Josh Hamon > Recent Status Updates

This is one of the most interesting books I’ve come across in awhile.

Just getting started but enjoying it already. “The modern historical profession ... assumes that the explanation of history lies within itself.”

“They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely...”

Page 211 begins with: So what is there to learn from the men and women of the Reformation?

Not a lot of space left to learn about feminism...

Page 190 is the beginning of chapter 17, How Modern Feminists View the Reformation, there are less than 40 pages left in the book...

I’m determined to finish this book. Currently I’m reading short snippets on various 16th century woman.

More than halfway through the book and yet still in the Reformation period.

From page 108 “Godly marriages and their fruit of faithful children change the world.”

If you believe in predestination/election then the quality of your marriage is not the deciding factor in the faith of your children.

Just keep slogging, just keep slogging.

I’m not sure I can finish this book. It’s very slow going. I find there’s a lot of back and forth. Paragraph one says the medieval Catholic Church set up roadblocks to marriage but then paragraph says they recognized any marriage where people ‘administered themselves the sacrament’.

I had never considered before that racism has been made binary and linked with morality. You either are or aren’t racist, no gradients. Combining that with the moral (racist = bad person, not racist = person) makes it’s an almost impossible subject to discuss.

This book is useful research

This is thoughtful and challenging. When I’ve mentioned to friends I’m reading it, they have sometimes brought up objections the author is just about to shoot down. For example: my mother is 1st generation Irish, does that make me white?

I’ve really only heard of Jack Kerouac before starting this book and didn’t realize how much it had influenced music and painting, even into the 80’s and 90’s