Guide to France for History Travellers / Bob Fowke - Book Review

Wish to obtain insight into the history of France sans the tedium of wading through the copious minutiae of detailed tomes that provide you with way too many dates, let alone barely pronounceable names of people and places? Bob Fowke, in his latest ebook in the series Guides for History Travellers, may just fulfil your desire. Guide to France for History Travellers (YouCaxton Publications; ASIN: B008657Y64) provides a painless introduction to the history of this grand and imposing country in just 141 pages. With a style that disguises erudition with a lively and raconteurish approach, he supplies the reader with an overview of the illustrious nation’s history that has its first traces back in 90,000BC, up until the time of its latest bling-bling Nicholas Sarkozy (bringing the scandalous overconsumption of the French court, which is notorious for the overindulgence practised by such royals as the Sun King and Louis XVI, right up to date).

Fowke’s lighthearted approach to centuries of history enables him to convey a great deal of information without leaving his audience feeling drained of any wish to hear more. In fact, he whets the appetite, so that one tends to yearn for added details. The author has been criticised for not citing his sources, but he clearly did not wish to weigh down the smooth flow of his text with unnecessary allusions that might merely have served to alienate some of his audience. Fowke has journalistic-type banter down to a fine art, as befits a columnist for the Guardian Online. His clear intention of writing with the tourist in mind is borne across by the subtitle to this book: “The perfect travel guide and rough history for tourists who like their guides and histories short and entertaining, with travel tips on places of interest.”

In addition to the narrative text, Fowke includes guide tips for the different regions of France that are of particular relevance to the tale that he tells. He includes not only numerous amusing line drawings, but also outline maps of the areas concerned. For each section of the text, Fowke provides travel guide timelines for the period covered. Appended are a list of the rulers of France, divided up into their respective dynasties (Merovingians, Carolingians, etc.), and a list of important dates, stretching from prehistoric times up to 2002, when the Euro replaced the franc.

Bob Fowke, renowned author and illustrator, is surprisingly modest and unassuming, considering his prolific output of over sixty largely science and history books, the majority of which have been published by leading British publishers. He is also amazingly versatile, as, in addition to the previously mentioned accomplishments, he is also an entrepreneur with a keen interest in the cause of those who wish to become self-published, having started up the YouCaxton venture a year ago in order to assist fellow writers with preparing their books for self-publication.  

Guide to Spain for History Travellers / Bob Fowke - Book Review

Turning his talents from writing numerous well-received history and science books for children, Bob Fowke has once again come up with a real treasure – this time with the international traveller in mind. Adding to the three other books in the series of Guides for History Travellers (with the previous destinations being France, Turkey and Greece), Fowke has now turned his attention to a land that is regarded by some as austere, and by others as bathed in blood of both the human and bovine kind, namely Spain. But don’t expect an overly portentous or sombre work – far from it, in fact, as Guide to Spain for History Travellers (YouCaxton Publishing; ASIN: B007NZLV3U) is a rollicking overview of the history of that much troubled and wartorn (historically speaking) land, geared towards the traveller who seeks relief in transit from those dreaded intercontinental flights. This relatively short, but clearly well-researched, book should provide you with ample thought, while tickling your funny bone all the way there.

A very far cry from dull academic treatises, Guide to Spain for History Travellers takes you from the huntsman (or woman, as Fowke takes care to point out) of Altamira all the way through to the last unsuccessful attempt made at a coup that “diehard supporters of the old Francoist regime” launched in February 1981, rounding it all off with a helpful timeline and list of rulers, together with their dates. In addition to highlighting the most important aspects of Spanish history over the centuries, which Fowke presents in narrative sequence, the chapters contain numerous maps and line drawings that reflect not only Fowke’s multisided talents, but also his warm and highly accessible sense of good humor. He titillates our desire to venture into the unknown, while refraining from boring us with a plethora of detail, but yet having the foresight to provide us with helpful guide tips along the way.

Clearly keeping his target audience in mind, Fowke makes what might be a daunting task of trying to come to terms with another culture into a great deal of fun. For instance, after exploring the etymology of the country’s name (which he attributes to the Carthaginians’ sharp-eyed observation that the peninsula was overrun with rabbits, which they called “sphan”), he saucily adds “not to say that ‘Spanish’ means ‘rabbit like.’ That would be unfair to one of the world’s great languages.” Definitely one for fair play (as well as for a tongue in the cheek), Fowke gives us much to think about inGuide to Spain for History Travellers – that is, when you can take a break from rolling around in the aisle laughing.

Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities / James Turner - Book Review

The fluent and highly accessible way in which James Turner, Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, recounts the evolution of the science of philology makes for relatively easy reading, which is especially exceptional when one considers the complexity of the subject matter of this 550-page book. Attention-grabbing from the start, Professor Turner begins his prologue by discussing a highly apposite adage of the leading humanistic scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, namely: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog [knows] one big thing.” He explains the importance and relevance of the adage to a central issue of this work: whether humanistic scholarship in the West consists of many disciplines, or just one overarching discipline. Clearly, Turner is a dab hand at unpacking multidimensional and intertwined concepts that might otherwise leave the reader floundering in the midst of an academic maze. His competence and ease in exploring a subject to which he has devoted much of his own academic career instils a sense of trust in the reader that this is an expert who is not only on intimate terms with his material, but who is also vitally concerned with conveying his understanding of the matter to his readers, no matter how new they are to the field. While in no way being condescending towards his audience, Turner explains even the most fundamental of ideas and practices in a pragmatic and fulsome way that gives heart and feeling to Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton University Press; ISBN: 978-0-691-14564-8). Making no undue assumptions as to the pre-existing level of understanding among his audience, he animates and informs all aspects of the evolution of philology, leaving no stone unturned in his portrayal of the history of the discipline, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the modern day.

Turner has a delightful sense of humor—he manifests none of the academic stuffiness that is typically associated with the science of philology, and is, in fact, prone to take the mickey out of pedantic claptrap. For instance, he personifies the appearance of philology in academic circles in Northern America and the British Isles as tottering “along with arthritic creakiness. One would not be startled to see its gaunt torso clad in a frock coat.”  The author traces the development of the science from its once “chic” and “dashing” form to its present state of apparent decrepitude with the ease and fluency of a skilled rhetorician who is a master of his art. He shows how, from philology’s once all-embracing encompassment of the study of all language and languages, as well as of all texts, the seeming deterioration of the discipline into its present attenuated state came about through its birthing of the many disciplines that currently comprise not only the humanities, but also the social sciences. By giving rise to a plethora of children, as many parents have done since time immemorial, it can clearly be seen to have sacrificed some of its own integrity so that it could give life to a host of new entities, each strong and growing by leaps and bounds in its own right.

In addition to the present volume, Professor Turner has also authored The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton and Religion Enters the Academy, as well as coauthored The Sacred and the Secular University. He is well-known for the depth of his professional insight and for the fluency and accessibility of his writing, of which the present volume is yet another memorable instance.