Book Description
This classic account shows how the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, after a siege of several weeks, came as a bitter shock to Western Christendom. The city’s plight had been neglected, and negligible help was sent in this crisis. To the Turks, victory not only brought a new imperial capital, but guaranteed that their empire would last. To the Greeks, the conquest meant the end of the civilisation of Byzantium, and led to the exodus of scholars stimulating the tremendous expansion of Greek studies in the European Renaissance.
Customer Reviews:
Solid history with storytelling flair.......2007-07-24
Sir Steven Runciman had an unique talent for conveying historical information with a flair. He did not convey history as a collection of unrelated facts to dates but instead provided all the color and nuances behind those facts and dates which gave them life. Only a few historians write in a way that transports the reader to the subject time, place, and people the way Sir Runciman has in this little volume.
The book is organized by describing the background and focusing on the last Emperor and Sultan Mehmet II as the key individuals in that background. It continues with a description of the weaknesses that prevented the west from providing efficacious help to Constantinople. Attention then turns to the siege and fall followed by an overview of the exodus of learned Byzantines to the west which helped to spark the renaissance.
A map of Constantinople and a pictorial depiction of the disposition of troops during the siege provides some detail for context. I would have liked more maps of the other geographical areas mentioned to provide the greater world context and that is my single critical point on this volume.
That so much information could be conveyed in so few pages with such brilliant flair is testament to his reputation. This is still the definitive work on the last years of Constantinople and the final fall of the Byzantine empire. It is a must have for ancient history libraries and a must read for historians wishing to communicate historical lessons in writing.
Amazing for any history buff and more.......2007-05-08
Runciman is academic yet lively, a rare combination that makes for a serious historical book that reads like a page-turning thriller/drama. Of course he is helped by the facts themselves. The story of the fall of Constantinople is one of those events in history that sounds like it was made up, because it is so picturesque. There are brooding Sultans, brothers strangling each other in competing for the throne, siege warfare, religious upheaval, dramatic sea battles, betrayal, the almost improbably anachronistic use of cannons and more.
The only fault I could find in the book is that sometimes he repeats himself in mentioning the same event in 2 chapters, each time in relation to a slightly different aspect of the story. But this he only does 5-6 times, everything else is great. He successfully builds up tension and is great at communicating the pathos of the events. The fall was seen as the end of a great civilisation stretching back thousands of years to ancient Rome. Reading the book you really feel the momentous nature of the events.
Runciman doesn't seem to like Mehmet II (the conquerer). I don't know enough of the history to tell if it's bias or whether he really was unusually cruel and despotic. I'm inclined toward the latter, for the facts speak for themselves. If other rulers of his day were similar (which they were!) this doesn't make him any more sympathetic.
This is a true classic of history. It's a real shame how unaware modern people are of Byzantium because our society is much more indebted to that civilisation than we think. This book is a sorely needed patch in this gap of knowledge.
A sublime account of the demise of the "Greek emperor" and the fall of his city.......2006-08-02
Exceedingly well written and utterly fascinating, Sir James Stevenson Runciman's classic account of the siege and fall of Constantinople manages to be thoroughly academically sound and highly entertaining at the same time. Steven Runciman doesn't just deliver the dry facts, which would be alright, no, he tells the story, which is much better. And he does it without forefeiting historical accuracy, and, blessedly, without drawing any politically motivated parallels to "modern" conflicts, be they religious, or political, or both.
This is one of the finest historical accounts I have ever read, and I recommend it 100%. It may be over 40 years old, but it is still unrivalled, the single greatest work on the subject in the English language.
strongly recommended.......2006-02-20
I strongly suggest to buy and read this book to all people interested in history in general.
I am a fan of history books, and I provilege high readable, well documented and general-picture-introducing books. This book satisfies all these criteria: it gives a full explanation of the context before and after the Empire's collapse, it is enjoyable to read, and it is well-grounded on the reports by witnesses from both parties (turks and christians).
This is my first book by Runciman, and I bet will not be the last.
Probably very good.......2006-02-02
I have not yet received this book from Amazon, so it is a little difficult to say what it is like. But I am sure it will be at least very good. Runciman is an excellent author.
