Anthony EsolenBesprekingen

Excellent examples which aren't followed by scientific citations, but by anecdotal evidence and bible verses. I would've much preferred some scientific citations

The second page of the introduction hooked me, "A good book is a dangerous thing. In the wrong hands, it is like a bomb housed within a couple of red pasteboard covers. It can blow the world wide open..." And a couple pages later, "But the bigger the school, the more dangerous and upsetting a single act of imagination can be." I'm tracking with this guy so far, we'll see what the rest of the book has to offer.

With the voluminous writings of Pope Leo XIII as his guide, Esolen explains that Catholic Social Teaching isn’t focused exclusively on serving the poor. Indeed, it offers us a rich treasure of insights about the nature of man, his eternal destiny, the sanctity of marriage, and the important role of the family in building a coherent and harmonious society.

You will step away from these pages with a profound understanding of the root causes of the ills that afflict our society, and — thanks to Pope Leo and Anthony Esolen — well equipped to propose compelling remedies for them.

A remarkable volume -- part music appreciation, part literary analysis, part theological presentation, part church history lesson, part devotional...with a whiff of polemic thrown in. (Dr. Esolen has no sympathy for the 'improvements' foisted upon older hymns in the interest of providing the 'inclusion' dictated by political correctness, nor does he have a very high regard for what passes as modern hymnody these days. It is somewhat ironic that the accompanying CD changes the wording in the second line of the second verse of "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven" to reflect the very p.c.-run-amok Dr. Esolen deplores.) The Catholic point of view of the author is not overly emphasized. -- The book might have benefited from the inclusion of fewer hymns (some are given almost breathless treatment), and the accompanying CD might have benefited from a closer coordination with the text -- inclusion of some of the more unfamiliar hymns that Dr. Esolen describes, as well as some he discusses at greater length, would have been appreciated. Still, such shortcomings do not seriously spoil a fine volume that I read with much pleasure and joy -- and edification.

Out of the Ashes takes a look at the world today and all the chaos and misery it contains and seeks to find a way forward that will help us regain control and take back what has been lost. If you've read Esolen before, then you know what to expect. For those who haven't, this is just as good a place to get started as any. Each chapter is dedicated to ideas for how to recover a particular aspect of society, such as beauty, school, manhood, or play. The author discusses how things were, what has gone wrong, and then provides some ideas for how to make things better. Like most of Esolen's works, it's hard to put down once you get started. Conservatives will probably get more out of this than progressives, and Catholics more than Protestants, but there is much here that everyone can agree on. Highly recommended for Esolen fans, those interested in building a better society, or Catholic social teachings.

Life Under Compulsion is a very interesting study of the ways in which modern society restricts and guides people to act a certain way and how you can free yourself (or your children) from its grasp. The goal is true freedom of thought and an escape from the rat race, with a focus on reading and classical thought and the quest for beauty in the mundane. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific area of modern society, how it is problematic, and what one can do to break out and forge your own path. Some of this has been heard before, but some is new, and there is a lot to chew on. It's definitely the kind of book to savor slowly as to get as much out of it as possible.

The one thing you can say about Esolen is that he knows how to write. His prose is worth reading for its style even if you think his thoughts are nonsense. Whether this preaching will reach anyone but the choir is questionable, but Esolen gives the reader much to consider, whether or not they agree with him. Highly recommended for anyone who thinks that modern society is turning humans into cloned automatons and has wondered what to do about it.

Arguments are good, but unlikely to appeal to people who have already bought into the sexual revolution.

Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching brings Pope Leo XIII's social teachings to the 21st century in an attempt to show where society has gone wrong and what we can do to fix it. And he has many good and useful points to make on that subject. With chapters dedicated to personal, family, and societal issues, the book is both concise and thorough covering quite a bit in only eight chapters. It also manages to avoid jargon and remain accessible to a beginner to the subject of Catholic social teaching. Perfect for anyone interested in the topic or those looking to begin at study of Leo XIII's teachings. Highly recommended.

Wonderful, Screwtape-ish take of child-rearing and education. Delightful prose with convicting principles. One of my favorites in last several years.

