Rating: 
Summary: Easy to read, a few nuggets.
Review: Although the author is excessively politically correct and spends too much time on theological fantasies, toward the end of the book he gives glimpses of the way the modern mind emerged from the middle ages. The book is very readable and that balances its weaknesses.
The final quarter of the book is the most interesting and least religiously oriented. There are glimpses of the scientific method emerging in the work of Bacon and Ockham and the idea of secular sovereignty being born in the work of Hobbes. It sent me to other books to read further, and that's a good thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Obscuring the Dark Ages
Review: Aristotle's Children costs $18 or less - not unreasonable, perhaps, for history light. Even that price, however, is perhaps too high to pay for the truths it correctly states: "The Aristotelian Revolution transformed Western thinking and set our culture on a path of scientific inquiry that it has followed ever since the Middle Ages (ix-x);" Aristotle's newly recovered Natural Books (libri naturales) did provide "the most comprehensive, accurate, well-integrated and satisfying account of the natural world that medieval readers had ever encountered" (80). "Europe depended upon Muslim and Jewish scholars for the recovery of its classical heritage (7)."
It may be a mistake to buy the book because the evidence Rubenstein offers for these truths is too often unreliable. Some of the mistakes Rubenstein makes are so obvious that they could be corrected on the internet, including its opening: The book begins with a paean to the Christian churchmen working in formerly Muslim Toledo rediscovering the bulk of Aristotle's writings. The first chapter begins with a sort of medieval medallion labeled: De anima by Aristotle. Then in chapter one bishop Raymond (d. 1187) holds the "new translation of De anima -- Aristotle's lost book on the soul" (12); the translators are Gundissalinus and his friend Avendauth. Much about what Rubenstein reports about the two is controversial, but one thing is certain: They did not translate Aristotle's De anima. Aristotle's De anima was first translated in the first half of the 12th century, not in the second half; it was first translated not in Muslim Spain from the Arabic, but by James of Venice from the Greek. What Gundissalinus and company translated was Avicenna's influential Liber de anima and Algazel's Logica et philosophia. These were immensely influential works, but they were not works by Aristotle.
This is annoying because there's a great truth here -- namely, that we owe a great debt to Muslim Spain -- but the proof offered is bogus. What is worse, the book gets wrong the questions we should be asking. It ignores, for example, important questions about the translations Western scholastics used.
When Western scholastics began lecturing on psychology they did not lecture on texts translated from Arabic; they carefully kept to the dauntingly difficult and very hard to understand translations from the Greek. They went to the great Muslim commentators, above all Averroes, to understand what the text meant, but they commented on the Muslim text only when the Greek based translation was unavailable (as it was for most of Aristotle's Metaphysics). Early commentators did not say why only their Metaphysics commentaries were based on the new translation (nova translatio) from the Arabic by Michael Scot. Why didn't they use this new translation that was so much easier to understand and came with an authoritative commentary? Not because they were great linguists. As their irate contemporary, Roger Bacon, pointed out, his contemporaries were no great shakes as philologists. So we should be asking what accounts for their continued allegiance to the Greek Aristotle and their unwillingness to use new translations based on Arabic.
Another problem is that difficult questions are described as if they were settled: Rubenstein waxes enthusiastic over the publicly supported universities of Muslim Spain (13). But it is by no means clear that there were universities as we know them in Muslim Spain. An important medieval Western contribution is the emergence of universities as independent corporations of masters and students. Again, it's not certain what the relationship between Aquinas and Moerbeke was (22). William of Auvergne based claims on his reading of Avicenna, very seldom Aristotle etc. etc.
Real questions are obscured by phony answers. It is not likely that "Farsighted popes and bishops ... [decided to marry] Christian Theology to Aristotelian science ..." The teaching of the so-called libri naturales comprised by the Metaphysics, Physics, De anima etc. was repeatedly banned at Paris, but permitted in the provinces, until the University of Paris went on strike -- not over freedom to teach, but because students were being beaten by local law officers. One provision in the agreement that brought them back was that the libri naturales would be bowdlerized, so that an edifying remainder could be taught. The committee appointed to do the job may never have met, but in any case the teaching went on, since the penalties for disobeying the ban were countermanded. The pope directed that any one who had incurred such penalties be absolved.
