cover image The Terror of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization

The Terror of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization

Teofilo F. Ruiz. Princeton Univ., $24.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-691-12413-1

This unkempt, often personal book opens up a fresh and profound historical topic: how people in the West have compensated for the terrors of life: death, pain, accident, horror, and the like. But UCLA historian Ruiz isn't interested in mundane responses (like bomb shelters) to human fears of annihilation. After weightier game, he argues that religions, the satisfaction of the senses (like food, drink, and sex), the creation of beauty, and the search for knowledge are all responses to life's terrors. And some, he says, usually ignored by historians, rather than fleeing the terror, "go on in their dogged way to keep the world afloat." Perhaps. The trouble is that Ruiz's arguments aren't persuasive . They are wide-ranging and winningly put. But can't a painting of a battle be just that%E2%80%94the depiction of an event, and a drunken orgy nothing but excess and not an escape from the fear of death? Religion comes closest historically to responding to what death signifies, but even here Ruiz stretches things. Had he kept himself out of the story and offered his speculations in an essay rather than a book he might have advanced closer to sketching the history of Western people's response to the dread of their lives ending. (Oct.)