John Glassie

A fairly lightweight combination of history, sociology and biography that mostly works. If the book has a fundamental problem, it is with the author's choice to emphasize the biography part. Ultimately this ends up being about a dude who was wrong way more than he was right, was a tireless self-promoter without much worthwhile to promote, and someone who when faced with contradictory evidence about his own conclusions--refused to re-examine his own conclusions. I was torn ultimately with how I felt about the main character, which makes me wonder if it was a completely successful biographical effort. Still an enjoyable read.… (meer)

Athanasius Kircher is an interesting subject, but the amount of conjecture and the repetitive narrative used by Glassie bogs down the reader. On the other hand, the societal and cultural picture of the 17th century Glassie provided was quite interesting. And, just when you are sure that any and all thinking attributed to Kircher must be a hoax, Kircher came up with something like "universal music," which may have influenced J. S. Bach.

The book is filled with the tabloid fodder of the day: Queen Christina, who abdicated her throne (and worse, became a Protestant), was rumored to be an hermaphrodite, or a lesbian, and to have killed René Descartes!

Not all the tidbits are farcical. After the Great Fire in London in 1666, Christopher Wren--the architect--rebuilt 51 of the 84 churches thus destroyed, including St. Paul's Cathedral.

The author, a writer for several magazines and of a photo book, took on an ambitious project for his first book-length project. Tighter editing could have been a help.… (meer)

A biography of Athanasius Kircher, the 17th century polymath and prolific author who amongst many other things tried to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs and invent a universal language.

Drily humorous account of Kircher's life. Unfortunately so much of the book is spent on describing the intellectual milieus Kircher was working in, other people's reaction to him, and his indirect legacy that Kircher himself and his thought remain rather elusive.

Even more unfortunately, although the endnotes in the ebook link back to the text, the text does not link to the endnotes.… (meer)

John Glassie has written an absorbing and enjoyable biography of one of history's great characters, the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. The author of more than thirty books on a wide range of topics (from music to hieroglyphics to snakebite to China to the nature of the interior of the earth), Kircher also collaborated with Bernini, rubbed shoulders with popes and emperors, and curated a famous museum in Rome. Many of his conclusions turned out to be entirely incorrect, and seem completely ridiculous to us now, but that notwithstanding, his life and career make for a good read, and Glassie does the job very well indeed.

With my usual gripe that the notes ought to be indicated in the text, the references are at least very thorough and provide plenty of extra fodder for the curious reader who finishes Glassie's book and wants to dig deeper.… (meer)