I love everything about this book--from all the classical references to his discussion of all the pitfalls in our current educational system. Esolen's book reminds me of some of the recent discussions we've been having on my blog where many of us have concluded that the greatest contributors to our society and those who have really made a difference have such passion and so much drive they they work independently outside the system. Highly Recommended!

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, by Anthony Esolen, came highly recommended, so I started reading my library copy with much enthusiasm. My husband stole the book after I'd read the first few chapters, and devoured the whole thing in a day, saying at the end that it was fantastic and we needed to own a copy. For the first few chapters, I agreed with both recommendations and was ready to recommend it to others. The author echoed many of my own opinions, and I felt he was on the right track in warning parents about overstimulating modern technology that can destroy imagination and intelligence. He also advocates classical education, referring to many wonderful works of literature, poetry, history, science, and philosophy.

The book is written in a similar tone as C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, as if the author were in fact telling parents how to destroy their children's imaginations. He suggests television, video games, dumbed-down education, helicopter parenting, and other methods as ways to keep children from developing dangerous ideas and thinking for themselves. It's a clever conceit, but began to pall somewhat as the book went on, especially since the author seemed to have trouble keeping it up and it was sometimes difficult to gauge his sincerity.

Then I started to notice that he rarely mentioned girls or domestic activities. All of his examples of a good imaginative life were about boys doing things that might have come straight from The American Boy's Handy Book. At one point he mentions that he feels unqualified to discuss girls, having never been one. That's fine, but in that case perhaps the book should have been titled Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Son.

And then he started in on the feminists. Now, I can understand being less than enthusiastic about Virginia Woolf or Kate Chopin, especially if one is a man, but to imply that they contributed little or nothing to English literature is not only wrong, it's uneducated. And it shows a seriously flawed view of history to dismiss suffragists and other women's rights advocates as unpleasant females with nothing better to do than make themselves obnoxious. He even goes so far as to claim that no feminist ever risked her life for her cause. Mrs. Pankhurst, anyone? Emily Davison? The hundreds of women who were force-fed in English prisons simply because they showed up at a rally? There may be many people who think of feminists as "no-bra-wearin', hairy-legged women's libbers", but someone with the prefix of "Dr" should know better than that.

By the end of the book Esolen's argument had fallen into nothing more than a personal manifesto. He seems to believe that men should be men and women should be women, just like back in the good old days. While I'm one of the first to agree that men and women are and should be different than each other, I don't believe that that means traditional roles necessarily apply anymore. And at no point in history was there a magical time where everyone was imaginative and intelligent and happy. Modern technology does make it easier for people to dull their brains, and that's a great topic for a book. It's just too bad Esolen didn't stick with that idea.

I really wanted to like this book, and I think it might have been really good--if he'd had a decent editor. My husband and I both felt that the author simply didn't have anyone along the way to curb his rantings and bring him back to the original point. He got carried away and lost my approbation.

This is one of the worst books I've read this year.

The book jacket lead me to believe this book would be witty and insightful as well as have helpful solutions to the problems it identifies with the way children are being raised in this country.

It does not.

Instead, it is the author's personal manifesto about raising boys into men and girls into women in the old-fashioned way. He draws extensively on classical literature and an idillic and not entirely realistic view of the past.

Although I do not consider myself a feminitst, this book is offensive to women. The author belittles several female authors and historical figures while he extols the virtues of men as role models for children, leaving g
irls no role models other than their mothers.

While he praises male historical figures, male accomplishments, and the virtues of a brotherhood of men and boys, the author is vague about where girls should look for inspiration or answers. He claims it is because women are a mystery to his male mind, while completely ignoring the fact that until quite recently, women were not even permitted to receive an advanced education or parcipate in activities that would spark scientific or literary pursuits.

If you are a conservative Christian who wants your boys to grow up with a liberal arts education and your girls to grow up to be mothers and little else, read this book. Otherwise, don't bother...it'll just make you mad.½

Book Review:

TEN WAYS TO DESTROY THE IMAGINATION OF YOUR CHILD

Anthony Esolen
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
2010

I purchased this book after attending a dinner where the author, Anthony Esolen, was the guest speaker. We were late for the dinner, and so Carolyn and I - and the oldest five children living at home - polished off the remaining spaghetti right before Dr. Esolen started. The speech was far better than the spaghetti.

