2007-06-03

recommended reading: conversations about the end of time :

This is one that I bought years ago in a bookstore in the Rockridge District of Oakland. It sat on my bookshelf for 6 years or so.

First published in 1998 in French (the English version is from 2000, I’m not so cool that I read the French edition), Conversations About the End of Time is four interviews done Q&A style with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau. Carriere (a screenwriter) and Delumeau (a Catholic historian) were new to me and contibuted considerably to the book.

The book is fascinating, not only because each interviewee is such a big and original thinker, but because it is amazing how much the world has changed in less than 10 years. This is both an easy read (because of the conversational style) but is as completely full of ideas and information as a collection of philosophy texts. I was especially impressed with Carriere and Delumeau. Their names don’t sell books to English-speaking audiences, but each had amazing insight.

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