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Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History
A beautifully told personal account of the discovery of Late Antiquity by one of the world's most influential and distinguished historians
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 path-breaking 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, mid-century Oxford, and pre-revolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the "grand endeavor" to reimagine a decisive historical moment.
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 path-breaking 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, mid-century Oxford, and pre-revolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the "grand endeavor" to reimagine a decisive historical moment.
736 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2023
43 people are currently reading
574 people want to read
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Peter Brown
247 books283 followersLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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November 4, 2025
This is the autobiography of one of the great historians of our time. When I studied history in the early 1970s we still learned that Roman Civilization collapsed in the Dark Ages, roughly 300 to 700 AD, and then gradually evolved into the Middle Ages. Brown was the leader of the movement to reject the "Dark Ages" label and to recognize that Roman culture evolved and changed but that the period had to be considered on its own merits, not just as a collapse before the rise of the Middle Ages. These days most historians agree with Brown. He was one of the most influential voices in favor of renaming the period as "Late Antiquity".
One allure of writing your autobiography is that you are free to decide what part of your life you want to explore. These days, many memoirs focus on times of personal trauma, abuse or challenges and spend little time on the working life or professional accomplishments of the author. Actors, for example, write memoirs about struggles with addiction and say almost nothing about the movies we know them for.
This autobiography is the exact opposite. This is Brown's intellectual autobiography. It is his story of how he became the historian he is. It feels odd. He has many detailed and interesting sketches of teachers and colleagues he has worked with over the years. He discusses their ideas and how they influenced his thought.
On the other hand, he says almost nothing about his wives. I needed Google to discover that he has been married and divorced twice. Both of his wives appeared to have been accomplished professors. In this 700-page autobiography he never mentions how he met them, his weddings, the challenges of two successful academics in a marriage or the reasons for his divorces.
In 1982 he was awarded a MacArthur genius grant which made him financially independent for the next five years. This would be a big event in most people's life. He gives it one paragraph and then goes back to explaining his research strategies.
He does discuss his parents, but mostly to explore what effect they had on his intellectual development. He was born in 1925 in Dublin. He was a Protestant who grew up in the Catholic Republic of Ireland. As a boy he saw the importance of religion in politics, and he saw the decline of a great empire. Both of those themes were at the center of his historical studies.
I was fascinated by much of the book. Brown's discussion of Oxford in the late 50s and early 60s is inciteful. It was the end of the classic Oxford system. Students met once a week to read an essay to their tutor. There were no grades or tests for three years, then the students sat for a three-day final examination and the results determined much of their future. Brown, as an Irish outsider, is very good at analyzing the effects, both good and bad, from that odd system.
Brown is a wonderful teacher. He weaves in discussions on most of the great medieval historians. He explains clearly the reason that they are important, what he learned from them and what he disagreed with. He makes it clear that history, at the highest level, is a collaborative effort. Time after time he shows how approaches or arguments from colleagues prompted him to see the evidence in a new light.
Later in his career Brown began to integrate anthropology and philosophy into his historical approach. Michael Foucault became a major influence. As an ignorant outsider, it seems to me that he began to worry less about what happened in the past and what caused or influenced events.
He began to worry more about how people felt in the past about issues like sex and ghosts and justice. He embraced a relativistic approach. For example, he argued that trial by ordeal was not necessarily worse than the courts and jury trials that followed. They were just two different ways of resolving disputes. Brown seems to put little weight on the fact that trial by ordeal was based on a false idea that God would make sure that the innocent prevailed as a result of the ordeal. He is more interested in the sociological reasons for the practice.
Brown made several extended visits to Iran to study the Muslim religion and its history, but his studies were sidetracked by the Iranian revolution.
Brown is an inquisitive guy who makes some interesting observations.
He taught for many years at Berkely and Princeton. He found American students to be more serious and disciplined than British students He suspects part of the reasons is that many of the American graduate students were married with children. They were focused on long term careers in a way that the younger mostly unattached English graduate students were not.
He has an interesting section on how the easy access to photocopiers drastically changed historical research. Copies could be easily made. There was no need to copy out long passages. It was easier to distribute drafts of articles. He does seem to have a nostalgia for carbon copies.
"God's plenty" is a phrase that Brown uses four of five times. I never heard it before. It means a large overflowing amount, as in, when Brown went to a museum to study classical archaeology and he reports, "Here was God's plenty.". He describes professors whose stimulating ideas were "God's plenty."
This is a long book and by the end I became a little tired with the parade of distinguished historians who he befriended and who influenced him. There are also many international conferences that tended to meld into each other.
