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Excerpt: ...days when we go to a gallery we criticize the pictures quite fiercely. "We know what we like." Yes, perhaps we do. I am not sure even of that. But in eighty-five cases out of a hundred none of us have any knowledge of the history of painting or any intelligent idea of why Velasquez is regarded as a master; yet we acquire a glib familiarity with the names of half a dozen cubists or futurists, and bandy them about much as my office boy does the names of his favorite pugilists or baseball players. It is even worse with history and biography. We cannot afford or have not the decency to admit that we are uninformed. We speak casually of, say, Henry of Navarre, or Beatrice D'Este, or Charles the Fifth. I select my names intentionally from among the most celebrated in history; yet how many of us know within two hundred years of when any one of them lived-or much about them? How much definite historical information have we, even about matters of genuine importance? Let us take a shot at a few dates. I will make it childishly easy. Give me, if you can, even approximately, the year of Caesar's Conquest of Gaul; the Invasion of Europe by the Huns; the Sack of Rome; the Battle of Chalons-sur-Marne; the Battle of Tours; the Crowning of Charlemagne; the Great Crusade; the Fall of Constantinople; Magna Charta; the Battle of Crecy; the Field of the Cloth of Gold; the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; the Spanish Armada; the Execution of King Charles I; the Fall of the Bastile; the Inauguration of George Washington; the Battle of Waterloo; the Louisiana Purchase; the Indian Mutiny; the Siege of Paris. I will look out of the window while you go through the mental agony of trying to remember. It looks easy, does it not? Almost an affront to ask the date of Waterloo Well, I wanted to be fair and even things up; but, honestly, can you answer correctly five out of these twenty elementary questions? I doubt it. Yet you have, no doubt, lying on your table at the..."
| ISBN-13 | 9781153718349 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 1153718340 |
| Weight | 0.38 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.26 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 108 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2010-03-01 |
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