Living with the Gods

September 15, 2018
Former British Museum and National Gallery director MacGregor (Germany: Memories of a Nation, 2015, etc.) takes readers on a whirlwind, though deeply satisfying, tour of the world's religions.The protestations of compatriots Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens aside, it is "one of the central facts of human existence," writes MacGregor, that people everywhere have cultivated worldviews that extend beyond individual lifetimes to reach the afterlife as well as a shared sense of what it means to be human. Arguing that many of the concerns of religion are coextensive with those of politics, the author adds that the way in which we share existence with the gods has bearing on how we share the world with other humans. Belief dates back a very long way; MacGregor opens his long, richly illustrated narrative with a consideration of the "Lion Man," an anthropomorphic carving 40,000 years old, recovered from a German cave, that "represents a cognitive leap to a world beyond nature, and beyond human experience." It also speaks to a people who depended on interactions with animals for their living--and who would have known big cats for real. Religion, MacGregor suggests, may seem static, but it changes with the times; as an example, he writes of once-polluted holy rivers of India that may become cleaner with the legal recognition that rivers, trees, and the like have the rights of personhood (for if a corporation can, then why not a river?). This is a world-ranging book of sharp juxtapositions and surprises: MacGregor writes of a Torah binder in the same breath as he does the dreadlocks of young Vanuatuan men as well as the meeting of the worlds of the beatific Buddha, the suffering Christ, and the ancient gods: "Clothed in drapery clearly influenced by Greek and Roman models," he writes of one statue, "the Buddha is shown here in mid-career, a halo behind his head, already in his enlightened state."As good a comparative survey of religion as there is and a pleasure to contemplate.

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October 15, 2018
MacGregor (A History of the World in 100 Objects), former director of the British Museum, assembles art objects to understand belief through the ages in a book that reads like a guided tour of the museum. MacGregor organizes the tour into six themes: the place of humans in the universe, community through belief, the performance of faith, faith work performed by images, the argument between mono- and poly-theism, and the relationship between divine and earthly power. For each section, MacGregor selects a number of items, including some not in the museum’s collections, such as the patterned stone at Newgrange and cave paintings in South Africa. For the most part, though, he depends on the museum—and the experts who work there—for discussions of, for instance, the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, the Sutton Hoo mask, and Egyptian mummies. (There is, perhaps surprisingly, no acknowledgement of recent controversies regarding the sourcing and ownership of many of these objects.) The commentary of experts is set off from the rest of the text in italic type, giving the book the feel of actual museum notes next to artifacts. This is a visually propulsive catalogue of the wonders of the British Museum.

October 15, 2018
A former director of the British Museum, MacGregor plumbs the institution's eight-million-piece collection to illustrate this accompanying volume to a 30-part BBC radio series reminiscent in scope and tone of two famous television series, Civilization and The Ascent of Man, some 49 and 45 years ago, respectively. The 30 parts, here rendered into chapters, are disposed in broad topical sections concerned with the primal inspirations of belief, communal belief, places and practices of worship, religious imagery, monotheism and polytheism, and religion and politics. Particular chapters are indicatively titled, such as Water of Life and Death in the first part, Let Us Pray in the second, Holy Killing (i.e., sacrifice) in the third, The Protectoresses in the fourth, Spirits of Place in the fifth, and Thy Kingdom Come in the last. The writing is clear and personable, and the illustrations nothing short of spectacular?230 images in both color and black and white. A fine popular work on the material history of religion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2018

MacGregor's companion volume to the highly acclaimed BBC series of the same name will please his many fans and may gain him new ones in the process. His objective is to explore the relationship between faith and society and how humanity understands its role among divine beings. He also examines how stories passed down to each succeeding generation are adapted and absorbed into everyday life. MacGregor uses images, objects, and art from prehistoric to contemporary times and from all corners of the earth to help illustrate his goal. Divided into six parts, the book's various sections consider a different aspect of how humanity developed and expressed their religious and spiritual awareness. Discussion topics include daily and weekly rituals, pilgrimages, houses of worship, monotheism, polytheism, atheism, and more, and features imagery from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and other faith traditions. VERDICT This richly illustrated and clearly written text focuses on subjects as relevant today as when time began. Highly recommended for religion, art, archeology, cosmology, and history enthusiasts.--Jacqueline Parascandola, Univ. of Pennsylvania

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2018

Former director of the British Museum, MacGregor again deploys the template that made A History of the World in 100 Objects and his subsequent titles such successes: he uses objects throughout the ages and the places they're found to explore a specific idea. Here it's faith as a means of understanding our place in the cosmos. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.