Brown is also unfailingly charitable. There are no assholes. conmen or frauds in this story. If that is an accurate depiction of his long academic life, he is a very lucky man. In any case, it doesn't always make for exciting reading.
This is an excellent example of how a serious historian goes about a career. It is a primer on modern views of medieval history and it is a tribute to the values of open and honest acedemic inquiry.
One allure of writing your autobiography is that you are free to decide what part of your life you want to explore. These days, many memoirs focus on times of personal trauma, abuse or challenges and spend little time on the working life or professional accomplishments of the author. Actors, for example, write memoirs about struggles with addiction and say almost nothing about the movies we know them for.
This autobiography is the exact opposite. This is Brown's intellectual autobiography. It is his story of how he became the historian he is. It feels odd. He has many detailed and interesting sketches of teachers and colleagues he has worked with over the years. He discusses their ideas and how they influenced his thought.
On the other hand, he says almost nothing about his wives. I needed Google to discover that he has been married and divorced twice. Both of his wives appeared to have been accomplished professors. In this 700-page autobiography he never mentions how he met them, his weddings, the challenges of two successful academics in a marriage or the reasons for his divorces.
In 1982 he was awarded a MacArthur genius grant which made him financially independent for the next five years. This would be a big event in most people's life. He gives it one paragraph and then goes back to explaining his research strategies.
He does discuss his parents, but mostly to explore what effect they had on his intellectual development. He was born in 1925 in Dublin. He was a Protestant who grew up in the Catholic Republic of Ireland. As a boy he saw the importance of religion in politics, and he saw the decline of a great empire. Both of those themes were at the center of his historical studies.
I was fascinated by much of the book. Brown's discussion of Oxford in the late 50s and early 60s is inciteful. It was the end of the classic Oxford system. Students met once a week to read an essay to their tutor. There were no grades or tests for three years, then the students sat for a three-day final examination and the results determined much of their future. Brown, as an Irish outsider, is very good at analyzing the effects, both good and bad, from that odd system.
Brown is a wonderful teacher. He weaves in discussions on most of the great medieval historians. He explains clearly the reason that they are important, what he learned from them and what he disagreed with. He makes it clear that history, at the highest level, is a collaborative effort. Time after time he shows how approaches or arguments from colleagues prompted him to see the evidence in a new light.
Later in his career Brown began to integrate anthropology and philosophy into his historical approach. Michael Foucault became a major influence. As an ignorant outsider, it seems to me that he began to worry less about what happened in the past and what caused or influenced events.
He began to worry more about how people felt in the past about issues like sex and ghosts and justice. He embraced a relativistic approach. For example, he argued that trial by ordeal was not necessarily worse than the courts and jury trials that followed. They were just two different ways of resolving disputes. Brown seems to put little weight on the fact that trial by ordeal was based on a false idea that God would make sure that the innocent prevailed as a result of the ordeal. He is more interested in the sociological reasons for the practice.
Brown made several extended visits to Iran to study the Muslim religion and its history, but his studies were sidetracked by the Iranian revolution.
Brown is an inquisitive guy who makes some interesting observations.
He taught for many years at Berkely and Princeton. He found American students to be more serious and disciplined than British students He suspects part of the reasons is that many of the American graduate students were married with children. They were focused on long term careers in a way that the younger mostly unattached English graduate students were not.
He has an interesting section on how the easy access to photocopiers drastically changed historical research. Copies could be easily made. There was no need to copy out long passages. It was easier to distribute drafts of articles. He does seem to have a nostalgia for carbon copies.
"God's plenty" is a phrase that Brown uses four of five times. I never heard it before. It means a large overflowing amount, as in, when Brown went to a museum to study classical archaeology and he reports, "Here was God's plenty.". He describes professors whose stimulating ideas were "God's plenty."
This is a long book and by the end I became a little tired with the parade of distinguished historians who he befriended and who influenced him. There are also many international conferences that tended to meld into each other.
Brown is also unfailingly charitable. There are no assholes. conmen or frauds in this story. If that is an accurate depiction of his long academic life, he is a very lucky man. In any case, it doesn't always make for exciting reading.
This is an excellent example of how a serious historian goes about a career. It is a primer on modern views of medieval history and it is a tribute to the values of open and honest acedemic inquiry.
February 8, 2024
Who would write—more importantly—who would read, a 699-page “intellectual biography” of a historian that specializes in “Late Antiquity?”
Peter Brown would—and did—write and publish such a book.
And I read it. And I’m very happy that I did.
