Peter Watson (intellectual historian)

Peter Watson (born 1943) is an intellectual historian and former journalist, now perhaps best known for his work in the history of ideas.

He was educated at the universities of Durham, London, and Rome. Watson was deputy editor of New Society, and was for four years a member of the Insight team at The Sunday Times. He was New York correspondent of The Times and has written for The Observer, Punch, The Spectator and The New York Times. His journalistic work has included detailed investigation of auction houses and the international market in stolen antiquities, which has resulted in books and TV documentaries.

In June 1997 Watson became a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge. He has published thirteen books, including The German Genius, published by Simon & Schuster in 2010.^[1][2] His latest is 2012's The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New.

In an interview on CBC News on May 5, 2007, Watson stated: "Religion has kept civilization back for hundreds of years, and the biggest mistake in the history of civilization, is ethical monotheism, the concept of the one God. Let's get rid of it and be rational."^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography [edit]

• Watson, Peter (2012). The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780061672453. 
• Watson, Peter (2010). The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-076023-0. 
• Watson, Peter (2007). Nothing Is an Accident. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press. ISBN 1-4327-0378-1. 
• Watson, Peter; Cecilia Todeschini (2007). The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities—From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums. Jackson, TN: PublicAffairs/Perseus Books. ISBN 1-58648-438-9. 
• Watson, Peter (2006). Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-093564-2. 
• Watson, Peter (2005). Landscape of Lies (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries). New York: Felony & Mayhem Press. ISBN 1-933397-18-7. 
• Watson, Peter (2002). The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-008438-3. 
• Watson, Peter (1998). Sotheby's: The Inside Story. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-41403-7. 
• Watson, Peter (1989). Wisdom and Strength, the Biography of a Renaissance Masterpiece. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-09-174637-X. 
• Watson, Peter (1984). The Caravaggio Conspiracy. New York: Penguin/Doubleday. ISBN 0-14-007635-2. 
• Watson, Peter (1978). War on the Mind: the Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09065-6. 

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• A video featuring Peter Watson at Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study (Durham), titled The Enchantment of Ideas, can be found here.
• Another video featuring Peter Watson giving a lecture in New York on the theft of antiquities can be found here.

This article about a writer or poet from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e