings and their meanings brings art and spirituality together in an inspiring coverage. More than a history of painting, Painting The Word discusses how Christian images reflected and influenced Christian civilization as a whole, with a universal quality delivering balanced messages. Color reproductions of significant classic Christian art works appear throughout.

As an ordained Anglican priest and the dean of Christ Church in Oxford, John Drury is by no means an accredited art historian but he is a trained artist and has a knowledgeable background in theology and New Testament exegesis. Depicted as "a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages" (p.ix), Painting the Word uniquely "extends" the "historically iconographical, or picture-describing, approach" to art by incorporating spiritual "meditation," in order to bring the reader through a "contemplative waiting process" of viewing Christian artwork (p. xi-xiii).

John Drury specifies that the purpose of the book is for the reader to take ownership of the paintings and receive `spiritual nourishment' from them. What originally began as `postcard sermons' describing artwork exhibited in the London National Gallery, has developed over time into the authoring of this wonderful book, which is full of photographic illustrations of European Christian paintings from the 14th to 18th century.

The author successfully brings the reader along on a spiritual journey through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Drury groups paintings under each key moment of the salvation story, starting with the Annunciation, to the Nativity, to Christ's baptism and ministry, and culminating with his death and resurrection. In this way, Painting the Word is entirely Christocentric, as it focuses on the sacrificial narrative of Jesus "from conception to resurrection" (p. xiv).

I question whether Drury successfully builds a connection between the artwork itself and the spirituality being conveyed by the artist, because Drury presents some very odd theological concepts throughout his book. I disagree with Drury's constant insinuation that the original painters understood the biblical scenes that they were depicting as "myths." For example, as Drury begins his discussion of paintings depicting the Annunciation, he states, "A dialogue between Mary and the angel follows. It can only be imaginary, but... it is held together over a respectful distance by their mutual regard" (p.41). Drury claims on the very next page that the "moment" of the Annunciation is thanks to the "imagination" of St Luke and St John. Is Drury actually insinuating that the dialogue between Mary and the angel was only a fantasy? Would the artists of the Annunciation paintings really see their portraits as depicting a mythical scene? If so, then a plethora of Christian artists from the 14th to 17th centuries must have believed that Christianity was nothing more than a "myth", as Drury repeatedly refers to sacred Tradition as "myth" throughout the book (cf. p.48, 89, 114). It is more likely that Drury is imposing his own view upon the reader rather than objectively bringing out the artist's intended spirituality.

A more detailed review is available on my website:
http://members.shaw.ca/angelamccormick

This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

Reasoned analysis involves dissection of statements and dissection of images. The dissection is needed to detect evidence or to expose the lack thereof. The reason analysis of images is needed is that all of the images are not natural. They are iconic based on conventions (like language) and therefore Christian images are signs. The discipline to investigate them is not the neuropsychology of perception but semiotics, the science of signs. Here we have an excellent semiotic rhetoric of Christian images informing us of the meaning of the signs and the meaning behind the images given to us by an expert in both religion (John Drury is a priest) and in the history of art. The cross, the scourging pillar, the spear and the sponge on a cane -all these have meaning. Particularly interesting was Chapter three with the dissection of the different presentations of the annunciation by Duccio as compared to Lippi and Poussin and the biblical quotes that supported each artist's view of what happened and how it happened.

John Drury is an art historian who uses his vocation as a priest to explain the subtlety of meaning that lies hidden in the symbolism of religious paintings in London's National Gallery.

Anyone how has looked at such a painting but not "seen" it, would do well to read this wonderful book and share the insights that the author offers. Paintings that I would have passed by with scarcely a second glance, are revealed within a context of their time, with reference to their history, the world view of the artist, the common and uncommon symbolism employed and much else besides.

It gives the possibility of sharing a visual language that we have lost and enables us to understand what it is about a picture that we sense is great, without comprehending why that might be.

It is hard to think that anyone who has ever visited an art gallery could not profit from reading this book and has certainly given me the enthusiasm to go and look at the pictures for myself.

Dr. Drury has produced a much needed lay-person's exposition of Earth science - Bravo! To paraphrase his words, this book provides the complete story which is sketched out in several contemporary works dealing with life sciences and origins.
On the down-side, the reader is forced to read the authors' (short but frequent) political commentary peppered throughout the work. Marx, Engels, Lenin and other economic/political writers are quoted throughout. In most cases, the quotes are forced and read as though they were inserted in spite of the otherwise wonderful text.

Drury has done for geology and the evolution of Earth and life what Carl Sagan did for the cosmos. In Stepping Stones you can see how chemistry, physics and biology combine with the evidence from rocks, and begin to understand the highly complex and extremely long past from which our own evolution has sprung. Heady stuff, but surprisingly easy to read.

This is one of the best books out of the hundreds I've read on astronomy, earth science and biology. This is the rare book that weaves together these disciplines. If you read one book on how our planet got to where it is, and where it's going, this is the one.

