Gymnasiebiblioteken

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason A. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines' founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, 'The Myth of Disenchantment' dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past

I denna personliga bok blandar Blom humor och allvar, kultur och litteratur, högt och lågt, folkbildning med egna upplevelser. I drygt trettio kapitel får vi bland annat ta del av hans syn på herrmiddagens magi, döden, att bli far, alkohol, lyckan i manglat linne, bikten, rakning och den svåra saknaden av att inte längre vara en ung stofil. Fram träder bilden av komplex och reflekterande person.

Gunnar Sträng var med och byggde det svenska välfärdssamhället. Som den minister som suttit längst av alla, i 31 år, hade han stort inflytande. Mest ihågkommen är Gunnar Sträng som finansminister, som färgstark talare med ett särpräglat språk och som kraftfull beslutsfattare. Här ges en initierad bild av folkhemsfadern Gunnar Sträng och skildrar samtidigt en viktig period i Sveriges moderna historia.