Customer Reviews:
Easy book to read but not the fastest solution.......2007-04-22
This is an easy solution but will not solve it fast. You will probably get it done in about 3-5 minutes. I have used Jeff Conquers the Cube in 45 seconds and Minh Thai's The Winning Solution in the 80's. I used to average 38 seconds with a best time of 23 seconds using the Jeff Conquers the Cube method.
I just got the Jeff Conquers the Cube book again and after about a month average just under a minute and have a best time of 38 seconds.
this is the one you want.......2006-12-03
Superb book - short and to the point. The explanations are clear and simple. Nourse even provides expert variations for when you get the hang of his solution. WARNING - it's virtually impossible to find this book in most brick-and-mortar book stores (nowadays puzzle and game shelves are filled mainly with books on sudoku or poker), so buy this book ONLINE if you get a chance. You might never find another copy!
A Very Practical Key to Solving Rubik's Cube.......2006-07-25
I finally could solve Rubik's cube after getting this book. Nourse begins with nomenclature for each of the faces: Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. (It does not matter which face is the front, as long as one consistently uses that face as the front, etc.). He has a nomenclature for each move. For example, (B+) means one quarter turn of the back face in a clockwise direction, (F-) means one quarter turn of the front face in a counterclockwise direction, and (T2) means a half-turn of the top face (does not matter in which direction). In using this guide, one first solves the top face of Rubik's cube, then the side faces, and finally the bottom face. Helpful diagrams guide the reader at each step. He points out that the center squares can only rotate in place.
Nourse even has a place for humor in his little book. He says (p. 20) not to unglue and move around any of the colors, or else one may not be able to solve the cube even if one outlives the universe.
it works, it's all about patterns.......2005-05-27
I remember tinkering around with Rubik's Cube back in high school but was never all that serious about solving it. Recently, I've decided to pick up a cube, get a book to learn some patterns and then finally solve it. With the aid of this book, I solved the cube in less than 30 minutes. I solved two thirds of the cube without using any of the patterns in the book. The last fews steps to solving the cube are kind of tricky but the book explains it very well and has easy to memorize patterns. So with some practice, I can see how someone can easily solve the cube in less than a minute by using the patterns in this book or variations of them.
Fond Memories of 20 Years Ago.......2003-01-10
Sometime I guess in 1981 or 1982 I purchased this book at the Woolworth's in Janesville, Wisconsin having bought a Rubik's cube and having been completely engrossed in it. I was 12 or 13 at the time. The book was (at is) a straightforward explanation of how to take a mangled cube and get it back in shape. My personal record is one minute and nineteen seconds. I've managed to hold onto that cube and this book over the years. It has a very high geek nostalgia factor.
Book Description
Spread the word...but keep the secret!
The Cube is an imagination game--and more--that holds a secret you are dared not to reveal. Last seen making the rounds in the coffeehouses of Eastern Europe, the Cube is rumored to be of ancient Sufi origin, but no one really knows for certain. This mystery game just seems to reappear when and where it is needed. Now it is here! Inside these pages, the game is revealed along with intriguing stories of others who have played the Cube--including such celebrities as Gloria Steinem, Willem Dafoe, Erica Jong, and Judy Collins.
So don't be square...Get Cubed!
Customer Reviews:
Great game, but you don't need the book........2007-06-28
I learned of the cube from a friend, who helped me through the exercise. I have done it for myself and for friends multiple times since. "Knowing the secret" (which frankly I think is a ridiculous way of putting it) only ruins it for you if you believe it does. Don't limit yourself, you can play this game again and again. As you change, your answers may change too, giving you new insight into yourself and your path. I do think it is a much more organic experience to do the cube person to person, rather than using the book. Just like reading Tarot is better without referring to the manual. I wish you peace and harmony on your journey.
Great book!.......2007-06-05
This book was fun and informative. I cubed myself and all my family members. It really was accurate. But, once you use it and know the secret you can't play again, so I passed mine along to my sister and she cubed her friends and passed it on. It is really interesting to see what other people pick for their items, especially after you already know the secret yourself. It is worth buying, but you might already know someone who has the book and would be willing to let you use it.
