Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Author: Tom Standage

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-18-11

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2819 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece, wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe, they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.

For Tom Standage, each drink is a different kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite beverage the same way again.

Editorial Reviews:

The precursor to his equally excellent book on hunger through the ages, An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage here charts the developmental course of beverages and their significance for human progress. Standage is really a journalist and a technologist, so A History of the World in Six Glasses is not your average history book. The author is clearly well-researched, but its his parlaying of the facts into a cohesive evolutionary narrative that keeps things interesting. Liquid refreshment is an essential part of our existence, and Standage doesnt simply map out the parallel developments of drink and civilization, but more excitingly, builds a strong case for how each drink has made foundational contributions to its era.

Earphones Award winner and Audie Award-winning producer Sean Runnette does a terrific job of letting beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola speak for themselves. Standage has set forth a tone that is highly interested, but not pedantic or overly exclamatory. Runnette knows just what it takes to fade away into the background, neither bombastically lecturing to the listener nor merely monotonously reading Standages text. Every pause is justified and every consonant is crisp. This is nothing less than expected from Runnette, who has been in the audiobook business for more than a decade and is the son of Grammy Award-winning producer John Runnette. As the beverage cultures advance, Runnette increasingly recedes, leaving the text to shine on its own surprising merits.

No matter what your choice of drink, hearing more about its influence on the world is actually quite engrossing. Of particular interest is the appendix at the end, where you can learn about exactly which modern beers most closely resemble the ale of yore, which ancient blends of tea are still available today, and so on.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Hiroshima

Author: John Hersey

Narrator: George Guidall

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 587 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

A journalistic masterpiece. John Hersey transports us back to the streets of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 - the day the city was destroyed by the first atomic bomb. Told through the memories of six survivors, Hiroshima is a timeless, powerful classic that will awaken your heart and your compassion. In this new edition, Hersey returns to Hiroshima to find the survivors - and to tell their fates in an eloquent and moving final chapter.

Members Reviews:

Hiroshima, the days and years that followed

Hiroshima, theAn easy read about a most shameful era in the history of mankind.

Can you imagine walking into work one morning thinking about your children safely deposited at the local school and your spouse at home. Perhaps she will be making your favorite meal tonight. You are happily planning your day and looking forward to crossing things off your 'To Do' list.

All of a sudden there is a massive bright light all encompassing ahead of you. Explosive, no 'implosive' noises that make you feel as if your ear drums will turn inside out. Everything comes to a halt. Hundreds, no, perhaps thousands of people just stop in their tracks. Seeing a mushroom shaped light you stare up at the brightest clod that you have ever beheld. Of course at that time no one in the general public has ever heard of an Atom bomb. What do you do? Everywhere you look there are the dead and dying. You are a part of a culture that is highly compliant when it comes to the rule makers in the government. However there are no rules for this. Indeed how could there be?

This book puts faces, names and breaths life into this story. This is a living history.

This is one history that I pray we never repeat.

Required Reading for a Reason

It's the story of 6 survivors of the A-bomb at Hiroshima. It reflects on the atrocity of a "total war" strategy but also in the surprising paradigm of the Japanese. I was supposed to read it in middle school but I did not.

The book itself is pretty simple; a narrative that groups each subject "bomb affected person" in somewhat-defined chaptered spans of time. The descriptions are concise and laregly unembellished. Simply one fact or event to the next. The culmination of these pictures provides a dynamic portrait of the Japanese population both at the time of the attack and later in life.

I don't like to say I "like" books where the subject matter is so terrible, particularly a book of non-fiction, but it is interesting and I hope, for a variety of reasons, it stays on required reading lists.

Insightful, but Apolitical; Edifying, Not Preachy.

I have never read Hersey's classic and after listening to the entire thing in one sitting I am baffled as to how I overlooked it. The book is phenomenal. It tells the story in a simple, fluid and seamless way. Hersey wrote with compassion and understanding without any hint of being a traitor to his home country which could not have been an easy line to cross in 1946. Today's world is so politically divisive and nobody escapes it -- journalists almost always show their colors in their writing and are deemed too liberal or too conservative. In the time that Hersey wrote this journalistic piece showing any empathy toward the Japanese was considered wrong and he could easily have been treated as a traitor.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Clockwork Universe

Subtitle: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

Author: Edward Dolnick

Narrator: Alan Sklar

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-08-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2739 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

At the end of the 17th century, an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare's century, when the natural and the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws, a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history. The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

Members Reviews:

It's a Wonder We Left the Dark Ages

This book sets everything up with a concise account of the kinds of nonsense and "old wives' tales" people believed back in the Middle Ages. It's important to note that people in those times weren't stupid, but superstition permeated everything, and society kept locks on the doors of advancement for a long time, often out of fear. And then little by little, some brave and brilliant minds risked ridicule or worse and slowly unlocked the secrets that transformed our understanding and gave birth to modern science. This is that story of what they did, how they did it, and some of the drama that unfolded because of it. That drama is precisely why I make the remark in the title of this review. This book will reveal that the Dark Ages weren't quite so dark, the Enlightenment wasn't that enlightening, and yet we made it this far in spite of ourselves because of the chain of events that did transpire. It's an interesting account that fills in some of the story behind the story.

