The Silver Chair Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an incredibly important book.
For some reason, this was the one Narnia book I could never get all the way through as a boy even though I was an otherwise voracious reader. I'm not really sure why. I just finished reading it to one of my own sons and he seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I wish now that I'd read it all the way through a long time ago. This is nothing less than a children's introduction to Christian spiritual warfare, in some ways far more general and comprehensive than Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" which covers the same subject for adults.
In order of authorship and according to the original ordering of the series "The Silver Chair" is number 4, coming between "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "The Horse and his Boy". Under the current numbering by the internal chronology of the narrative, it's second to last. In many ways neither ordering is really the most useful. In broad terms, the books divide thematically between allegorical (or better, fanciful) representations of salvation history, and guides to Christian living. Into the first category fall "The Magician's Nephew", "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", "Prince Caspian", and "The Last Battle". The second category has "The Horse and his Boy", "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", and "The Silver Chair". I believe this last is the most significant.
Lewis himself always denied his works were intended to be strictly allegorical, and in the case of the salvation history volumes this may well be the case. Element by element assignment from reality to story usually breaks down once you get past Aslan as Christ, and even where characters or events are not made to do double duty at different points (such as Edmund in "Lion") it's not alway possible to carry out this operation reliably. ("Applicability", as Lewis' friend J.R.R. Tolkien termed it, is another matter.) But "The Silver Chair" is far more nearly allegorical than the others, with symbolism that's crystal clear. This makes the lessons it teaches, in the context of a high fantasy adventure, all the more accessible.
It would take a long essay to explore all the lessons in this book so I'm not going to do that here, but they're not difficult to identify for an adult with a moderately thorough Christian education. Lewis packs an incredible number of subjects into this short book, everything from repentance and forgiveness to the basics of the theology of the image of God in our human nature. (Although in other works Lewis has promulgated what is, to Eastern Christian eyes, a faulty Augustinian Pneumatology, his treatment of the image here makes me think he must have been familiar with at least some Eastern Church Fathers.)
Lewis also anticipates, and armors his readers against, modern trends already evident in his time such as the despair engendered by the prevailing nihilism, extreme materialism, secular humanism, and others. He was very much spot-on in indentifying those ideas that would come to present the greatest temptations to Christian believers in the decades to follow, and this work, among others, reflects that. This means it's useful and relevant even today, over 50 years since it was written.
I now regret deeply that I never gave this book the attention it deserved when I was younger. I don't know, of course, how much of a difference it would have made, but it might have made at least some. As difficult as it is these days to be a Christian, no help can be neglected. If you're a parent of a Narnia reader, do what you can to make sure they don't skip this one. If you *are* a Narnia reader, "The Silver Chair" is worth your full attention and then some. It's a fun adventure too.

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Jill and Eustace must rescue the Prince from the evil Witch.

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Arthur Szyk: Artist, Jew, Pole Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent book for anyone interested in both art and history. I found it well documented and scholarly. The author includes many of Szyk's beautiful full-color illustrations.

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Artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk was a Polish Jew whose work was overwhelmingly Jewish in theme and content. In a lifetime of creativity that spanned many of the major events of the twentieth century and took him from Poland to France, England, and the United States, the mission he set himself was to use his artistic talents to serve humanity and the Jewish people. Though his politics were dictated by what he thought would be good for the Jews, his work as a political artist went well beyond a narrow definition of the Jewish cause. He is best known among Jews for his illustrated Haggadah, but the overwhelming majority of his work deals with contemporary political themes and social causes. In his native Poland, Szyk promoted the causes of freedom, toleration, and human dignity, drawing his inspiration from the Old Testament. He believed that as a Jewish artist he had a responsibility to speak for all minorities. His famous illustration of the historical Statute of Kalisz symbolized his belief that the newly re-established Polish state would welcome all its citizens into full and equal participation.Even though at that time he was already based outside Poland, he worked for many years on behalf of the Polish government in an effort to strengthen the Jews' position. Szyk left Europe in 1940 and arrived in the United States via Canada later the same year. Determined as ever to use his art for political purposes, he crusaded against the Nazis through newspaper and magazine cartoons, posters and public exhibitions. Convinced that Hitler would not stop with the Jews but would suppress all freedom-loving people, he supported the war effort through his striking propaganda images of the German and Japanese armies, to great effect. After the war he turned his efforts to promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel. In every phase of his career, one finds Szyk looking to the past but hoping for the future; he believed that art could make a difference in the world, politically and socially.Joseph Ansell's biography makes a singular contribution to the history of Jewish art and of Polish-Jewish relations in the first half of the twentieth century.

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