Before turning to Brown and his writing and publishing such a lengthy tome, let me offer a brief note about why I read it.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated by history, the stories of what happened in the past. I gradually matriculated into wondering about not only what happened, but why it happened. Now, on the other end of life, I find that these questions haven’t left me. But the scope and depth of my interest has expanded. Not only am I interested in what happened, and why it happened, but also how do we know, write, and reflect upon what happened and why? In other words, how and why do historians do what they do? As a result of these interests, I’m also a sucker for the stories of historians. How did a particular historian come to her or his interest in a topic, and then how did they pursue their interest? In short, how did they do it? I hoped Brown’s book would reveal what was going on with him during his storied career as a historian. I’m pleased to say that this work delivered.
I learned of Brown first, I believe, from Garry Wills, as Wills praised Brown’s biography of St. Augustine, which is the foundation upon which Brown’s reputation was built. (Wills, by the way, is himself no mean student of Augustine.) And some years back, I read one book by Brown. I believe it was The World of Late Antiquity (1971), although it didn’t leave me with a special impression. But over the years, I’d see here and there remarks about Brown or the fact that he’d published another book, often with intriguing titles, such as The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (1983); Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (1988); Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD; The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988); Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (2001); The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (2015); Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (2016); and so on. Indeed, I believe that Brown is credited with establishing the study of Late Antiquity (and the label itself) as a distinct field of historical study. Before, historians would have spoken of the Dark Ages as a vast lacuna after the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire and before the advent of the 12th-century renaissance. (Thanks to the late John Bell Henneman of the University of Iowa for introducing me to the “early Middle Ages.”)
But having provided some indication of Brown’s reputation and the scope of his learning, what about this book? It starts slowly, with Brown recounting a good deal about his ancestry in Protestant Ireland. This section isn’t uninteresting, as it gives a sense of life in Protestant Ireland in the last couple of centuries, but I wouldn’t have cared for any more of it than he provides. Brown writes some about his boyhood there in Dublin and his early schooling, but it’s not full of anecdotes and tales of boyhood adventures. The tale is an intellectual biography, and so it gets going when he arrives at the upper forms in school.
Brown earned a place at Oxford and began study there in 1953. From there his academic career blossomed, and the story became focused on his career, his life within that career, and those with whom he worked and from whom he learned. It provides a look at the cloistered academic life at Oxford in the 1950s and its unique system of learning (tutorials and exams). His eventual changes of venue included teaching and administration at Royal Holloway College, London; teaching at UC Berkeley; and then (and ever since), teaching at Princeton. He recounts his academic positions and experiences, including extensive travels in Iran, the Mediterranean area, and the Middle East. But these journeys are not the heart of his book, nor what makes it compelling.
The most interesting part of the book is about his journeys of the mind, which take him back in time across much of the ancient world. He documents his journeys of the mind by recounting his reading, research, and personal encounters with other scholars, both in person and through their writing. This, to me at least, is the heart of the book. Brown is very generous in recounting the various contributions of other scholars to his work. In him, they found a wide-ranging and inquisitive mind; in them, Brown found ideas for new avenues of inquiry and insights that would guide and define his scholarship. This account is an intellectual adventure story.
I’ve read some of the scholars that Brown names, such as Richard Southern, Isaiah Berlin, Geoffrey Barraclough, E.R. Dodds, Pierre Hadot, and H.R. Trevor-Roper. I recognized the names of Glen Bowersock, Fernand Braudel, Caroline Walker Bynum, Patricia Crone, Jean Daneielou, Mary Douglas, Richard Evans-Pritchard, Michel Foucault, and a few others—and there were many others that Brown introduced me to. And while I can say that I’ve read a bit of some of them and recognize some others by name, Brown knew (or knows) many of these individuals personally and their scholarly works well. But Brown writes and reflects on his learning quite unpretentiously. Despite my awe at his learning and erudition, I’m left with the feeling that he’d be a delightful fellow to encounter over a pint at a pub. (Indeed, I sense that much of Brown’s world is within a confraternity of scholars who are willing to share a fine lunch or a pint.)
By reading Brown alone, I believe I’d have gained significant credit toward a claim to expertise in Late Antiquity. If I read all the scholars whom he mentions, I’d be worthy of a professorship! But I’m only an amateur, a dabbler, yet I greatly enjoyed this tour through Brown’s career and the world of Late Antiquity that he's done so much to reconstruct for us. It’s a world that seems both remote and foreign, yet it’s a part of the foundation for our world.
P.S. A hat-tip for my learning about this book to the incomparable book reviewer and bibliophile Michael Dirda, who reviewed this book for the Washington Post, where he writes regularly. The review is a gem, as are most of Dirda’s reviews and books.
