Rate this book

How Should We Live?: Great Ideas From The Past For Everyday Life (2011)

by Roman Krznaric(Favorite Author)

3.89 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1933346841 (ISBN13: 9781933346847)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

BlueBridge

review 1: Really interesting and well-written! The author selected a few universal topics and reflected on how these concepts (money, time, love, death...) have changed in history to lead to how we think now. By doing that, he provides us with other ways of thinking and we can imagine ourselves being back in time, with other beliefs and other ways to doing everything we now take for granted. What wisdom has humanking lost or gained over time? This approach is really original and interesting. This is a self-help book, and I agree with some comments seen below, that sometimes the author is a tiny bit 'too much' into presenting his own experience to bring the message down to earth and illustrate with daily life examples. There is a chapter or two in which he overdid it. It's hard for... more a writer to know when to do it or to stop!!! I've been there :-)) I think overall, he did it well - I found it disturbing only in the chapter on 'travel' but I didn't really enjoy this chapter in particular. I didn't find the examples and the advices very enlightening. I particularly enjoy the series of chapters on Making a living (time, work, money), and the chapters on Nature and on death (I thought that ending a book with a chapter on death would be gloomy but it was not depressing at all, it was about how people chose to live when life expectancy was much shorter and how society takes care of its ageing population). Because I am not an English native speaker, I can't judge the style but it seemed to me it was good, very accessible for non-natives in any case, without being too simplistic. The most recent references are mostly from English writers, UK and US but this is not too disturbing, because the author is from Australia originally which gives the book an interesting cultural perspective on top of the historical one. The only one thing I didn't like, but this is detail and doesnt' affect my score: There is one chapter in which the author has mentionned some studies in psychology and neuroscience and I wished he has avoided the topic, because this part is a miss :-) Oh I am a pain in the ** when it comes to commenting on psychology, I know, my expectations are super high. I give it a 5-star because I find the idea and the approach new and daring. It's perhaps not 'amazing', but it's really entertaining and a pleasant read!
review 2: I expected more historical tie ins and less of the authors own opinions! We got more historical information on Love in the first chapter than we did on any other topic in subsequent chapters! This is too bad! I didn't want to read your ideas with a few historical bits thrown in! I wanted to read historical ideas with a few personal notes from you thrown in! The Bon Marche thing was fabulous to read about I must say. I had no idea it was such a big deal, how cool! less

Download links for: How Should We Live?: Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life

Advertising