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Title: Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) by Garry Wills ISBN: 0-670-88610-6 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.73 (26 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Needs prior knowledge of Augustine; some history invented
Comment: As some reviewers have mentioned, this book presupposes you know a lot about Augustine before you read this. This assessment is correct--you do. Wills freqently stops in mid-discusssion to get into arguing with other translaters about whether a given word should be translated one way or the other. And if you don't know about Augustine's life (presumably true, if you're reading a biography), you have no idea why the author is making a big deal about each translation point. And they are numerous.
In addition, key facts that most biographers would introduce for the reader are skipped. For example, he refers to the Maximus the Usurper in his pages as if you should know who he is. Who Maximus is or why he is important is never explained. Other references to key players are left similarly unexplained.
Other parts that are suspicious. After a long explanation of the origins of the word 'confession' and its use in Augustine's time, Wills decides to call Augustine's most famous work not by its universal title "The Confessions" but "The Testimony." What is the point of renaming a book that is known by everyone under one name? Everytime he refers to the Testimony, you mentally correct it to the Confessions. This is a pointless distraction and it makes you suspicious of what other titles have been intenetionally retranslated to something no one would recognize.
Likewise, he gives the name Una to Augustine's mistress, even though there is no record this was her name.
Personally, I don't like this kind of self-created biography. I was expecting a book that would lay out Augustine's life, and at various points dip deeply into the theological debates and explain Augustine's views in the context of his times and also detail how they affected Catholic/Christian thinking after him. This is not that book. This is a treatise arguing for a different translation of Augustine; it's not a biography.
Rating: 5
Summary: History and Spirit
Comment: I was prompted to read this book after reading E.L. Doctorow's novel, City of God. I wanted to learn more about Augustine to think further about the obvious allusion in Doctorow's title, and throughout his book. I had read Augustine before, and was not a total newcomer to his thought. But I need a refresher and something that would expand my limited understanding.
Wills's book is short, clearly written, and presents in an accessible form something of the nature of this complex person, thinker, and theologian. But the book is no mere introduction. It in many ways takes issue with other accounts of Augustine and presents him in a manner that shows why he is worthy of the attention of the modern reader, as he has been of readers throughout the ages.
Wills spends a lot of time arguing that the title "Confessions" for Augustine's most famous work is inappropriate and retitles it "Testimony". This point has been made many times before, but in the process Wills does teach us something about the book. The process is not merely a pedantic exercise. Wills also argues that Augustine was not a sexual libertine in his youth and, actually more importantly for the modern reader, that he was not anti-sexual in his old age. He presents a Christianity that does not despise the body (making the simple point that in Christianity God came to the earth in a body) and that seeks to use the body for God's purpose in humility and love. In fact, Wills presents Augustine as correcting the anti-physical bias of pagan ascetics of his day.
The texts I was interested in for my purposes were the Confessions("Testimony") and City of God. The first text is referred to repeatedly in the first half or so of the book and forms the basis for Wills' discussion of Augustine's life, conversion, and theology. The second book is summarized briefly late in the book, and I found it useful. Again, Wills argues agains an other-worldy interpretation of the City of God and finds Augustine willing to bring the City to earth in a world believers share with nonbelievers through an early form of toleration, through love, and through common purpose.
There is a good, if necesarily brief, description in the book of the closing days of the Roman Empire. This is in itself worth reading and I had known little about it.
I think somebody coming to Augustine for the first time could benefit from the book and be encouraged to think and learn more. I found it useful. I think Penguin is to be commended for its biographical series, making important lives accessible to modern readers in brief, but not superficial texts.
Rating: 4
Summary: A good stepping stone
Comment: This is a very good book for someone who has a basic understanding of Saint Augustine's philosophy and wants to gain a better understanding of his times and how this influenced his development before embarking on further study.
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Title: Pope John XXIII: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) by Thomas Cahill ISBN: 0670030570 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Leonardo Da Vinci (Penguin Lives) by Sherwin B. Nuland ISBN: 0670893919 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Woodrow Wilson (Penguin Lives) by Louis Auchincloss ISBN: 0670889040 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 20 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Abraham Lincoln: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) by Thomas Keneally ISBN: 0670031755 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Dante (Penguin Lives) by R. W. B. Lewis ISBN: 0670899097 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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