Calculus Ergo Modernity

I hesitated to buy this one after reading the reviews, so I felt obliged to offer a counter opinion. I thought the book excellent and the narration quite tolerable. While the author centers on the great calculus debate between Newton and Leibniz and tosses in a lot of anecdotal history, the book also functions as a very good primer on the foundations of modern science, treating it as the elaboration and application of mathematics to physical phenomena. The crucial step represented by a mathematics of motion is a central theme. His descriptions of the calculus and the weird conceptual innovation Newton called ???gravity??? are really very good and surprisingly clear in narration without any visual aids.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Guns, Germs and Steel

Subtitle: The Fate of Human Societies

Author: Jared Diamond

Narrator: Doug Ordunio

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-18-11

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4281 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1998

Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology. Diamond also dissects racial theories of global history, and the resulting workGuns, Germs and Steelis a major contribution to our understanding the evolution of human societies.

Members Reviews:

Compelling pre-history and emergent history

This is a fascinating and foundational work that takes a topic (for me) shrouded in obscurity (how and why did civilization emerge in the pattern it did around the globe), and provides a vivid, detailed, and substantially convincing explanation. Thanks to GGS, I see world and cultural history with new eyes. That is pretty much the highest praise I can think of for a book.

I have a personal policy of ignoring (or at least trying to ignore) negative narrator reviews, as I find them always overstated. This reading is on the dry/flat/dull side, but it is still professional. The book is great and one of the most stimulating I have ever listened to. It is dense, but if you don't like fact, analysis, and theory, you wouldn't seek out this sort of book. Extremely highly recommended. It will change the way you see the world.

A story all should know, not all can endure

What a wealth of information! So amazing to think about the inevitabilities and chance occurrences that shaped our world. I wish I could recommend this book to all since it should be standard reading(listening). The down side is that its a bit of an endurance challenge to get through. There are a lot of numbers lists and .. vocally read charts. I doubt most could make it through this entire book. An abridged version might be more digestible.

Regardless, give it a try. You'll think about the world in a completely different way. But take your time, or else you'll burn out on this anvil of a book.

Informing, Interesting, and Boring all in one

His point of view is compelling, and gives definite weight to the view that all men are created equal, and 'Whites' for example aren't 'better' than anyone else, but that they had a better deck of cards than other peoples and cultures at a time when it mattered. I have heard others talk on the same issues and topics and make it much more engaging however. And while he titles the book "Guns, germs and steel", given what takes up the majority of the book it should be titled, "Grains, Vegetables and Domestic-able animals".

interesting but dry

I had some difficulty staying focused on the subjects due to the fact that the narrator was a bit on the side of sleep inducing. A soothing voice but dry in the reading, often coming across as methodical and like a recitation of facts. Much of the information is interesting but it was hard to stay focused.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Orientalism

Author: Edward Said

Narrator: Peter Ganim

Format: Unabridged

Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-31-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 241 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture." He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture. Peter Ganim's narration gives the work an elegant and knowledgable voice.

Members Reviews:

We're lucky to have this on audio

In the academic world, this book has become well-known and influential that a realistic estimate of its impact has the sound of hyperbole. That makes it worth reading in the same way as Plato's _Republic_ or Machiavelli's _The Prince_; you may not agree with all or even much of its arguments, but there's much value simply in knowing what these ideas are that so many people are thinking and talking about.

For those who don't know the book, it describes the connections between how European empires (and the US, somewhat) controlled the Middle East politically, fantasized about it, and studied it, arguing that these were all aspects of the same structures and processes. It suffers from a certain amount of contradiction and one-sided argument, but I think that when Said was writing in the 1970s the other side of the argument--the pro-colonialist side--was more frequently heard than it is now.

Another reviewer complained that he quit after listening for 45 minutes and finding that it was all generic political arguments. I think that reviewer never got past the new preface, which does go on for something like 45 minutes. The preface was added around 2004 and is mainly a fairly standard critique of the US invasion of Iraq from the perspective of its early years. There's no solution but to be patient and wait for the book itself to begin.

