Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History

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The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the 'neglected half-millennium' now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East.

In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.
Documenting both his own intellectual development and the emergence of a new and influential field of study, Brown describes his childhood and education in Ireland, his university and academic training in England, and his extensive travels, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He discusses fruitful interactions with the work of scholars and colleagues that include the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the French theorist Michel Foucault, and offers fascinating snapshots of such far-flung places as colonial Sudan, midcentury Oxford, and prerevolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the 'grand endeavor' to reimagine a decisive historical moment.

'Brown] delivers an insightful and detailed chronicle of his life and academic career...A rewarding combination of the personal and the scholarly, this is a valuable resource for students of the ancient world and the early Middle Ages.' Publishers Weekly

'This meticulous and lively account of [Brown's] intellectual development lovingly acknowledges all the scholars-from his school days onward-whose work helped shape his own. . . . This book offers no less than a template for how to live, in an uncertain world, while surrounded by death and the unraveling of all we know: that is, in generous recognition of our teachers, with boundless curiosity, and buoyed by the delight of lifelong scholarship.' Claire Messud, Harper's

'No historian has evoked more vividly the strange waltz between a transcendent faith and earthly powers in the centuries from Constantine to Muhammad (a period the book's author named 'late antiquity') than Peter Brown. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History is a gripping new memoir about how he came to do it. . . . A sustained and moving meditation on how historians of any faith cope with the strangeness of its past.' Michael Ledger-Lomas, Los Angeles Review of Books

'An enthralling account of an eminent scholar at work. . . . Journeys of the Mind may well be the most romantic book of the year.' Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Reviews