Peter Brown would—and did—write and publish such a book.
And I read it. And I’m very happy that I did.
Before turning to Brown and his writing and publishing such a lengthy tome, let me offer a brief note about why I read it.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated by history, the stories of what happened in the past. I gradually matriculated into wondering about not only what happened, but why it happened. Now, on the other end of life, I find that these questions haven’t left me. But the scope and depth of my interest has expanded. Not only am I interested in what happened, and why it happened, but also how do we know, write, and reflect upon what happened and why? In other words, how and why do historians do what they do? As a result of these interests, I’m also a sucker for the stories of historians. How did a particular historian come to her or his interest in a topic, and then how did they pursue their interest? In short, how did they do it? I hoped Brown’s book would reveal what was going on with him during his storied career as a historian. I’m pleased to say that this work delivered.
I learned of Brown first, I believe, from Garry Wills, as Wills praised Brown’s biography of St. Augustine, which is the foundation upon which Brown’s reputation was built. (Wills, by the way, is himself no mean student of Augustine.) And some years back, I read one book by Brown. I believe it was The World of Late Antiquity (1971), although it didn’t leave me with a special impression. But over the years, I’d see here and there remarks about Brown or the fact that he’d published another book, often with intriguing titles, such as The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (1983); Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (1988); Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD; The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988); Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (2001); The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (2015); Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (2016); and so on. Indeed, I believe that Brown is credited with establishing the study of Late Antiquity (and the label itself) as a distinct field of historical study. Before, historians would have spoken of the Dark Ages as a vast lacuna after the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire and before the advent of the 12th-century renaissance. (Thanks to the late John Bell Henneman of the University of Iowa for introducing me to the “early Middle Ages.”)
But having provided some indication of Brown’s reputation and the scope of his learning, what about this book? It starts slowly, with Brown recounting a good deal about his ancestry in Protestant Ireland. This section isn’t uninteresting, as it gives a sense of life in Protestant Ireland in the last couple of centuries, but I wouldn’t have cared for any more of it than he provides. Brown writes some about his boyhood there in Dublin and his early schooling, but it’s not full of anecdotes and tales of boyhood adventures. The tale is an intellectual biography, and so it gets going when he arrives at the upper forms in school.
Brown earned a place at Oxford and began study there in 1953. From there his academic career blossomed, and the story became focused on his career, his life within that career, and those with whom he worked and from whom he learned. It provides a look at the cloistered academic life at Oxford in the 1950s and its unique system of learning (tutorials and exams). His eventual changes of venue included teaching and administration at Royal Holloway College, London; teaching at UC Berkeley; and then (and ever since), teaching at Princeton. He recounts his academic positions and experiences, including extensive travels in Iran, the Mediterranean area, and the Middle East. But these journeys are not the heart of his book, nor what makes it compelling.
The most interesting part of the book is about his journeys of the mind, which take him back in time across much of the ancient world. He documents his journeys of the mind by recounting his reading, research, and personal encounters with other scholars, both in person and through their writing. This, to me at least, is the heart of the book. Brown is very generous in recounting the various contributions of other scholars to his work. In him, they found a wide-ranging and inquisitive mind; in them, Brown found ideas for new avenues of inquiry and insights that would guide and define his scholarship. This account is an intellectual adventure story.
I’ve read some of the scholars that Brown names, such as Richard Southern, Isaiah Berlin, Geoffrey Barraclough, E.R. Dodds, Pierre Hadot, and H.R. Trevor-Roper. I recognized the names of Glen Bowersock, Fernand Braudel, Caroline Walker Bynum, Patricia Crone, Jean Daneielou, Mary Douglas, Richard Evans-Pritchard, Michel Foucault, and a few others—and there were many others that Brown introduced me to. And while I can say that I’ve read a bit of some of them and recognize some others by name, Brown knew (or knows) many of these individuals personally and their scholarly works well. But Brown writes and reflects on his learning quite unpretentiously. Despite my awe at his learning and erudition, I’m left with the feeling that he’d be a delightful fellow to encounter over a pint at a pub. (Indeed, I sense that much of Brown’s world is within a confraternity of scholars who are willing to share a fine lunch or a pint.)
By reading Brown alone, I believe I’d have gained significant credit toward a claim to expertise in Late Antiquity. If I read all the scholars whom he mentions, I’d be worthy of a professorship! But I’m only an amateur, a dabbler, yet I greatly enjoyed this tour through Brown’s career and the world of Late Antiquity that he's done so much to reconstruct for us. It’s a world that seems both remote and foreign, yet it’s a part of the foundation for our world.
