Name: CIVILISATION
ISBN: 9780719568442

CIVILISATION

Kenneth Clark's sweeping narrative looks at how Western Europe evolved in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire, to produce the ideas, books, buildings, works of art and great individuals that make up our civilisation. The author takes us from Iona in the ninth century to France in the twelfth, from Florence to Urbino, from Germany to Rome, England, Holland and America. Against these historical backgrounds he sketches an extraordinary cast of characters -- the men and women who gave new energy to civilisation and expanded our understanding of the world and of ourselves. He also highlights the works of genius they produced -- in architecture, sculpture and painting, in philosophy, poetry and music, and in science and engineering, from Raphael's School of Athens to the bridges of Brunel.

What Hacker News says

wyclifSep 2022

I have to put in a word for Kenneth Clark's series called Civilisation. There's also a book. You can find all the episodes on YouTube with a simple search. They have almost all of them in a playlist but for some weird reason the first episode was deleted from the playlist, but exists separately on YouTube so you can still watch all the episodes.

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zgniataczMay 2021

Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark

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DrPhishDec 2016

If you're interested in a good overview of Architecture in the context of period art/philosophy (and culture in general), it would be hard to recommend Kenneth Clark's Civilisation [0] series more. It shows the development of architecture through the ages in context, and he has extremely interesting and insightful views on what that says about the human condition of the people living at the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation_(TV_series)

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dredmorbiusSep 2016

If your only real exposure to history was through primary and secondary school, you really owe it to yourself to explore the space yourself.

It's not just late 20th century history that's elided, I'm finding (despite some exposre) that my knowledge of Greek and Roman history, of the post-Enlightenment era in Europe, much of English history, the late 19th century, 20th century issues of labour, race, drugs, culture, immigration, women's rights, and more, was tremendously elided.

* James Loewen, Lies my Teacher Told Me: Everything your American History textbook got wrong is a good start. http://www.worldcat.org/title/lies-my-teacher-told-me-everyt...

* Howard Zinn's A People's History has its own biases, but they're a strong antidote to the traditional view. http://www.worldcat.org/title/peoples-history-of-the-united-...

* Will and Ariel Durant's Lessons from History is a short (115 pages) overview of major themes from history. It's a wonderful introduction to the Durants' broader works. http://www.worldcat.org/title/lessons-of-history/oclc/336824...

* James Burke's Connections and The Day the Universe Changed are good introductions to histories of technology and philosophy. From these, continuing the PBS series mode, I'd recommend Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. These are truly excellent productions.

* Daniel Yergin, The Prize, whacked me over the head with just how tremndously momentous the discovery of petroleum in Western Pennsylvia was, and the impacts across the last quarter of the 19th century and all of the 20th. Follow this with a more technical exploration in Vaclav Smil's Energy in World History and Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power.

And that's only the barest start.

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kevin_morrillJan 2013

This Referly page may be right up your alley: https://refer.ly/the_men_behind_movie_trailers/c/aaf97926603... The routine by Pablo Francisco makes me laugh every time.

On a more serious note, one of the gems in this page is the Art History series called Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. PG recommended this guy in one of his essays, and it's one of the best things I've watched all year. I feel like I have such a better perspective on art now.

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pgMar 2008

When I was a kid, the documentary series Connections. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone follow vectors through history instead of recounting it one period at a time, like most books and classes do.

Discovering Lisp was a big one. This was in 1983, when the default programming language was Pascal. Lisp seemed (and in retrospect was) startlingly better. There was no one single book or quotation, but I remember how excited I was to get my hands on a photocopy of the InterLisp manual.

Kenneth Clark's documentary series Civilisation (and the accompanying book) impressed me a lot. In fact, it was clearly the model for Connections. I've never read anything else better about art. His ideas are extremely subversive, but few get it because he usually speaks in code. And he had access to stuff like no one else ever will again.

I also learned a lot from his book The Nude.

One of the biggest influences on my ideas about startups was an essay by TJ Rogers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. I don't remember the title, but it cut through the usual corporate bullshit like a knife. For me the important thing was not just what he said, but that one could even be that candid.

Of all the books I've read in the last 5 years or so, Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology is probably the one that stuck most in my head.

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