"Real is the purpose of the book"

The review of the translator of the sums of the sums of Ivan Kurilllah “History, or the past in the present” (St. Petersburg: EUSPB Publishing House)-finalist of the Enlightener Prize.

"History" continues the series of "ABC of concepts" published by the European University in St. Petersburg. In this series, “Books with the Lad” in two years, “Authority”, “Democracy”, “Money” and “Nation” written by leading specialists were published in two years. The idea of ​​the series, its very name, the format is distinctly educational. Clarification of words is necessary before any discussion - just so that the discussion can take place.

The pocket size of books, a conversation about words, expressive, as if from a comic book, illustrations, quotes, biographical and bibliographic certificates in the fields - tempting reading. Light, but not lightweight. The "alphabet" of the series does not imply the interpretation of truths that have long been approved in science. The history of concepts as a discipline is approved in European science in the 1970-1980s; In Russian, strong works appear after 2000. This is the front edge of science, and the authors of the ABCs act in a double role of popularizers and researchers.

To a large extent, the series sets not only the format, but also a certain method of presenting material and even intonation. A consistent restraint, a non -angled story about those and other points of view that replaced each other along with historical periods, and only in conclusion - an acute conversation, the situation here and now, in our country in 2016 and 2017. Only having gone with the reader the whole path of searches and disputes, having taught him how to develop his own opinion and understand the dependence of opinions on time and language, on internal factors and external influences, authors allow themselves to finally speak in full voice, with passion - judging, instructing and warning.

That intonation and the way of presentation that are immediately conquered in the book of Ivan Kurilla are inherent in other books of this series, and I want to thank all the authors of the series and its editor for the accuracy of the choice and the theme, and the method, and the style. Nevertheless, for the author of the book under consideration, a similar style and the course of thought are so organic (you can compare the text with scientific publications and newspaper articles, but you can not compare, it is heard) that from the first page his book is felt as a natural and friendly conversation.

A conversation that does not subordinate the reader for a minute for a minute does not force him to see "like this." Facts - yes, be kind to accept. Knowledge - yes, we must respect. Professionalism - yes, because the joke “good man is not a profession” is not at all as accurate as the opposite: the profaning profession is obviously unscrupulous. But professionalism and knowledge of facts do not move the author from the reader, because their main thing is common - to ask questions. And if the author teaches something (it does not mean to be sure to teach something), then only independence: ask questions.

Here is what a professor at the European University tells us, and with each page this topic sounds bapto: “History” moves from an entertaining story - to criticism; from the method to assert this or that right - to the ability to refute the rightness; From the creation of myths, religious traditions, peoples and nations, that is, from ready -made, almost from the diapers of answers - to the ability to ask questions. A person asking questions is an independent and modern person. For him, the story is really the past in the present. And the present, not captured into the past, is not requested by the utopias of the past or future and not "what the past we need to our future."

The most important educational role of this book is not even in the knowledge that it supplies so generously, but in the fact that it strengthens the reader to do her own. Think for yourself, look for yourself; And most of all I want someone (at least oneself) to involve such a conversation.

You don’t even have time to catch up on how you turn into a co-author, or rather, the author of some other books that could dig up from this. Here's how to write a book for teenagers! Here's how to make our series!

And the series was conceived in the “Self -Cattle” for adolescents a year ago - the history of concepts, realities and relationships (“History of PRO”); And the series, having typed several gambling first chapters in one and another book, too. Most of all due to the problem of the centipede: what does the reader know and what is not? What to explain, and where to leave the freedom of curiosity? And suddenly it seemed that in the fields of this book, in its sinuses, in the cells of a tightly stretched network - the possibility of many more books. Youth, open to the reader, involving in conversation, educating.

The "History" of Ivan Kurilla is a strong and at the same time breathing text. Reading and re -reading the book, you begin to circle next to one or another plot and ask again: from what moment the Greeks realized the “history” as a special discipline? What happened to the Babylonians, the Egyptians and other Persians at the place where the Greeks and the Romans created history? How about the policy of history and the policy of memory in the ancient world? Each of these issues is the possibility of new books.

It is amazing how much it was possible to accommodate in 140 half the size of the pages-and, of course, something will not be enough for each reader. For example, I would like to go beyond the framework of Eurocentric and learn about the Chinese historians something beyond the fact that their concept of “general history” was limited to the history of China. And about Islam, too, is something else other than a combination of history with geography and ethnography. Also about the latest alternative stories - on behalf of the minorities, on behalf of the former colonies, on behalf of women, I also wanted to. But after all, I was already taught to ask questions - I will go look.

And it is clear why Ivan Kurill did not delve into other and alternative stories. He holds the plot tightly, leading the reader from antiquity by a dotted line through the Middle Ages in the age of enlightenment and in the romantic age of the formation of nations, in order to bring through disasters of the twentieth century to the present. The present is the goal of this book.

Love of sums