P.S. A hat-tip for my learning about this book to the incomparable book reviewer and bibliophile Michael Dirda, who reviewed this book for the Washington Post, where he writes regularly. The review is a gem, as are most of Dirda’s reviews and books.
March 24, 2024
brilliant
July 25, 2024
Peter Brown is the most well known scholar of late antiquity. This period covers from the 3rd Century to the 7th Century. Journey of the Mind is an intellectual autobiography. By this point in my deep dive into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I have enough information to orient myself. When Brown discusses his adventures in Roman and early medieval history I know more or less what he is talking about. Reading this book has made me very happy. I enjoy reading about how Brown’s scholarly passions developed over the years. I have spent much of my reading life on fiction and this book opens another world for me, the world of history. When I did a deep dive into Iceland last year I did not feel the same way. I found the sagas interesting but when I was finished I had no desire to learn more about Iceland.
Brown writes about his encounters with Michel Foucault at Berkeley and in Paris. I read some Foucault in the eighties and I also saw him lecture at UVM where he was a visiting professor. Bernie Sanders introduced him at the lecture. Who knew at the time that Bernie would become even more famous than Foucault!
While reading Journey of the Mind I decided to continue reading about Ancient Rome and late antiquity until January. Then I will go back to more general reading. My hope is that I can spend 6 months on a deep dive into one subject followed by 6 months of exploring many different kinds of books. My reading system seems to be in constant flux so it remains to be seen if I follow through on this latest plan.
July 12, 2024
Through not for the faint of heart, since reading Peter Brown’s “Journeys of the Mind” take a measure of commitment, this is a rich and enriching account of Brown’s career and scholarly journeys. It’s also refreshing to hear Brown describe the several times when new discoveries and the incites of other scholars caused him to change his mind. Journeys of the Mind should involve continuing questioning and rethinking. Bravo Professor Brown.
September 18, 2025
An intellectual autobiography, at the same time a historiographical survey, covering the field of late antiquity, a field that Brown helped shape. One of the emphases of Brown’s scholarly work, dating back to his first book, the acclaimed biography of Augustine of Hippo, is that history as practiced when he began allowed little room for anything other than external events, ignoring the inner life. This autobiography mirrors that theme: Beneath the externalities of life is a complex inner world and connection to a common breath of life.
Nor are the journeys purely mental. He traveled to Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and other places important for shaping the late antique world, picking up languages—ancient and modern—as he went. He is also sensitive to how the institutional setting in which a scholar works—whether Oxford, London, Rome, Berkeley, or Princeton— shapes his research and writing. Brown calls this the social aspect of scholarship. Through generous mentions of the work of other scholars whose work inspired and challenged him, Brown demonstrates the importance of this social aspect.
Given that Brown had such a long and productive career and published many groundbreaking studies, it was heartening to read repeatedly how his views on this or that topic had changed based on further research, whether his own or that of others. Brown writes clearly; this book should be accessible for any interested layperson (such as his two aunts—“folk of few books”—he had in mind as he wrote). The book is long and sometimes wanders in the telling, yet it more than repaid the time I invested in reading it.
Nor are the journeys purely mental. He traveled to Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and other places important for shaping the late antique world, picking up languages—ancient and modern—as he went. He is also sensitive to how the institutional setting in which a scholar works—whether Oxford, London, Rome, Berkeley, or Princeton— shapes his research and writing. Brown calls this the social aspect of scholarship. Through generous mentions of the work of other scholars whose work inspired and challenged him, Brown demonstrates the importance of this social aspect.
Given that Brown had such a long and productive career and published many groundbreaking studies, it was heartening to read repeatedly how his views on this or that topic had changed based on further research, whether his own or that of others. Brown writes clearly; this book should be accessible for any interested layperson (such as his two aunts—“folk of few books”—he had in mind as he wrote). The book is long and sometimes wanders in the telling, yet it more than repaid the time I invested in reading it.
September 17, 2024
tbh i mostly picked this up because 1) i think about peter brown’s work on late antique cults of saints pretty much every day, and 2) i Needed to read the chapters about his life as a medievalist at oxford, but i was pleasantly surprised by how interesting i found the entire book. this was definitely more of an explication of the development of brown’s scholarly interests, outlooks, and writings than it was an autobiography in the traditional sense, but the prose was as convivial as that of any memoir. really digging the whole intellectual autobiography sub-genre right now.
tl;dr i spent nine months hunting for this book in stores and it was worth the search.
tl;dr i spent nine months hunting for this book in stores and it was worth the search.
August 27, 2024
I took a class from Peter Brown in college. I didn’t know how amazing a scholar he was at the time. Ah the ignorance of youth.
