SHC Library Databases - Alphabetical/bySubject


Soul made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How it Changed the World

	by Carl Zimmer
	A fascinating chronicle of the beginning of the Neurocentric Age: a time "in which the brain is central not only to the body but to our conception of ourselves." From Publishers Weekly The subtitle doesn't do justice to this illuminating book, which transcends the "history of X and how X changed the world" genre with a deep and contextualized exploration of two millennia's worth of human theories about consciousness and the soul. Zimmer, a columnist for Natural History and author of the highly praised Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, is interested in how philosophers and scientists moved from a view of the human soul as immaterial and residing in the heart to the common explanation of thought as having a material grounding in the brain and nervous system. His wide-ranging narrative reaches from the days of Aristotle to a 21st-century lab in the basement of a Princeton University building. The central figure in Zimmer's tale is the oft-overlooked 17th-century scientist Thomas Willis, a member of the British Royal Society and colleague of Boyle and Hooke. Willis, a figure of fascinating contradictions, was a conservative, religious royalist raised on a farm outside Oxford, who wound up working on the frontiers of science, as physician to the highest strata of London society and as an experimenter who helped found a new science of the brain. In the end, however, this book is less about Willis in particular than about the evolving metaphysics of the soul in general, and the reader is left with a better picture of the roots of the modern understanding of the self as well as a familiarity with one of the unsung heroes of the scientific revolution.
	LC Call Number: QP 376 .Z2555 2004

Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History.

	by James A. Marone
	A timely book for these times. An engaged look at the long-term legacy of influence left by the Puritans on this country. From the Book Jacket: The American Constitution firmly separates church and state. Yet religion lies at the heart of American politics. How did America become a nation with the soul of a church? In Hellfire Nation, James Morone recasts American history as a moral epic. From the colonial era to the present day, Americans embraced a Providential mission, tangled with devils, and aspired to save the world. Moral fervor ignited our fiercest social conflicts-but it also moved dreamers to remake the nation in the name of social justice. Moral crusades inspired abolition, woman suffrage, and civil rights, even as they led Americans to hang witches, enslave Africans, and ban liquor. Today these moral arguments continue, influencing the debate over everything from abortion to foreign policy. Written with passion and deep insight, Hellfire Nation tells the story of a brawling, raucous, religious people. Morone shows how fears of sin and dreams of virtue defined the shape of the nation.
	LC Call Number: E183 .M873 2003

	Propaganda and The Jesuit Baroque

	by Evonne Levy
	A curious blend of art and architecture, history and religion, this expansive look at the art of propaganda and the propaganda of art. Book Description In this provocative revisionist work, Evonne Levy brings fresh theoretical perspectives to the study of the "propagandistic" art and architecture of the Jesuit order as exemplified by its late Baroque Roman church interiors. The first extensive analysis of the aims, mechanisms, and effects of Jesuit art and architecture, this original and sophisticated study also evaluates how the term "propaganda" functions in art history, distinguishes it from rhetoric, and proposes a precise use of the term for the visual arts for the first time. Levy begins by looking at Nazi architecture as a gateway to the emotional and ethical issues raised by the term "propaganda." Jesuit art once stirred similar passions, as she shows in a discussion of the controversial nineteenth-century rubric the "Jesuit Style." She then considers three central aspects of Jesuit art as essential components of propaganda: authorship, message, and diffusion. Levy tests her theoretical formulations against a broad range of documents and works of art, including the Chapel of St. Ignatius and other major works in Rome by Andrea Pozzo as well as chapels in Central Europe and Poland. From the Back Cover "This is a subtle, intelligent, and deeply learned recasting of a whole range of issues central to art history: the place of the Baroque in the construction of modern art histories; the peculiar aesthetics of propaganda as a distinctively institutional mobilizing of images and forms; the role of the Jesuits in constructing (and then deconstructing) the relation of architectural style and ideology. Evonne Levy's careful readings of key monuments in the Catholic Baroque shed light not only on those works, but on the whole evolution of art historical understanding--and misunderstanding--that has made the Baroque so central and problematic for the discipline of art history."--W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry and author of Iconology and Picture Theory
	LC Call Number: N 7865 .L48 2004

Last Update:
August, 2004