An Intimate History of Humanity
sat6jun2009—23w157d43%— 19h39m00s—0utc
One of the best books I’ve read: Theodore Zeldin’s An Intimate History of Humanity.
It will be a while before I transcribe all the many, many parts of this book that I highlighted but in the meanwhile, here’s the index, wonderful in itself, all the more so because the book delivers on it:
- How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them
- How men and woman have slowly learned to have interesting conversations
- How people searching for their roots are only beginning to look far and deep enough
- How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness
- How new forms of love have been invented
- Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex
- How the desire that men feel for women, and for other men, has altered through the centuries
- How respect has become more desirable than power
- How those who want neither to give orders nor to receive them can become intermediaries
- How people have freed themselves from fear by finding new fears
- How curiosity has become the key to freedom
- Why it has become increasingly difficult to destroy one’s enemies
- How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to
- Why compassion has flowered even in stony ground
- Why toleration has never been enough
- Why even the privileged are often somewhat gloomy about life, even when they can have anything the consumer society offers, and even after sexual liberation
- How travelers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for
- Why friendship between men and women has been so fragile
- How even astrologers resist their destiny
- Why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives
- Why fathers and their children are changing their minds about what they want from each other
- Why the crisis in the family is only one stage in the evolution of generosity
- How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them
- How humans become hospitable to each other
- What becomes possible when soul-mates meet