December 5, 2024
In the hands of another historian, this book would feel indulgent and in need of editing. Peter Brown, however, produces an insightful and deeply enjoyable account of his own intellectual journey and of the development of Late Antiquity as a subject in its own right. A truly great historian
Currently reading
July 12, 2023We are reading Brown's memoir aloud to each other.
April 22, 2024
How often do you read an autobiography by one of the great biographers and historians. Beautifully written, covers his progression of thinking about history, especially Late Antiquity, but also very interesting and illuminating about the British education system, Oxford, and how American universities were/are different from British. Not for everyone, it is long (despite briefing over the last 35 years), but a great read if you are interested in what it is like to be a professional historian, what it was like to study and then teach at Oxford, and/or Late Antiquity. But mostly, just so well written, the subject matter almost doesn’t matter
April 27, 2024
"Did these persons walk beneath the same stars that as we do? The answer was very definitely: no. In my reading I was brought up against the richness of the late classical view of the cosmos, the physical universe. It was a murmurous world filled with invisible beings - an entire hidden society of gods, demons, and angels, in which human beings and human society were embedded"
"To read Foucault at this time was to down a stiff tonic - a remedy for what had always been, for historians, the one unforgivable sin - anachronism: the invasion of the past by the present."
Most autobiographies tend to be predominantly inward looking and narrowly interested the eccentricities of one's own personal life and personality. That myopic quality seems in many ways to be an almost necessary and expected feature of the genre. Yet, Peter Brown's autobiography is effectively defined by the inverse and - a wider attention to the rhythms of the times in which he has lived, as encapsulated in the subtitle: A Life in History. We see this is quaint small ways, such as recalling the toothache he had as child, which happened to occur on the same day that Hitler committed suicide. But, we also see this in more substantial ways, such as the impacts of the sexual revolution of the 1970's and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 on his scholarship. It is a work to be expected not just of a professional historian, but of someone that deeply appreciates and loves that discipline to its fullest.
Characteristic of this autobiography in particular (and also something that further sets it apart from the rest of the genre) is that its major focus is with Brown's intellectual development, hence the title Journeys of the Mind. We hear very little about Peter Brown's personal life once the narrative progresses passing into his adulthood, though the book itself is capped off in 1987 recalling the last few week of his mother's life. This is not to say that it is a completely dry and monotonous account of his life. Brown's down-to-earth personality comes through at various points in the narrative, such as the meetings of Holy Men Incorporated - a series of informal gatherings of Berkeley grad students at his house to discuss hagiography over potluck and six-packs of beer. As with the larger historical events taking place during his lifetime, this is also neatly juxtaposed with the evolutions of in the world of academia. This includes Brown's various meetings and crossing-of-paths with famed figures like Michel Foucault, Paul Veyne, and Jacques Le Goff.
In short, an autobiography of a professional historian might be a fairly boring things for most people to read, but it is clearly not a work intended for the general public anyway. Those who even know the name of Peter Brown are the obvious target audience, and who will most enjoy reading about these decades in academia in Brown's lively and entertaining style.
"To read Foucault at this time was to down a stiff tonic - a remedy for what had always been, for historians, the one unforgivable sin - anachronism: the invasion of the past by the present."
Most autobiographies tend to be predominantly inward looking and narrowly interested the eccentricities of one's own personal life and personality. That myopic quality seems in many ways to be an almost necessary and expected feature of the genre. Yet, Peter Brown's autobiography is effectively defined by the inverse and - a wider attention to the rhythms of the times in which he has lived, as encapsulated in the subtitle: A Life in History. We see this is quaint small ways, such as recalling the toothache he had as child, which happened to occur on the same day that Hitler committed suicide. But, we also see this in more substantial ways, such as the impacts of the sexual revolution of the 1970's and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 on his scholarship. It is a work to be expected not just of a professional historian, but of someone that deeply appreciates and loves that discipline to its fullest.
Characteristic of this autobiography in particular (and also something that further sets it apart from the rest of the genre) is that its major focus is with Brown's intellectual development, hence the title Journeys of the Mind. We hear very little about Peter Brown's personal life once the narrative progresses passing into his adulthood, though the book itself is capped off in 1987 recalling the last few week of his mother's life. This is not to say that it is a completely dry and monotonous account of his life. Brown's down-to-earth personality comes through at various points in the narrative, such as the meetings of Holy Men Incorporated - a series of informal gatherings of Berkeley grad students at his house to discuss hagiography over potluck and six-packs of beer. As with the larger historical events taking place during his lifetime, this is also neatly juxtaposed with the evolutions of in the world of academia. This includes Brown's various meetings and crossing-of-paths with famed figures like Michel Foucault, Paul Veyne, and Jacques Le Goff.
