Several Kenneth Rexroth essays on history and historians have just been added to the BPS website: Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/2.thucydides.htm Tacitus: Histories of Imperial Rome http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/3.tacitus.htm Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/7.gibbon.htm Gibbon's Letters http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/gibbon.htm The Unchristian Crusades http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/crusades.htm The Sicilian Vespers http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/runciman.htm Parkman: France and England in North America http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/parkman.htm A few excerpts: "Today we know that clowns and blood-drinking perverts climb to the summits of power, pushed on by the enthusiastic applause of the majority; nor is it now unbelievable that a Roman Emperor enjoyed being sodomized on the public stage." "The great histories of the world have all been integral works of art. They have been so not because of their pretty prose but because of their objective dramatic presentation of the great truth that history, like life, is neither optimistic nor pessimistic but tragic. . . . Gibbon's millennium-long drama is a tragedy presented with a good humor peculiar to himself." "There is a certain smug pleasure in reading the story of human stupidity, larcenous folly, and just plain foolishness. . . . It is a consolation to know that in 500 years, if there are still civilized men on earth, our own capers will be appreciated on their merits and not in terms of their present justifications. This, I suppose, is the most one can learn from a study of the Crusades." * * * Other Rexroth essays of related interest at the same website: Herodotus: History of the Persian Wars http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/2.htm Plutarch: Parallel Lives http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/3.htm Machiavelli: The Prince http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/5.htm Marx: The Communist Manifesto http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/8.htm Science and Civilization in China http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/needham.htm Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (complete book) http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/communalism.htm BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS http://www.bopsecrets.org "Making petrified conditions dance by singing them their own tune."
