Then and Now: The World’s Center and the Soul’s Demesne is a short book made up of two long essays. The first full of depth and knowledge, in which Eva Brann gets at the roots of our thinking – without tearing things apart. In this section Brann parses out the schema and meaning of Herodotus’s The History (The Persian Wars). In the second essay, the author delves into what it means for a person to unite a disposition toward conservatism with a capacity to reiterate and rehearse events, scenes, and dramas in “The Conservatory of the Imagination.”