BOTM: P. Paphides, Broken Greek (2020)
R. Calasso, The ruin of Kasch (1983)
A. Horne, The terrible year: a history of the Paris commune (1971)
J.H.C. King, Blood and Land (2016)
B. Bishop, The big sort (2008)
D. Defoe, Journal of the plague year (1722)
I've read Defoe before - a decade ago. I'd forgotten that, but I'm glad I reread it; a lot is reminiscent of today. It was however heavy going. Not as heavy going as Calasso, which I thought was vastly overrated once it strayed off Talleyrand, and it wasn't great on him either.
My favourite wasn't heavy going at all. Paphides' book is joyful and brilliant. Billed as a memoir, which is is, just about, its quality lies in its saturation with the music of the time (very specifically about 1975-1982) and his writing about that. That writing that is enhanced by the adult critic adding layers to this childhood insight. It has its fair share of actual memory too, with flashes of acute observation about the nature of his family and their experience. It rattles along, and for me at least those two things hugely complement each other. My memories are also fixed by place and sound. It's a book filled with love: for the music (almost all music) and for the people around him and as such an excellent read for right now, but would be anytime. Right now, it also has the added advantage that it has a long playlist, and you can listen to that without leaving your house.
Thursday, 2 April 2020
Monday, 2 March 2020
Bibliography, February 2020
BOTM: J. Child, My life in France (2006)
C. Fraser, Prarie Fires: the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
A. Huxley, Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell (1954, 1956)
U.K. Le Guin, The word for world is forest (1972)
A. Martin, Night trains (2017)
S. Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (2017)
How did the fashionable 50s and 60s happen? How did intelligent, well established, perceptive people fall for this utter tosh? Reading Huxley's book on hallucinogens I'm reminded of the terrible end of A Dance to the Music of Time. I don't think Powell understood the 1960s, but his final incarnation of Widmerpool is reminiscent of Huxley here. It is dreadful to see the decline. The brilliant satirist of 20s society, trenchant and perceptive critic of the utopian dreams of the 30s, is reduced to writing bunkum.
At the same time as this drivel was being written, Julia Child was in France, learning to cook. Her posthumous account of it is everything Huxley's is not. It is engaging where his was ponderous; self-deprecating rather than infused with his own sense of its significance. And it's undergirded with a fierceness of interest that makes his witterings on the transcendent look absurd. Like her masterpiece, it has dated elements (though far less than Huxley), and is, entirely acknowledged, the product of the particular background of the author. Learning this makes my much beloved Mastering the Art of French cooking even more immediate and engaging. At heart though, it's is a romp through post war Paris and the century of French cooking that preceded it. That's no bad thing.
Children, spend more time with classic French sauces and less time on acid, especially if you're reading about them.
C. Fraser, Prarie Fires: the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
A. Huxley, Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell (1954, 1956)
U.K. Le Guin, The word for world is forest (1972)
A. Martin, Night trains (2017)
S. Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (2017)
I. Tree, Wilding (2018)
J. Philips, Saladin (2019)How did the fashionable 50s and 60s happen? How did intelligent, well established, perceptive people fall for this utter tosh? Reading Huxley's book on hallucinogens I'm reminded of the terrible end of A Dance to the Music of Time. I don't think Powell understood the 1960s, but his final incarnation of Widmerpool is reminiscent of Huxley here. It is dreadful to see the decline. The brilliant satirist of 20s society, trenchant and perceptive critic of the utopian dreams of the 30s, is reduced to writing bunkum.
At the same time as this drivel was being written, Julia Child was in France, learning to cook. Her posthumous account of it is everything Huxley's is not. It is engaging where his was ponderous; self-deprecating rather than infused with his own sense of its significance. And it's undergirded with a fierceness of interest that makes his witterings on the transcendent look absurd. Like her masterpiece, it has dated elements (though far less than Huxley), and is, entirely acknowledged, the product of the particular background of the author. Learning this makes my much beloved Mastering the Art of French cooking even more immediate and engaging. At heart though, it's is a romp through post war Paris and the century of French cooking that preceded it. That's no bad thing.
Children, spend more time with classic French sauces and less time on acid, especially if you're reading about them.
