Category: Book Notes
-
Progress in the Little World
Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories are delightful little tales set in the “little world” of an Italian town in the Po valley in the years immediately after World War II. What makes them wonderful is their pure humanity, the sheer warmth of the oft-contentious between Don Camillo, his eternal rival, the communist mayor Peppone, and…
-
A Flat Stanley World
The modern world often feels very hollow, flat and dull. But why? We live in an age of riotous color and spectacle, of the greatest material abundance in human history. In our pockets we carry devices capable of bringing us the most beautiful music, the greatest works of literature, and conversations with our loved ones…
-
The wind had a mysterious voice and carried nothing now of the songs of birds, or of the rustling of palms and fragrant vines. Its burden was gathered from a stormy expanse of crested waves and briny tangles. I could see no striving in those magnificent wave motions, not raging; all the storm was apparently…
-
War
A deaf and dumb German girl, named Libbe or Libba, had grown fond of my cousin Armand and had followed him. I found her sitting on the grass, which had bloodied her dress: her elbows were propped on her folded and upraised knees; her hand, tangled in her thin blond hair, supported her head. She…
-
Observations of America
In sum, the United States give the impression of being a colony, not a mother country: they have no past, and their mores are not a result of their laws. The citizens of the New World took their place among the nations at a moment when political ideas were in the ascendant, and this explains…
-
The Church of Reason and Liberty
The pictures, the sculpted and painted images, the veils, and the curtains of the monastery had been pulled down. The basilica, gutted, was now nothing but bones and shredded sinew. In the apse of the church, where the wind and the rain poured in through the broken panes of the rose-windows, a carpenter’s workbench served…
-
Hanover Tigers, Memory, and Place
Eternally trying to post more and to allow myself to post more scattered thoughts and fragments. Thus, a small note from Ritter’s fanastic The Glory of Their Times. For those who’ve forgotten, the book is an oral history of baseball at the turn of the century and, in my opinion, the best thing written on the sport.…
-
A Theory on Mandeville
Preparations for my course on travel (still time to sign up!), led me to reread one of my favorite medieval works recently, Mandeville’s Travels. The merits of the book are many. It’s wondrously imaginative, with all the sciapods, fountains of youth, and mighty Christian kings of the East that you could ask for, made all the more charming…
-
Against Flatness in Baseball
Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times is the greatest book on baseball ever written. It’s an oral history of the game at the turn of the century, and it’s utterly charming. The love of the game, the sheer fun of playing shines through on almost every page. The game was more colorful then, chaotic and…
-
Priorities
It is a very serious perversion to view professional work as the serious part of life, and family life as relaxation. No, the time we spend with our loved ones is not the time to relax and take it easy, but rather the moment to put on our festival garment, the moment to accomplish a…
Dan Yingst 