I am a historian, so I am constantly thinking about “time” - about the past, present, and future, and their relationship. While that endeavour is unending this side of eternity, this short classic by the accessible twentieth-century philosopher Josef Pieper, is an inspiring and insightful guide to consideration of the questions and to paths towards answers.
Pieper’s book, as its title suggests, is about the end - the final point - of time, yet it is also about the end - as in the goal - of time and of history. Serious historians are searching for meaning - “Why did X happen?” “Why did Y do that?” - and Pieper helps everyone - for every human is necessarily a historian, reflecting on the meaning of the past - to contemplate the wider issues and implications related to the significance of time, a quest which, at its root, represents the pursuit of truth.
This is a work of rare prophetic brilliance by Josef Pieper, one of this century's most profound and lucid expositors of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. This book was written to throw light on an ancient question that has vexed and tormented many. What is the nature of "The End" toward which, even now, the world and men are moving? No writer of our time is better equipped to answer that question than Pieper. He provides the most rigorous and sustained philosophical analysis, anchored to "the primeval rock of theological pronouncement", in order precisely to understand the finalities of…
What I have always loved about the study of the past, and what I attempt to develop more than anything else in my students, is the ability to read and analyze texts, and seeking the truth about a period, come to one’s own conclusions.
This collection, prepared by perhaps the greatest living expert on the subject - that is Gaul (essentially France) in the early Middle Ages - and one of my own scholarly mentors, allows readers to directly encounter sources from the time, produced by people of the time. And what a time! The period from c.300–c.700 is one of the most fascinating in human history. The complex processes in play in the transitional world of Late Antiquity in the West in that era - no mere “Dark Age,” subsequent to a “Decline and Fall” of Rome - mean that there is always more to discover and new perspectives to add.
The ever-engaging and often entertaining sources in this collection offer students, scholars, and interested human beings windows into that transformation, together with the chance to make up their own minds about what happened, as well as how and why.
Including such remarkable accounts as Attila the Hun's meeting with the Pope, Queen Balthild's life, and Gregory of Tours' vivid descriptions of what happens when daily life is enmeshed with politics, From Roman to Merovingian Gaul documents events that are both remarkable in themselves and that demonstrate what made this era of history distinct.
While I am a historian - an academic and a professor - I am also a husband and a father and to my mind, there is no better exploration in fiction than this book by Michael D. O’Brien about the depths, the mystery, and the authentic lived yet transcendental reality of married love.
In my opinion, Michael O’Brien is one of the world’s best living writers and artists. He will certainly be remembered by posterity as one of Canada’s greatest-ever novelists, and his books, and this one in particular, will be a staple on Canadian Literature lists. An epic and enthralling tale of inter-connected characters and themes, Strangers and Sojourners takes place against the backdrop of the history of twentieth-century Canada, and as the story unfolds, offers a compelling history of the spirit of Canada in that century.
At the same time, this novel is a word of truth about life and love that reflects and illuminates the experience of married couples taking their vocation seriously, inspiring us all to continue on the journey via mutual self-giving towards mutual fulfillment.
An epic novel set in the rugged interior of British Columbia, the first volume of a trilogy which traces the lives of four generations of a family of exiles. Beginning in 1900, and concluding with the climactic events leading up to the Millennium, the series follows Anne and Stephen Delaney and their descendants as they live through the tumultuous events of this century.
Anne is a highly educated Englishwoman who arrives in British Columbia at the end of the First World War. Raised in a family of spiritualists and Fabian socialists, she has fled civilization in search of adventure. She…
Everyone needs to produce essays - or papers, projects, policy documents, reports, and the like. Yet few people are taught how.
This book will guide you through the process of writing an essay - a successful essay - in Five Simple Stages, broken down into digestible chunks that are practicable for everyone - whatever level you are at, whether school, university or in your career.
Using the method explained in this Guide will not only help you write higher quality assignments as one-off exercises, but, if you pursue it consistently, until the technique becomes a habit, the strategy outlined here will enhance the way in which your mind works and set you up to deliver superior outcomes more effortlessly in life–not just in essays.
