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Toward Modernity: European Jewish Model
by Jacob KatzFirst Published in 2017. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.
Two Hundred Years of American Communes
by Yaacov OvedThe United States is the only modern nation in which communes have continuously existed for the past two hundred years. This definitive history of communes in America examines the major factors that have supported the existence and growth of communes throughout American history. The most impressive survey of the communal experience since the works of Noyes and Nordhoff, it is informed by a deep respect for the human subjects and organizational forms of American communes. The findings in the analytical chapters are of considerably theoretical import beyond the historical narrative.Oved details the founding, growth, development, and sometimes failure of alternative societies from 1735 to 1939: Icaria, Ephrata, Oneida, Shaker, religious, secular, and socialist communes. Extensive reference material cited will assure this work a special place in the archives of the literature on communes.
Jews Among the Nations
by Erich KahlerThis is an augmented edition of a superb volume by one of the foremost analysts of European institutions and ideas. Here the late Erich Kahler turns his attention to the special character of the Jewish people, formed uniquely through the interaction of internal and external circumstances in which past and present merge.The chapters in this book deal with persistent problems of Jewish identity. Kahler claims these can be fully understood only by awareness of the close interconnection between the singular ethnic nature and the unique social structure of the Jewish people. He discusses the Jews in Europe, specifically the historical implications of a strict tribal ritual that yet permitted the widest spiritual scope.The second half of the book concerns anti-Semitism, in relation to Jews and Germans. How did the German people, seemingly so congenial to the Jews, develop a murderous revulsion against them, ending a long and fruitful symbiosis? Kahler sees this as a parallel to the parricidal rejection of the Jews by the Christian church. His argument is deepened in an added chapter, new to this volume, on the major forms and features of anti-Judaism, 'in which the earlier theme of the universal and the specific are seen as central not only to the inner history of Judaism but also to the specific interaction of Jews and Gentiles throughout social history.
Edmund Burke: Appraisals and Applications (Library Of Conservative Thought Ser.)
by Daniel E. RitchieThe eighteenth century remains contemporary more than 200 years later because the fundamental questions raised then about politics in both the American and French Revolutions still speak to us. The writings of Edmund Burke on these and other political events of his time are today acknowledged as the basis of modern conservative thought. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of interpretative essays on Burke, and serves as a basic introduction to this seminal thinker.A member of the British Parliament from 1766 to 1794, Edmund Burke had sympathized with the American War of Independence and argued for reform of British policy toward Ireland and India, but he surprised many of his friends by his early, vehement opposition to the French Revolution. This volume brings together assessments of these and other statements by Burke by contemporaries such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt, along with essays by Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk, who established his significance for twentieth-century conservatism.This is a collection of the best, previously published interpretive essays on Burke. It will be of interest to all those interested in the philosophical roots of conservatism, in the history of political thought, in revolution, and in modern political ideologies.
Encyclopaedia of Soviet Life
by Ilya ZemtsovA by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with novoe politichaskoe myshenie - new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society.The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic.This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology.This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. Encyclopedia of Soviet Life is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.
Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution (The Library of Conservative Thought #Vol. 1)
by Peter J. StanlisTwo centuries after Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France, his name and reputation stand alongside Locke, Montesquieu, and Hume - the other still-cited grand political thinkers of the eighteenth century. For those great nations that have fallen into what Burke called "the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion and unavailing sorrow," the work of Burke supplies that sense of order, justice and freedom the present age seems to require.This volume by Peter Stanlis has grown out of almost four decades of studying Burke. Today, Professor Stanlis is called by Russell Kirk "the leading American authority on the political thought of the great conservative reformer." The book is divided into three categories: Burke on law and politics; Burke's criticism of Enlightenment rationalism and sensibility; and Burke's theory of revolution and critique of the English revolution of 1688.Stanlis' reasons' for linking Burke to the English Revolution rather than the later, and admittedly more decisive American and French Revolutions of his own time, is that for Burke, that earlier event was the normative pivot for judging how to make important changes in civil society. Indeed, even in his writings on the contemporary revolutions of his time,. Stanlis reminds us that Burke interpreted revolutionary events in France and Americas through the prism of the bloodless Revolution of 1688.