In short, an autobiography of a professional historian might be a fairly boring things for most people to read, but it is clearly not a work intended for the general public anyway. Those who even know the name of Peter Brown are the obvious target audience, and who will most enjoy reading about these decades in academia in Brown's lively and entertaining style.
April 9, 2024
Peter Brown's career as an historian, writer, and teacher were richly nurtured by his collaboration with other scholars and by his travels--undertaken with his desire to experience the cultures and landscapes, the arts and artifacts that were expressions of ppls' lives in various times and places.
Even as a child, he had a foot in various places. He was born a Protestant in Catholic Ireland; his father was an engineer in Sudan; and Brown was a scholarship student at Oxford.
One of the things that made my journey with him especially interesting was that he posed questions he was trying to resolve for himself in pursuing the same subject, Augustine, for instance, as broader exposures opened up in the course of his own life. Similarly, he quoted Michel Foucault: "There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on thinking or reflecting at all." Brown's take on the stunning differences he discovered teaching graduate students at Berkeley after feeling the narrowness of the Oxford method of educating undergraduates was refreshing.
The students of course mirrored the cultures in which they were raised. The Oxford system had to change, and it did as changes in the world came home to roost.
When Brown began focussing his work on the years 300-700, it was an area hardly anyone paid attention to. By the end of his long career, Late Antiquity was no longer regarded as the Dark Ages. I liked seeing how cross disciplinary study can greatly enrich the way one views history-- looking at not merely politics and military records, but what was going on in villages and religions, the arts, and economies. History becomes the study of ppl's lives, ppl like us.
I chose to read Brown's memoir for personal reasons. One of the things I expected to learn was more detail on how Christianity transformed the Roman Empire. Instead I got a much broader understanding of the gradual transformation of a culture, not in a simple linear movement, but thorough learning the micro histories of various places.
Brown had a deep appreciation of diversity, among students and scholars, landscapes and ideas. By seeing other ways of living and thinking, one's own worldview changes.
This memoir was well named and engagingly written.
Even as a child, he had a foot in various places. He was born a Protestant in Catholic Ireland; his father was an engineer in Sudan; and Brown was a scholarship student at Oxford.
One of the things that made my journey with him especially interesting was that he posed questions he was trying to resolve for himself in pursuing the same subject, Augustine, for instance, as broader exposures opened up in the course of his own life. Similarly, he quoted Michel Foucault: "There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on thinking or reflecting at all." Brown's take on the stunning differences he discovered teaching graduate students at Berkeley after feeling the narrowness of the Oxford method of educating undergraduates was refreshing.
The students of course mirrored the cultures in which they were raised. The Oxford system had to change, and it did as changes in the world came home to roost.
When Brown began focussing his work on the years 300-700, it was an area hardly anyone paid attention to. By the end of his long career, Late Antiquity was no longer regarded as the Dark Ages. I liked seeing how cross disciplinary study can greatly enrich the way one views history-- looking at not merely politics and military records, but what was going on in villages and religions, the arts, and economies. History becomes the study of ppl's lives, ppl like us.
I chose to read Brown's memoir for personal reasons. One of the things I expected to learn was more detail on how Christianity transformed the Roman Empire. Instead I got a much broader understanding of the gradual transformation of a culture, not in a simple linear movement, but thorough learning the micro histories of various places.
Brown had a deep appreciation of diversity, among students and scholars, landscapes and ideas. By seeing other ways of living and thinking, one's own worldview changes.
This memoir was well named and engagingly written.
May 24, 2025
Excellent biographical memoir -- his was a life of objective scholarship and pioneering work on
"LATE ANTIQUITY" -- approximately Early Christian centuries but also multi-cultural approaches from religious movements to philosophical / political / anthropological "schools" / institutions (both reform and conservative). Peter Brown made notable academic contributions to many U.S. Schools and to U.K. academia. He sustains the 100+ chapters with some notices of his moves from Universities and Higher Learning as well as personal & familial anecdotes. He continued to write books that were significant and of General Reading interest -- prime example is "The Body and Society." Also works of ancient history, eras of Greek civilization and Roman (early, middle, late) empire as well as Medieval and eras of non-Western development of theology, history, philosophy. I give it a 5* out of 5.
More about Ch. 95 of "JOURNEYS" in my Google Blog:
faithfor2008.blogspot.com/2025/05/pet...