Sunday, 2 February 2020
Against Millenarians (and for Charles, King and Martyr)
Preached Candlemas (2nd February) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell.
Family service
Malachi 3.1-5
Family service
Malachi 3.1-5
Psalm 24.1-10
Hebrews 2.14-18
Luke 2.22-40
Good morning; some short words from me, not least because the children were brilliant and the vicar has stolen all my jokes. I will be brief, though – unlike the vicar – I will be covering Charles King and Martyr properly.
Now, as it’s Candlemas, I’d like to ask how many of you took down your Christmas decorations? 150 years ago, you would definitely have kept them up till now, because the whole time running from Christmas was seen a single season, up to when Jesus was presented in the temple, which we read in the gospel.
And it’s today because 40 days after the birth of a child, according to the Jewish law, mothers come to the temple to be purified. And while Mary is there, we read that she also dedicates her firstborn to God. When we talked about waiting earlier, this is one of the most significant – waiting for a child to be born. It certainly was for me, and I imagine for Mary and Joseph. They, overjoyed, give thanks to God and make sacrifices. But their waiting is nothing compared to that of Symeon and Anna. All we know of them is that they are old, exceptionally old for the time. And they have been waiting and hoping for many years. For them, that waiting has been fulfilled in their lifetimes. They have seen the light come into the world.
I want to remember today the years before. Not about the hope fulfilled in their lifetime, but the uncertainty and the years without it. Because for many, the Hollywood ending does not come in our lifetime. That’s the theme of our reading from Malachi. This is the last book of the Old Testament, written in exile, promising that God will come to bring justice, to purify and to refine. These are hopes you write down when you have nothing, not when you have power.
And so to Charles I, King and Martyr. King of England, pious Christian, crowned on Candlemas 395 years ago, the most powerful man in England. Twenty four years later, stripped of all his power, after a sham trial, he was murdered, at the behest of a dictator, backed by the army (other historical interpretations are available). Why is he a saint? Not because he died, plenty of people get killed, especially by military dictators. But because the church holds that he had been offered peace and to be spared if he abandoned his principles, his church and, in his view – and mine – legitimate government. He didn’t take it. My children tell me that he was the worst king ever and really boring, but it’s certainly the case that his actions shaped the Church of England, and it’s certainly the case that he died, alone; his family fled; his supporters in hiding. All he had left is hope.
What did he hope for? Was it fulfilled? He did not receive anything in his lifetime. They cut his head off. Was it for justice or revenge? He had that I suppose. Eleven years later, his son returned, his killers were punished, and their leader’s dead body dug up and his head displayed on a spike as a warning. I hope my sons are listening.
But I don’t think that is what he hoped for. As Christians, we do not hope for impossible, radical transformation in this world. That is millenarianism. Symeon will probably have read Malachi, but he does not live to see judgement, but a baby. He knows the psalms, but he doesn’t see victory in battle, but the light to the gentiles. Our hope is wider and greater, and more certain, than those stories. It’s right there in our reading from Hebrews: Christ will destroy the one who has power over death. Charles knew that. Among his last words we read: ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown’. He was aware of his own weakness, the fallibility of the world and the perfection of heaven.
This is not an excuse for not hoping or acting in the world. I preached on that earlier this year and I wouldn’t want you to think I am inconsistent. But it is the knowledge that in the end we rest our hopes, in the words of the BCP, on ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.’ Whatever the wait, whatever the test, whether or not it is shown to you.
I end with those words in Hebrews: because Christ himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
Amen.
Good morning; some short words from me, not least because the children were brilliant and the vicar has stolen all my jokes. I will be brief, though – unlike the vicar – I will be covering Charles King and Martyr properly.
Now, as it’s Candlemas, I’d like to ask how many of you took down your Christmas decorations? 150 years ago, you would definitely have kept them up till now, because the whole time running from Christmas was seen a single season, up to when Jesus was presented in the temple, which we read in the gospel.