"A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year"
"A History Today Book of the Year"
"A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"
"[Brown] delivers an insightful and detailed chronicle of his life and academic career. . . . A rewarding combination of the personal and the scholarly, this is a valuable resource for students of the ancient world and the early Middle Ages." * Publishers Weekly *
"This meticulous and lively account of [Browns] intellectual development lovingly acknowledges all the scholarsfrom his school days onwardwhose work helped shape his own. . . . This book offers no less than a template for how to live, in an uncertain world, while surrounded by death and the unraveling of all we know: that is, in generous recognition of our teachers, with boundless curiosity, and buoyed by the delight of lifelong scholarship."---Claire Messud, Harpers
"No historian has evoked more vividly the strange waltz between a transcendent faith and earthly powers in the centuries from Constantine to Muhammad (a period the books author named late antiquity) than Peter Brown. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History is a gripping new memoir about how he came to do it. . . . A sustained and moving meditation on how historians of any faith cope with the strangeness of its past."---Michael Ledger-Lomas, Los Angeles Review of Books
"An enthralling account of an eminent scholar at work. . . . Journeys of the Mind may well be the most romantic book of the year."---Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"Journeys of the Mind is a scintillating intellectual autobiography and an evocative traversal of lost worlds."---Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal
"An extraordinary book, recounting the intellectual development of an extraordinary scholar."---Peter Sarris, Engelsberg Ideas
"Enthralling." * Salopian Magazine *
"A fascinating map of intellectual debts, of unexpected twists and turns . . . and of academic friendships across most of the globe. . . .[A] brilliant book."---Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement
"The veritable crash course in twentieth-century intellectual history that [Journeys of the Mind] provides will capture the attention of persons with no particular knowledge of or interest in late antique studies as such. . . . And this, I think, is the books greatest contributionthat it is also an invitation. To follow the journeys of Peter Browns mind over the course of these seven hundred pages is necessarily to begin making journeys of our own."---John Ladouceur, The Lamp
"Peter Browns Journeys of the Mind is really two books in one: the autobiography of a distinguished historian, and a guided tour of the development of his intellectual interests and their application during his long career. . . . A fascinating safari through territory that is often unfamiliar but always interesting."---Lawrence N. Crumb, The Living Church
"An outstanding account, drawing on an exhaustive personal archive and aided by a formidable memory. . . .Written in pellucid prose, always gracious, unpretentious and unaffected, it is a rich feast to relish slowly." * Dublin Review of Books *
"Journeys of the Mind has elucidated a lifetime of thought. It reflects how much Brown has enriched scholarship for the past six decades in ways which will undoubtedly stimulate new directions for research on this world of late antiquity for many more decades to come."---Rosamond McKitterick, Zeitschrift fr Antikes Christentum
"Peter Brown, like no other, has taught historians to view religion as a powerful force in history (past and present) and has taught theologians to understand every religious idea and doctrine as embedded not to say: incarnated within its specific historical and social context. This books gift to its readers is to offer this double insight and challenge once again, this time not in relation to distant times and people, but to the scholars own life and thought in history. Journeys of the Mind reveals how religion can work as a catalyst for historical imagination. But reading this book can also stimulate reflection on how history can become a catalyst for theological work. For history without religious imagination is empty, and theology without historical imagination is blind, as Kant might have said."---Katharina Heyden, Zeitschrift fr Antikes Christentum
"Browns autobiographical reflections now offer us a clearer and indeed much wider-ranging view on [religion]"---Claudia Rapp, Zeitschrift fr Antikes Christentum
"The most exciting book that I have read this century is Journeys of the Mind (Princeton), an intellectual memoir by the historian of late antiquity Peter Brown. Immaculately written, radiant with wisdom, generous, grateful and gladdening, it matches The Education of Henry Adams without the haughty wounded misanthropy."---Richard Davenport-Hines, Times Literary Supplement
"This wry scholarly autobiography excels in its pen portraits of scholars who have influenced Brown, from Mary Douglas to Michel Foucault."---Michael Ledger-Lomas, History Today
"Students of history and professional historians . . . should treasure this book for its portrait of an ideal historians mind. . . . Journeys of the Mind charts and epitomizes an exemplary career."---Amit Majmudar, New Criterion
"[An] entertaining memoir. . . . Journeys of the Mind is a portrait of a scholarly life in manual mode, but it is an excellent primer for twenty-first-century academics."---Josephine Quinn, New York Review of Books
"[An] engaging book. . . . It is a deep pleasure to accompany Brown on his journeys, intellectual and otherwise, and thereby to get a sense of the man, the world in which he grew up and thrived, and the field that he shaped."---Adele Reinhartz, Reading Religion
"Every reader will [find]something in Journeys of the Mind to amuse, stimulate, or enhance their understanding. Certainly, there will be one or two classic authors to whom one is prompted to return with new eyes. . . . [Browns] own work has inspired others as much as the titans he credits here had once inspired him."---Michael Kulikowski, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"Beautifully wrought."---Charles S. Maier, H-Diplo
"Peter Browns Journeys of the Mind charts the career of one of the worlds most gifted and respected living historians during a period of significant historical and historiographical change. Deeply learned, exquisitely written, and sparkling with Browns characteristic wry humour, it will be essential reading for scholars across many fields of intellectual enquiry."---Salvador Ryan, Irish Theological Quarterly
"Deeply learned, exquisitely written, and sparkling with Browns characteristic wry humour, it will be essential reading for scholars across many fields of intellectual enquiry."---Salvador Ryan, Irish Theological Quarterly
"Elegant. . . . [Journeys of the Mind] can be enjoyed as both a travelogue and an intellectual memoir of the highest order."---Patrick J. Hayes, Catholic Library World
"Gripping from start to finish, written with the verse and generosity that characterizes all of [Browns] work. . . . I loved it."---Gabriel Josipovici, Times Literary Supplement
"Journeys of the Mind is very much a history of books and a man who read them, engaged with their authors, and then read some more. Brown follows wherever the quest for the fuller picture of Late Antiquity leads him and is not afraid to be pushed out of his comfort zone."---Rev. Maurus B. Mount, O.S.B., American Benedictine Review

Author Bio

Peter Brown is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University. He is the author of Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350550 AD (Princeton); The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 2001000; The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity; Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in Early Christianity; and many other books.