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The fall of Constantinople (World landmark books)
Bernardine Kielty
Manufacturer: Random House
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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Greece
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ASIN: B0007E6ZIK |
Customer Reviews:
borrowed from Gibbon.......2003-11-07
The author's name is Bernardine Kielty Scherman. This is part of a series of books for teenagers about world history (World Landmark books) in the 1950's. I read it with avidity when I was 14 years old, and I developed a passion for Byzantine history which never left me. It was only years later that I discovered that the entire text was borrowed from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Byzantion Nea Hellas, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1218 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Steven Runciman The Fall of Constantinople 1453.(Reseña de libro)
Author: M. Castillo Didier
Publication:
Byzantion Nea Hellas (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2003
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 22
Page: 257(3)
Article Type: Reseña de libro
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This volume sets out a new paradigm that increases our understanding of African culture and the forces that led to its transformation during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and beyond, putting long due emphasis on the importance of Central African culture to the cultures of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Focusing on the Kongo/Angola culture zone, the book illustrates how African peoples re-shaped their cultural institutions as they interacted with Portuguese slave traders up to 1800, then follows Central Africans through all the regions where they were taken as slaves and captives.
Book Description
This new edition of Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work-translated into fifteen languages-is extensively rewritten and reorganized, reflecting the experience of the author, his colleagues, and correspondents in twenty years of teaching from the previous edition. Significant additions are new chapters on the Bayesian approach to science, the new experimentalism, the nature of scientific laws, and the realism/anti-realism debate. An ideal introduction to scientific method, Chalmers's work is both accessible to beginners and a valuable resource for advanced students and scholars.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent introduction.......2005-07-23
This was the textbook used when I was an undergraduate. We had a short course on the philosophy of science, and this book is an excellent introduction to the topic.
Since then I have gone on to read the texts recommended in the book; if I was first faced with those I am not sure I would have read any. This slim volume provides just enough interest to make it worthwhile to read the might tomes by Popper, Lakatos et al.
Best Intro Available!.......2005-07-09
This book is about as clear an introduction to the philosophy of science as you can get. Chalmers starts out by debunking the common-sense notion that science is simply derived for the facts. Chalmers makes the case that there is "more to seeing than meets the eyeball". By using several examples, Chalmers concludes, quite rightly, that what one sees is affected by one's past experience, knowledge, and expectations; and that although two individuals may observe the same object (he concedes one reality exists), all that they have access to is their own experiences. Images on our retina do not determine our experience; rather, it is the combination of that image with inner state of our brain that determines our experience.
He then clarifies what one means when one talks about facts in science. Facts are statements about states of affairs, not the states of affairs themselves. As a consequence of this definition of facts, it becomes farcical to then claim that scientific knowledge is derived simply from facts via the senses, since a fact is a now defined as a statement. Moreover, considerable conceptual knowledge in presupposed in order form factual statements, further undermining the idea that knowledge is derived directly from the facts via the senses. Some knowledge about what one is speaking/writing must be there prior to creating the statements that are, in fact, facts!
Also, since one must know in some way what relevant knowledge must be obtained, one must also have some problem, hypotheses, theory, already in mind. This goes against the common notion that facts must precede theory.
But Chalmers doesn't leave us floundering in a relativistic, post-modern, inescapable abyss. Experiments can be arranged to limit the reliance on the subjective states of various observers. It is, according to Chalmers, the facts derived from this type of activity, rather than passive observation (social sciences?) that should form scientific knowledge.
Next Chalmers presents-- quite persuasively, and then attacks, with double the persuasion-- the inductive method of deriving theories from the facts, Popper's falsification theory, sophisticated falsificationism, Kuhn's paradigms, Lakatos's research programs, Feyerbend's anarchistic theory of science, the Bayesian approach, the new experimentalism (mostly Deborah Mayo's theory).
