MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
Latest editorial
Greetings! I was here
MARTIN HALL relishes a history that advocates a dialectical understanding of culture as both representative and transactional
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS CHARCOAL: A magnificent rendition of a woolly rhino drawn on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche valley of southern France c37,000 years ago using charcoal from combusting Scots pine oil. The shading as a technique has not been seen before the discovery of the Chauvet Cave
[Inocybe/French Wikipedia/Public domain]
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
Culture: A New World History
Martin Puchner
Ithaca, £12.99
MARTIN PUCHNER’S Culture: A New World History manages to achieve something not all histories do: to make you come away feeling that you’ve learnt something.
The book’s strength lies in its storytelling as a narrative history constructed from 15 chronological episodes that the author sees as emblematic of the varying ways in which culture has been created, used, discarded and rediscovered, going back to the 14th century BCE. As well as that, the book is framed by an introduction on the Chauvet Cave from 35,000 BCE and an epilogue about the future of the library in the digital age.
Among other things, we learn about the bust of Nefertiti, the Japanese Pillow Book, the Storehouse of Wisdom in Baghdad, the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast, Hildegard of Bingen, Moctezuma and the Aztec Empire, Toussaint L’Ouverture and George Elliot’s role in the origin of historiography. His focus is on visual and performing arts, plus to a lesser degree, literature, so there’s no real discussion of music, and none of film, though given that the latter is only turning 130 next year, so he can be forgiven for that.
Similar stories
MARTIN HALL examines the way the Roman orator took on different schools of philosophy
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
MARTIN HALL welcomes a study of Britain’s relationship with the EU that sheds light on the way euroscepticism moved from the margins to the centre
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage