Harvey & Eck

Product Description

Harvey is 33. She has a motorcycle, a baby-on-the-way and two troublesome men. Eck has only a parakeet named Dickens--but not for long.

Customer Reviews:

Extremely Enjoyable Read.......2007-05-25

This is a well-written story of self-discovery, re-embracing life, and the power of feeling connected, no matter how it's achieved. The story progresses at a nice pace, and it's a read that can be accomplished in a couple of long evenings. The ending isn't as carefully plotted and executed as the rest of the story - almost as if the author wasn't quite sure how to end it; however, it doesn't detract from what is a very good first outing by an author with a nice sence of humor, a certain amount of quirkiness, and just a little bit of cynicism thrown in for good measure.

Cannot put the book down!!.......2007-01-23

Erin O'Brien has written a wonderful freshman novel. As a woman, relating to the "Harvey" character was easy for me, but this book was about so much more. A journey through pregnancy and still wanting to be your own woman "not only viewed as the oven for a fetus" was such a laugh out loud depiction of most modern women today. Then I fell in love with the obsessive compulsive "Eck" and his own journey through his friendship with "Harvey" and how it helped him come out of his shell at an older age to realize you are never to old to love again. This is a must read and having met Ms. O'Brien personally has been such a treat!!! 5 STARS!!!

A love story with many dimensions.......2006-04-26

Reviewed by Joanne Benham for Reader Views (4/06)

When Harvey's married lover finds out she's pregnant, he dumps her....just like that. Luckily her husband doesn't know she's been cheating on him, so he's delighted that they're going to have a baby and is determined to take care of Harvey whether she likes it or not. Fired from her job because she's pregnant, and not really sure she even wants to have a baby, Harvey has no friends to talk to about her troubles. One night in desperation, she picks a name from the phone book and writes a letter to that person, whose name is Eck, a middle-aged librarian living alone with his parakeet, Dickens. Eck has lived his entire life on an unvarying schedule and routine, and Harvey's letters throw him for a loop.

As Harvey's pregnancy advances, her husband tries to box her in more and more by monitoring her food and drink intake, her activities and then the ultimate insult, refusing to have sex with her because it might hurt the baby.

Eck's heart, which he thought he had safely tucked away, is slowly broken by the unhappiness in Harvey's letters, but he has no way to contact her and offer his support. Meanwhile, as he reads Harvey's letters, which have brought a sense of fun into his life, he finds within himself the courage to break free of his narrow lifestyle and start to really live again. In turn, Eck gives Harvey the stability she so desperately needs.

I won't give away the ending, but you'll be very happy with it.

This book is a love story, but a love story with many dimensions. It's a love story between husband and wife, between parents and children, between man and woman and finally, between friends.

This book is a real keeper.

Cover to Cover.......2006-04-06

Unique, captivating, and personal-this novel is brilliant from cover to cover as it bares the soul of humanity naked, in a manner that will excite you. A smashing read indeed, one that I would feel dignified to have accompany me into any coffee shop.

Delightfully Human.......2006-03-11

If you are human and have ever loved, read this book. Read carefully and learn something about yourself, and about those who are not at all like you on the surface. Learn deep down that we all have the same needs, no matter how much we repress them, and love will find a way into your heart whether you want it there or not. And learn that, if you really try, you can be happy.

Book Description

The MacKenzie Women

The MacKenzie sisters are smart, strong, and sassy and it will take strong men to match them! So when free spirited Angeleen MacKenzie is forced to wed ranch foreman Pete Gifford in a marriage of convenience, it's a battle of wills-where mutual surrender is the only way to win!

A Marriage in Name Only,

Rugged Peter Gifford had always come to Angeleen MacKenzie's rescue-and now, he was getting her out of the biggest trouble of all-by protecting her honor with a vow of marriage. The free-spirited beauty had strayed far from home, and now Peter was bringing her back... as his bride. Every toss of Angel's ebony tresses, every flash of her sapphire eyes, tempts him into waging a passionate seduction of the woman he calls wife yet who refuses to share his bed. Can his kisses tame her wandering spirit and awaken the wild need that will bind her to him forever? Rugged Peter Gifford had always come to Angeleen MacKenzie's rescue--and now, he was getting her out of the biggest trouble of all, by protecting her honor with a vow of marriage. The free-spirited beauty had strayed far from home, and now Peter was bringing her back...as his bride. Can't his kisses tame her wandering spirit--and awaken the wild need that will bind her to him forever?

Customer Reviews:

You have to read all 10 of the series........2007-02-24

This is a wonderful western romance series , mabe the best I have read in a long time. You will be hooked and can't put them down till you finish the last one . Between 10 books the story of The Mackenzies span about thirty years. Once I had read a couple I had to find the rest.

the mackenzies:peter.......2007-01-21

I loved this set of books,you get hooked and can't put them down great book.

Another great book in this series..........2005-01-18

I'm really enjoying this series. Peter is the 5th book in this series & although the first 3 books (Luke, Flint & Cleve) were my favorites so far this book is pretty good as well. I will admit though that Angeleen is my least favorite female I've come across in this series. She just doesn't seem the brightest & she is very naive. I just couldn't understand why it took her so long to realize that she could love Peter & this is the main reason I didn't give the book 5 stars. The first half of this book is kind of slow because Angie is kind of slow in realizing what is right in front of her. Regardless of this I highly recommend this book. It's very exciting at the end when The MacKenzie brothers are brought into the picture.

Another great book in this series..........2005-01-18

A good romance in a good series.......1998-10-23

In 1880 St. Louis, Angeleen MacKenzie wonders how she was ever convinced to enter a riverboat singing contest. However, when she wins with her rendition of Foster's ballad, "Beautiful Dreamer," Angie abandons her proper lifestyle as an art school student to begin a career as a singer. A few months later the troupe reach New Orleans, but a disillusioned Angie loathes being part of a chorus. Ultimately, her lover abandons her.

Peter Gifford is from Angie's hometown in Colorado. He has always loved her and is concerned when he learns she is performing on a Mississippi riverboat. He offers to marry her and she accepts, but warns that she will never be a real wife to him. Peter wants her to be his ranching spouse, but agrees to her marriage of convenience. Though frustrated, Peter is going to court Angie until she realizes that she loves him too.

Ana Leigh's popular western romance series, the MacKenzies, continue to be fun to read, pleasing novels that deserve the attention they have received. The round II collection centers around the MacKenzie sisters (round I was cousins) with the newest tale being that of the wild Angeleen. The story line is typical of Ms. Leigh, an award winning author, in that the story is fast and passionate.. Peter and Angeleen are a delightful duo, whose marriage of convenience is surprisingly fun to watch unravel. Fans of western romance are getting a season ending treat, which will leave them impatiently waiting for the next installment.

Harriet Klausner

Amazon.com

The Humanx Commonwealth is Alan Dean Foster's signature fictional universe, the setting of, among others, his Adventures of Flinx series (which begins with For the Love of Mother Not) and the Icerigger trilogy. But how did the Commonwealth come to be? How did two seemingly dissimilar races--the gregarious, warm-blooded humans and the reserved, insectile thranx--form a union that would become so strong and prosperous as to eventually dominate our part of the galaxy?

The actual first contact between the humans and the thranx takes place in the quite exciting Nor Crystal Tears, but you don't have to have read that novel to follow what happens in Phylogenesis. In this book, which takes place soon after the first contact, the races have embarked on a program of slow, careful cultural exchange. If all goes well, the planners feel, in some decades a few tentative agreements might be reached. But they never planned on the chance meeting of a rogue thranx poet and a human thief who's hiding in the Amazon jungle. The events that surround the friendship of these two, each an outcast from his own society, will force scientists and politicians of both races to alter not only their plans but also their beliefs about human/thranx compatibility.

Foster makes excellent use of his knowledge of Latin American culture to paint a picture of a vibrant yet realistic future South America. The Amazon jungle is presented in such vivid detail it seems almost an alien world itself. Fans of the Commonwealth novels won't want to miss this crucial chapter in its history. --Brooks Peck

Book Description

In the years after first contact, humans and the intelligent insect like Thranx agree to a tentative sharing of ideas and cultures despite the ingrained repulsion they have yet to overcome. Thus, a slow, lengthy process of limited contact begins.

Yet they never plan for a chance meeting between a misfit artist and a petty thief. Desvendapur is a talented Thranx poet who is bored with his life and needs new inspiration for his work. Venturing beyond the familiar, Desvendapur runs into Cheelo Montoya, a small-time criminal with big dreams of making a fast buck. Together they will embark upon a journey that will forever change their beliefs, their futures, and their worlds . . .

Customer Reviews:

phylogenesis: Book one of the founding of the commonwealth.......2007-01-16

This book jumps around and maybe hard to follow but help you to understand the later books in the series.

Foster's mastery at creating believable aliens is on full display here........2006-02-19

Humans and Thranx have a great deal in common. Including disgust at each other's physiology. The two intelligent species that experienced first contact in Foster's earlier novel, NOR CRYSTAL TEARS, are working on a carefully planned continuum of establishing relations as PHYLOGENESIS opens. Meanwhile, the reptilian Aan - who have commonalities with both the insectoid Thranx and mammalian Humans - would dearly love to add either, or both, to their own growing empire.

Thranx poet Desvandapur dreams of making himself immortal by finding unique inspiration, the kind that he believes meeting and interacting with Humans might provide. When he learns of a tightly guarded Human enclave on his home world, the Thranx colony of Willow-Wane, he maneuvers himself into that enclave only to be disappointed at the level of contact it actually offers. Then he's thrilled to find himself chosen to join a secret Thranx settlement on Earth itself, and disappointed yet again at not being able to spend time in Human company. So Desvandapur, who has already risked much for his art, sets off on his own into the heart of the Amazon. Where he meets a Human in an unsupervised setting, at last - who's not at all the kind of Human the rest of that species would have chosen to be their ambassador.

This book is the first part of a trilogy, and as such it spends most of its pages setting up plot threads and establishing characters. It's a fun read just the same, because Foster's mastery at creating believable aliens (individuals and their social histories) is on full display here. One can feel Desvendapur's thrilled disgust at touching living Human flesh for the first time, right along with the character.

Good old-fashioned SF -- light & fun. 4.7 stars.......2005-09-09

_____________________________________________
Desvendapur is a misfit, a third-rate professional poet on the
backwater colony world of Willow-Wane. Hearing a rumor of a
secret alien colony, on impulse he sneaks into it and forges a new
identity, hoping the weird, smelly "humans" will inspire him, and
jump-start his stalled artistic career. Inspiration he gets, plus exotic
travel, but at a very high price....

Cheelo Montoya is a ninloco, a small-time Tico hood on the lam
from a mugging that went sour. He's hiding out in the Peruvian
Reserva Amazonia, waiting for the heat to die down. He falls out of
his stolen boat, which chugs on out-of-sight, on autopilot. Now he's
hiding in a tree, after an unfortunate encounter with a column of
army ants, when this *giant bug* walks by....

Des and Cheelo make a wary acquaintance, and then an uncertain
partnership against the hazards of the jungle: jaguars, anacondas,
poachers.... and unwittingly advance the budding Human-Thranx
alliance. But the wily reptilian AAnn have an idea of how to throw
a spanner in the works. Tune in next time for -- Book Two, Dirge!
(Should be out RSN -- it's been turned in to the publisher.)

This is a very entertaining book -- light, fun, and action-packed, with
clever twists and likeable characters. A lot like the good old stuff we
read and loved when we were fourteen. And, for that matter, like
earlier ADF books I've liked -- I'd gotten out of the habit of reading
Foster, after several so-so books (and the appropriately-titled "The
Damned" trilogy), so I'm very pleased to see him back at the top of
his form. Familiarity with earlier Humanx Commonwealth books is
helpful but certainly not required -- and, unlike many such books, Phylogenesis comes to a satisfying closure. If you happen to be new to
Foster, or were disappointed before, this is a good chance to see him
at his best. Fluff, but *good* fluff.

review copyright 1999 by Peter D. Tillman
First published at Infinity-plus

Sci-Fi version of the odd couple.......2004-02-06

It's not a book I'd put on a list of great science fiction, but it's nonetheless an entertaining read. It's a story of two characters, one a poet named Desvendapur from an insect like alien race known as the Thranx, and the other a human thief named Cheelo Montoya, who through a series of events become unlikely traveling partners. There's no high drama at play in the story. No planets about to be destroyed or alien swarms about to invade. It brought to mind any number of buddy movies I've seen, only with a science fiction twist. I haven't read any of the other books in the commonwealth series, so I can't comment on how the book compares with the others, but if you're looking for some light entertainment, this book fits the bill.

The Founding: Book One.......2002-10-02

Alan Dean Foster has been knocking his varied future narratives around the Humanx (Human/Thranx) Commonwealth for decades, so it should come as no surprise that the prolific pulp writer would eventually roll up his sleeves and dig out the dark and dirty tale of just how the Commonwealth was formed...

Phylogenesis is predominantly the tale of the slightly mad and very driven Thranx poet Desvendapur, who aspires to create beautiful art that will surpass all around him. His ferocious drive to contact and glean inspiration from the recently discovered humans leads Desvendapur to commit several transgressions, including an accidental murder. What Desvendapur does not know is that his almost ruthless drive to acheive something more than what he is is mirrored by the Human Cheelo Montoya, who likewise commits a crime and accidently kills someone to further his own goals.

With a sure hand, ADF crafts two very different and yet quite similar characters that are destined to meet and, in an even more unlikely yet completely logical twist, become friends of a sort. That this unlikely and illegal meeting and befriending of two iconoclastic criminals of different species should mark an important step in a larger scheme shows that the Human and Thranx have a lot more in common than they like to think.

Several reviews of this book point out its weak story (and sometimes it does read like a travelogue), so potential readers should understand that Phylogenesis is the first part of a trilogy. Plot points and schemes are introduced but not completely resolved for they play integral parts in the remaining two chapters. Taken as a part of a much bigger whole, Phylogenesis is a satisfying opening chapter. Recommended.

Average customer rating:

Another Thought-provoking treatise

An Urgent Wake Up- A Must Read

Important subject, important writer, mediocre book

The US and Europe - common problems, common interests

EUROPE: ALL IS NOT LOST, YET

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God
George Weigel
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0465092667
Release Date: 2005-04-05

Book Description

One of America's foremost public intellectuals argues that Europe's abandonment of its spiritual and cultural roots raises urgent questions about democracy's future around the world - including the United States

Why do Europeans and Americans see the world so differently? Why do Europeans and Americans have such different understandings of democracy and its discontents in the twenty-first century? Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist "cube" of the Great Arch of La DŽfense in Paris with the civilization that produced the "cathedral" of Notre-Dame, George Weigel argues that Europe's embrace of a narrow secularism has led to a crisis of morale that is eroding Europe's soul and threatening its future-with dire lessons for the rest of the democratic world.

Weigel traces the origins of "Europe's problem" to the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth-century European intellectual life, which set in motion a historical process that produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, the Gulag, Auschwitz, the Cold War-and, most ominously, the Continent's de-population, which is worse today than during the Black Death. And yet, many Europeans still insist-most recently, during the debate over a new EU constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously-informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. Precisely the opposite, Weigel suggests, is true: the people of the "cathedral" can give a compelling account of their commitment to everyone's freedom; the people of the "cube" cannot. Can there be any true "politics"-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God? George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is "No," because, in the final analysis, societies are only as great as their spiritual aspirations.

Customer Reviews:

Another Thought-provoking treatise.......2007-08-31

George Weigel has written another well thought out counter to the prevailing mindset. His argument was well thoughtout, well reasoned and fair. I am a great admirer of Weigel and this book has done nothing to reduce my opinion of him and his work. The book has an important point and is well worth reading and I recommend it for anyone who wants a proper view of Europe and where it has been and where is going.

An Urgent Wake Up- A Must Read.......2007-05-30

Weigel, a brillant researcher and biographer, pens a text here that reads like a novel. Unfortunaely for us, it is all true.

With a master's stroke Weigel lays out the case explaining with smart examples, how Europe has surrendered it's moral center while it's soul is being digested piecemeal by a new wave of evangelization- ISLAM.

The civilization that gave us libraries, universities and the Cathedral of Notre Dame as examples of greatness bestowed on man by God, has crumbled into the society that refuses to acknowledge their Christian past. Hence, the cube- France's modern answer to the Cathedral.

Declining birth rates,mass attendance and increasing abortion and euthenasia give way to millions of devoted believers with families of six and immigration from the Middle East in record numbers. While one side refuses to push their God on anyting, the other invokes Him as the reason for everything.

By the conclusion of Weigels book, the reader will understand how there will be more practicing Sunnis in Amsterdam then Christians and referendums for Sharia to replace common law without the Xenophobic label many hide behind.

Important subject, important writer, mediocre book.......2007-03-15

This is another book about how Europe is committing suicide by not having children. It is written by one of the most important American Catholic writers of our time. Weigel's general argument is that, by rejecting the Church, Europe is destroying itself.

I am a great fan of Weigel's other books. His bio of John Paul II is a classic, which contributed a great deal to bringing me back to the Church. I also tend to agree with the thesis of this book. I think that Europe is going to hell, because of its aggressive secularism.

Nonetheless, this book was disappointing to me. The argument is lightweight. I agree with it, because I agreed with the thesis BEFORE I read the book. If I was a skeptic, though, he would not have persuaded me. He does not show the connections between the loss of religion and the ways that Europe is falling apart. He basically just reviews how Europe is falling apart, note that they have rejected God recently, and says, bingo. Not a very persusaive way to argue.

On this subject, Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, is far better. Steyn is much more of an unbalanced bomb-thrower than the carefully responsible Weigel, but, on this one at least, Steyen did his homework and thought his argument through better.

The US and Europe - common problems, common interests.......2006-11-24

The US-European dispute over Iraq masks more than it reveals

On September 12, 2001, the front-page headline of Le Monde famously read `Nous sommes tous americains'. Four years later, such sentiments sound either quaint or ironic, as the Atlantic Ocean seems to have widened considerably since. But did the often painful debate over the war in Iraq really result from the fact that Europe and America have fundamentally parted ways strategically, and even ideologically and culturally? More and more, a wide swath of Americans and Europeans would answer, yes. In many ways, the very publication of George Weigel's The Cube and the Cathedral is an indication of this. The volume is aimed a wide educated audience, and is representative of a new le divorce sub-genre of American non-fiction (most of which consists of worthless exercises in France-bashing).

A flashpoint of this debate has been the rather unfortunate terminology set down in Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power (2003): basically, 'Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus'. Kagan argues that the 'power gap' between America and Europe arises as both a cause and consequence of an 'ideological gap.' Put simply, Europe believes that all the world's problems can be solved by a World Court, economic redistribution, and collective security organizations; America does not. This premise is accepted not only by American Republicans, but also by the blithest of Euro-philes (e.g., Mark Leonard, who argues for `the power of weakness').

George Weigel, an American Roman Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul II, seems to have been spurred to write The Cube and the Cathedral after most of Western Europe refused to support Operation Iraqi Freedom. But then, unlike his neoconservative colleagues (including Kagan), Weigel has a far more passionate attachment to the continent, and calls up much of his inspiration from western European and Slavic thinkers. Weigel criticizes contemporary Europe in an effort to inspire them - and America - to reconnect with what he most admires of their shared European past.

Weigel conceives his critique through the architectural metaphors of Paris' Notre Dame (1260-1345) and La Grande Arche de la Défense (1982-1989), a minimalist cube in the corporate district large enough to contain Notre Dame in its hollow inner-sanctum. Weigel first asks, who were the Frenchmen who built `the cathedral'? What constituted this culture whose central monument emphasized communal worship and the contrasts of stone and glass, support and lightness, unity and hierarchy? Weigel then looks across town, and asks, who are the Parisians who constructed the Grand Arch? What constitutes this culture which builds a 'monument to human rights' as a kind of über-corporate headquarters? (The Arch, by the way, was dedicated on the bicentennial of the French Revolution by François Mitterand.)

Weigel's more central question is, despite the Grand Arch's pretensions, `which culture would better protect human rights? Which culture would more firmly secure the moral foundations of democracy?' The question cuts right to the heart of the faith that it is only after tradition and religion have been abandoned that ethical societies can be forged and individuals inspired to flourish. Of course, Weigel's architectural metaphor is flawed within the context of the book. For what is `the cube' but a French attempt to outdo American corporate culture? Put another way, what is about, say, the architectural landscape of Huston, Texas, that leads it to be the stronghold of the 'faith-based' values - in typical Republican dumb-speak - which Weigel so admires?

This quibble aside, Weigel's critique is most piquant in his look at Europe's fundamental failure to create a vital culture on the most basic of levels, as expressed by, in the words of Niall Ferguson, the greatest `sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death'. As of 2004, no western European nation comes close to replacing its population: Germany's birth rate is 1.3 children per woman; Catholic Italy and Spain, 1.2 and 1.1 respectively; France's is slightly better by dint of its expanding immigrant population. This genocide is tragic in that it is both silent and entirely self-inflicted. It might be tempting to blame it all on feminism, self-absorbed consumerism, the welfare-state tax burden or careerism, but all of these explanations are insufficient. What one witnesses in post-war Europe is a culture that, for all of its undeniable achievements, simply does not believe in its future.

Writers like the American environmentalist, Bill McKibben, cogently argue that a reduction in population is beneficial in that less people offers the prospect of smaller communities with lightened ecological impact. But such arguments collapse in the face of the reality that not only do modern economies and social programmes rely on sustained populations, but that, in Weigel's words, `Demographic vacuums do not remain unfilled'. As of today, 20 million Muslims reside in Europe - most of them having arrived legally. The question must be asked, how European will Europe be when, for example, the majority of teenagers of the coming Dutch generation will be of Middle Eastern ancestry?

Many would dismiss this discussion as `racist', and claim that these new Europeans will become valued citizens (and there is no reason why this could not be the case). However, Muslim immigrants who entered Europe en masse in the second half of the twentieth-century have on the whole lacked inclination towards assimilation and espouse little in the way of loyalty towards their host nation. Weigel expresses appropriate alarm at these developments, but then, any kind of real definition of what modern European citizenship should be is seriously lacking, and deserves to be fleshed out here. As citizenship based solely on race is equally impossible and undesirable - would exclude Arabs who seriously want to become European -, it is all the more important for conservatives to base citizenship on allegiance to a nation. Such distinctions allow the Right to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of, on the one hand, hateful racism and, on the other, the "citizens of the world" globalarchy expressed by free-marketers, liberals, and Europhiles alike.

In this line, Weigel is certainly justified in excoriating the EU-constitution writers who avoided even facing this problem. Leaving the door open for Turkish EU-membership, they instead indulged in a concept 'tolerance' which amounts to little more than indifference. Could the EU constitution, which does not acknowledge the continent's Christian heritage, truly `give an account of why Europeans should be tolerant and civil[?] Why not?' [my emphasis] The point is well made, but the obvious counter-example is the remarkably secular Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution, and, in the end, it is difficult to fully accept that a nation must avow Christian faith to act ethically.

Still, viewed within its proper context, Weigel's Catholic tinged notion of a kind of 'Christian Union' seems to reveal a crucial historical aspect of the EU overlooked in the current Euro-phile/Euro-skeptic debate. Whatever kinds of reconstructed Trotskyites support the EU now, one must not forget that the devout Catholics Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann were two of the most important in envisioning the project. It should thus be less surprising that Pope John Paul II actively supported Poland's membership in the EU. For them, a European union, on a very basic level, represented a new Christendom - certainly a Christendom in tune with secular modernity, but a Christendom nonetheless. The current state of the EU is all the more depressing in that such sentiments are now completely absent in the way that `Europe' is conceived by supporters and detractors alike.

Unfortunately, Weigel is less insightful in his discussions of twentieth-century European culture and current foreign affairs. In Weigel's analysis, Europe's catastrophes arose from a deep and lasting cultural breakdown at the gateway to the twentieth-century: `World War I, the Great War, was the product of a crisis of civilizational morality, a failure of moral reason in a culture that had given the world the very concept of moral reason'. The source of this crisis is, for Weigel, intellectual, and consists of the usual suspects: Comte's positivism, Feurbach's and Marx's messianic socialism, and Nietzsche's embrace of `the will to power'. The rest was inevitable.

This is not a particularly original argument and amounts to a gross oversimplification of late nineteenth-century thought, particularly in the case of Nietzsche. But even if one were to grant the point, Weigel's true problem is his complementary claim - sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit - that America has represented a moral alternative. Weigel certainly does not deny the influence of Nietzsche, Marx & co. in American life, but still wants to imagine that America has tread a different, more dignified path into modernity.

