Aristotle's Children
How Christian, Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages

Okay. A book about the middle ages, right? Uh-huh. But wait, not only about the (ugh!) middle ages, but about PHILOSOPHY in the middle ages? You're kidding, right? But, you say, there's more? It's not just about medieval philosophy and philosophers, but also about the intricate, and delicate balance......more

UPDATE ... 15 years later, I'm planning to re-read Aristotle's Children along with Cahill's Gifts of the Jews ... so many unanswered and unanswerable questions This is part of my summer research on a novel I am writing (a sequel to THE HERETIC), set in the humanist world of Lorenzo de Medici's Floren......more

Rubinstein does a fine job presenting the introduction and inclusion of Aristotelian thinking into the catholic universities from 1200-1400 CE. He introduces the reader to a number of lesser known philosophers and theologians. Rubinstein is a great communicator and effortlessly explains the relative......more

When I saw the subtitle of the book was how Ancient wisdom illuminated the "Dark Ages". It lead me to expect it was written within that secular mythological ethos; that being that the West was once a glorious civilization until it embraced Christianity which submerge Europe into the dark ages, this......more

An accessible exploration of the rediscovery of Aristotle's ideas toward the end of the Middle Ages, just before the Renaissance. Rubenstein covers Aristotle's life and major ideas in contrast to Plato, then he skips forward and discusses major Western thinkers of the late 1100s through the early 13......more