After giving a fair hearing to all these philosophies of science, Chalmers moves on to the ontological question "Why should the world obey Laws?" He explores, and then rejects, the traditional belief of laws as regularities. So what's his alternative? He says that "the material world is active," and that what a thing is is related to what it is capable of doing and becoming-- it's actuality and potentiality. He says the material world is made up of objects that have "dispositions, tendencies, powers or capacities." Sound like Aristotle? Don't be alarmed. He makes a pretty good case considering the options available.
In the final two chapters, we get an overview of the realism vs. anti-realism debate and then-- seperate for the realism vs. anti-realism debate-- Chalmer's conclusion that there can be no general account of scientific methods or knowledge for all sciences that will fit for all historical contexts.
My chief complaint is that he seems to restrict his discourse to the hard sciences. Almost all of his historical and experimnetal anecdotes come from physics. The author admits this incompleteness and says he covers the social sciences in his other book "Science and its Fabrication". When it's all said and done, however, this is a wholly readable, concise (252 pages), and all around excellent intro to the subject.
What is this thing called Philosophy of Science?.......2002-05-17
"Philosophy of science ... pointlessly scholastic activity which is liable to confuse the budding scientist" - Matthew Stewart, 'The Truth about Everything'.
Once upon a time, the wisest men in the land turned their thoughts to the vexed question of how it is possible for farriers to shoe horses. Some said that you nail specially shaped lumps of iron on the extremities located at the four corners, and if one drops off you replace it with another, hopefully longer-lasting. But this was dismissed by almost all the wise men as too pedestrian for words.
One of the wise men won fame by pointing out that there was a time when people got by without ever shoeing their horses. Those people, he said, would have been quite unable to perceive why the moderns put dead weights on their horses' hooves (even though, of course, they were just as smart as us). This was called the incomprehensibility of paranickels. It was received with jubilation throughout the land, especially by those who thought that shoeing horses was rather a vulgar business, tediously technical and probably involving difficult sums; now they knew the secret and didn't have to bother.
Another wise man made his name by questioning how far the farriers could be said to be shoeing horses at all. Perhaps, he speculated, they and their customers only think that's what they're doing, or agree among themselves to say so. Anyway, nailing shoes to horses' heads ought to work just as well.
The greatest influence on cultured folk came from radical thinkers who doubted whether there were such things as 'horses' and 'horseshoes'; or, if by chance there were, whether 'shoeing horses' might not be better termed 'horsing shoes'. This was agreed by one and all to be clever and humorous and (because it was written mostly in French) deep as well.
By this time, since it was clear that a learned consensus on the farriers' art was nowhere in sight, it was suspected by some of the wise men, and by many who had caught snatches of the argument, that the farriers must be doing something wrong. This was called the epistemological crisis of the post-Enlightenment ferrous hegemony, and before long it was right-on wisdom in all the land. Simple country pomos would tell you about it at the drop of a hat. The farriers found this exasperating. One reportedly said that a philosophy of horse-shoeing is about as useful to farriers as ornithology is to birds. But he was a bongo-player and part-time Nobel laureate; that was just the kind of thing he said.
As to this book, it is nicely written and provides a solid, readable if uninspired introduction to the current state of play. Many readers will find it useful for filling in the background, bringing the story up to date, and yielding quality material for cocktail-party conversations. It is best read in conjunction with the same author's 'Science and Its Fabrication'. Of course, you must also read the wise men's original works (don't worry, we're not talking Wittgenstein here). But whatever you do, younkers, never go near a smithy. To this day, the farriers can still be seen there shamelessly nailing on lumps of iron, just as they always did.
Introduction to the Scientific Method.......2002-05-09
Chalmers's book is the widely read and well-received classical and basic introduction to the epistemology of science. Though this book has important insights that can be applied to the quantitative studies in social science, it is essentially an introduction to the philosophy of natural sciences.
Basic concepts and important thinkers are dealt with in order in separate chapters and at the end of each chapter a critique is provided and entries for further reading are provided. The latest edition of the book includes an extensive chapter on Feyerabend and his radical agenda.
Besides this the themes covered in the book include observation, experiment, induction, falsification, Kuhn, Popper, Bayes, realism and anti-realism.