I've had a print copy for years and never got around to reading it, but am finding the audio version pleasant going. Said's writing is much clearer and jargon-free than many of his admirers--he is a scholar of literature, after all. The reader does well enough to keep my attention, and handles fairly well the French words that show up regularly. There are times when he sounds exactly like a computer-generated voice reading text, but his reading doesn't put me to sleep.

Why now? Because it's about now.

I had heard of Orientalism for many years -- it was on my feel-guilty-because-I-haven't-read-it list. I was more or less shocked to see that Audible was offering it -- unabridged, yet. What shocked me further is that its vitality grabs you by the throat from word one. I'm sure that part of the effect is produced by the superb narrator, but most of it must come from the impassioned yet inescapably logical author. i'll never think the same way about people in the non-rich world again.

Required reading

Fabulous , wonderful, written by a thinking person. For thinking people.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: At Home

Subtitle: A Short History of Private Life

Author: Bill Bryson

Narrator: Bill Bryson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-05-10

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4356 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

From one of the most beloved authors of our timemore than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone - a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home.

Houses arent refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to write a history of the world without leaving home.

The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

Critic Reviews:

"There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose - "What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing" - to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Another wonderful Bryson

Another entertaining look at life and history from one of my favorite writers. Walking through the English parsonage he calls home, Bryson explores the history and uses of homes themselves, and many of the minutiae in them.

While parts of the bathroom and bedroom had a strong "ick" factor, his explorations of the 19th and early 20th century --explorers, inventors, thinkers, the Industrial Revolution --was fabulous, and invites the reader to read further about people or inventions of particular interest, with excellent bibliographic references.

Highly recommended.

Bryson does it again

So now I know where "Barking Mad" comes from and why we "sleep tight". Mr. Bryson yet again digs deep and blends history, science, philosophy and psychology into this wonderful entertaining book on how we got to the point today on how we live. I am so glad that Bill reads how own book. His tone and articlulation provides the proper sense of irony when needed.

Although some parts did make me squeamish (19th century surgery), I think it provides an excellent view of where our roots of Home comes from.

Thanks for the research, and the story. My only regret is that Ive finished it (and all his books) and will have to wait another few years for his next book.

Bill makes lint interesting

Really think Bill Bryson should have been a teacher. The kids would have absorbed everything because of the way he tells stories around history.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: King Leopold's Ghost

Subtitle: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Author: Adam Hochschild

Narrator: Geoffrey Howard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-13-10

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 714 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II's vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms.

Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold's slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans - George Washington Williams and William Sheppard - risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eye-opening investigation of the Congo River stations.

Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world.

Critic Reviews:

"Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light." (Amazon.com review)

"Hochschild's superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold II's rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885....[M]ost of all it is a story of the bestiality of one challenged by the heroism of many in an increasingly democratic world." (

Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Fascinating

I had heard about this book from friends and knew I should read it, but dreaded hearing the gory details of King Leopold's horrendous subjugation of the Congo. But Hochschild breaks it to you gently, and crafts the story so skillfully that I never felt overwhelmed. The book is easy to listen to and consistently fascinating. It is amazing that the Belgians were able to prevent the information about this massive crime against an entire people from being disseminated earlier, successfully burying it for so many decades. Highly recommended.

A History that I Should Have Known

This is a history that I should have known, but did not, and am glad that I had an opportunity to explore the history of the Belgian Congo and the forces that shaped many of the countries in Africa. The author focuses on the perceived need, within Europe countries, and King Leopold of Belgium, in particular, to have a foot hold on the African continent and to exploit the resources and peoples in Africa to his own personal advantage. The author makes the history more personal, more intimate, by focusing on the dynamics of King Leopold of Belgium and how his personal needs drove widespread exploitation and brutality in the area that became the Belgium Congo. The reader captures the history as if telling an engaging mystery that is unfolding with many characters with multiple over-lapping and conflicting agendas until the reader has to step back and realize the damage and destruction that is being done.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Author: Bill Bryson

Narrator: Bill Bryson

Format: Abridged

Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-01-10

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 368 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Brysons quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science.

It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?

On his travels through time and space, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

Members Reviews:

Abridged!

Nothing indicated this was abridged until the closing credits. My only disappointment. I had read this before and some of my favorite parts were missing.

If you only own one audio book, this is it!

This book was a little hard going as text but completely comes to life when read by Bill Bryson. I love it and have listened to it several times.