One could take issue with Weigel on a variety of fronts - for example, the appalling death of civility in America represented by Wal-mart, mega-churches, and uncentered suburban sprawl. But this is also a weak argument on the political level as well. It is certainly easy to bemoan Europe's fraction into extremist `-isms' in the first half of the twentieth-century. But it is more difficult - and thus all the more pertinent - to look critically at militant universalism in American foreign policy stretching across the entire century, what Claes G. Ryn (a Catholic political scientist more perceptive than Weigel) has called, "America the virtuous'. That is, if one is to argue that the First World War resulted from Europe's spiritual tragedy, then one must be equally skeptical of an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who claimed that Americas national interest lay in `a war to make the world safe for democracy'.

But Weigel reduces the Catholic tradition of `just war' theory to a moral obligation and license to save the world at gunpoint (although in op-eds, he uses the conservative-sounding language of `advancing the cause of world order'). But he fails both to reveal American interventionism's ethical foundations, as well as to offer any compelling reasons why Europeans should support the noble cause. In the end, Wilson's defeat of the German Empire ensured the sustainability of Bolshevism just as Bush's overthrow of Iraq has galvanized Islamic violence.

In turn, beyond shear policy failure, a proper understanding of America's 'just wars' overturns most of Weigel's oppositions. Today, President Bush's most fervent supporters are evangelical Christians, groups who claim to be not only the most conservative, religious, 'real' Americans, but hold that it is the military's duty to expand universal values abroad. America has her own form of decadence, but it is something that cannot be measured by church attendance as Weigel would like.

Weigel's book was published before the seismic shift in European politics following the `non'-vote in France and the Netherlands rejecting the E.U. constitution. Interestingly, the 'non-coalition', if it should be called that, included not only the nationalist Right but, perhaps to a greater extent, a faction of the socialist Left. In turn, in Germany, it is not just the Right-wing Junge Freiheit that warns of `the dictatorship of the Bureaucrats', but the social-democratic Der Spiegel. Furthermore, while the current state of the American two-party system offers no choice for the real Right, in Europe, this is increasingly not the case. And yet Weigel's deprecation of Europe and sanctification of American `conservatives' offers no space to consider these developments.
Despite these criticism, as a popular book that brings questions of philosophy and national character pressingly to the fore, The Cube and the Cathedral deserves to be read. Perhaps, most of all because, despite himself, Weigel leaves one with the impression that Europe and America fundamentally share the same problems and interests. Both of which are centered on the question of the very possibility of retaining communities, nations, spirituality, and dynamism in a world not only of mass immigration, but of consumerism, economic efficiency, universalism, and self-satisfaction.

A crucial case study in survival and triumph mentioned by Weigel is Poland. In the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, Poland existed solely as a plot of land to be divided and traded between the great powers. The twentieth-century brought far worse horrors. Is it not then a miracle that Poland played as significant a role as any in bringing the Soviet Union to an end, and afterwards emerged unified as a nation and people? Weigel is right to find the source of the Poles' enduring strength in their culture. Even accounting for terrorism, Americans and Europeans face nothing even resembling the direct threat to survival experienced by the Poles. And yet, their shared culture is no less at stake.

EUROPE: ALL IS NOT LOST, YET.......2006-11-13

Anyone wanting a quick way to assets the general merits and intellectual muscle flexed in the book should glance at the chapter headed `Two Ideas of Freedom', contrasting the secular and sacred versions of Freedom with luminous brevity. However, the general easy-reading contemporary nature of the prose will be better gauged from the later chapter `The Cost of Boredom', which sums up why white post-Christian Europe cannot be bothered to procreate with sufficient vigour to stem its population decline, and our `postpolitical wilderness' of rule by faceless bureaucrats.

As an American theologian and the biographer of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel is well placed to speak with perspective on Europe's current problems. The main thrust of the book is a critique of atheistic secular humanism (ASH) and its many virus variants which have infected the Euro-Russian continent. The emphasis is on the 20th century, and picks up the root philosophical and cultural causes of World War I and II, and the rebellion of the `Les Soixante-Huitards' (1968 riots) with remarkably fluent and coherent reference to Western European history as far back as the High Middle Ages of Aquinas and Occam (1200-), and glancing reference much further back. The Cube is the intellectual symbol of the sterile closed-universe ASH viewpoint, the architectural colossus of 'La Grande Arche' of Paris, being an open cube of white marble and glass about 40 stories tall and 348 feet wide. The cathedral is the rather more famous church of Notre Dame, which despite its ancient complexities and beauty in spire and tower, would `fit comfortably inside the Grand Arch'. This current edition is dated 2005, and probably just missed the rioting and looting and epidemic of car-burnouts that afflicted France that year.

