Tertullian of Africa: The origin of Christian thought in the West
(Tertullian, a Roman citizen living in North Africa, wrote...)
Tertullian, a Roman citizen living in North Africa, wrote with startling ease and insight about early Christian beliefs. This book contains translations of his essays On the Testimony of the Soul and To the Nations, Volume I. There is considerable notation and supporting material inserted within the text. I have a PhD in classical languages and have published a book on the subject of early Christianity (Reincarnation for the Christian).
Quincy Howe was an American journalist and historian.
Background
Quincy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1900. He was the son of Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe, an editor and biographer, and Fanny Huntington Quincy. Through his mother, Howe was a descendant of Josiah Quincy, a president of Harvard University and mayor of Boston.
Education
After attending St. George's School in Newport, R. I. , Howe studied at Harvard and graduated with honors in 1921. While living in England for a year, he studied at Christ's College, Cambridge. He returned to Boston in 1922.
Career
Following in his family's literary tradition, Howe joined the Atlantic Monthly Company in 1922 as an editor for Living Age, a scholarly magazine of reprints and translations from foreign journals. When the magazine was sold in 1928, Howe stayed with the Atlantic Monthly as an assistant to Ellery Sedgwick, the magazine's editor. Archibald Watson, who had acquired Living Age, moved the journal to New York City and hired Howe in 1929 as editor in chief. As editor of Living Age, Howe put his own distinctive imprint on the magazine. In addition to selecting and translating articles of significance from the international press, Howe wrote a monthly analysis of world politics and culture. His first book, World Diary: 1929-1934, published in the fall of 1934, was a provocative, iconoclastic study of the years before World War II and of the forces that caused the Great Depression.
From 1935 to 1942, Howe was among the more influential figures in book publishing as the editor in chief of Simon and Schuster. He was hired by Max Lincoln Schuster, with whom he worked closely in the selection of manuscripts. During his tenure as editor, Howe improved the quality of the firm's nonfiction catalog, producing books that were topical and commercially successful. While Howe was the senior editor, Simon and Schuster published the first two volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization. Howe personally edited and wrote the introduction for the British editorial cartoonist David Low's Cartoon History of Our Times (1939) and edited Ambassador Joseph E. Davies's Mission to Moscow (1941).
As a writer, he became one of Simon and Schuster's more controversial authors. In England Expects Every American to Do His Duty (1937), Howe challenged the pro-British policy of the American establishment and made the argument that the United States should not be led into a war to preserve Britain's colonial empire. "It is not Britain's strength but Britain's weakness that America has to fear, " wrote Howe. "America's destiny hinges upon the destiny of the British Empire not because that Empire is strong but because it is weak. And the stronger America becomes, the more England needs that strength during the first century of its decline. " Howe asserted that "ever since the unpleasantness of 1776 the American Dominion has been making the world safe for the British Empire. " The book provoked controversy in the United States and England, including a debate in the House of Commons, and a satirical verse about Howe by H. G. Wells. In 1939, Howe published Blood Is Cheaper Than Water, an analysis of the battle between isolationists and interventionists for American public opinion. Norman Cousins, reviewing the book for Current History, wrote, "even if the side you choose is not Howe's, you will have to acknowledge the brilliance with which he states and presents the issue. "
His fourth book, The News and How to Understand It (1940), was an engaging portrait of American journalism with profiles of prominent columnists and radio commentators. By the time of the book's publication, Howe had become a well-known radio personality. He was among the first journalists to move from print to electronic journalism. With his Yankee twang, Howe brought the war home to millions of Americans as a radio commentator. He was among a group of broadcast journalists, including Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, Elmer Davis, H. von Kaltenborn, and Eric Sevareid, who were thrust into prominence by World War II. Ironically, Howe, who had been an outspoken noninterventionist, said that his life began when his broadcasting career was launched in 1938 during the Czechoslovakian crisis. He analyzed the Munich Agreement for the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1938 and from 1939 to 1942 aired three commentaries per week for WQXR, a New York City radio station.
Upon joining CBS in 1942, he was a pioneer in establishing news analysis as an important ingredient of broadcast journalism. Howe, who modified his isolationist views after the fall of France in 1940, was widely acclaimed for his insightful reporting, his encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs, and his fairness. Viewed by his contemporaries as the most authoritative and perceptive of news analysts, he elevated the standard for broadcast journalism. Instead of reading the news, Howe told his listeners what national and world events would mean to them.
Making the transition to television after the war, Howe was a commentator on the CBS evening news until he was dropped in 1947, at the urging of a sponsor. His removal as a nightly commentator was criticized by the New York Times and may have ultimately strengthened the independence of the CBS news division. Writing in the November 1943 Atlantic Monthly, Howe had warned about threats to the integrity of broadcast journalism:" Give government its head, and radio becomes a Federal monopoly. Give the radio industry its head and you get more and more power concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Give the sponsors who support radio their heads and radio becomes the voice of private American industry. " After losing his commentary slot, Howe continued reporting for CBS and earned critical praise, along with Murrow and Douglas Edwards, for coverage of the 1948 Republican and Democratic national conventions in Philadelphia.
He left CBS in 1949 and taught journalism at the University of Illinois from 1950 to 1954. Howe returned to network television in 1954, resuming his commentary for ABC News, where he made broadcasts for the next fourteen years. From 1961 to 1965, Howe edited Atlas magazine, which published reprints from the world press.
In the mid-twentieth century, Howe became one of the nation's more admired historians. Inspired by the journalist-historians Mark Sullivan and Frederick Lewis Allen, he spent twenty-five years writing a three-volume history of the twentieth century, A World History of Our Times. The first volume, which covered the period from 1900 to the World War I armistice, was published to popular and critical acclaim in 1949. The second volume, which covered the period between the two world wars, appeared in 1953. The concluding volume, Ashes of Victory: World War II and Its Aftermath, was published in the fall of 1972. Panoramic in scope and richly detailed, Howe's trilogy was an impressive achievement. "Mr. Howe's manner of putting all the pieces together, of reappraising the war in the light of its consequences, and of making sense out of chaos is indeed unique, " John Toland wrote in reviewing Ashes of Victory for the New York Times. "He leads the reader through the maze of politics and war with the endearing arrogance of a school teacher who cares. "
Howe died in New York City. In a letter to Edward R. Murrow's wife, Janet, after Murrow's death, Howe had written: "Ed was a perfectionist, in other words an artist, and his genius lay in the way he organized, channeled and eventually exhausted and expended all that was in him. Nobody can say where this spark comes from. Whenever and wherever it appears, it is a kind of miracle. " Howe had a similar spark.
An advocacy journalist, Howe was a reformer in the tradition of New England liberalism. In 1932 he took part in a motorcade that brought food to striking miners in Harlan County, Ky. ; opposed legislation to restrict immigration; and was active in prison reform. A director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1932 to 1940, he was a fighter against censorship. But it was in foreign policy that Howe drew attention in the 1930's. A critic of dictatorships of the left and the right, he was sympathetic to the emerging nationalist movements in the colonial empires of the Old World. He was a member of the left-wing American League Against War and Fascism. In his writings of the 1930's, Howe stressed the dangers of American intervention in another world war.
Connections
Howe married Mary L. Post on May 14, 1932; they had two children.
Recipient George Foster Peabody award for radio-television news analysis, 1955. Overseas Press Club award for radio-television news analysis, 1959. Columbia-Catherwood award for responsible international journalism, 1962.
Recipient George Foster Peabody award for radio-television news analysis, 1955. Overseas Press Club award for radio-television news analysis, 1959. Columbia-Catherwood award for responsible international journalism, 1962.