Reviews for Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Vol. 3

The average rating for Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Vol. 3 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-04 00:00:00 Delta Foxx This book differs from most books about Russian and Soviet science in that it is not a book about the scientific elite or the major institutions of science before and after the revolution. Rather, it is a study of the popularization of science among the masses. Andrews shows that, prior to 1917, a grass roots (or at least independent-of-the-state) effort for adult education involved the popularization of science. This was mostly handled by scientific societies, founded in the provinces, during and after the great reforms of the 1860s. For the most part, they served rural communities that were hungry for scientific and technical knowledge, and that were very eager to listen to those experts who could present such information at the appropriate level. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks, also promoters of science in the service of statecraft and "cultural enlightenment," became the primary supporters of these local efforts of science popularization and education (with the hope that the adoption of a materialist view of the world the peasants and working class would be less likely to become counterrevolutionaries). While the popularization movement grew in numbers and influence directly after the revolution (in the 1920s under Lenin's New Economic Policy), they also experienced efforts by Party authorities to gain more control over their societies. (This support, and the control that came with it, came primarily from Glavnauka, the scientific branch of the Commissariat of Enlightenment. However, tensions erupted between Glavnauka and the scientific branch of the Vesenkha, which worried that Glavnauka's support of these societies was supporting prerevolutionary attitudes.) With the Stalinist cultural revolution of the late 1920s, the focus of the movement and its publications turned to a more limited set of concerns. Where once they had been able to promote many topics of science without national prejudice, they now were forced to focus on practical technologies tied to the ideological and industrial campaigns of the regime. Around the time of the first 5 year plan the leaders of the original movement became targets of the new regime in its campaign to ostracize the old "bourgeois" intelligentsia. They were attacked from above and below, by an alliance of Communist professors, young militants, and the state. By 1931 the formerly independent societies became parts of regional bureaucracies or replaced by Stalinist party organs. A tension emerges at this point: while Stalinism sought to educate Soviet workers and make technology accessible to the masses, it also attempted through its propaganda to create a closed off culture that glorified Soviet achievements. For their own part, workers had always been most receptive to information from experts who seemed to be politically neutral. They enjoyed the new popularization selectively - they sought out the exposure to scientific and technological information, even as it was laden with unwelcome propaganda. The new radical organizations still had to negotiate with the workers and their desires. As has been pointed out by Richard Stites in his study of popular culture in the Soviet Union, workers were still able to define their own interests, even at the height of Stalinist oppression.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-27 00:00:00 David Chanan I have considerable interest in geology, so this travelogue about various regions with granite domes intrigued me. Wessels clearly knows the relevant geology, but his deeper passion seems to be for the plants that grow on or near granite outcrops. Unfortunately, the book has no photographs to help the reader appreciate the plants over which he waxes so rhapsodically. Much of the reading consists of his excitement over seeing this or that plant without visual insight that could be appreciated by the reader. I realize that to include color photographs would have changed both the character and cost of such a book. Accepting that caution, I still wish he had opted for more visual info. Stephen Senturia is the author of One Man's Purpose - A Novel