Books in brief: Contested Visions | The Science Delusion | It Was a Long Time Ago...

Published on Saturday 21 January 2012 00:00

Michael Kerrigan casts his eye over recent publications

Contested Visions

edited by Ilona Katzew

(Yale, £45) ****

“The Indian’s cloak covers us all,” said the Spanish priest: the settlers were sustained by the labours of those they’d enslaved. But how did the “Indian” respond to being clothed in the ways of the Old World? The benefits of European-style civilisation were taken as read till recently; then historians concentrated on the costs. This book finds a fascinating middle ground: focusing on Mexico and Peru, contributors consider how conquest was experienced. The New World reshaped the way the Spanish felt about everything from spirituality to bullfights. The indigenous mind, meanwhile, had to process new ways of understanding – even of such fundamental things as time. At the heart of this sumptuously illustrated book is art: Aztecs and Incas made an alien aesthetic their own; the relationship was unequal, but it was not one-sided.

The Science Delusion

by Rupert Sheldrake

(Coronet, £19.99) ****

Sheldrake’s title will stir a smile in anyone who was ever uneasy with Richard Dawkins’ ex cathedra tone. But the pontiff of the “New Atheism” is by no means the only target in a book that’s concerned less with religion than with scientific materialism itself. As a critique of conventional approaches, overly categorical and insufficiently self-questioning, The Science Delusion scores a fair few hits. Less immediately convincing (though in many ways more interesting) is Sheldrake’s vision of where science should be venturing: is the universe alive – a living consciousness? How – if at all – does meditation work? Can acquired characteristics be inherited? Is it possible for our minds to transcend our brains? Such things, he claims, can be scientifically tested.

It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway

by David Satter

(Yale, £14.99) *****

This study of modern Russia builds an overwhelming case that, when a country refuses to acknowledge its collective memory, something sinister takes hold. The persecutions, the purges, the mass-graves, the Gulags … the whole inhuman legacy of the Communist era remains under wraps. Satter casts fascinating light on the (comparatively cheerful) way in which repression was endured by the citizens of the USSR – and in many ways still is, by their liberated sons and daughters. The sense that the state trumps the individual is as strong as ever: that’s bad news, says Satter, for the Russians and for us. An informed and insightful essay – with disturbing implications.

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