To call this a "book" is an overstatement.......2007-05-22
The book is based on a mind game, which I won't spoil here (out of respect for the reader, not for the benefit of the authors). However, don't be fooled by the 200-something page count. The authors use about 30-40 words per page, as if they are writing poetry, and the entire trick can be described in 10 pages maximum, including commentary. Granted, the game itself is neat and can be used as an icebreaker, but you don't need this so-called "book" to learn a tale that belongs in the public domain. Overall, this is a waste of money and shelf space.
the cube is fairly accurate.......2007-05-13
it is a great ice breaker to use. The storm part seems to be the one that doesn't fit.
Spend an evening discovering your inner self..........2007-04-23
This is one of the books that I really like. I carry this book with me all the time and take it to small get-togethers and partys and it provides hours of entertainement. Not only is this entertaining but also, by answering 5 simple questions you will really discover some deep secrets about yourself and the people you play this game with. I wish they had more books like this, that is simple and yet very entertaining and insightful.
Keep a copy. It will be money well spent.
Book Description
Today, lots of women would love to integrate their passion with their career and are seeking advice on how to do just that. Michelle Goodman, a self proclaimed, "wage-slave" has written a fun, reassuring, girlfriend-to-girlfriend guide on identifying your passion, transitioning out of that unfulfilling job, and doing it all in a smart, practical way. The Anti 9-to-5 Guide realizes that not every woman wants the corner office, in fact, some women don't want to be in an office at all. Today's women are non-traditionalists, do it yourself sort of girls who want to travel the world, take up knitting, frolic in the land of freelancing but want to do it all without going broke. The Anti 9-to-5 Guide provides readers with the resources you need to have it all and still have a place to sleep. Michelle suggests great tips for easing into the life you want. With an entire chapter devoted to pursuing your passion on the side, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide encourages us to tweak our current career path or head down a new one, and ultimately succeed.
Customer Reviews:
So you don't like your cube at work? Maybe it's time to move into a real office or start your own business?.......2007-08-30
This book was kind of fun to read. I liked the author's frankness and humor. But I wasn't particularly impressed with how the title of the book was matched to its content. The book totes itself as a supposedly helpful career guide for young women just out of high school or maybe college who work in a cubical in an office environment. And it explains how young women can do some investigating and networking to learn about opportunities outside of a cube. But many of the opportunities discussed in this book were 9 to 5 JOBS. And the title says it is against such career moves.
I would have liked the book much better if it had stuck to explaining how to get out of a cube and make the transition into self-employment. Or if the title were changed, I would have like the book much better if it had only explained how to escape a cube into a more meaningful and lucrative job with an office or a company car. Of course, I wouldn't have pulled this book from the bookstore shelf if it was about the latter because I pretty much just review books that relate to my volunteering for SCORE, the small business coaching nonprofit.
The part of the book that I enjoyed the most was the author's story of how she had found herself stuck in a cube at age 24 and not doing what she wanted to do with her life - which was to do freelance writing. She decided to quit her job and start her own freelancing small business. And she found she couldn't make money at it at first - but she was resourceful and started temping in order to pay her bills while she got her business off the ground. Of course, I would have liked her story better if she were to have said she got her business WELL off the ground within a year or two. But unfortunately she says she continues to dabble in temping jobs from time to time to make ends meet. That doesn't sound like she has really accumulated enough of her own success to be writing this book, but some company did publish it and there are quite a number of positive book reviews posted on Amazon for it. So who am I to judge?
My favorite chapters were "I want a more flexible work schedule" (4), and "I want to be my own boss" (6). These two chapters were right on point when it comes to dumping a day job and starting one's own business. And in the book's appendix I very much liked "A Temp's Survival Guide" and "Boss in a Box." The "Must-See Resources" section in the appendix also seemed to be fairly informative. The checklists at the end of each chapter were well-thought out, too. 4 stars!
Liberating & Inspiring!!.......2007-08-19
If you've ever longed for the wide open spaces of a self-directed career, this gem of a book is for you. Whether you want to pursue a hobby/project on the side or do a complete career 180, Michelle Goodman's book will give you the roadmap. It's chocked full of practical advice on the range of questions that inevitably pop up on a such a journey (What do I really want to do with my career? How do I prepare financially for a transition? How do I stay connected to the world at large? Where do I get started???). Yep, she answers them all. If you've got the urge to "flee the cube," the THE ANTI 9 to 5 GUIDE will lead you out into the light.
Yes, to kicking the 9 to 5 habit! .......2007-08-08
I found this book at just the right time. I was beginning to give up on my dream of leaving my job, and doing something that I really love. People change. (How can we expect to stay in the same job we chose in our early 20's?) I began reading the book and doing the suggested exercises. I have to say that I had more in common with the way the author wrote, than other "follow your dream" books. Right when I would begin to doubt my plan, the author, Michelle Goodman had an answer! Thank you for a great book, with great topics! If you are aching to live a purposeful life and your current job is not part of that purpose, check out this book. Find out how you can begin living your dream today!
Smart, Sassy, and Soulful.......2007-07-28
The biggest compliment I can give Michelle Goodman's The Anti 9-to-5 Guide is that it gave me a much needed kick in the a-- to get my right brain in gear and devote more time to what I'd like to make my full-time career. The other biggest compliment I can give her is that she doesn't tailor the advice to one set cubicle ex-pat camp.
Using an arsenal of examples (everyone from a professional dominatrix to web designers to non-profit divas), Goodman crafts a book where each chapter and piece of advice can apply universally to those of us who want to work in a "non-traditional" work environment. That Goodman herself is a cubicle expat but not above the occasional office gig to supplement her income, as she makes clear, is also incredibly reassuring and helpful. I've read enough make-it-happen books about doing what you want to do, but my biggest complaint with what I've read before TANtFG is that there wasn't the frank viewpoint that, in the interest of supporting your family, paying rent, or financing a new project may require a Money Job on occasion. I appreciate the realism in Goodman's advice as much as I appreciate the motivation with which it goes hand-in-hand.
Regardless of what stage in the game you're at (working for the man or running your maple syrup conglomerate with glee form home), this is a must for your bookshelf. The amount of usable advice in the 200+ pages will leave this book paying for itself.
Great guide for women who want money without handcuffs.......2007-07-24
This book is great for the woman who wants to figure out how to earn a living without becoming a slave. The book is an easy read and is well organized. Two thumbs up.
My only complaint is that the author assumes her reader's age is 20 or 30 something. I fit that, so it was fine for me, but I kept thinking about older women who might be annoyed that some advice doesn't suit them. So, the age stuff was distracting and unnecessary.
Book Description
When these essays first appeared in Artforum in 1976, their impact was immediate. They were discussed, annotated, cited, collected, and translated--the three issues of Artforum in which they appeared have become nearly impossible to obtain. Having Brian O'Doherty's provocative essays available again is a signal event for the art world. This edition also includes "The Gallery as Gesture," a critically important piece published ten years after the others.
O'Doherty was the first to explicitly confront a particular crisis in postwar art as he sought to examine the assumptions on which the modern commercial and museum gallery was based. Concerned with the complex and sophisticated relationship between economics, social context, and aesthetics as represented in the contested space of the art gallery, he raises the question of how artists must construe their work in relation to the gallery space and system.
These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the history and issues of postwar art in Europe and the United States. Teeming with ideas, relentless in their pursuit of contradiction and paradox, they exhibit both the understanding of the artist (Patrick Ireland) and the precision of the scholar.
Product Description
Mario's back and he's in an all-new mess. Clean up with the only official Super Mario Sunshine strategy guide created by the gaming pros at Nintendo. Mario needs your help to collect Shines, and the insiders at Nintendo Power will be your guiding light.
Customer Reviews:
Mario By The Official Book.......2005-03-23
Nintendo has really made some of the best video games out there. That also goes in the way with their strategy guides too. One of the best games for the Nintendo Gamecube is Super Mario Sunshine. Yet, while so many companies have made different kinds of strategy guides, Nintendo hits the nail on the head at #1. The strategy guide from Nintendo has every detail of Super Mario Sunshine, gracefully and all in detail. It is much better than third-party guides like Prima and Versus Books, which don't give the detail at a full 100%. This guide includes details on how to get all the shines to unlock special features, and how to defeat all different enemies like Bowser and Petey Piranha. For so many who've played Suuper Mario Sunshine, stick it out with Nintendo.