It is difficult to do anything like reviewing justice to this book at one reading, but one of the central themes is that `western Europe is committing a form of demographic suicide' (p.5), with a general greying of the population and coming universal pensions crisis due to a birthrate being less than the replacement rate. He might have added that Russia currently has an annual death-rate that exceeds the birthrate by 750,000, but his purpose does not extend to a proper vilification of communism. The root cause of our lack of reproductive enthusiasm is analysed to be spiritual nihilism, emptiness, and lack of purpose in life, having rejected the Christian roots of our historical culture. Its criticism of the purblind inability of the EU to see the problem, let alone grapple with it, will gladden the hearts of those who oppose this political con-trick that is the eurozone--despite the (to me) astonishing revelations he makes of the catholic Christians who were the architects of the whole scheme.

He is frequently at pains to trace the intellectual, cultural, and moral roots of western Europe (the eastern empire is sparingly but properly referenced, and not ignored as is so often the case). Recently the ruling EU elites totally refused to recognise the Christian heritage of Europe in the drafting of its 70,000 word constitutional treaty. Our roots apparently jumping from the classical civilisation of Greece and Rome to that of the humanist Enlightenment of Descartes and Kant (which merely extracted the parts it liked from Christian culture, and promptly forgot what it takes to develop and preserve them, which is a living faith in a Judaeo-Christian God.)

He invites us to contemplate a striking list of Christian scientists, artists, politicians, leaders, warriors, and philosophers--and asks us to imagine Europe [history itself, I would say. Just consider that we only discovered the gas oxygen about 225 years ago. We could not even begin to describe the chemistry of burning or human respiration before this], without their contribution. And this is a list which is so wide-ranging that it includes Milton, Mendel, Michaelangelo, Wesley and Wilberforce, while it omits Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Handel, and dozens of others.

The other main theme is euro `Christophobia', which is detailed in many ways, from the persecutory attitude to the Catholic Professor Rocco Buttiglione in his proposed place in the EU government, to the universal demand for tolerance which includes rather madly includes rigid intolerance of any discussion of the Christian religion or its place in influencing civic society. Altogether, this adds up to the best analysis of secularism that I have ever read.

The statement of the very obvious that is the underlying theme of the themes, is that western European civilisation was built by the Catholic church. There is more balance and a gentler tone here in the treatment of the subject, but the author is generally in line with Thomas Woods book, `How the Catholic Church built Western Civilisation'. Which is well paired with this one, before or after making little difference.

The only weakness of this book is that it understates its case. It would be easy to adduce more evidence of outright damage and incoherence of ASH in our literature alone (Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus), and then as a whisky chaser consider the intellectual flight from science. Professor Robin Dunbar's `The Trouble with Science', published in 1995 traces the problem in Britain back at least twenty years. And is still seen in the rapid and ongoing rejection of chemistry and physics in the school system throughout, from GCSE at 16, to university graduate, a trend which is steadily shutting down departments in these subjects as I write. My second reading of this book starts right now, and I can also see how it would help one or two of my friends, with Christmas about to hove into view. Read them and pray.

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.(Book review) : An article from: Journal of Church and State

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The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.(Book review) : An article from: Journal of Church and State
Francis J. Beckwith
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This digital document is an article from Journal of Church and State, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 816 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics wiithout God.(Book review)
Author: Francis J. Beckwith
Publication: Journal of Church and State (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 48 Issue: 1 Page: 218(3)

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The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review) : An article from: National Catholic Reporter

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The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review) : An article from: National Catholic Reporter
Mark S. Massa
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This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by National Catholic Reporter on May 6, 2005. The length of the article is 1206 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: The cultural roots of democracy.(Book Review)
Author: Mark S. Massa
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 6, 2005
Publisher: National Catholic Reporter
Volume: 41 Issue: 27 Page: 17(1)

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