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Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 Kindle Edition
“At irregular times and in scattered settings, human beings have achieved great things. Human Accomplishment is about those great things, falling in the domains known as the arts and sciences, and the people who did them.’
So begins Charles Murray’s unique account of human excellence, from the age of Homer to our own time. Murray compiles inventories of the people who have been essential to the stories of literature, music, art, philosophy, and the sciences—a total of 4,002 men and women from around the world, ranked according to their eminence.
The heart of Human Accomplishment is a series of enthralling descriptive chapters: on the giants in the arts and what sets them apart from the merely great. Charles Murray takes on some controversial questions. Why has accomplishment been so concentrated in Europe? Among men? Since 1400? He presents evidence that the rate of great accomplishment has been declining in the last century, asks what it means, and offers a rich framework for thinking about the conditions under which the human spirit has expressed itself most gloriously.
“Well-written and informative.” —Publishers Weekly
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- File size10.7 MB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
About the Author
Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of seven other books, including Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, with Richard J. Herrnstein.
From The Washington Post
Consider this claim: that the greatest human accomplishments require mastery of rigorous constraints first achieved almost exclusively by white Western European males. One might guess that it would be Charles Murray making such an argument. In his latest book, Human Accomplishment, Murray steps back up to the plate after Losing Ground and The Bell Curve with a thesis sure to irritate most of America's thinking class.
Yet the book is, more often than not, brilliant. In lucid prose, Murray methodically addresses and refutes most of the predictable counterarguments to his thesis. Taking local biases into account, he assesses various regions' contributions to human accomplishment by tabulating how many figures from a specific part of the world are cited in 50 percent or more of standard encyclopedic compendia, including Islamic and Far Eastern sources.
Murray begins his survey at 800 B.C., arguing that innovation before then had been more species-wide than individual, and had tended largely to evanesce rather than become established, other than in China. Summarizing the work of Jared Diamond (of Guns, Germs and Steel fame), he shows that serious innovation requires advanced civilizations of the sort that geography helped bring about earlier in the Middle East and elsewhere than, for example, in Africa. Murray argues that, with the leisure and specialization that agricultural surpluses allowed, China and the Islamic world gave the West a run for its money at first but that ultimately an efflorescence in a few Western European countries after 1400 turned the world upside down. Linear perspective, polyphonic music, the novel, mathematical proof and the scientific method are largely the product of the Dead White Males whom we are taught to assume have been celebrated at the expense of subalterns written out of the history books.
This is no survey of the lives and works themselves à la Jacques Barzun's masterful From Dawn to Decadence; Murray spends more than half of the book justifying his epistemology. But that he must do this is a sign of our times, when reflexive relativism exerts such a hold on so many and qualifies as responsible scholarship. While I find it sobering that none of his milestones springs from Togo or New Guinea, I also share Murray's lack of enthusiasm for the critics who respond to such omissions by questioning the very value of Western technology; he is correct in his skeptical view of those who would make that disparagement while talking on their cell phones on the way to the airport. Nevertheless, he has to craft his argumentation to the terms of present-day cultural debate, and this makes the book something of a trudge. Hundreds of pages of throat-clearing lead to final chapters adopting the Weberian argument that Protestantism encourages individuality and a sense of purpose in secular life, qualities that spur innovation. That point is, after all, hardly new.
Nor, however, is it chauvinistic, as opposed to simply a product of historical contingency. As Murray has it, "highly familistic, consensual cultures have been the norm throughout history and the world. Modern Europe has been the oddball." Where he does display bias is in his 1950 cutoff. Ostensibly stopping here because expert consensus has yet to jell, Murray elsewhere pronounces that "it is hard to imagine that the last half-century will be seen as producing an abundance of timeless work." Murray believes that the 20th century witnessed a decline in artistic accomplishment, as artists and intellectuals rejected religious conviction and Western norms. But will two centuries of sifting really leave "La Dolce Vita," "Raging Bull," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "Sweeney Todd," Mama Day and Herzog on the same scrapheap as the works of Thackeray? There is more awesome craft and inspiration in such works than Murray, with his classical leanings, appears willing to seek.
He also has an idealistic sense of how most human beings process accomplishment. Murray makes the surprising assumption that humans are universally awed by complexity, so that the fashion must eventually swing back to all thinking people's readily acknowledging that the Venus de Milo exceeds in sophistication the carving of an indigenous tribesman. When he charges that to equate "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?" with Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is to make "a sweeping judgment of the capacity of the human mind to assess information," he considers it a deft point, supposedly revealing a stark qualitative distinction that few would contest.
But for more than a few readers, the distinction Murray draws between sentimental response and critical assessment will be not only counterintuitive but offputting. Few people have trouble with the extremes -- one can like hot dogs without considering them the equal of high Thai cuisine. But many intelligent people today do not spontaneously revere Renee Fleming over Aretha Franklin even though Fleming's art is more complex and based on more training, or regard Bach's achievement as greater than Radiohead's. "Funk" and "attitude" reign as pillars of artistic evaluation, and for more people than Murray seems to be aware of, just why we put "Stairway to Heaven" in quotes and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in italics wound not, I suspect, be readily clear.
The reason for this has less to do with lapsed faith in higher ideals than in how more complex artistic forms, such as the novel and classical music, are products of technological developments such as writing, which allow art forms much longer, more intricate and memory-unfriendly than those humans have evolved to appreciate intuitively. All humans have music, for example, but indigenous peoples need no music-appreciation training to embrace their unwritten songs and dance accompaniments. Beethoven's Seventh, with its several instruments sustaining precise melodies and harmonies through complex developments over 30-plus minutes and not based on cyclic repetition or easy remembering, could not exist without writing, and many require tutelage to appreciate it.
Time was that familiarity with classical music was tied to education and middle-class membership, but the hold it exerted was always fragile. Today, recording technology combines with the multiculturalist imperative to allow constant access to forms that are more immediately appealing. Unsurprisingly, both creators and listeners now hearken more to those forms. Murray attempts to cut through relativism by designating worthiest those accomplishments that elicit the response "How could a human being have done that?" But more than a few today are sincerely moved to ask that question of Sting's latest album.
Murray's cultural predilections leave him unable to address that frame of mind conclusively. And thus, for all of its cogency, Human Accomplishment will never reach readers who recoil at any claim that "The Marriage of Figaro" occupies a higher plane than The Who's "Tommy."
Reviewed by John McWhorter
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Product details
- ASIN : B000OVLJSC
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
- Publication date : October 13, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 10.7 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 998 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #376,846 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #20 in Demography
- #193 in History of Anthropology
- #281 in Cultural Anthropology (Kindle Store)
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About the author

Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and libertarian. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of "Losing Ground," which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, "The Bell Curve" (Free Press, 1994), coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America's class structure. Murray's other books include "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" (1997), "Human Accomplishment" (2003), "In Our Hands" (2006), and "Real Education" (2008). His 2012 book, "Coming Apart" (Crown Forum, 2012), describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century. His most recent book is "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" (Crown Forum, 2015).
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Customers find the book's insights interesting and helpful for research. They describe it as a compelling work with well-written, witty content. However, some readers feel the reading is drawn-out and the images are unreadable. Opinions vary on the interest level - some find it fascinating while others consider it boring.
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Customers find the book insightful and informative. They appreciate the top-notch research and clear documentation. The book is helpful for their research and provides a good case study on human innovation in the arts. While some of the author's arguments feel unconvincing at times, overall, they consider it an interesting and important read.
"...Bottom line: a very interesting and important book, particularly in a world where the very notion of excellence and accomplishment is under constant..." Read more
"...Murray makes a great effort in capturing non-Western culture by dedicating several inventories/rankings specifically for them, including numerous..." Read more
"...I feel the topic is top tier. The author perfectly suited for this task. Yet in the end the whole thing just disappoints...." Read more
"...ASTONISHINGLY he is rational, reasonable, and straightforward. Rare! (Naturally I would say that about one with whom I share much agreement.)..." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and interesting to read. They appreciate the thoughtful approach and consider it worth the effort. The first few chapters are praised as great. Overall, readers describe the book as an excellent compilation from a well-respected author.
"...of the book is to understand the nature of human accomplishment—true excellence, not high competence—and see who (and when, and why) has achieved..." Read more
"...I like the book, I really do. I thought the first few chapters were great. I feel the topic is top tier. The author perfectly suited for this task...." Read more
"...This book was my cup of tea. ASTONISHINGLY he is rational, reasonable, and straightforward. Rare!..." Read more
"...He looked at what an outstanding accomplishment was, why it was outstanding, what caused it to be outstanding, what contributed to periods of..." Read more
Customers find the book well-written and informative. They appreciate the author's wit and accurate charts.
"...The grammar is precise. The author is sharp and witty. The charts are accurate...." Read more
"Charles Murray is a good and thoughtful writer, so I give him three* stars for misguided audacity...." Read more
"excellent book: top-notch research, well written, and incredibly informative" Read more
Customers have different views on the book's interest. Some find it interesting and helpful for research, while others find it boring and uninteresting. The book is described as well-organized and helpful for historical research.
