Man The Measure: A New Approach To History

by Erich von Kahler

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Genres: History

700 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Erich von Kahler was a mid-twentieth-century European-American literary scholar, essayist, and teacher known for works such as The Tower and the Abyss: An Inquiry into the Transformation of Man (1957).

Kahler was born to a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied philosophy, literature, history, art history, sociology, and psychology at the University of Munich, the University of Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of Freiburg before earning his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1911. In 1912, he married his first wife, Josephine (née Sobotka). In 1933, deprived of his German citizenship by the Nazi regime, he left Germany, emigrating to the United States in 1938 after a period of residence in England. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, where he was known as Erich Kahler.

Reviews

[Mary Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was 22, 60 years ago, and sanding a pine floor in Massachusetts. It took me 3 weeks to finish the floor as this book was riveting and, without exaggeration, changed my life. All history is questionable without having read this one first. A five star introduction to the world of history.

[Jeff Hrusko]

I bought this from a library book sale, and wow, treasures like this are one of the reason I go to those…although written over 60 years ago, it calls itself a new way to look at history, and in some ways it still is…it follows the trends of our civilization, how one idea forms another, or forms in opposition to another, in the great conversation that is our common culture and heritage.



It amazed me how so many facts and perspectives that I thought were much more recent, were found in this book. Maybe they started here, and slowly leaked out into the culture. The book was written at the height of world war two, and it primarily traces how the world got into that state of affairs. I would love to hear the author discuss what happened after, and how it changed us.



There is very little that’s dated in this book. This book changed me, much the way Steel, Guns and Germs changed my perspective, and like that book, it’s written in a passionate, but sober, accessible yet intelligent language.



Reading is very intimate, especially in works of non-fiction the reader feels a bit of the author’s personality in the work. I remember reading a Brief History of everything, and liking the book, but not the author, I didn’t like the intimacy of joining his thoughts..this guy…it feels like a special privilege to gather so closely to such a mind!