Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 Years

Rating:
Summary: World's greatest labyrinth compendium
Review: A museum curator, Hermann Kern spent six years researching labyrinths for an exhibition in Italy in 1980. He then expanded that information and assembled the most complete compendium of labyrinth information ever assembled, from history to the modern era. Published by Prestel, a company in Munich, Germany, that specializes in art books, this compendium was available only in German until the current English edition, which took three years to translate and update. New material has been added to cover discoveries and contemporary labyrinths of the last 20 years, making this the most complete presentation of labyrinth information anywhere. It contains hundreds of photos. Granted, Hermann Kern is quite opinionated and confident of his opinions. Nevertheless, any serious labyrinth enthusiast should own this book. I rate it four rather than five stars because, except for a color section in the beginning, all of the photos are in black and white.

Rating:
Summary: The Labyrinth Bible
Review: This book is known by general consent as the "Labyrinth Bible" -the ultimate tool for the knowledge of the history and meaning of such a mysterious symbol.
Written by German lawyer and art historian Hermann Kern as a catalogue for a labyrinth exhibition hold at Milan, Italy, in 1981 this encyclopedic work covers the social and cultural world panorama from pre-history to modern times; the new English version is enriched with a new chapter by North-American expert Robert Ferré on modern labyrinth revival and with addenda written by British specialist Jeff Saward.
The cyclopic knowledge Hermann Kern shows in this complex, bewildering and paradoxical subject sounds sometimes ambivalent (like the symbol itself) but the book as a whole is a very good and important resource to understand the entangled complexity of this millenary symbol; with an almost thorough black-and-white catalogue (enriched with some magnificent colored photographs) of the most historical labyrinths known up to the 20th century; in addition to this the author approaches the several questions that baffle the labyrinth study like the origin of its conceptual idea or its symbolic meaning.
Historically the book is an impressive research from classical authors until recent geographical findings all over the world. However, his rationalistic approach misses the poetical (and potential) "Weltanschauung" needed to penetrate into the enlightened knowledge which transcends space, cultural concrete applications and time; besides this particular aspect this new version would deserve a better translation.
We, scholars, artists, researchers and enthusiasts are all indebted to Hermann Kern (as well as to Robert Ferré and Jeff Saward) for this (en)cyclopic work, which opened doors leading into the exciting field of further research.