It is a handy reference work for graduate students and scholars alike who would like to know more about the selection process of hypotheses, how and why hypotheses can be rejected, how important a framework is for any "scientific" research, what it means to have a paradigm shift et cetera. All in all, it is a seminal introduction to the scientific method.
A primer for skeptics.......2002-03-24
This is an excellent text for skeptics to obtain a grasp on the state of the art in the modern philosophy of science. It provides rather more detail than many people will require but it does indicate clearly how the old "positivist" philosophy of science did not really work, and it provides a good survey of the more up to date ideas in the field. Chalmers is especially helpful in showing the limitations of Kuhn and providing a balanced perspective on Popper, Lakatos and Feyerabend.
Customer Reviews:
Clear, Comprehensive and Friendly.......2006-07-16
Alan Chalmers's "What is this thing called Science?" is an introduction to the philosophy of science. While Chalmers reaches some of his own conclusions, the book generally digests theories in the philosophy of science with standard criticisms in a very friendly and unimposing manner.
This book is quite comprehensive, covering the nature and justification of scientific theories, theories about scientific progress and the realism/anti-realism debate, among other topics. It progresses chronologically through inductivism, falsificationism, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and more contemporary theories.
Chalmers explains and critically evaluates the theories clearly and in some depth. He often illustrates his claims with examples from the history of science. The book is also well organised, and each chapter is concluded with suggestions for further reading.
The third edition of this book is significantly changed from the previous editions, including new chapters on Bayesianism, the new experimentalism, natural laws (I like Boyle's explanation; pity Chalmers dismisses it so quickly) and the realism/anti-realism debate.
"What is this thing called Science?" has remained popular for well over two decades. While there are many new alternatives available, I recommend this book for introductory courses in the philosophy of science and for anyone interested in the subject.
Introspection.......2005-12-04
I disagree with Chalmers. He admits to the reader on page 169 that he believes the philosophy of science, and therefore this book, is of no help to scientists. This claim he supports by stating his book primarily assults our societal ideologies of science (i.e. either an unwavering association of science with truth, or an impenetrable opinion that science is simply a buffet of ideas to freely choose from). I agree with this statement, but I contend such ideologies exist significantly within the scientific community as well. Perhaps Chalmers assumes his writings won't be internalized by the practicing scientist. This assumption may be true, but my evidence of one data point (me) suggests perhaps scientists (especially apprentices like me) can gain from this book.
I recommend this book only to those practicing scientist who have the courage to allow Chalmers' microscope to examine what they believe and how they justify their existance.
Important introduction into the epistemology of science.......1999-07-14
Too often sciences are taught without much consideration for their inner workings; emphasis is put on techniques, but not enough on the philosophical considerations that keep sciences honest and as free of dogma as possible. This book by Alan Chalmers successfully and concisely engage us into thinking about the many ways the beliefs in the sciences try to justify themselves, and how some of them fail at doing so. I find this book an essential addition to any science student's bookshelf to critically help her through her studies, and also for professors through whom honest scientists may emerge.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Chemical News, published by Chemical Institute of Canada on September 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1999 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Climbing to the future, on the ladder of chemistry: science is changing rapidly. These days, what is this thing called chemistry? (Editorial).
Author: Michael Bos
Publication:
Canadian Chemical News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2002
Publisher: Chemical Institute of Canada
Volume: 54
Issue: 8
Page: 34(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Rural landowner liability for recreational injuries: myths, perceptions, and realities.(Abstract) : An article from: Journal of Soil and Water Conservation
B.A. Wright ,
R.A. Kaiser , and
S. Nicholls
Manufacturer: Soil & Water Conservation Society
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ASIN: B0009FPFYC
Release Date: 2005-07-30 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, published by Soil & Water Conservation Society on May 1, 2002. The length of the article is 7773 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
From the author: Keywords: Private lands, landowners, liability, recreational access, recreational injuries
Citation Details
Title: Rural landowner liability for recreational injuries: myths, perceptions, and realities.(Abstract)
Author: B.A. Wright
Publication:
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 2002
Publisher: Soil & Water Conservation Society
Volume: 57
Issue: 3
Page: 183(9)
Article Type: Abstract
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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