Overall: A
Book Description
Tired of working in a bland, boring, office cubicle? Interior designer Kelley Moore has the solution with Cube Chic, a hip, irreverent style book with inspirational cube designs for every taste, from Tiki to Zen. With dazzling full-color photography and helpful decorating tips,you'll learn how to create:
- The Garden Cube: Rather be gardening? This cube features bright grassy greens, floral prints, and a desk covered in bright gerberas.
- The Cabin Cube: Like a ski lodge at your desk, this cube features dark wood tones and creature comforts aplenty.
- The CEO Cube: Get on the fast track to the executive lifestyle, and create a corner office in your own space.
And that's just the beginning there's also a Hip-Hop Cube, a Pub Cube, a Safari Cube, and even a Cubism Cube. With so many eye-popping design options to choose from, Cube Chic will inspire office drones of all ages!
Book Description
Group theory deals with symmetry, in the most abstract form possible. It is a core part of the undergraduate math curriculum, and forms part of the training of theoretical physicists and chemical crystallographers. Group theory has tended to be very dry--until now. David Joyner uses mathematical toys (primarily the Rubik's Cube and its more modern cousins, the Megaminx, the Pyraminx, and so on) as well as other mathematical examples (e.g., bell ringing) to breathe new life into a time-honored subject.
"Why," asks the author, "should two such different topics, mechanical puzzles and abstract group theory, be related? This book takes the reader on an intellectual trip to answer this curiosity." Adventures in Group Theory will not only appeal to all math enthusiasts and interested general readers but will also find use in the classroom as a wonderful supplementary text in any abstract algebra or group theory course.
Customer Reviews:
Why bother fixing typos?.......2006-03-18
I was thinking of buying this book, but when I read that it is riddled with typos, I declined. Perhaps publishers will get the message that not doing proper editing results in lost sales.
Riddled with errors, but ---.......2003-06-01
I have never seen so many typos, omissions, and errors in a published book. Many of the examples are poorly introduced, theorems are mentioned that don't exist in the book, etc. Other than Rubik's cube, most of the other puzzles are presented in a completely incomprehensible manner. It's very annoying, in a book that's otherwise just what I want. It does give a good quick and dirty intro to the group theory needed, however.
In depth group theory via games and puzzles.......2003-04-04
I am old enough to remember the original appearance of the Rubik's cube puzzle. I examined it a few times while in a store, but never put any effort into it. Later, I looked at some of the literature that explained how "easy" it was to solve the puzzle. The solution involves the use of some advanced topics in group theory, so it is a puzzle with a mathematical twist. However, that is not the only application of group theory, there are many ways in which it can be used. Joyner shows us many of them, and provides the foundation before he tackles the problems.
This is an excellent book that can be used to either refresh your understanding of group theory or teach it to advanced undergraduates. The objects being manipulated are easy to understand, sometimes easy to build or acquire and the explanations are easy to follow. They are also different from those found in the standard group theory text. Puzzles are an area that fascinates many people, so it is often an advantage to present mathematical instruction in the form of a puzzle rather than in the standard sequence of background notation, theorem and then proof.
Finally, the author is to be commended for donating all of the profits from the book to the Earth Island Institute. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental projects throughout the world. Therefore, not only can a purchase of this book do your mathematical skills some good, it can also improve the quality of life for everyone on the planet.
Published in the recreational mathematics newsletter, reprinted with permission.
For the love of Puzzles..........2003-03-01
I just got this book yesterday and I have not read it fully, but I had to write a quick review to say how excited I am about this book. The Rubik's Cube craze hit when I was young. I loved solving the cube and have loved puzzles ever since. I did start trying to describe a solution mathematically when I was at college, but got side tracked and bogged down in some of the math. So this book was a great find for me. I am going to enjoy reading this book and following the mathematical proof. Even though there does seem to be a lot of equations and for the casual reader this might put them off, but from my first browse of the book the math isn't too complex and should be something that anyone who has taken some introductory math courses at the college level should be able to follow.
If you love puzzles and especially the Rubik's cube and math doesn't frighten you then I highly recommend this book.
Average customer rating:
- 4+ stars.
- A Beauty Quest
- Xanth at its best
- Cube Route
- This book is the root of goodness...
