I took a look at the dust jacket. Seeing as I'm British, the rampant American jingoism about US can-do saving us Europeans from the darkness of the unenlightened 17th century was something of a turn-off. Barring his excesses in Ireland I'm also generally disposed to think well of Cromwell ;)
hard to pinpoint any one era. We've a love of all things piratey, but things back then were quite violent.
Any time that any science made a huge breakthrough is big with me.
People used to say that I would have loved the '60's. I'm definitely a free thinker, and was raised as such, but I'm not much of a politico, as you know.
I think I'd have loved to experience the Italian Renaissance.
I'm not answering this very well. History is simply too vast and lush to pick a favorite.
Do you mean the two wars, or L'entre-deux-guerres (the interwar period)? Not being snarky, just not quite sure which you have in mind. If the latter, I tend to agree - The Wasteland made quite an impression on me for example.
Generally in between, but some of the highest lights were writing during the wars (Apollinaire and Desnos, respectively, e.g.). Hell, one of them's still going strong at ninetysomething (Aime Cesaire).
The Enlightenment, for the basic attitude of the time. I think it gets unfairly blamed for perpetuating slavery -- Frederick Douglas argued against slavery pretty effectively within a logical framework, and didn't need to appeal to anti-intellectualism like Emerson or Thoreau.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 08:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 08:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 08:48 pm (UTC)Any time that any science made a huge breakthrough is big with me.
People used to say that I would have loved the '60's. I'm definitely a free thinker, and was raised as such, but I'm not much of a politico, as you know.
I think I'd have loved to experience the Italian Renaissance.
I'm not answering this very well.
History is simply too vast and lush to pick a favorite.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 01:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-30 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 06:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-29 11:29 pm (UTC)and I thought the pleistocene had people.