Theophrastus: His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings (Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities)
by William FortenbaughTheophrastus of Eresus was Aristotle's pupil and successor as head of the Peripatetic School. He is best known as the author of the amusing Characters and two ground-breaking works in botany, but his writings extend over the entire range of Hellenistic philosophic studies. Volume 5 of Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities focuses on his scientific work. The volume contains new editions of two brief scientific essays-On Fish and Afeteoro/o^y-accompanied by translations and commentary.Among the contributions are: "Peripatetic Dialectic in the De sensibus," Han Baltussen; "Empedocles" Theory of Vision and Theophrastus' De sensibus," David N. Sedley; "Theophrastus on the Intellect," Daniel Devereux; "Theophrastus and Aristotle on Animal Intelligence," Eve Browning Cole; "Physikai doxai and Problemata physika from Aristotle to Agtius (and Beyond)," Jap Mansfield; "Xenophanes or Theophrastus? An Aetian Doxographicum on the Sun," David Runia; "Place1 in Context: On Theophrastus, Fr. 21 and 22 Wimmer," Keimpe Algra; "The Meteorology of Theophrastus in Syriac and Arabic Translation," Hans Daiber; "Theophrastus' Meteorology, Aristotle and Posidonius," Ian G. Kidd; "The Authorship and Sources of the Peri Semeion Ascribed to Theophrastus," Patrick Cronin; "Theophrastus, On Fish" Robert W. Sharpies.
United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775-1938
by Ralph E. WeberUnited States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775-1938 is the first basic reference work on American diplomatic cryptography. Weber's research in national and private archives in the Americas and Europe has uncovered more than one hundred codes and ciphers. Beginning with the American Revolution, these secret systems masked confidential diplomatic correspondence and reports.During the period between 1775 and 1938, both codes and ciphers were employed. Ciphers were frequently used for American diplomatic and military correspondence during the American Revolution. At that time, a system was popular among American statesmen whereby a common book, such as a specific dictionary,was used by two correspondents who encoded each word in a message with three numbers. In this system, the first number indicated the page of the book, the second the line in the book, and the third the position of the plain text word on that line counting from the left. Codes provided the most common secret language basis for the entire nineteenth century.Ralph Weber describes in eight chapters the development of American cryptographic practice. The codes and ciphers published in the text and appendix will enable historians and others to read secret State Department dispatches before 1876, and explain code designs after that year.
The Ways of Desire
by Joel MarksFirst Published in 2017. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.
Cuba, Cubans and Cuban-Americans: A Bibliography
by Jesse J. DossickFirst Published in 2018. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.
Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology
by Gunther StentWhat prompts a well-renowned scientist in molecular biology to write memoirs about a part of his life? In the case of Gunther Stent, it was not to reflect on his career as a scientist, but to come to an understanding of his own soul. In his seventies, he had come to see that he had been, throughout his life, an emotional sleepwalker, especially as regards women and, in addition, that he had been troubled by Jewish self-hatred. His story may have more to do with St. Augustine's Confessions than with a scientist's memoirs. Stent provides insight into the power of political correctness, and the ability of a government to establish a perverse vision of reality. For readers interested in bioethics, Stent's memoirs help to explain how Germany could have been the first country to enact an all-encompassing protection for human research subjects while it was also the country that produced the medical experiments of the Nazis and the greatest perversion of medical morality in history. Stent is a person of intelligence and subtlety, an accomplished writer, a deep and wise man, and a loyal friend. His narrative is centered emotionally on a youth spent in Berlin in the Nazi period. As a boy of fourteen he was an eyewitness of the horrors of the Kristallnacht pogrom.On New Year's Eve 1938 he escaped from Germany across the "green frontier." He came to America in his teens, only to return to Berlin at the end of World War II as a scientific consultant for the U.S. Military. On his return to the States, Stent participated in the exciting early scientific breakthroughs of molecular biology that transformed the twentieth-century life sciences. His Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology is a piercing self-examination, and as its review in Science Newsletter says, "an act of self-exposure, abnegation, contrition, and expiation." It will be of keen interest to those who have inhabited Stent's worlds or shared his experiences, as well as those who wish to learn more about them. Gunther S. Stent is professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of such classic texts as Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses and Molecular Genetics, as well as philosophical books, such as The Coming of the Golden Age, Paradoxes of Progress, and, most recently (2002), Paradoxes of Free Will.