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Cube Route (Xanth)
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: Tor Fantasy
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Currant Events : Xanth #28 (Xanth)
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ASIN: 0765343096
Release Date: 2004-08-05 |
Book Description
For nearly three decades, Piers Anthony's bestselling Xanth series has been delighting tens of thousands of fantasy fans around the world. Now, with Cube Route, the series' twenty-seventh adventure, Anthony has penned a tale that adds another dimension to this exciting saga.In the magical land of Xanth, wishes are far more than mere words. So when a Plain Jane called Cube whispers a wistful wish to be beautiful, she finds herself leading a company of colorful companions on a search for the mysterious Cube Route--a perilous path that leads to danger, adventure, and perhaps her heart's desire as well.This curious quest takes them all over Xanth, into the mythical realm of Phaze, and even to our own world, where Cube rescues a beautiful human woman from a very ugly situation, ending at last in a mysterious Counter-Xanth where things can be transformed into their opposites in the wink of an eye.A rollicking tale brimming with laughter, wonder, and enchantment, Cube Route is also a moving exploration of the beauty that dwells within all of us.
Customer Reviews:
4+ stars........2004-03-27
Very enjoyable. Good characters. Great ideas and values.
One of his best efforts.
A Beauty Quest.......2004-02-04
Cube Route is the twenty-seventh novel in the Xanth series, following Up In a Heaval. In the previous volume, Umlaut completed his quest by delivering all the letters, so the Demoness Fornax lost Counter Xanth to the Demon Xanth and she has committed herself to an extended visit with the Demon Jupiter. Surprise convinced the Demons to allow Umlaut to continue his existence and even provided him with half her soul. The dragon girl Becka also convinced Brusque Brassie to visit with her for a while.
In this novel, Cue is a very plain girl, downright ugly in fact, who is called Cube because she is so square. Boys notice her face and figure, then glance aside. When she explains her desire to be beautiful to Demoness Metria, she is asked why she has not taken her Question to the Good Magician. Since she had not previously thought of doing so, Cube immediately sets off to the Good Magician's castle.
On the way, Cube meets Ryver Human and Karia Centaur. When the Good Magician declares that she must gather nine companions and follow the Cube Route to find a way to Counter Xanth, Cube decides to start recruiting with these two. Sofia Socksorter, the Magician's current designated wife, provides her with a magical pouch made from one of his old socks that can hold anything of any size in stasis. Cube is to use the pouch to contain her Companions whenever someone else might notice them, for the quest must not attact unfavorable attention.
When Metria shows up, Cube recruits her as the first Companion, then sends her to ask Karia to come to her. When they meet, Karia agrees to join the quest and they fly to Ryver's house. Although Ryver is disappointed that she is not yet beautiful, he finally agrees to join. They go next to Castle Roogna and recruit the Princesses Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. Then the Princesses conjure a magical thread that shows them the path that they must follow and they add Drek Dragon, the sidestepping Mundanes Cory and Tessa, and the dog Diamond to their band.
While they are searching for the Companions and even afterwards, strange things happen around them. Since the level of magic they are facing is extremely high, they conclude that the Demoness Fornax is interfering with the quest. When one of the interventions causes Cube to drop the pouch, with all her Companions within it, into a stream that soon carries it underground, Cube immediately finds a way to the castle of Nimby and Chlorine to ask for their help, which Nimby provides.
All throughout the quest, Cube is faced with situations and people for which she has to strain her abilities to handle properly. Although the route is extremely winding and indirect, the Companions believe that the path is preparing her for the final resolution of the quest. Cube is definitely having new experiences and learning new skills and insights.
This story has a running joke about fractional moments, the length of silences and other timespans. There are the usual puns and situational jokes aglore. Moreover, Cube gets the grand tour of Xanth and Ida's moons in addition to Mundania, Phaze and Counter Xanth. Of course, she completes her quest and becomes beautiful; however, the payoff is not quite what she expected.
Highly recommended for Anthony fans and for anyone else who enjoys comic fantasy with some basic humor and a humane message.
