At the Edge of History

by William Irwin Thompson

Book Overview

Seminal works of cultural history that changed the way we think about ourselves. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060910046
• ISBN13: 9780060910044
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: HarperCollins (paper)
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Myths That Keep on Giving...

William Irwin Thompson is a cultural historian and one of the few writers who pay attention to the myths of humankind that wash within us, over us and through us in this strange epoch of existence we now find ourselves. Thompson has written that we are like ants crawling across an oil painting: our limited consciousness can sense a series of changes and colors but it is only the poet, the mystic or the artist who is able to glimpse and describe the bigger picture. Thompson uses his nimble, eclectic intelligence to reveal the larger patterns of history that narrate and guide the complex unfolding of human existence in context with both culture and cosmos. We only see through a glass, darkly. And there is much more than meets the eye. To use another metaphor, the night sky we stare up into reveals the light from stars that left deep space aeons ago. We are truly living in a different universe than the one we can perceive. Thompson takes the reader on a journey that connects cultural dots that we rarely acknowlege to illuminate our journey to and through the future of our human heritages, our civilizations and our species. This book of essays is no guru romp through the New Age, but a work of serious historical scholarship that is both readable and penetrating. It is a mythic manual for the new world and can be read, enjoyed and marveled at again and again.

A Must For Every Library

William Irwin Thompson is one of the truly great minds of our time. These two early works (which were originally published separately) are the perfect introduction to Thompson's opus. While some of the pop culture references may seem dated, passed over by events, the basic world view presented here remains valid. Thompson, riding on the shoulders of such as Jean Gebser and Marshall McLuhan, illuminates the transitional period we are undergoing, as we move out of the modern era into ... whatever is coming -- we don't really know yet, but the so-called "postmodern" isn't the future, it's just a replay of isolated elements of the modern. Thompson sees signs of one possible future in the emerging planetary consciousness where thinking globally while acting locally is more than a pop phrase but a new way of perceiving our oneness with a sacred world. Thompson looks at signposts all over the planet which, taken individually might seems interesting, but taken together begin to form a picture that inspires either hope or dread, depending on your attachment to the prevailing consciousness. (You'll have to read his more recent books to get his take on capitalism's latest phase of globalization.) I won't give any more away as I don't wish to spoil the intellectual feast that awaits the reader. I urge anyone interested in the history of ideas and in understanding the changes taking place in the world around us to read Thompson, starting with this publication. Then work your way through the rest of his books. It's a journey that can change your worldview and your life.

Outside the Academy

These two books neatly collected into one volume are written by a man who was a traditional academic but chose to work outside the academy and it is this that he discusses in these books. Trained as a historian Thompson takes a mythical view of history informed both by his own views and those of W.B. Yeats whose "A Vision" is interpreted here. To classify Thompson as simply "new age" would be to dismiss him too easily. While his work does fit at times with that nebulous genre he wrote these before that term was coined. This is a different take on history and on the academy. I regularly give copies of this one to my academic friends to keep them from getting stagnated by the university system. Essential reading.

A Model to understand the world with.

This is one of those few intellectual works that can truely change one's understanding of how things work. A profound analysis of historical change that presents both models of change and societal models.