And it’s today because 40 days after the birth of a child, according to the Jewish law, mothers come to the temple to be purified. And while Mary is there, we read that she also dedicates her firstborn to God. When we talked about waiting earlier, this is one of the most significant – waiting for a child to be born. It certainly was for me, and I imagine for Mary and Joseph. They, overjoyed, give thanks to God and make sacrifices. But their waiting is nothing compared to that of Symeon and Anna. All we know of them is that they are old, exceptionally old for the time. And they have been waiting and hoping for many years. For them, that waiting has been fulfilled in their lifetimes. They have seen the light come into the world.
I want to remember today the years before. Not about the hope fulfilled in their lifetime, but the uncertainty and the years without it. Because for many, the Hollywood ending does not come in our lifetime. That’s the theme of our reading from Malachi. This is the last book of the Old Testament, written in exile, promising that God will come to bring justice, to purify and to refine. These are hopes you write down when you have nothing, not when you have power.
And so to Charles I, King and Martyr. King of England, pious Christian, crowned on Candlemas 395 years ago, the most powerful man in England. Twenty four years later, stripped of all his power, after a sham trial, he was murdered, at the behest of a dictator, backed by the army (other historical interpretations are available). Why is he a saint? Not because he died, plenty of people get killed, especially by military dictators. But because the church holds that he had been offered peace and to be spared if he abandoned his principles, his church and, in his view – and mine – legitimate government. He didn’t take it. My children tell me that he was the worst king ever and really boring, but it’s certainly the case that his actions shaped the Church of England, and it’s certainly the case that he died, alone; his family fled; his supporters in hiding. All he had left is hope.
What did he hope for? Was it fulfilled? He did not receive anything in his lifetime. They cut his head off. Was it for justice or revenge? He had that I suppose. Eleven years later, his son returned, his killers were punished, and their leader’s dead body dug up and his head displayed on a spike as a warning. I hope my sons are listening.
But I don’t think that is what he hoped for. As Christians, we do not hope for impossible, radical transformation in this world. That is millenarianism. Symeon will probably have read Malachi, but he does not live to see judgement, but a baby. He knows the psalms, but he doesn’t see victory in battle, but the light to the gentiles. Our hope is wider and greater, and more certain, than those stories. It’s right there in our reading from Hebrews: Christ will destroy the one who has power over death. Charles knew that. Among his last words we read: ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown’. He was aware of his own weakness, the fallibility of the world and the perfection of heaven.
This is not an excuse for not hoping or acting in the world. I preached on that earlier this year and I wouldn’t want you to think I am inconsistent. But it is the knowledge that in the end we rest our hopes, in the words of the BCP, on ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.’ Whatever the wait, whatever the test, whether or not it is shown to you.
I end with those words in Hebrews: because Christ himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
Amen.
Bibliography, January 2020
BOTM: T. Salih, Season of migration to the north
C. Birch, Jamrach's menagerie (2011)
M. Dinshaw, Outlandish Knight: life of Steven Runciman (2016)
E. Edugyan, Half blood blues
A. Forest, Autumn term
V. Franklin and A. Johnson, Menus that made history (2019)
S. Kelman, Pigeon English
J. Mahjoub, A line in the river (2018)S. Kelman, Pigeon English
J. Ryle (ed.), The Sudan handbook (2015)
Lots of good stuff here. All of this was worthwhile, Edugyan and Kelman the best of the recent fiction (I'm back to the 2011 Booker shortlist). Two outstanding ones. Minoo Dinshaw's biography of Steven Runciman was absolutely delightful. It's a fantastic immersion into a world now gone, centred on Runciman himself, but illuminated by a vast cast of characters. Some of those are famous; some are now obscure, but deftly realised without losing the thread of Runciman's own life. It's a triumph. It is edged out however, by Tayeb Salih's short novel about the impact British influence had on the Sudanese. That sounds much drier than it is. It's a tight evocative piece looking at both Sudanese village life as it enters post-colonial 'modernity' and the experience of the African in early and mid twentieth century Britain. It also has a pleasing amount of drama and plot. It's a very good use of 169 pages.
And my ranking for the 2011 Booker shortlist is now complete. I think they got this right, though my memory of Barnes is imperfect. The commentators were also right: this was a poor list, with half of them being not really up to par. The top three were good, though not outstanding.