A Present of Things Past: Selected Essays
by Theodore DraperTheodore Draper is one of America's most trenchant and informed critics. A Present of Things Past gathers together ten of his most recent and most powerful selected essays, in which Draper, with his customary acuity and wit, tackles a host of issues that define America's political culture. A Present of Things Past is concerned with a reexamination of the Second World War in both its military and its political aspects; the trajectory of American conservatism as it manifested itself during the Reagan years; the rise of Gorbachev and the history of "reform" in the Soviet Union; the revisionist debate over the origins and history of American communism; and the persistent mystery of a man named Max Eitingon, who was, depending on one's reading of the sources, either an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis or an agent of the Soviet secret police, or both. In "American Hubris," Draper illuminates the assumptions that have guided American foreign policy in the postwar period, and concludes that our costly misadventures--in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and elsewhere--cannot be considered a string of aberrations. They were, he argues, a consequence of the Truman Doctrine. In "Reagan's Junta," Draper observes: "This is supposed to have been the era of the imperial presidency. It has turned out to be the era of presidencies that have tried to make themselves imperial-and failed." Throughout these compelling essays, Draper demonstrates the uses and abuses to which history has been put by ideologues of both the left and the right. He finds unacceptable, for example, the practice of many journalists of fictionalizing their sources. The New York Times has called Draper "one of the clearer-eyed observers of the issues that torment us." A Present of Things Past enhances that reputation.
Archetypes of Thought
by Thomas MolnarIn Archetypes of Thought, originally published in 1991 with the title Philosophical Grounds, Thomas Molnar follows seven basic themes of Western philosophical speculation from their development in the earliest times of systematic thought through their evolution through the centuries and civilizations to the present. Some of the themes are origin and its reflection, guilt of being, one and the multiple, the temptation of mechanization, and nocturnal man. The book is neither a chronological treatment of issues nor a list of philosophical schools and movements. Rather, it reaches for the archetypes of philosophical reasoning. Molnar shows the presence of modern themes in the entire history of thinking, traces technology to the first stirrings of rationalism, and evinces modern man's feeling of culpability. Throughout, the soul is perceived as the keeper of God's and man's secret, one which reflects reality and also tries to organize it according to an ontologically implanted rhythm. In his new introduction, Molnar explains and re-examines his reasons for writing the book. While the themes he covers have been widely dealt with in contemporary thought, they are brought together to form an original combination of philosophical concepts. Archetypes of Thought is an intriguing study of the evolution of philosophical thinking. It is essential reading for both students and professionals of philosophy, history, and sociology.
Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis De Tocqueville
by Alan Kahan"Liberalism" is widely used to describe a variety of social and political ideas, but has been an especially difficult concept for historians and political scientists to define. Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville define one type of liberal thought. They share an aristocratic liberalism marked by distaste for the masses and the middle class, opposition to the commercial spirit, fear and contempt of mediocrity, and suspicion of the centralized state. Their fears are combined with an elevated ideal of human personality, an ideal which affirms modernity. All see their ideals threatened in the immediate future, and all hope to save European civilization from barbarism and militarism through some form of education, although all grow more pessimistic towards the end of their lives.Aristocratic Liberalism ignores the national boundaries that so often confine the history of political thought, and uses the perspective thus gained to establish a pan-European type of political thought. Going beyond Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, Aristocratic Liberalism argues for new ways of looking at nineteenth-century liberalism. It corrects many prevalent misconceptions about liberalism, and suggests new paths for arriving at a better understanding of the leading form of nineteenth-century political thought. The new Afterword by the author presents a novel description of liberal political language as the "discourse of capacity," and suggests that this kind of language is the common denominator of all forms of European liberalism in the nineteenth century. Aristocratic Liberalism will be valuable to students of history, political science, sociology, and political philosophy.
