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by: Garry Wills
List Price: $13.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.40 You Save: $2.60 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 200
EAN: 9780143035985
ISBN: 0143035983
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: August 30, 2005
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 256608
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Saint Augustine, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and cultural critic Garry Wills, is a 145-page biography of a saint whose collected works total 13 volumes. Despite its brevity, the book offers a complex and compelling interpretation of Augustine's life and work. Much of Wills's task is demythologizing: Augustine was not a central figure in 4th-century Christianity but was 'peripheral in his day, a provincial on the margins of classical culture,' who did not know Greek, the intellectual lingua franca of his time. Although Augustine has been portrayed by artists as a bishop 'wearing all the episcopal finery of the late Middle Ages,' he actually 'dressed in the gray clothes of a monk.' And far from being a self-righteous pontificator, Augustine was 'impatient with all preceding formulations, even his own.' He wrote, 'Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God.' Wills also argues that Augustine's Confessions (which, Wills persuades the reader, is an anachronistic, egoistic translation of the original Latin title, a word Wills more accurately renders as 'Testimony') has been misread in a way that suggests Augustine led a debauched sexual life before his conversion. In the Shocking Revelation department, Wills does, however, find more detailed (if elaborately coded) information about Augustine's mistress and about the son they raised together than other biographers have found. Like Wills's masterful Lincoln at Gettysburg, Saint Augustine accomplishes its revisionist aims completely and yet lightly. Wills makes his arguments without ever forgetting his first job: telling the story of a life. --Michael Joseph Gross
Product Description:
Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills brings the same fresh scholarship, lively prose, and critical appreciation that characterize his well-known books on religion and American history to this outstanding biography of one of the most influential Christian philosophers.
Saint Augustine follows its subject from his youth in fourth-century Africa to his conversion and subsequent development as a theologian. It challenges the widely held misconceptions about Augustines sexual excesses and shows how, in embracing classical philosophy, Augustine managed to enlist pagan authors in the defense of Christianity. The result is a biography that makes a spiritual ancestor feel like our contemporary.
Download Description:
'Saint Augustine explores both the great ruminator on the human condition and the everyday man who set pen to parchment. It challenges many misconceptions--among them those regarding his early sexual excesses. Here, for students, Christians and voyagers into the new millennium, is a lively and incisive portrait of one who helped shape our thought. '
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Close, but not Augustine's Voice
It's hard to love St. Augustine. Even as one of the most influential religious thinkers in the history of Christianity--the image of heaven as a holy city, the City of God, was his idea--and as the author of his Confessions, arguably the first confessional biography (and a model for many of the literary memoirs we've lately been swamped with), he presents a cold and prickly figure. It's not so much that he doesn't give us the goods about his early, sinful life--he does, sometimes in great detail ... Read More
Rating: - Vague
With so much to say about Saint Augustine, it is difficult to include all of the facts in one book. It is impossible to include all of the facts in 144 pages. What makes this book disappointing is that this book has little to say about this magnificent man.
At times, Wills focuses more on the writing of Saint Augustine than in his life. Obviously, there are not first hand interviews of this saint available. Instead, Willis interprets the writings on Saint Augustine. The product is ... Read More
Rating: - Not a Good Introduction but it will be Stimulating for the Informed Reader
Any biography on Augustine will always linger in the shadow of the great Peter Brown's work, which is a classic treatment of the philosopher/bishop without rival in the English speaking world. Therefore, anyone desiring a complete portrait of St Augustine must first behold the masterpiece found in the pages of Brown's Augustine of Hippo. This being done, Wills book can be fully appreciated. Some notable aspects of this compact but wholesome biography are (1) his ability to bring into focus some of ... Read More
Rating:  - NOT AN INTRODUCTION
Wills' essay on Augustine was written for a series of new introductions for use by students and the public. But unlike Peter Brown's superb biography, now stronger than ever after its revised 2000 edition, Wills does a very poor job introducing big chunks of Augustine's life and background. If you don't know about Donatism and Pelagianism, or have never heard of Julian of Eclanum, Wills won't help you. His selection of themes and angles is almost eccentric and he skates over way too much. This is an essay ... Read More
Rating: - Disappointing
On the positive side, it contains none of O'Donnell's tendency to cast petty motives on Augustine's life. It is a nice short read, and it contains many interesting facts in a short space. I liked the discussions about the symbolism in the Confessions very much. The information about Augustine's sexual life was also interesting.
Still, it is not very good. As another person here has pointed out below, it would be better if Wills had not injected his own ecclesiastical politics into the book (he ... Read More
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