- Barnes, Sense of an Ending
- Edugyan, Half blood blues
- Kelman, Pigeon English
- Miller, Snowdrops
- Birch, Jamrach's menagerie
- The Sisters Brothers
Wednesday, 1 January 2020
Bibliography, 2019
Disappointingly, despite a very strong first eight months (averaging just shy of ten books a month), the back third let me down (seven book average) and I ended the year on slightly less reading than last year. And a lot more fiction, which accounted for over half of the reading, though I had pretty poor returns in terms of quality. BOTMs were not reflective of this reading at all. Five were fiction (from 56 fiction books read); six were cultural (from 26) and one lone historical work (from 15).
For this and other reasons, this makes fiction in particular hard to discuss. I found all the fiction listed below worthwhile, and I'd add recommendations for a string of Science fiction and fantasy Susan Copper's Dark is Rising series, Jemisin's science fiction trilogy, and Addison's The Goblin Emperor also good. So, for the second year running, the monthly system has let me down. Jemisin's opener, The fifth season, was exceptional. Imaginative, different, and fully fleshed out, it took a great premise and executed brilliantly. They are garlanded with multiple awards for a reason.
Also like last year, fiction and non-fiction were from the same month as the non-fiction winner. Here, I had an embarrassment of riches. I would heartily recommend all my non-fiction BOTMs. In fact, I've already bought them for people. But Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah was never in doubt. Its scope and range are vast; yet for such a long book it retains a lightness of writing without sacrificing its seriousness. It's a masterpiece.
Finally, as a coda. It's now 2020. So for the decade past:
January: B.Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah (2013)
February: A. Kurkov, Death and the penguin (1996)
March: D. Levy, The cost of living (2018)
April: P.G.Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith (1908)
May: J. Jeffs, Sherry (6th ed) (2016)
June: Y.N. Harari, Sapiens (2011)
July: W. Goldman, Adventures in the screen trade (1983)
August: A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015)
September; A. Maalouf, The rock of Tanios (1993)
October: B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019)
November: D. Lessing, The grass is singing (1950)
December: W. Self, Umbrella (2012)
For this and other reasons, this makes fiction in particular hard to discuss. I found all the fiction listed below worthwhile, and I'd add recommendations for a string of Science fiction and fantasy Susan Copper's Dark is Rising series, Jemisin's science fiction trilogy, and Addison's The Goblin Emperor also good. So, for the second year running, the monthly system has let me down. Jemisin's opener, The fifth season, was exceptional. Imaginative, different, and fully fleshed out, it took a great premise and executed brilliantly. They are garlanded with multiple awards for a reason.
Also like last year, fiction and non-fiction were from the same month as the non-fiction winner. Here, I had an embarrassment of riches. I would heartily recommend all my non-fiction BOTMs. In fact, I've already bought them for people. But Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah was never in doubt. Its scope and range are vast; yet for such a long book it retains a lightness of writing without sacrificing its seriousness. It's a masterpiece.
Finally, as a coda. It's now 2020. So for the decade past:
- This year's non-fiction may be a masterpiece, but it, and others, lose to Eminent Victorians (from 2012). It is fine-tuned for my interests, though I defy anyone not be enthralled by it.
- For fiction, Gilead (from 2015) is the best book about Calvinism I've ever read. It may be the best novel I have ever read.
January: B.Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah (2013)
February: A. Kurkov, Death and the penguin (1996)
March: D. Levy, The cost of living (2018)
April: P.G.Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith (1908)
May: J. Jeffs, Sherry (6th ed) (2016)
June: Y.N. Harari, Sapiens (2011)
July: W. Goldman, Adventures in the screen trade (1983)
August: A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015)
September; A. Maalouf, The rock of Tanios (1993)
October: B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019)
November: D. Lessing, The grass is singing (1950)
December: W. Self, Umbrella (2012)
Bibliography, December 2019
BOTM: W. Self, Umbrella (2012)
DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers (2011)
A.D. Millers, Snowdrops (2011)
A. Moore, The lighthouse (2012)
A. Munro, The moons of Jupiter (1982)
L. Sciascia, The council of Egypt (1963)
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (2016)
I've been reading old Booker shortlists again, and, though mixed, they do reliably throw up quality. Best of them, and I hate saying this, was Umbrella. It's a swirling chaotic novel, but, with the exception of the fourth fifth, tightly done. It is stream of consciousness, but it does it well. Early dispatches from the controversial 2011 shortlist indicate that the criticism is genuine - you wouldn't have seen Self's modernism on the previous year's list - and that's a shame.
DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers (2011)
A.D. Millers, Snowdrops (2011)
A. Moore, The lighthouse (2012)
A. Munro, The moons of Jupiter (1982)
L. Sciascia, The council of Egypt (1963)
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (2016)
I've been reading old Booker shortlists again, and, though mixed, they do reliably throw up quality. Best of them, and I hate saying this, was Umbrella. It's a swirling chaotic novel, but, with the exception of the fourth fifth, tightly done. It is stream of consciousness, but it does it well. Early dispatches from the controversial 2011 shortlist indicate that the criticism is genuine - you wouldn't have seen Self's modernism on the previous year's list - and that's a shame.
Monday, 16 December 2019
Bibliography, November 2019
BOTM: D. Lessing, The grass is singing (1950)
M. Brearley, On cricket (2018)
T. Holland, Dominion (2019)
U.K. Le Guin, The real and the unreal: selected stories, volume 2 (2012)
A. Munro, Something I've been meaning to tell you (1974)
S. Tighe, Rethinking strategy (2019)
B. Wilson, The Hive (2004)
J. Worth, Call the midwife (2001)
It has been a mediocre month, and surprisingly so. I'm a big fan of many of the authors on this list, but it is clear I was not reading their best work. Of the stronger ones, Brearley was very enjoyable, but I have read lots of this kind of thing before; ditto Le Guin. More interesting was Lessing, both on its own merits, and in the context of when it was written. Its racial politics are clearly progressive for 1950, and in themselves unobjectionable, but it would be inconceivable to write such a novel now, with the black voice almost completely silent save as a foil to the disintegration of the whites.
A lengthy and specific coda now follows on Dominion, which I expected to be my favourite, but wasn't.
Good things first. This is a well written, very enjoyable, canter through the history of Western Christianity. Tom Holland writes nicely and has a great eye for interesting detail and insightful extrapolation, as well as good asides. As a narrative history, it's very good. But that's not the limit of the ambition of this book - it wants to show that Christian heritage drives much of the modern west's values, and are unique. I found both of these problematic, especially the latter.
Part of this I think is an unwillingness to do the major work, which I'll come onto, but there are also more minor questions of accuracy, noticeable perhaps only to people who have been over this ground many times before. Ulfilas, bishop to the Goths, is described as only really ministering to Christian captives on page 186, but six pages later is translating the bible into Gothic. Wittenberg was not, in 1517, 'poor and remote' (p.295), but the residence of one of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. These don't really matter, but are suggestive of a desire to ramp up the rhetoric at the expense of detail. Personally, I also found irritating the fact that Gregory VII, who animates a lot of this book, is interchangeably referred to as Hildebrand (his given name), though I accept that's personal only.
The central role given to Gregory is however, excellent. Canossa here is given its rightful place in the Christian narrative. The hinge of that narrative is the early part of the second millenium, and Holland does it well, though I would have liked to see more on Innocent III. This experience is western European only - this is after all, a history of 'the making of the western mind' - and is the first of my major objections: the book skates over the clear implications of this focus. Whatever we are talking about cannot be intrinsic to Christianity if it doesn't describe the experience and thought of the Christians to the east of the Adriatic, and indeed those east of the Euphrates. Holland knows the eastern church perfectly well, but much of what he claims to be Christian would I think be hugely undermined by an assessment of the Byzantine church and state.
Even more serious, and I think fatal, is the lack of engagement with any comparative religious analysis. Frequently, things are referred to a unique or unprecedented, but I just don't think they are. I'm not an expert on eastern religion, but it's very clearly not unique to Christianity to love the poor, nor even for the nobility to do it. Ask anyone from the subcontinent. I'm less familiar with some of the comparisons around sexual mores, both monogamy and homosexuality, but again, the only comparisons are classical and occasionally Islamic. That's Holland's specialism, but I don't think it's credible to make claims about the distinctiveness of Christianity in a book, whose excellent index (for which many commendations) has a sole reference to Hinduism and none to Buddhism.