I just finished it. It was a really great book. It is somewhat technical, as of course is must be, without going over the top.

But not being trained in neither geology, chemistry or biology it was slow work on my part. 5-10 pages max. per sitting. Too much info to digest.

But well worth the effort.

For years I have been interested in geology and the evolution of life, but have rarely found any general book aimed at the non-specialist. Stepping Stones breaks completely from the single-topic approach and takes on probably the broadest scope of any book I have read - the entire evolution of our home planet, the life upon it and our own emergence from a history of quiet change interspersed with unimaginably violent events over almost 5 billion years. It links geology through physics, chemistry and biology to astronomical factors. Forget the Whole Earth Cookbook; Stepping Stones tells our story. Like all good reads, it contains a sting in the tail and blends fact, theory, speculation and some wry humour. I can't say that it is an easy read, but truly found it hard to put down. What I particularly like about it is the way that the author has divided the text into more than 20 chapters, each of which is almost self-contained and possible to read in an evening. I don't know how he did it, but the huge amount of content links together wonderfully. My favourite passage - where he jokingly links our irritating cough reflex to the survivors of a volcanic holocaust 25 million years ago when the atmosphere was thick with noxious fumes, and 90 percent of all life perished. Every living thing today descends from those survivors, and I laughed to think we may owe our being to the plague of concert halls. What I learned most - how humans evolved through a repeated sequence of huge climate and environmental shifts, which helped hone our ancestors survival skills, and generally how evolution is as much a product of outlandish chance as it is of slow change governed by genes pitted against surroundings. If I were younger, I would enroll for a geology course, and would feel confident that I could master any specialist detail thrown at me, now that I have grasped the fullest possible context from Stepping Stones!

I am very impressed with this new release of Mary Walker's Diary. I am a direct decendant of Mary and Elkanah Walker and am very proud that there is such a wonderful book with her's and Myra Eells' diary entries. It gives us a view of how women's lives were, how people's views about the Native Americans were at that time, and shows us the hardships of pioneer life. I want to thank the authors for keeping this piece of history alive.

Carrie Walker

These diaries of Mary Walker and Myra Eells bring to life the early day pioneer struggles to maintain survival and sanity during the years 1838-1848. Being recently married wives of missionaries, both Walker and Eells maintained excellent daily diaries of their arduous overland journey from Missouri to Washington. In company with two other missionary wives (Gray and Smith), they were the second group of women to cross the continent. These overland diaries are an entrancement to read, depicting day to day life along the Oregon Trail while riding side-saddle for 1900 miles. Mrs. Walker was oftentimes dismayed over both the long journey and the uncertain and questionable love of her husband (she was also pregnant during this journey).
Once in Washington, they all spent the winter of 1838-39 at the Whitman mission. Conditions were somewhat crowded that first winter, therefore human feelings and emotions ran rampant (even amongst missionaries).
Mary Walker then continues her diaries for the next ten years. They had their own mission to build and manage at Tshimakain whilst bringing salvation (attempting to) to the Spokane Indians. Mary had six children while living at their mission. With so many children to look after, along with cooking, cleaning, making clothes, tending livestock and the garden, etc., it was a full life. So full in fact, she oftentimes was despondent of her purpose in life regarding the mission and raising her children. The book ends shortly after the tragic Whitman massacre of 1847 when they then moved to the Williamette valley of Oregon.
At times the book can become somewhat overbearing due to the multitude of footnotes, but still a truthful look at pioneering so long ago.

The belated arrival of this early book of Jacques Rancière in English is very welcome. Andrew Parker's Introduction, which tells the convoluted story of the book's prior aborted translation, is worth reading by itself. And Parker goes beyond this story to provide not only the most thorough bibliography on Rancière that an English reader will ever have seen, but a compelling explanation of the philosopher's place in relation to his, and our, contemporaries (Althusser, Balibar, Bourdieu), and of his importance. And the book itself is fascinating stuff: a journey through the philosophical tradition tracking the contempt-laden figure of the working man. Rancière finds his favorite example, the shoemaker, in so many texts from so many centuries that one almost needs to check the references, lest we start to think the whole piece is some kind of Borgesian joke; but this is, completely in earnest, a fascinating synthetic argument about the condescension philosophy, even leftist philosophy, shows toward "simple" workers. The tone of the book isn't as hard to pin down as some of Rancière's other work (e.g. the terrific "Ignorant Schoolmaster"), and it is a little more of a scholarly, historical effort, a little more humorous, and a little more accessible than you might expect, but it's still a difficult, intelligent, and rewarding text for the philosophical reader.

Jacques Ranciere is one of the most important French philosophers writing today. This work deftly shows how sociologists have, over the years, taken control of Marxist thought away from the philosophers who once had (perhaps) too firm of a grip. Did the philosophers do this willingly? Should theorizing the poor go back into the hands of the philosophers? Do sociologists do a better job writing from the proletarian's perspective? You'll have to read the book to find out!