Again there's a real and important question: It is not about the decisions reached by men with ecclesiastical authority, it is about Christian Europe's intellectual leaders. Why did the most influential teachers at medieval Paris from Alexander of Hales and Philip the Chancellor to William of Auvergne (bishop of Paris) think that Aristotle could be safely taught? Why no great worry about heterodoxy?
Here are some answers that might be right: The exponents of the new Aristotelianism were personally devout, exemplary Christians. The extent of the challenge was not understood. Western Scholastics did not know for decades after they began reading Aristotle on the topic that he held views incompatible with creation. As late as 1266, in his Opus maius, Roger Bacon, claimed it was a mistake to hold that Aristotle denied creation. This was an intellectual question, not a matter for enlightened rulers, however farsighted. The intellectual leaders of the Muslim world reached the opposite conclusion and not without considering the question carefully. So this is perhaps the single most important question about the foundations of Western civilization, and it is an important disservice to obscure it.
Then there's the talk about the degeneration of scholasticism and the absurd hair-splitting of late scholasticism (9-11). But no names of deficient authors are provided -- and with good reason: Jacobus Zabarella (1538 - 1589), for example, is a contemporary of Galileo and no slouch. The only proof Rubenstein offers for his claim about scholasticism's "senile manifestations" (11) is that silly questions are debated such as whether we eat and drink after the resurrection. To this there are two replies: firstly, such questions were debated throughout the period (in eras Rubenstein praises as well those he deprecates), and secondly, the questions are not silly or trivial. Supposing we're interested (and I don't suppose we should be) in what kind of bodies the resurrected will have, then it's a pressing question whether there's eating and drinking in the afterlife. If resurrected saints have corporeal bodies, then probably the answer must be yes. Moreover, in debating these questions medieval philosophers raised important questions about personal identity and considered the kind of issues that continue to preoccupy philosophers today.
In short, I did not like the book, and I would not recommend it. I could continue this polemic, but there's no reason to think you'd enjoy its continuance.
Rating: 
Summary: More than just a history of how knowledge came to light
Review: Aristotle's Children is an informed and informative survey of Aristotle's legacy reveals how Christians, Muslims and Jews rediscovered the wisdom and findings of the Middle Ages, and charts the conflicts between militant religious groups and modernists who battled between opposing belief systems. Aristotle's Children is more than just a history of how knowledge came to light: it holds fascinating concepts for modern ideas, relationships between West and East, and how modern countries can keep open lines of conflict resolution and communication.
Rating:
Summary: Civilizations clashed before-- Dark Ages Illumined
Review: Aristotle's Children is one of those rare books dealing with potentially dry historical narratives that electrifies the dust of the past and brings vividly to life intellectual and human struggles of antiquity through the efflorescence of Christian and scientific Europe. Surfing waves of pagan philosophies through their translations and migrations within the orthodoxies and heresies of Christian, Jewish and Muslim contexts, Rubenstein renders accessible and gripping such diverse subjects as epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), the origins of Christian theology as a discipline, and many other threads of human thought crisscrossing landscapes of time, cultures, religions and thinkers. He commands the voice of a lively yet neutral narrator throughout, making this an excellent read for people of any or no faith tradition. While historical, this page turner naturally calls us to reflect on our own struggles with reconciling Faith and Reason, and our own troubled times, with deeper understanding. Contrary to some whacky interpretations of this solid work, there is no hatred or minimization of Catholicism, Europe, or Jewish scholars in this book, subconscious or otherwise, but a real appreciation of scholasticism at its best, and a fabulously true story with important implications for constructively engaging today's world.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but much more on non-Christian influence.