-Arthur W. Jordin
Xanth at its best.......2003-10-25
In the land of Xanth Cube feels depressed and unwanted because as she knows that once you peel away a dimension from her what you have left is a wholesome usable but ugly square. In spite the warning labels, Cube desperately asks the Good Magician Humphrey to help her attain her wish of being beautiful for she thinks that will bring her happiness and contentment.
As is Humphrey's typical response that means nothing yet everything to anyone else but himself including the requestor (aside: is Humphrey a reincarnation of Professor Irwin Corey?), he tells her to search for the CUBE ROUTE. There he insists she will find her heart's desire. Thus, Cube begins a journey in which she does not understand the instructions, the objective, or the time it will take to complete (aside two: sounds like American nation building missions). Soon with a retinue of characters that can only live in Xanth, Phaze or Mundania, she treks towards the realm of Counter-Xanth where anything can change so just don't blink or miss the transformation.
As is usual with the Xanth tales (this is number twenty-seven), Piers Anthony uses puns and multiple entendres to satirize human frailty within a strong epic fantasy adventure. The story line is the usual epic quest of an individual, who this time seeks beauty. Mr. Anthony does a delightful job with Cube and company as she learns what the true essence of beauty is. Though clearly for fans of the author (can't just say the series as the crew travel to Phaze), CUBE ROUTE is a refreshing witty morality tale that lovingly escorts the audience across the complex Anthony galaxy.
Harriet Klausner
Cube Route.......2003-10-16
The best book of the first Trilogy of Xanth. Not too many puns. Overall a good book.
This book is the root of goodness..........2003-10-13
Goodness....I enjoyed that book very well. I haven't had much time due to school, but I always have time for Xanth. If you get into the series, it is hard not to. Well, this book was very inspiring...I won't spoil anything for anyone. Whenever anyone starts to spoil things for me, I know I usually stop reading the review.
But anyways, this book is about Cube, and she is very ugly. This is a very unusual thing for Anthony to have...an ugly character. Almost all of the books focus on beautiful, sexy characters. And in those books, a large amount of the plot revolves around the characters using their sex appeal to get out of sticky situations. In this book, though, Cube must use her gumption and intellect to save herself. Her ugliness also adds to the wonderful inner beauty aspect of the book's morals
The puns in the book are wonderful as my main humor is pun-based. But, there were a few less puns than were needed...Maybe eight more puns in the book would have been good....maybe gr-eight...
Well, this book is feel-good, as all of the xanth books are. Though there are many major characters, the most characterization goes towards Cube. This is because of the fact that most of the characters are stuffed in a sock for the majority of the novel. This book covers most of the areas in Xanth: Mundania, Ida's Moons, The Isles, et cetera. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I hope others do. This book is enjoyed to the greatest capacity when preceeded by the other 26 books in the trilogy. But even non-xanth fans can appreciate this book as great literature...Alright, goodbye.
Product Description
The Official Nintendo Player's Guide from Nintendo Power.
Customer Reviews:
Gets the job done ..........2007-01-09
I give this Nintendo guide 4 stars only because it doesn't have an overworld fold-out map, which is customary to Zelda literature. ;)
Anyhow, the guide is not completely clear or specific in a couple of locations and people always say: "The devil is in the details".
Some details are not spelled out thoroughly and left me guessing a bit to find the solution to gameplay.
Although I have experienced this same confusion in the past with other name brand guides as well ... It happens.
What I do like about this guide is that it does include all pertinent info and screenshots to progress and master the game. It gives you all you need to enjoy the game, but doesn't spoil the adventure of it at the same time.
I bought mine 12/12/06 for 20 bucks at a local gamers depot.
How it compares to the Prima or Brady guide I have no idea, since I haven't seen their versions.
Although having bought Prima guides in the past, I was happy with the info they had in them, but it seems they typically spoil more clues than an alzheimers patient playing Clue?.
The thing that turned me away from the other two guides is the Ocarina of Time filler pages ... If I wanted a good OoT guide I would just buy one.
I would rather have added pages filled with more spreads on the applicable game at hand: Wind Waker, but that's just me. ;)
If I was to do over, I would buy this guide again.
I can't give it 5 stars because I don't know how it compares to the other two guides available?
Although I probably should since it meets all my criteria for a guide ... well, besides the lack of an overworld map. ;)
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
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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.
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