An essential reference for all game designers, this 1938 classic is “a fascinating account of ‘man the player’ and the contribution of play to civilization” (Harper’s).In this classic evaluation of play that has become a “must-read” for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting wit...

In this book, Huizinga delves into Erasmus's early life, education, and the development of his humanist thought. He highlights Erasmus's commitment to the ideals of Renaissance humanism, emphasizing his belief in education, critical scholarship, and the importance of returning to the original texts of Christianity. Huizinga also examines Erasmus's famous works, such as The Praise of Folly and his translations of the New Testament, which challenged the established norms of the Church and en...

"Here is the first full translation into English of one of the twentieth century's few undoubted classics of history." — The Washington Post Book WorldThe Autumn of the Middle Ages is Johan Huizinga's classic portrait of life, thought, and art in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France and the Netherlands. Few who have read this book in English realize that The Waning of the Middle Ages, the only previous transl...

"The Waning of the Middle Ages," Huizinga explores the cultural, social, and intellectual aspects of the late medieval period in Europe. He focuses on the 14th and 15th centuries, a time of significant change and transformation in European society.Huizinga's central thesis is that the late Middle Ages witnessed a shift in the prevailing worldview and cultural sensibilities. He argues that the period experienced a decline of medieval ideals and a rise of new attitudes and sensibilities that...

"Erasmus and the Age of Reformation". In this very readable biography, a noted scholar traces Erasmus's youth, his years as an itinerant scholar, sojourns in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy, friendship with Sir Thomas More, and disputes with Martin Luther. The author also probes Erasmus's mind and character and discusses his writings.

Johan Huizinga's *The Waning of the Middle Ages* is a brilliant cultural history of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Burgundy, France, and the Low Countries, an era poised between medieval forms and Renaissance transformations. Rather than narrating political events alone, Huizinga reconstructs the period's sensibility through religious devotion, chivalry, courtly love, violence, symbolism, art, and popular festivals. His method is synthetic and interpretive: literary texts, chronicles, p...

This classic study of art, life, and thought in France and the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ranks as one of the most perceptive analyses of the medieval period. A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but ...

A classic study of the forms of life, thought and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it is the remarkable work of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. Huizinga brings a depth of knowledge, commentary and insight into the way of life, spirit and artistic expression of medieval times. For Huizinga, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were much more than the prelude to a new period in history - the Renaissance. They were a completion, culmination and ma...

This shorter book on Erasmus might be considered a companion to Huizinga's most famous work, The Waning of the Middle Ages. While in his magnum opus he presented a study of the forms of life and thought in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in this one the subject is the central intellectual figure of the next generation after the period which Huizinga called the waning, or rather the autumn, of the Middle Ages. It was first published in 1924, and so belo...

The Waning of the Middle Ages (also known as The Autumn of the Middle Ages, or Autumntide of the Middle Ages), subtitled A study of the forms of life, thought and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is Johan Huizinga's most famous work. It was published in 1919 as Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen and first translated into English in 1924. Huizinga defends the idea that the exaggerated formality and romanticism of late medieval court society was a defense ...

Philosophical esotericsim—the practice of communicating one's unorthodox thoughts "between the lines"—was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others'. Despi...

National Book Award Finalist: The "impressive" conclusion to the "magisterial trilogy on the mythology of violence in American history" ( Film Quarterly)."The myth of the Western frontier—which assumes that whites' conquest of Native Americans and the taming of the wilderness were preordained means to a progressive, civilized society—is embedded in our national psyche. U.S. troops called Vietnam 'Indian country.' President John Kennedy invoked 'New Frontier...