"...The principal method is to check with standard, encyclopedic and historical sources and see the degree of attention accorded to particular..." Read more
"In short: The book presents a fascinating foray across human history, with exploration of what accomplishment means and how is it attained...." Read more
"...He never really hits anything interesting, just stating the obvious and then trying to justify his "controversial point"...." Read more
"The book is interesting from my perspective...." Read more
Customers find the book's reading quality poor. They say it's drawn-out and has small, unreadable images.
"...Figures have not been rendered as text, but as tiny, almost unreadable images...." Read more
"...The reading was very drawn out and I've read better on far more drier material...." Read more
"Two stars for effort. Book is myopic and its right-wing amnesia is inexcusable. Karl Marx is not even mentioned...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020This is a stunning book from one of the world's great public intellectuals. CM is a sociologist, a political scientist, an applied geneticist, and many other things. Here he reveals himself as a sophisticated historian of science and of (certain portions of) the arts. The purpose of the book is to understand the nature of human accomplishment—true excellence, not high competence—and see who (and when, and why) has achieved the most of it. What are the conditions that give rise to it? What are the foundations that are largely necessary for it? Is it now in decline?
The principal method is to check with standard, encyclopedic and historical sources and see the degree of attention accorded to particular individuals and accomplishments. Corrections for national bias are made, so that, e.g., non-English sources are used to assess English accomplishments.
The results are predictable with a few exceptions. Rousseau, e.g., is accorded more attention that I believe he deserves. Ditto Sir Walter Scott. However, I can see the reasons for some of these assessments. Dead white European males predominate in the inventories and CM is at pains to demonstrate why this is the case. At bottom, the book attempts to relieve us of our concerns that we are biased because our initial impressions (which turn out largely to be true) are justified with elaborate statistical argument. Approximately 200 pp. are devoted to appendices, notes, bibliography, index and, in general, explanations for the methods employed. (For those unfamiliar with regression analysis, e.g., CM provides explanatory descriptions of the method.)
The key takeaway is an old key takeaway—the importance of religion and faith and the worldview that they entail. CM positions himself against the arid secularism and abandonment of the notions of truth, goodness and beauty embraced by much of the modern arts community, attributing the decline in human achievement (in part) to the loss of a worldview that produced, e.g., the great art of the renaissance. He supports his argument with statistics. One can find another instance of this argument in the magisterial work of George Steiner (using philosophy, theology, language, literature and science to make the case). Camille Paglia (herself an atheist) has also made this case.
Bottom line: a very interesting and important book, particularly in a world where the very notion of excellence and accomplishment is under constant fire. This book leaves no room for participation trophies; many contemporary academics leave no room for beauty, goodness and truth. That is why CM must go to such lengths (a book of nearly 700 pp.) to reassure us that Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, Michelangelo, Pasteur, Lavoisier, Darwin, Euler, Lyell, Edison, Aristotle, et al. should be familiar to all educated citizens and should be taught in all of our universities and colleges. We need to stay in touch with greatness; it elevates and inspires us as human beings.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2007Charles Murray is a gutsy social scientist. Back in 1994, he co-wrote the excellent Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) with Richard Herrnstein. The onslaught of controversy from the politically correct faction exhausted Herrnstein (he died not long after the release of the book). But, Murray kept on trucking and a decade later released another politically incorrect outstanding bombshell with this book.
Being aware of the topic's controversial nature, Murray spends nearly as much time explaining his statistical methodology as he does analyzing results. After reading Murray's disclosure, you're overwhelmed by his data gathering effort. And, you are hard pressed to think off how a researcher could have been more objective in this endeavor.
From his extensive data, he develops a ranking of the top 20 contributors in tens of different fields. The usual suspects dominate the podium. In Western literature it is Shakespeare and Goethe. In Western Art, it is Michelangelo. In Physics, it is Newton and Einstein. In Western music it is the usual trio Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. And so on and so forth.
Murray makes a great effort in capturing non-Western culture by dedicating several inventories/rankings specifically for them, including numerous disciplines for the Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian cultures. His research methodology renders him as well versed in Japanese Art as Arabic Literature. His related analytical commentaries are fascinating and educative.
Murray preempts politically correct concerns by addressing them head on. How about representation of women? As an abstract of his findings, if you are looking for the greatest composers of all time it is just impossible to come up with an alternative to the Mozart-Beethoven-Bach trio. And, the same is true for the other rankings he developed. He mentioned that in his gathered inventory of significant figures 98.5% are male. Speculating that all the well established sources had been heavily biased against women and had missed 50% of such significant figures; that would mean the percentage of male/female significant figures would be 97%/3% instead of 98.5%/1.5%. Murray does not believe the mentioned sources were biased. But, he adds even if they were it would not have made a material difference as stated above. Murray explicitly states men and women are of equal intelligence. It is just that our societies are patriarchal. Access to activities leading to superlative achievements is limited for women. Biologically, women incur the burden of reproduction and child rearing that is a constraint on the maniacal focus needed to become one of the all-time-greats in anything.
