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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, by Lars Brownworth (Crown Publishers)

When many think of the Roman Empire, they usually think of the “fall of Rome” (to the Germanic king Odoacer) in 476 A.D. to be the end the Roman Empire, after which the West went in the “dark ages” until the Renaissance. Others may acknowledge that an entity called the “Byzantine Empire” centered in Constantinople continued on for some time in slow decline until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. In fact the situation was more complex and more interesting. Lars Brownworth, in his book Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, tells an entertaining and highly readable account of this near-forgotten episode of the Roman Empire.

In reality the Roman Empire didn’t fall in 476. The capital of the Empire had been Constantinople since 330 A.D., and even before, in Diocletian’s reign, government of the Empire was divided into Eastern and Western spheres. The term “Byantine Empire” is a relatively modern invention; the people of the Empire, their allies, and their enemies continued to call them “Roman” until the end. Moreover, that the Empire existed for over a thousand years in the face of external threats from the east and the west, as well as internal threats and dissensions, belies the belief that its history was a simple long decline. Rather, the fortunes of the Empire ebbed and flowed over its long history, and was a world power even as late as the 11^th century. In addition, the Empire continued to be a haven of learning and culture and a bulwark against expansion of Islam into the West. Without its preservation of culture and learning and the dissemination of such after the fall of the Empire, it is doubtful that the Renaissance would have happened at all.

Brownworth’s book is relatively short, barely more than 300 pages, and so by necessity it can hardly be a comprehensive treatment of more than 1000 years of dynamic history. Thus, serious students of history who want or need a detailed analysis of this period should look elsewhere. Nevertheless, he does give a highly entertaining account that reads more like a historical novel than a dry work of non-fiction. He does this principally by focusing on emperors and other major players in key periods of history in which the actions of such figures were important. I had never been a big fan of the “Great Man Theory” of history, but Brownworth’s accounts of men and women who made huge impacts in the history of the Empire may make me rethink this position.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in history who would like to learn about this important episode of western civilization, or even to those who may be well-versed in this history already but may want to revisit it with entertaining read.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books)

One can hardly enter a bookstore these days without seeing a plethora of books that pledge that the reader can achieve any number of goals—money, love, health, to name a few—merely by thinking enough positive thoughts. Barbara Ehrenreich stands athwart this rising tide of pernicious positivism and shouts “Stop!” in her latest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, which brings a badly needed breath of fresh air and dose of realism to forefront of modern culture.

Ehrenreich begins her book with some personal history: her diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer that introduced her to the world of the “pink ribbon culture” in which a kind of cheery optimism festooned with pink ribbons and kitschy bric-à-brac bothered her nearly as much as her disease did. She exposes some of the darker elements of this movement—for example, patients whose disease progress badly are made to feel as if they were to blame for not being positive enough—as well as demolishing the belief that patients’ mood could affect their outcome.

From there she traces the history of the positive thinking movement and how it infiltrated religion, business, and culture at large in addition to spawning a whole industry devoted to selling the idea that success and fortune come to those who merely wish hard enough. Although I think she may have slightly overstated her case that the pervasiveness of the positive thinking culture was a major contributor to the financial collapse of the 2000’s—after all, speculative bubbles that collapse have existed at least since the Dutch tulip mania of the 17^th century—she makes a compelling case that such thinking has gone beyond silly and into the harmful.