TEN WAYS TO DESTROY THE IMAGINATION OF YOUR CHILD is another in a series of books which proposes to do just the opposite of its stated goal. The most famous example of this genre would have to be C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, where a senior devil is writing letters of encouragement and advice to a junior devil who is working on ruining the soul of his 'patient.' The book also reminded me of a product which was sold during the Prohibition era - grape juice - which came complete with instructions on how to NOT ferment their product to produce wine. One can benefit from doing the opposite of what is suggested in all of these pieces of literature.

In his introduction, Dr. Esolen states that "a judicious application of even three or four of these methods will suffice to kill the imagination of an Einstein, a Beethoven, a Dante, or a Michelangelo." Of course this is not what he wants, so every chapter looks at the various things which are being squeezed out of the life of a child; things which will stimulate the mind of a boy or a girl to grow into independent, thinking man and women whose minds are free to think on their own.

I found the book inspiring, with every chapter full of references to great works of literature to recommend to my children. There is even a bibliography at the end of the book for those of us who are trying to construct a home library. Dr. Esolen has a writing style which is enjoyable to read, even when the subject is serious. For example, this paragraph made my wife and I chuckle when I read it to her as we both were drifting off to sleep:

"Chastity is absurdly easy to laugh at. For of all, no one is chaste. Second, it is stupid to be chaste to begin with. What's all the bother about, anyway? Elizabeth Bennett believes, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, that her family will be disgraced when it becomes known that her silly sister Lydia has run off, unmarried, with a soldier. Weren't they quaint and unenlightened in Jane Austen's day? Better that Elizabeth Bennett should follow her sister's lead, ignoring that prig Mr. Darcy, and make the carriage springs squeak with Colonel Denny or someone - anyone will do."

Dr. Esolen focuses on several institutions which have seriously hampered the imagination of the child: television, schools, and lack of free or unscheduled time in the life of the child. In his lecture, he talked about a game he used to play, where one would try to guess if a collection of buildings one would see on trips was either a prison, a school, or a factory. He pointed out that all three are built in the same manner and perform the same function. Once again, in his introduction he describes the phenomenon known as Take Your Daughter to Work Day:

"See, Jill, this is the office where Mommy works. Here is where I sit for nine hours and talk to people I don't love, about things that don't genuinely interest me, so that I can make enough money to put you in day care."

I enjoyed reading the book. Like any other good book, TEN WAYS TO DESTROY THE IMAGINATION OF YOUR CHILD inspired me to want to read more classic literature which Dr. Esolen mentioned in this excellent addition to my library.

First published on the blog:
http://scorpionstalkingduck.blogspot.com/2011/05/ten-ways-to-destroy-imagination...

Anthony Esolen’s entry in the ‘PIG’ series of ‘politically incorrect guides’ takes on the granddaddy of them all: it’s the PIG to western civilization itself.

With such a daunting and crucial task at hand, Esolen is a marvel. He’s erudite, witty, bold and so, so right about the myriad ways in which the glories of the West, from the Greeks to the Romans to Jews to the Middle Ages to the present day, have been suppressed or undermined by quislings within.

In just over 300 sparkling pages, Esolen plays Virgil to the open-minded reader -- now cajoling, now challenging, now simply opening windows to allow fresh air and light long excluded to flow back into the room.

The elegance and yes, beauty of Esolen’s work here is in danger of being obscured by the series’ insalubrious title and the book’s rather garish cover. Don’t let this put you off. Although this is a perfect gift for university or graduate students, it’s a work that rewards the attention of anyone interested in the truth.

I teach a Western civilization course for a tutorial service and I thought I would check out this book. Esolen writes in a very readable style and touches on the history, art, ideas and people that have made the Western world what it is. He comes from a strong Catholic perspective and is not apologetic about it. He brings up some excellent points that in our politically correct society we overlook or downplay. I would not use it as a textbook but I have used some of his points in class and looked further at some of the books he recommended. At a time when many high schools and universities are watering down their curriculum and not assigning the reading of the great books or discussing some of the great philosophers or leaders of the Western Civilization this book challenges us to rethink that and realize what a rich heritage we have.½