This is an amazing work whose only fault is that it was not published by a larger house. Drury clearly outlines his argument against the commonly held notion of a balance of nature. He finds the idea of ecological communities succeeding to climax a distasteful one, and rightly so. Drury advocates actually thinking about problems rather than hiding behind an orthodoxy that seems to know all the answers.

He realizes that the world is a continually changing, dynamic place with an unpredictable quirkiness. It is not, as is so often assumed, a world where "ecosystems", left to their natural states, will go back to what they "ought" to be. He argues that we should conserve the world because we can, and not because of abstract notions of the intrinsic value of life. We want to save the world because we like critters, and we should fess up to it.

Drury was not a scheming wise-user, as may be inferred from his criticism of the environmentalist movement. He just wanted people to think about what they had learned about ecology in the century since Clements and Forbes.

Think people think!

Harvey Asher chronicles the decades of turmoil and glory of an excellent liberal arts college in the midwest. No Drury alumnus will pass on this book. Yet Asher's account of an institution in transition should appeal to a much wider audience of students, educators, and those who take close to heart the issues of liberal arts education. Many generations of Drury students have benefited from Dr. Asher's www (warmth, wisdom, wit). It stands to reason that this one-of-a-kind teacher capped his career at Drury by writing a compelling story of the school that owes at least part of its success and vitality to his dedication and humanism.

Robert Drury was a 15 year old English sailor when his ship The "Degrave" ran aground on Madagascar in the early 1700's. All the crew were either killed or enslaved by the natives. After 15 years, Drury escaped and returned to England. He left this account of his adventure when he died. Some say his journal is fiction and is the work of Daniel Defoe. But "Sources for Robert Drury" tells how church records of the time list a person who's name was Robert Drury or Robert Jury, and who was not only born at the time of the protagonist, but entered the navy at the same time. A recent expedition to Madagascar found that all locations and historical references in the book are accurate. If Defoe realy did write the book, then he first heard the story from the real Robert Drury.

John Drury, of the long defunct Chicago Daily News, published Old Illinois Houses in 1941.The sixty to seventy five houses included, from all over the state, represent not just architectural styles but all imaginable aspects of Illinois' rich history. The author brings this history entertainingly to the fore. The book will interest even those who are completely blind to the beauty of domestic architecture. Each portrait of three or four pages includes a black and white photo.

Considered by John Robert Moore as a work by Daniel Defoe and contested by A. W. Secord (with the discovery of a real Robert Drury). This work is important not just because its investigation into Madagascar, but because it has been wrongly given as the work of Drury. It was transcribed by Defoe from meetings with Drury. See Moore "Defoe in the Pilory and Other Studies."

Assikuh, tih menf ughast ifg ushphizxim. Medhabis Vif igyamas, neu semmotes nosdervji inh aghs der mixz iphouteh. Parcsec mi jeemma iveg noh genna, fegiz no hadaghshi.

Having been raised and then later worked in southern Madagascar, this book could not have been a rewrite of "Robinson Crusoe" as has been often been the critique of this rare jewel. You can find a copy of this rare book in the Western Bank Library of the U Of Minnesota. A must for any serious anthropologist studying southern Madagascar culture!

As a great (x3) grandson of Eliza Spalding, I found this book (and "Memoirs of the West", by Eliza's daughter) to be very hard to put down. When I did, all I wanted to do was tell my daughters about the women in their family. I came across this book doing a search of ancestors, and benefitted greatly from the work done by Karen Rico, whose review is above.

This is a story of tough people, who, amazingly, held on to their religious convictions through every test possible, even the threat of ugly death. Once again, truth is more outrageous than fiction.

As a great-great-greatdaughter of eliza hart spalding, I found the book very informative and enlightening. I never realized the perils and problems that being the first white women in a land of natives that could be encountered. Both Narcissa and Eliza had courage and strength even though they seemed to have different personalities. The author was very informative and he backed his findings whenever possible with historical fact and copies of letters and diaries. I found that I was able to visualize the trek across the country and the life that these women had to endure by being missionaries. The author even noted the problems between Catholics and Protestants during that time.

As Eliza Spalding's great-great grandaughter, I was deeply moved by the account given of Eliza and Narcissa's journey into the rugged and primitive Northwest territory in 1836. In our current age of technology, where knowledge of the unknown comes to us in full color without direct experience, it is unimaginable to consider two young women,driven from family and loved ones by their devout spritual quest,brave enough to endure the rigors of exploration. Mr. Drury's words both enlightened me and filled me with pride to be connected to one of these relatively unknown heroines. I will recommend this book to my high school students, to draw on the example of the courageous role modeling illustrated by the lives of both Eliza and Narcissa. In light of their fearless independence and their unparalled commitment to a cause greater than themselves, they teach us much about the human spirit. One may need to rethink the origin of the women's liberation movement as the pages of this book are turned, revealing the strength and enduring power of Eliza and Narcissa.