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Books
Kepler and plague
Books we're reading this week
By Kevin Potvin
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Tycho and Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens, by Kitty Ferguson (Walker and Co., 2002), gives a riveting and intimate account of science in its moment of revolution. It is friendship, betrayal, jealousy and piety that turns the big cranks of history. Kepler was the vehicle that delivered modernity to astronomy in the late 16th C, and it was as much Tycho, who tried to keep medievalism in the picture, who was driving. But in setting up the background, the book is as much about the political turmoil in Europe as it is about science. And the book shows that, probably just like today, the one is the product of the other.
The Devil’s Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy, by Frances Stonor Saunders (Fourth Estate, 2004) carries on the theme this week of religious fanatics getting involved in politics. The 1300s are a curious time in Europe: plague was wiping out up to a third of the continent, and in some regions, entire towns were killed. Yet, out of such massive death arose a flourishing of equality and ideas. Servants were parading around in their masters’ clothes and living on the masters’ estates, the masters having succumbed and the authorities, equally decimated, busy with more pressing issues. Labour costs skyrocketed for those still alive, enabling the greatest improvement to working conditions ever experienced in one generation in Europe.
Both books are available now at Magpie, 1319 Commercial Drive, both new hardcovers, and both for just $13 each.
New books also just in at Magpie that caught our eye: The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, edited by Richard C Leone and Greg Anrig Jr; and The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind, by Rupert Sheldrake.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
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Potvin
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