Aristotle and His Philosophy
by Abraham EdelIn this stunning act of synthesis, Abraham Edel captures the entire range of Aristotle's thought in a manner that will prove attractive and convincing to a contemporary audience. Many philosophers approach Aristotle with their own, rather than his, questions. Some cast him as a partisan of a contemporary school. Even the neutral approach of classical scholarship often takes for granted questions that reflect our modern ways of dissecting the world.Aristotle and His Philosophy shows him at work in asking and answering questions. Abraham Edel fashions a sound comparative way of using current analysis to deepen our understanding of Aristotle rather than argue with or simply appropriate him. Edel examines how Aristotle's basic ideas operated in his scientific and humanistic works, what they enabled him to do, what they kept him from doing, and what in turn we can learn from his philosophical experimentation.The purpose of this volume is twofold: to provide a comprehensive introduction to Aristotle's thought, and to throw fresh light on its patterned and systematic character. First, tracing the pattern in Aristotle's metaphysical and physical writings, he then explores the psychology, epistemology, ethics and politics, rhetoric and poetics. In the process, Edel discusses the way interpretations of Aristotle are built up and how different philosophical outlooks Catholic, Hegelian, Marxian, linguistic, naturalistic, and pragmatic have affected the reading of Aristotelian texts and ideas.The new introduction probes the general problem of interpreting a philosophy, and suggests how working through the different interpretations can contribute to a fuller understanding. This methodological self-consciousness makes Aristotle and His Philosophy markedly different from other studies of Aristotle. Martha C. Nussbaum of Brown University has described Edel as having "philosophical sensitivity and good sense throughout. His scholarship is comprehensive, but handled with grace and clarity."
Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings
by Gertnid LenzerAlthough Auguste Comte is conventionally acknowledged as one of the founders of sociology and as a key representative of positivism, few new editions of his writings have been published in the English language in this century. He has become virtually dissociated from the history of modern positivism and the most recent debates about it. Gertrud Lenzer maintains that the work of Comte is, for better or for worse, essential to an understanding of the modern period of positivism. This collection provides new access to the work of Comte and gives practitioners of various disciplines the possibility of reassessing concepts that were first introduced in Comte's writings.Today much of the ordinary business of academic disciplines is conducted under the assumption that the realm of science is essentially separate from the realms of politics and science. A close reading of Comte will reveal how deeply such current ideas and theories were originally embedded in a particular political context. One of his central methodological principles was that the theory of society had to be removed from the arena of political practice precisely in order to control that practice by means of these same sciences. It is in Comte's work that the reader will be able to observe how the forces of social and political reaction began to be powerfully organized to combat the critical forces in its own and later eras. Auguste Comte and Positivism will be of importance to the work of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, and historians.
Austria in the European Union (Contemporary Austrian Studies #Vol. 10)
by Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Michael GehlerAustria joined the European Union in 1995, with the overwhelming support of its citizenry. In June 1994, a record 66.6 percent of the Austrian population voted in favor of joining the Union, and Austria acceded on January 1, 1995. Only three years later, in the second half of 1998, Austria assumed its first presidency of the European Union. Its competent conduct of the Union's business enhanced its reputation. The sense that Austria was a role model collapsed overnight, after a new conservative People's Party (iVP/FPi) coalition government was formed in Austria in early February 2000. Austria became Europe's nightmare.This volume has two purposes. The first is to assess Austria's first five years in the European Union. The second is Austria's ongoing struggle with its past. Heinrich Neisser evaluates and assesses Austria's commitment to the European Union. Thomas Angerer offers a long-term perspective of regionalization and globalization trends in Austrian foreign affairs. Waldemar Hummer analyzes contradictions between Austrian neutrality and Europe's emerging common security policy. Johannes Pollak and Sonja Puntscher Rieckmann look at current debates over weighing future voting rights in the European Commission. Michael Huelshoff evaluates Austria's EU presidency in 1998 and compares it to the subsequent 1999 German presidency. Gerda Falkner examines the withering away of the previously much admired Austrian welfare state. Walter Manoschek scrutinizes the Nazi roots of Jorg Haider's Freedom Party. Michael Gehler critiques the EU sanctions and bemoans the absence of mediation through transnational Christian conservative parties.In reviewing how Austria deals with World War II, Richard Mitten investigates discourses on victimhood in postwar Austria and the place of Jews in this process. A "Roundtable" presents overwhelming evidence of Austrians' deep involvement in Nazi war crimes, and includes articles by Sabine Loitfellner and Winfried Garscha. This addition to the Contemporary Austrian Studies series will be welcomed by political scientists, historians and legal scholars, particularly those with a strong interest in European affairs.
Austria in the Twentieth Century (Studies in Austrian and Central European History and Culture #Vol. 1)
by Gino GermaniThese fourteen essays by leading Austrian historians and political scientists serve as a basic introduction to a small but sometimes trend-setting European country. They provide a basic up-to-date outline of Austria's political history, shedding light on economic and social trends as well. No European country has experienced more dramatic turning points in its twentieth-century history than Austria. This volume divides the century into three periods. The five essays of Section I deal with the years 1900-1938. Under the relative tranquility of the late Habsburg monarchy seethed a witch's brew of social and political trends, signaling the advent of modernity and leading to the outbreak of World War I and eventually to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. The First Austrian Republic was one of the succession states that tried to build a nation against the backdrop of political and economic crisis and simmering civil war between the various political camps. Democracy collapsed in 1933 and an authoritarian regime attempted to prevail against pressures from Nazi Germany and Nazis at home. The two essays in Section II cover World War II (1938-1945). In 1938, Hitler's "Third Reich" annexed Austria and the population was pulled into the cauldron of World War II, fighting and collaborating with the Nazis, and also resisting and fleeing them. The seven essays of Section III concentrate on the Second Republic (1945 to the present). After ten years of four-power Allied occupation, Austria regained her sovereignty with the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. The price paid was neutrality. Unlike the turmoil of the prewar years, Austria became a "normal" nation with a functioning democracy, one building toward economic prosperity. After the collapse of the "iron curtain" in 1989, Austria turned westward, joining the European Union in 1995. Most recently, with the advent of populist politics, Austria's political system has experienced a sea of change departing from its political economy of a huge state-owned sector and social partnership as well as Proporz. This informed and insightful volume will serve as a textbook in courses on Austrian, German and European history, as well as in comparative European politics.
Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity (Contemporary Austrian Studies #Vol. 14)
by Gunter Bischof Anton PelinkaWhen the Hapsburg monarchy disintegrated after World War I, Austria was not considered to be a viable entity. In a vacuum of national identity the hapless country drifted toward a larger Germany. After World War II, Austrian elites constructed a new identity based on being a "victim" of Nazi Germany. Cold war Austria, however, envisioned herself as a neutral "island of the blessed" between and separate from both superpower blocs. Now, with her membership in the European Union secured, Austria is reconstructing her painful historical memory and national identity. In 1996 she celebrates her 1000-year anniversary.In this volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies, Franz Mathis and Brigitte Mazohl-Wallnig argue that regional identities in Austria have deeper historical roots than the many artificial and ineffective attempts to construct a national identity. Heidemarie Uhl, Anton Pelinka, and Brigitte Bailer discuss the post-World War II construction of the victim mythology. Robert Herzstein analyses the crucial impact of the 1986 Waldheim election imploding Austria's comforting historical memory as a "nation of victims." Wolfram Kaiser shows Austria's difficult adjustments to the European Union and the larger challenges of constructing a new "European identity." Chad Berry's analysis of American World War II memory establishes a useful counterpoint to construction of historical memory in a different national context.A special forum on Austrian intelligence studies presents a fascinating reconstruction by Timothy Naftali of the investigation by Anglo-American counterintelligence into the retreat of Hitler's troops into the Alps during World War II. Rudiger Overmans' "research note" presents statistics on lower death rates of Austrian soldiers in the German army. Review essays by Gunther Kronenbitter and Gunter Bischof, book reviews, and a 1995 survey of Austrian politics round out the volume. Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity will be of intense interest to foreign policy analysts, historians, and scholars concerned with the unique elements of identity and nationality in Central European politics.
