By: Greg on October 5, 2017
Where have you been all my life! I don’t know about the rest of you but while reading this book by Alder and Van Doren, I kept wondering if I had read this in college would it have made a difference in how I read books? There are times that I start a book and…
By: Chris Pritchett on October 5, 2017
I remember my father recommending this book to me when I went to college, 20 years ago. I did not read it, then. I thought it was oddly titled to begin with, a play on words, to be sure, but logically impossible to be of any assistance. “If I needed to know how to read…
By: Jennifer Williamson on October 5, 2017
As I read Adler’s How to Read a Book, I felt nervous that I wasn’t doing it right—as if the book might somehow know that I had not bothered to inspect its jacket cover or write in its margins. The truth is, I instinctively do much of what Adler recommends for the first three levels…
By: Dave Watermulder on October 5, 2017
I am sitting in Heathrow Airport in London, on a 30 hour return trip home from South Africa. There is a hustle and bustle around me as travelers hurry to their flights, do some shopping, sleep on the benches, or talk on their phones. My laptop is perched precariously on my lap, as I sit…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on October 4, 2017
The book, How to Read a Book by Adler and Doren, was especially helpful to me since it has been over twenty years since I have been in a formal learning or school environment. Refreshers on how to get what you need from a book in a short amount of time will come in…
By: Dan Kreiss on October 4, 2017
I wish I had read this book 20 years ago. I’m not sure why I never came across it but somehow I managed to complete an undergraduate and two masters degrees without actually knowing how to read, at least according to this text. I have always held books and their authors reverentially, probably more than…
By: Mike on October 4, 2017
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s, How to Read a Book, is a practical time saving approach that helps readers “grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually.”[1] Growing through reading is the book’s key theme. Two motivations that answer the “why” we should read books are: if we start reading we are taught about the “world and…
By: Trisha Welstad on September 15, 2017
Apartheid has not been a subject on the top of my reading list until very recently. With the plan of visiting South Africa and the preparatory reading of David Welsh’s, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, I have a new appreciation for the leaders and the people of South Africa who persevered through decades of…
By: Kyle Chalko on September 14, 2017
I knew the word apartheid. Well, I had seen it. Turns out I didn’t know how to pronounce it properly. And that probably is a good illustration for how much I actually knew about apartheid. Going into this study, mostly naïve, I knew of Nelson Mandela, but only in the type of sense, I know…
By: Jean Ollis on September 14, 2017
In reading David Welsh’s “The Rise and Fall of Apartheid”, PW Botha’s own rise and fall of power captured my attention. Although an unlikely character to focus on (Mandela and De Klerk are certainly more notorious), Botha’s intersection between his Christian faith and leadership within the Nationalist Party (NP) prompted me to want to dig…
By: Jason Turbeville on September 14, 2017
My earliest memories of apartheid came from a movie. “Because your black”….in Lethal Weapon 2, when Danny Glover and Joe Pesci had gone to the South African consulate as a distraction the idea of apartheid hit home for me. Why would a person of color want to even go somewhere they were hated? Even the…
By: Mike on September 14, 2017
The book by David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of the Apartheid, is a book about how black South African’s fought and gained a democratic voice from the elite ruling class of white Afrikaners.[1] Welsh’s work was published at the same time I was living in Botswana, a country known for its bushmen tribes, diamond…
By: Chris Pritchett on September 14, 2017
In his monumental work, “The Rise and Fall of Apartheid,” Welsh chronicles the conditions that led to Apartheid, the injustices and divisions that took place under its regime, to the influences that led to its collapse, along with the challenges that came in the aftermath of transition. The complexity of the situation as described by…
By: Jennifer Williamson on September 14, 2017
In The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, David Welsh offers a comprehensive and balanced history of South African politics in the 20th century. While I had some idea of the causes and challenges related to apartheid, I had not realized how complex the issues had been. Nelson Mandela is rightfully portrayed as a hero who…
By: Dave Watermulder on September 14, 2017
In his book, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, historian and political scientist David Welsh quotes Absolom Vilakazi to say, “disorganization and disintegration are simultaneously accompanied by reorganization and reintegration.”[1] Part of what Welsh sets out to show in his book is the dynamic flow between “disorientation” or the deteriorating situation in South Africa for…
By: Greg on September 14, 2017
Do you ever wonder why people do what they do? Why we act the way we do to certain scenarios and situations reflects an understanding on who we are in that situation. I was thinking as I walked down the street today about the way the old people in Chinese society demand respect. It is…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on September 14, 2017
David Welsh’s book, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, was very insightful and highlighted some aspects regarding the ending of apartheid in South Africa that I already had some interest in as a result of some movies and documentaries I have watched on the subject. The relatively peaceful transition was shocking to most everyone who…
By: Dan Kreiss on September 13, 2017
Living in New Zealand during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s allowed me a closer perspective of the ultimate demise of apartheid in South Africa and the ascendency of the ANC and Nelson Mandela in the new Republic of South Africa. I well remember the white South African immigrants fleeing what they anticipated would…
By: Jay Forseth on September 13, 2017
When I was in my college history class, I was taught apartheid was “apart-hood” and it brought to my developing mind a vivid picture of painful “separateness” for all people. My first memories of racial division came as a kindergarten student in the Denver Public Schools. My parents bought a house in the Denver city…
By: Mark Petersen on September 13, 2017
With The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, David Welsh promises a sweeping historical overview of ground-breaking world events in southern Africa of the 20th century. What cultural and sociological realities coalesced with key agents to create and sustain this oppressive system of separateness? What movements and influences dismantled these structures in a relatively short time…
