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Ideas and Men, The Story of Western Thought
Ideas and Men The Story of Western Thought Author:Crane Brinton A prime American intellectual historian, in a revised second edition of a work with eleven reprintings since 1950, offers a huge relief map of the mind of Western man, his ideas and mental temper as seen in his actions and reactions. ... — The first quarter of the book links Graeco-Roman, Judaeo-Christion, and Hellenistic contribution to emergent... more » doctrinal Christianity as a world force. Thereby, the author has built a broad foundation for consideration, far=reaching and sophisticated, of the essence of the Church, its growth and triumph, progress through medieval theology and philosophy and characteristic cultural institutions Theories of human relations in the Middle Ages are explored in depth.
The making of the "modern" world from approximately 1500 A.D. to the present occupies roughly the second half of the book. Lucidly set forth are the advent of Humanism, the bloom of the Renaissance, the rise of Protestantism and of such new areas as natural science, rationalism the Enlightenment and the belief in progress.
A skillful counterpoint of exposition and description makes Dr. Brinton's stylistic approach. His method is that of the reasoning humanist for who wholeness of fact (and the balancing of opposing source to establish such fact is a necessity; he supremely able to make temperate judgment on the knottiest-and the most partisan-historical distinction« less