Reviews for History Of Art

The average rating for History Of Art based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-04 00:00:00 George Rhodes I have given this book four stars, because even though it has its flaws I found it enjoyable to read most of the time and felt that I learned a lot. Whether I will be able to retain what I learned is another matter, what with age and beer thrown into the mix! It has taken me months to read this history, whilst also reading lighter books along the way, because I have tried to get the content into my head, which, in effect, means that I have read most of it twice or even three times. I kept going back and re-reading the last chapter because there was just so much to take in. The writing frustrated me at times, the author using long and complicated sentances that took half a dozen reads before I really understood them. The proof reading could have been better too – some basic errors, e.g. ‘a 1,000,000’ instead of merely ‘1,000,000’ was an annoyance. Having said all that, it must be incredibly difficult to write about the history of such a long period of time in a succinct, readable way and, for the most part, Roberts has succeeded. The style is unbiased and does not shy away from revealing the faults, prejudices, exploitations and atrocities committed by and to Europeans over the centuries. Overall, however, Roberts concluded that Europe did much that was of value to the world, along with the misery. Inevitably a historian (or an historian, if you prefer), looks at ‘the big picture’, so the benefits the rest of the world ultimately gained by being either conquered or bullied by Europeans, or being merely in contact with them, e.g. the rule of and equality before the law, political systems (democracy, communism, federalism, nationalism), economic development and others, have resulted in the more rapid overall development and economic prosperity of the world than would otherwise have occurred. Whilst this was going on he also makes it clear that many of the motives were greed and selfishness, as well as expediency and necessity, and that cultural and traditional life, religious belief systems and tribal organisation were in so many places denigrated as ‘savage’, sometimes wiped out in the name of progress and peoples re-organised into unnatural political entities as the world was carved up by Europeans competing for their empires. Not to mention the millions of people who suffered personally whilst history was being made. The history of Europe is such that it makes a complete nonsense of artificial concepts such as racism and nationalism. Europe has been invaded so many times from several directions, added to the migration over the centuries of people from all over the world to Europe, that surely all of us have in our veins very mixed blood and have never had the right to feel any racial superiority over others. Even in these ‘enlightened’ times we still struggle with feelings of cultural superiority over more ‘primitive’ concepts and societies, and denigrate societies that value religious belief and adherence to religious laws as inherently more ‘backward’ than our own. This is, no doubt, as a result of some practices being abhorrent to our minds: female genital mutilation, ‘honour’ killings and female subjugation being some examples, but we must try to separate these hideous concepts (which must be stopped) from the overall cultural heritage they spring from, rather than using them as an excuse to reinforce our in-built, long-held prejudices. As the book proceeds we see that Europe is today an even more fluid concept than in the past: where are the boundaries to Europe? The book was written in 1996 so much has changed since then. The EU (European Union) wants to expand itself ever further and Turkey has been pushing for membership for years: is it a European country? If it is, then what about Israel? It is already in the European Song Contest, for some reason. If not, does it matter as long as it means that countries can get on well together without conflict and improve people’s lives? He ends by speculating, interestingly in these days of the EU ‘In-Out’ Referendum (in the UK), that perhaps nationalism is coming to the end of its usefulness as a concept of organising people. After all, ‘fighting for your country’ has caused an awful lot of death and misery over the years. We shall see. It may be instead that before this happens we see new ‘empires’ exert their influence over world affairs before nationalism is done. China will one day be able to exert such economic and financial pressures that she could have vastly more influence on world affairs, and perhaps the power and influence of ‘the West’ is waning, as so many other great powers have waned before. There is no doubt that the big picture will change continuously and it is interesting to speculate that perhaps one day the names (of the EU, the United States, China, India, et al) will disappear into history and we will have a world government, something that will need to happen to ensure the survival of our species, I suspect. This should be an interesting and hopeful concept, though there is much to be done before we get to that point. Some of the comments in this review are my own opinion rather than being from the book. Sorry to waffle on but this history book makes you think as well as learn, so it’s done its job well.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-05-11 00:00:00 Jack Arminius I've had this on the back of the toilet for a few months--great bathroom reading, I dare say. Sections are broken into small, two to seven page chunks, making this a great bit of porcelain prose. But, on a lighter note, Roberts does the unthinkable: he condenses three thousand years of European history into a single, accurate, informative tome with a wonderfully readable prose. As a primer for European history, this book is at the top of the class and, moreover, for those who are more intimately familiar with history, it is in no way a tedious read. Neither too surfactory nor too pedantic, Roberts provides a compelling and accessible book on an important part of world history. And it really is good toilet-reading material. Though, that should not cast aspersions on its merits.