Great primer on the history of the world

Very interesting content. Primarily about how the universe, galaxies, earth was created and then moves onto some of the most important discoveries made about living things. The authors voice is a bit monotone and at times the content is packed with names of discoverers, academics, etc., which makes it a bit difficult to follow. All in all a good audiobook.

my favourite author

Love. if Bryson was my teacher, I would take every subject imaginable, and go to school forever.

Mr. Bryson is a master storyteller.

Highly recommended for anyone who would like to understand difficult and often dry details of some of the worlds most profound scientific discoveries. he takes on the task with wit, insight and even humor . Truly a master of the written craft .

Hören Sie sich dieses volle Hörbuch kostenlos bei https://hotaudiobook.com

Titel: Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen

Autor:: Martin Luther

Erzähler: Hans Jochim Schmidt

Format: Unabridged

Spieldauer: 1 hr and 15 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 02-25-10

Herausgeber: Vorleser Schmidt Hörbuchverlag

Kategorien: History, World

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

Dieser 1520 entstandene Text gehört zu den wichtigsten Reformations-schriften Martin Luthers. Sie stellt nach seinen eigenen Worten "die ganze Summe eines christlichen Lebens" dar.

(c)+(p) 2009 Vorleser Schmidt Hörbuchverlag

Mitglieder Bewertungen:

Content and navigation 5*

Everyone who buys the book will know about the content.

But the navigation inside the book is very good as well. You can jump to each chapter, which are:

Impressum

Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen

95 Thesen des Theologen Dr. Martin Luther

Kleiner Katechismus

Das erste Hauptstück: Die zehn Gebote

Das zweite Hauptstück: Der Glaube

Das dritte Hauptstück: Das Vaterunser

Das vierte Hauptstück: Das Sakrament der heiligen Taufe

Das fünte Hauptstück: Das Sakrament des Altars oder das heilige Abendmahl

Der Morgensegen

Der Abendsegen

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Peculiar Life of Sundays

Author: Stephen Miller

Narrator: Alex Day

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-23-10

Publisher: Caravan

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

Sunday observance in the Christian West was an important religious issue from late Antiquity until at least the early 20th century. In England the subject was debated in Parliament for six centuries. During the reign of Charles I disagreements about Sunday observance were a factor in the Puritan flight from England. In America the Sunday question loomed large in the nations newspapers. In the 19th century, it was the lengthiest of our national debatesoutlasting those of temperance and slavery. In a more secular age, many writers have been haunted by the afterlife of Sunday. Wallace Stevens speaks of the peculiar life of Sundays. For Kris Kristofferson theres something in a Sunday, / Makes a body feel alone.

Members Reviews:

Fascinating and Useful

The book begins with what might be called a thematic chapter titled "Sunday Gladness, Sunday Gloom" that sets the tone of the discussion for the book. The second chapter gives a summary of Sunday in antiquity, focusing on Augustine. The bulk of the book is then devoted to looking at how Sunday was observed in England from the Elizabethan through the Victorian eras (chs 3-6) and in the USA from the colonial to the current period (chs 7-8). Miller concludes with a chapter on Sunday in the current American religious context.

The novel, and most useful, aspect of Miller's approach is that he presents the practice of Sunday through the experiences of prominent writers who wrote about how they experienced and practiced Sunday. The writers from which he draws range from observant Christians such as William Law and Jonathan Edwards, to non-observant Christians (those who no longer worshiped, but had not publicly denied Christianity (such as Oliver Goldsmith and John Ruskin), to lapsed Christians such as Henry David Thoreau and Robert Lowell (those who were raised as Christians but as adults had publicly departed from the faith).

This approach enables Miller to avoid the theological discussions and disputes, and focuses on how people actually practiced their Sundays. All in all, a well-written and helpful piece of work.

A sprightly work of synthesis

Although this sprightly work of synthesis begins with a chapter on Sunday in antiquity, it is largely a study of Sunday observance in England and America from the Reformation to the present. With only a nod here and there to the Sunday behavior of ordinary people on the Christian day of rest, Miller largely treats the views about Sunday--expansively defined--of such influential individuals as Samuel Johnson, William Law, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Edwards, Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, John Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell, and Walt Whitman. Miller is especially drawn to those, like Thoreau, who dabble in thinking of Sunday as the day of the Sun.

Miller writes gracefully, defining his terms simply and usually without condescension. (Such is the current state of education that I cheerfully grant him considerable leeway along those lines in any case.)

Occasionally Miller misses a source that might have provided a different perspective on one of his characters, such as Ann Twaite's Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse (2002). And Miller is overly anxious to broaden adherence to the Christian faith unless a character explicitly and determinedly announces his anti-Christianity.