Review: Finally a book written for a general audience on the link between Aristotle and the monotheist tradition in the Middle Ages. Most could read this book,learn, and enjoy the story. However, I would have welcomed more on the link that the great Muslim thinker Averroes in Spain brought to the reexamination of the Greeks to the Enlightenment. Much has been written on the intellectual foundations to a Christian philosophical tradition but the book would have been "meatier" for me if the Islamic and Jewish line would have been explored by the author more deeply and it would have been interesting to see the historical reaction to the three monotheist traditions view of Aristotle coming together in the Middle Ages. Other than that, thought the book was a fun read during a cold, dark time.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Comparison of World Views
Review: I enjoyed the book and I recommend the book. His style is very readable. The first chapters are especially good. I never knew how Aristotle was re-introduced into the intellectual community of Western Europe in the middle ages. His description of the faith versus reason (Aristotle's teaching) struggle over the centuries is very interesting. However, the book drags towards the end. The author repeatedly makes the same points in the final chapters. His thesis is that we can learn from Aristotle and from history methods and attitudes that will unite faith and reason in our present day. However, his conclusions are confusing to me. The book as a whole gave me a better understanding of the faith versus reason struggle and how it started long before Galileo's dispute with the Catholic church.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended !
Review: I recommend this book for its clarity and perspective. It shows us the light to understand in part the so called Dark Age.
Rating:
Summary: Good work..but nothing new
Review: I was very excited with this book when i bought it.I wanted to know about how pagan philosophy got all tangled up with christianism and other religions.Altough Mr Rubenstein presents a good and well researched book,it's nothing new under the sun.Most of the information he writes about it's information well known.He doesnt break any new ground.One thing that i particularly found very good was that Mr Rubenstein explains the philosophical terms in a very simple manner.One thing i didnt like is that in the introduction Mr Rubenstein says that the Catholic Church accepted the contamination of philosophy with open arms and that also the catholic Church was a vehicle for knowledge and wisdom to spread thru Europe and the rest of the world.But when you read his book,he constantly says that the Catholic Church had to accept philosophy because it couldnt control it anymore.His arguments as to the Church's "good" intentions toward the spread and openess of science and other areas is not proven throught his book.But as an introduction to the subject is a very good book,but if you do more research you will find out that his conclusions are wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Very good but with flaws
Review: Let make it perfectly clear I throughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. That said I will go against custom and list what I liked about it first and disliked second. What I liked about it was the author has an excellent writing style that takes what can be (trust me I know) a very dry subject and render it interesting and accessible without dumbing it down. Further Mr. Rubentstein works in both the details of Aristotle's philosophy and its growth in the west and the lives of the characters involved superbly. This is different than most histories of the time period involved which have covered the spread of Aristotle's thought without really explaining it and have more or less ignored the lives of the people involved. Also Mr. Rubenstein to his credit has noted that he started his work under the impression that the Catholic Church would be revealed as a hinderance to learning and discovered to the contrary that the Church after some considerable initial trepidation enthusiastically embraced the philosophy of Aristotle. Now on the flip side. Mr Rubenstein gives very short shrift to the times before and after the period of the 12th-13th centuries. Relegating the the time prior to them as the "Dark Ages" and simply ending his book around the dawn of the 14th century. This is a critical lack in that the time up to the time period covered in the book was hardly a time of intellectual ignorance (see the Church Fathers)and despite what Mr. Rubenstein seems to think, the use of Greek philosophical thought has continued to the present day particulary in the Catholic Church which he seems to think has abandoned it and adopted an antagonistic view towards science and reason. NB Virtually all Catholic priests have undergraduate degrees in Philosophy (or close to it) and Pope John Paul II has a Phd in Philosophy and but has written a reconciliation of faith and reason called Fides et Ratio. Further, although the book is incredibly well researched I get the feeling that Mr. Rubenstein just didn't know the subject very well before he started his research. This may explain his intial misconceptions about the Catholic Church and his giving such short shrift to the time periods before and after the events of the book. Overall very good, but for a more complete study of the subject I highly recomend The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries by James J. Walsh along with Religion and the Rise of Western Civilization by the incomparable Christopher Dawson and Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II.
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating
Review: My interest is medieval history and this work provides a very readable perspective of major scholars and ideas during the medieval period. Rubenstein covers a lot, some of the major attention goes to: Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, Peter Abelard; heretics such as Henry the Monk, the Cathars; William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Siger de Brabant, William of Ockham (Ockhams razor), Meister Eckhart. Discussions of Scholasticism and the University of Paris are excellent. Overall the theme of the book is the historical integration of rationalism with religion.. science with god in modern terms. By wrapping the story of these scholars around the central theme of the rediscovery of Aristotles works, Rubenstein has illuminated their lives and works with a meaning and significance other bibliographies and historical narratives miss or are unable to fully capture.
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