How about representation of foreign cultures? As mentioned, Murray already dedicated numerous inventories/rankings to other cultures to give them more than their fair share of representation.
After ranking individuals, Murray goes on to developing chronologies of major events in all the mentioned disciplines. Then, he moves on to analyzing trends in creativity over time and geographical location. You get that just a few places over short period of times generated an inordinate number of luminaries such as Athens during the Greek antiquity and a few Italian cities during the Renaissance.
Murray is intrigued by this phenomenon. In chapters 15 and 16, he analyzes the factors contributing to generating many luminaries at any one time within a specific country. From his multivariate regression models we learn that the major contributing variables to generating such luminaries per country are: 1) # of political and financial centers; 2) # of cities with an elite university; 3) population of the largest city; 4) # of luminaries in the immediate preceding generation (defined as a 20 year span); and 5) GDP per capita. On page 380, he discloses the results of this model. And, it is surprisingly good. Using this model he estimated within + or - 10 the number of luminaries per country from 1400 to 1950. Less than 5% of the defined per country-period have an error greater than + or - 10 in the estimated number of luminaries.
Next, Murray attempts to explain what the model has not. He extensively looks at the role of government with the expected assessment (totalitarian ones are bad as they don't allow individual creativity). He also advances that the reason why Europeans dominate the rankings is because of religious considerations. Confucianism and Buddhism in Asia valued tradition, family, responsibility to community, and detachment from desire and individual aspiration. Murray feels Christianity allowed more room for individual achievements hence related human accomplishments thrived in Europe more than else where. Murray makes a case that Christianity fostered human accomplishments more than our modern secularism. This is because he feels religion gives a greater sense of life purpose than secularism. He extends his theory by explaining why he feels that the rate and quality of innovation in the arts and sciences has declined in the 20th century. Remember, he is not talking just about technology. He is questioning whether our civilization will ever produce music composers of the quality of a Beethoven, or painters comparable to Michelangelo, playwright matching Shakespeare, or even scientists matching Newton or Einstein (ok this last one is just on the cusp belonging in good part to the first half of the 20th century). Even though many would disagree, Murray makes a very interesting point. Do we really have another Michelangelo or Shakespeare to come?
For a much different view of the interaction between science and religion, I also recommend Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Mike Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design.
Top reviews from other countries
- thomas kReviewed in Canada on October 15, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly amazing read
This book changed my perspective on humanity
-
Jeunet ValérieReviewed in France on August 10, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars étude de sociologie
Pour tous ceux qui s'intéressent à ce que les hommes ont su inventer et réaliser au cours des siècles.
- KublaiReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2016
4.0 out of 5 stars Human accomplishment - in Christian culture and society
A statistical look at the great artists and scientists of human history. If you know your history there isn't too much to surprise in Murray's findings but it is a well put together book, and very fairly considered.
He finds (Spoilers!) that almost all the great scientists and artists of the world have been European. At one point he faces the figure of 97% being western. And he is extremely kind to Asian, Indian and Arab history throughout, inflating the role of these parts of the globe, which at times diminishes the whole point of his statistical method:
It is something of a contradiction to have to include Confucious as the number one Asian eminent figure, scholars in Neo-Confuciansm close behind, Buddhist thinkers also in the list, and later explain how their thinking was a main reason for Asian society being restricted, lacking curiosity and inspiration, and producing few noteworthy talents.
He also avoids/underplays the most obvious reason for western achievement for the majority of the book - which is Christianity. It is no coincidence that the places in which Christian culture bloomed with a sense of individual freedom and purpose - Renaissance Italy, and Protestant Northern Europe - are the exact places which contribute the vast majority of significant accomplishments.
It's a good book, and I applaud him for again going where he knows politically correct commentators don't want to look. However, in trying to keep their cries of disquiet to a minimum and maintain the possibility of discussion he rather misses the major points of his work. Michelangelo is often mentioned, but never the subjects about which his great works were concerned; he was a great artist because of his ability but also because of what he painted and sculpted: the touch between God and man, the Biblical David, etc. So many of the scientists he mentions did what they did because they were exploring God's laws. Greatness amongst human achievement is unequivocally linked to seeing the greatness of the Christian God, and living in a society that does, and Murray's statistics attest to this throughout.
- GHLReviewed in Canada on December 5, 2019
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
But boring...