Babbitts and Bohemians from the Great War to the Great Depression
by Elizabeth StevensonBabbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account of the 1920s, a decade that seems almost mythical to some. Elizabeth Stevenson finds that the true twenties was a society of contrast. On the one hand, it was an era of sameness and political conformity, but on the other hand, it was also a time of cultural revolt. In places labeled Main Street and Middletown the citizenry followed a conventional pattern. At the same time, while most of America enjoyed the good life of this period, bohemians in Greenwich Village and expatriates in Paris were fervently scornful of it.The author explores the new sense of self and the world during this period, especially evident in the writings of Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Glenway Wescott, William Faulkner, and others. Stevenson writes about numerous facets of the 1920s: the brilliant entertainers, Harlem's brief period of glory, the worsening conditions in the South, the hero worship of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, and the stockmarket crash in 1929 that brought an abrupt end to the golden years. In the new introduction, the author reflects on her personal experience and discusses how the 1920s affected her family. She goes on to talk about how living in the tumultuous 1960s prompted her to write Babbitts and Bohemians. While she concedes that there were some not so glorious times during the 1920s, she still considers it a period where the vitality of life exhibited itself in all sorts of interesting and entertaining new ways.Elizabeth Stevenson succeeds admirably in conveying the spirit and the history of the era: the people and the mood that shaped the times; the political, international, and economic apathy; the conformity and rebellion of a decade unlike any other before or since. Babbitts and Bohemians will be enjoyed by all, especially historians, sociologists, and political scientists.
Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Quality Paperbacks Ser.)
by William GardnerWilliam Safire was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon from 1968 to 1973. During that time, as a Washington insider, Safire was able to observe the thirty-seventh president in his entirety: as noble and mean-spirited; as good and bad; as a man desirous of greatness. Rarely has there been a White House memoir more intimate or revealing in its exploration of the great events that took place "before the fall" of Watergate. In this anecdotal history, Nixon and his associates come alive, not as caricatures, but as men with high and low purpose: Henry Kissinger, William Rogers, H. R. (Bob) Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and Arthur Burns struggle not just for power, but for ideals. As William Safire says in his Prologue: "In this memoir, which is neither a biography of [Nixon] nor an autobiography of me nor a narrative history of our times, there is an attempt to figure out what was good and bad about him, what he was trying to do and how well he succeeded, how he used and affected some of the people around him, and an effort not to lose sight of all that went right in examining what went wrong." The book is divided into ten sections, in which run three main themes: the President, the Partisan, and the Person. As a president, Safire discusses Nixon and the Vietnam War, foreign policy, economics, and race relations. As a partisan, he discusses Nixon's attempt to form an alignment across party lines, successful in many respects before the president tolerated the excesses that eventually corrupted his administration. And as a person, Safire finds that Nixon was a mixture of Woodrow Wilson, Machiavelli, Theodore Roosevelt, and Shakespeare's Cassius--an idealistic conniver evoking the strenuous life while he thinks too much. This paperback edition of a classic primary source for historians includes a new introduction by its author. Studded with direct quotations that put the reader in the room where history was being made, Before the Fall is a realistic, shades-of-gray study of the Nixon years.
Bernanos: His Political Thought and Prophecy
by Thomas MolnarThomas Molnar's Bernanos is an illuminating study of the personal evolution of the French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos from a reactionary royalist to a religiously principled anti-fascist. It also provides a detailed account of the intellectual divisions within the French Catholic Right and suggests a number of parallels with intellectual and literary figures on the secular and religious left including Zola, Peguy, and Simone Weil. But, as Molnar points out, the significance of Bernanos is not exhausted by his writings. Bernanos the man is as deserving of attention as is Bernanos the novelist, essayist, and social critic.Molnar shows Bernanos against the troubled political-religious background of modern France: the Dreyfus case, the disillusionment following World War I, the Franco regime, Vichy, and the beginnings of the cold war. Whatever touched France touched Bernanos, and he flung himself into each crisis, not armed with a political system nor an academically sanctioned philosophy, but with a peasant's respect for what is and a Christian's sense of what might be. The portrait that Molnar draws is that of a passionately concerned Christian who knows that truth is hard to come by, but who is ready to follow it wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences.A crucial theme covered by Molnar is Bernanos' long and conflicted relations with Charles Maurras and the Action Francaise. He makes clear the extent to which Bernanos' fervent Catholicism set him apart from Maurras whose positivistic inspiration and passion for order helped lay the groundwork for the political collapse that led to the Vichy regime. Thomas Molnar's book is a fascinating account of Georges Bernanos' stature as both a political thinker and an important novelist. Bernanos will be enjoyed by historians, political scientists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of literature.
