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 | A Very Brief History of Eternity |
What is eternity? Is it anything other than a purely abstract concept, totally unrelated to our lives? A mere hope? A frightfully uncertain horizon? Or is it a certainty, shared by priest and scientist alike, and an essential element in all human relations? In A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire, the historian and National Book Award-winning author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, has written a brilliant history of eternity in Western culture. Tracing the idea from ancient times to the present, Eire examines the rise and fall of five different conceptions of eternity, exploring how they developed and how they have helped shape individual and collective self-understanding. A book about lived beliefs and their relationship to social and political realities, A Very Brief History of Eternity is also about unbelief, and the tangled and often rancorous relation between faith and reason. Its subject is the largest subject of all, one that has taxed minds great and small for centuries, and will forever be of human interest, intellectually, spiritually, and viscerally. Carlos Eire is the author of the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (Free Press), which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003, and a number of works of religious history, including From Madrid to Purgatory and War against the Idols. He is the Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. "Despite its heady topic, Eire's engaging style and sense of humor keep things light enough to carry readers through a history of 'how conceptions of forever, or eternity, have evolved in Western culture, and what role these conceptions have played in shaping our own self-understanding, personally and collectively.' Eire gives readers so much to think about and in such an entertaining manner that he can be excused for occasionally overreaching."--Publishers Weekly Endorsements: "As learned as it is lively, Carlos Eire's A Very Brief History of Eternity traces the elusive history of a very big idea. Eire teaches us to understand our ways of thinking about the future--as well as the present and our past--with new clarity and insight."--Anthony Grafton, Princeton University "A Very Brief History of Eternity is vintage Eire: erudite and witty, profound and written with a light touch. Eire compellingly narrates the ways in which complex beliefs about eternity are intertwined with the way life is lived in time. It is an invitation to reflect on how eternity, even when it is absent from view, can make, as he puts it, 'a hell of a difference.'"--Miroslav Volf, Yale University Divinity School "Carlos Eire doesn't disappoint. The breadth of detail, the depth of imagination, the ability to synthesize and to identify the telling example--and all for such an impossibly expansive topic as eternity--are astonishing. We get glimpses throughout of the creativity that graced his memoir of Cuba, and evidence everywhere of his massive learning."--Craig Harline, author of Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl List of Illustrations ix Subject Areas: | |||||
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