As I write this, I wonder if I'm being overly critical. For I am sympathetic to the view that Christian history has shaped modern thinking, and that many modern assumptions owe much to particular strands of thought in our Christ-drenched, though also classically influenced, backstory. Books that tell that story are welcome. And this makes clear the distinctions between parts of the ancient west and parts of the Christian west. However, to expand that thesis requires a lot more than is present here. I understand anyone not wanting to spend more time on Buddhism than they have to, but then they shouldn't make the claims contained here.
M. Brearley, On cricket (2018)
T. Holland, Dominion (2019)
U.K. Le Guin, The real and the unreal: selected stories, volume 2 (2012)
A. Munro, Something I've been meaning to tell you (1974)
S. Tighe, Rethinking strategy (2019)
B. Wilson, The Hive (2004)
J. Worth, Call the midwife (2001)
It has been a mediocre month, and surprisingly so. I'm a big fan of many of the authors on this list, but it is clear I was not reading their best work. Of the stronger ones, Brearley was very enjoyable, but I have read lots of this kind of thing before; ditto Le Guin. More interesting was Lessing, both on its own merits, and in the context of when it was written. Its racial politics are clearly progressive for 1950, and in themselves unobjectionable, but it would be inconceivable to write such a novel now, with the black voice almost completely silent save as a foil to the disintegration of the whites.
A lengthy and specific coda now follows on Dominion, which I expected to be my favourite, but wasn't.
Good things first. This is a well written, very enjoyable, canter through the history of Western Christianity. Tom Holland writes nicely and has a great eye for interesting detail and insightful extrapolation, as well as good asides. As a narrative history, it's very good. But that's not the limit of the ambition of this book - it wants to show that Christian heritage drives much of the modern west's values, and are unique. I found both of these problematic, especially the latter.
Part of this I think is an unwillingness to do the major work, which I'll come onto, but there are also more minor questions of accuracy, noticeable perhaps only to people who have been over this ground many times before. Ulfilas, bishop to the Goths, is described as only really ministering to Christian captives on page 186, but six pages later is translating the bible into Gothic. Wittenberg was not, in 1517, 'poor and remote' (p.295), but the residence of one of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. These don't really matter, but are suggestive of a desire to ramp up the rhetoric at the expense of detail. Personally, I also found irritating the fact that Gregory VII, who animates a lot of this book, is interchangeably referred to as Hildebrand (his given name), though I accept that's personal only.
The central role given to Gregory is however, excellent. Canossa here is given its rightful place in the Christian narrative. The hinge of that narrative is the early part of the second millenium, and Holland does it well, though I would have liked to see more on Innocent III. This experience is western European only - this is after all, a history of 'the making of the western mind' - and is the first of my major objections: the book skates over the clear implications of this focus. Whatever we are talking about cannot be intrinsic to Christianity if it doesn't describe the experience and thought of the Christians to the east of the Adriatic, and indeed those east of the Euphrates. Holland knows the eastern church perfectly well, but much of what he claims to be Christian would I think be hugely undermined by an assessment of the Byzantine church and state.
Even more serious, and I think fatal, is the lack of engagement with any comparative religious analysis. Frequently, things are referred to a unique or unprecedented, but I just don't think they are. I'm not an expert on eastern religion, but it's very clearly not unique to Christianity to love the poor, nor even for the nobility to do it. Ask anyone from the subcontinent. I'm less familiar with some of the comparisons around sexual mores, both monogamy and homosexuality, but again, the only comparisons are classical and occasionally Islamic. That's Holland's specialism, but I don't think it's credible to make claims about the distinctiveness of Christianity in a book, whose excellent index (for which many commendations) has a sole reference to Hinduism and none to Buddhism.
As I write this, I wonder if I'm being overly critical. For I am sympathetic to the view that Christian history has shaped modern thinking, and that many modern assumptions owe much to particular strands of thought in our Christ-drenched, though also classically influenced, backstory. Books that tell that story are welcome. And this makes clear the distinctions between parts of the ancient west and parts of the Christian west. However, to expand that thesis requires a lot more than is present here. I understand anyone not wanting to spend more time on Buddhism than they have to, but then they shouldn't make the claims contained here.
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