Between Generations: Family Models, Myths and Memories (Memory And Narrative Ser.)
by Daniel Bertaux & Paul ThompsonBetween Generations concerns powerful memories that continue to shape the present, but in this case in almost all families throughout the world. What is it that parents pass down to their children? How can we understand the mixture of conscious and unconscious models, myths, and material inheritance that are intertwined in both family and individual life stories? These questions turn out to be unexpectedly complicated, and answering them has suggested how a life-story approach can provide a new key to research on the dynamics of the family and on social change. Because culture is the essence of what makes individual humans into a group, the core of human social identity, its continuity is vital. Cultures are always changing, but the stability of languages, religions, and cultural habits can be astonishing. In contrast to the claims of culture to represent tradition over centuries, stands the sheer brevity of individual human life. Hence, the universal necessity for transmission between generations exists. This edition in the Memory and Narrative series, brings together, contributions from the Americas and Asia as well as from Western and Eastern Europe. They combine the techniques of life story research with the insights of family therapy. Interdisciplinary and intellectually stimulating, the volume will appeal to students in many areas, including history, sociology, literature, psychology, and anthropology.
Bismarck and the Creation of the Second Reich
by Friedrich DarmstaedterChancellor Otto Bismarck's "greatness" lay in what he created, the German Reich of 1871. This Reich was the product of his genius, and in it his genius took complete shape. In less than a decade German chaos was brought to an end and in its place a homogeneous state began to arise. The structure of this state left no room for opposing political forces, but rather made ready a roof under which these forces might rally, support each other, and gain strength. Bismarck and the Creation of the Second Reich begins as a biography but continues as a description of his political life and the ideas that led to the birth of an authoritarian political culture.The community from which Bismarck formed his conception of the state was first the family and clan, then the landlord caste, and finally the people. These communities found their unifying force in the Kaiser, who as their patriarchal head enjoyed divine honors as ruler by the grace of God. The existence of the state was justified as the framework within which these communities existed, and it had thus a biological as well as a religious content. This idea of the state as the supreme moral command of religion was too powerful a driving force to be dropped in favor of the rational view of the state as a potential war machine. Bismarck reconciled the two concepts by use of the concept of a "people in arms," an idea which had originated in German history as a means of defense, but which was changed into one of aggression. In order to become a means of aggression it was changed into a moral precept commanded by religion, and indeed into the supreme precept.Through the unfolding of the political life of Bismarck, we find the roots of the Nazi Third Reich--the inability of the people to educate themselves about politics enough to effect any change or satisfy their own political needs. In this loss of control, the authoritarian regime grew stronger. Though Bismarck's work led to the creation and implementation of the Second Reich, "it is in the Third Reich that we find the devilish distortion that was its fruit." This volume is an essential tool for understanding twentieth-century German history.
Black Women in Politics: Identity, Power, and Justice in the New Millennium (National Political Science Review Series)
by Michael MitchellThe research included in this volume examines the competing pressures felt by black women as political agents in the domains of elections, public policy, and social activism. Their challenges and initiatives are explored in public spaces, institutional behaviours, and public policy.The volume features cutting-edge research exploring black women's political engagement. The first group of contributors interrogates the treatment of black women within the discipline of political science. The second group examines the relationship between cultural politics and policymaking. The third and final group outlines the politics of race-gendered identity and black feminist practice.Black Women in Politics includes chapters on black leadership, radical versus moderate politics in New Orleans, and the Shelby vs. Holder Supreme Court decision. The editors introduce a new series highlighting trends in black politics. Finally, the work notes the passing of William (Nick) Nelson and Hanes Walton, Jr., prominent members of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.