"LATE ANTIQUITY" -- approximately Early Christian centuries but also multi-cultural approaches from religious movements to philosophical / political / anthropological "schools" / institutions (both reform and conservative). Peter Brown made notable academic contributions to many U.S. Schools and to U.K. academia. He sustains the 100+ chapters with some notices of his moves from Universities and Higher Learning as well as personal & familial anecdotes. He continued to write books that were significant and of General Reading interest -- prime example is "The Body and Society." Also works of ancient history, eras of Greek civilization and Roman (early, middle, late) empire as well as Medieval and eras of non-Western development of theology, history, philosophy. I give it a 5* out of 5.
More about Ch. 95 of "JOURNEYS" in my Google Blog:
faithfor2008.blogspot.com/2025/05/pet...
April 13, 2025
Professor Mavroudi recommended this book to me. I had not read the work of Peter Brown (save for some excerpts for a graduate seminar) so to get to know someone so intimately as a person first and a scholar second was a strange experience given his eminence. The most insightful part of his autobiography, beyond the great bibliography of academics that he gives, was his explicitation of all those feelings that go unsaid by academics. When he writes about his worries at not getting a fellowship for education, I get relief at the un-uniqueness of my own worries in this regard. When he mentions the process of learning ancient languages for his scholarly work, I feel that aforementioned relief. I’ve also been fortunate to live in many of the same places as the author and to relive them through his words, as well as his brief histories of them, grant me a new appreciation for them.
September 20, 2023
The best parts of this brick of a book come in the first half. Brown’s childhood in Ireland, his family, his religious explorations, and his school days make good reading. All of this is told with an eye to the scholar he would become, of course, but there’s an appealing humanity in it. After Brown finds his place as a fellow at All Souls (Oxford), the story becomes more entirely about his “journeys of the mind” – that is, his intellectual interests and research, with a lot of name-dropping and descriptions of academic conferences. The personal story largely evaporates. As a study in the making of a scholar, this tome has plenty of interest, but I felt the loss of the man himself.
August 13, 2023
What a pleasure to meet you, Prof Peter Brown! How blessed are so many others who met you directly.
I was so reminded of my own mentor professor throughout reading your "memoir." Now I have a few books from university off my shelves for reviewing.
You know, one of the nicest things I can say, perhaps, is that you are a beautiful writer. Something all of my favorite history teachers worked on to guide me forward academically.
I was so reminded of my own mentor professor throughout reading your "memoir." Now I have a few books from university off my shelves for reviewing.
You know, one of the nicest things I can say, perhaps, is that you are a beautiful writer. Something all of my favorite history teachers worked on to guide me forward academically.
June 27, 2025
I think I would like Peter Brown, his passion for the late Byzantine and history in general shine through like a beacon--I find the foot fitfully interesting, very much more like a book of scholarship than your average biography, he sometimes gets into details on this or that which I'm less interested in, but at the same time, there's something loveable about the way he earnestly documents every personal connection in the same way he'd do a studious work.
December 12, 2023
This is a fascinating look at the life of an extraordinary scholar, from his childhood in
Sudan to his professorships at various universities. As a Protestant in Ireland, as an Irishman
at Oxford, always somewhat on the outside, but always learning, and probing deeply in
various societies -- and the importance of religion in every society.
Exceptional!
Sudan to his professorships at various universities. As a Protestant in Ireland, as an Irishman
at Oxford, always somewhat on the outside, but always learning, and probing deeply in
various societies -- and the importance of religion in every society.
Exceptional!
Read
November 24, 2023This was chosen by Michael Ledger-Lomas, author of Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown (Oxford, 2021), as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
December 5, 2023
Inspirational and exciting.
My only disappointment is that, aside from the postscript, the narrative ends at 1987. I would definitely read another memoir by Prof. Brown.
My only disappointment is that, aside from the postscript, the narrative ends at 1987. I would definitely read another memoir by Prof. Brown.
January 24, 2024
My favorite historian and human being.
Want to read
February 10, 2024"A towering figure in the study of late antiquity, a founding father of the field, Brown is now almost 90 years old.
February 10, 2024
A wonderful memoir of a great scholar.
May 26, 2024
700 pages and only covers the first half of his career 😳
June 12, 2024
I bought this book based on the glowing review it got in the Wall Street Journal. It is a fine book and very erudite, but isn’t living up to the review.
December 3, 2024
Honestly malpractice on someone's part that I didn't know about the Peter Brown/Foucault connection in undergrad.
January 4, 2025
An enjoyable read.
April 10, 2025
I most enjoyed reading about his educational experiences at Oxford; it made me realize that I, too, had a similar period of tuition.
June 10, 2025
Quite a historian's book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews