655 results for "History"

A history of political thought: the Middle Ages

Ullmann, Walter
Entre los siglos V y XII, cuando aún había vastos territorios deshabitados en Europa, se desarrolló una sociedad que tuvo que aprender los rudimentos de la admnistración de la vidá pública. En ese período se formaron, y plasmaron, numerosos conceptos políticos básicos que continúan vigentes en nuestro tiempo. En este libro, el profesor Ullmann traza los orígenes de las ideas políticas de Occidente, ideas tan fundamentales como la soberanía, el parlamento, la ciudadanía, el imperio de la ley y el Estado. Demuestra que el desarrollo de estos conceptos surgen del conflicto entre tesis descendientes y ascendientes de gobierno (con sus fuentes romanas y griegas), y explica el dominio del eclesiástico en la sociedad medieval. Walter Ullmann fue profesor de Historia eclesiástica medieval en la Universidad de Cambridge. Su extensa obra representa un hito en la historiografía de su especialidad. Miembro de la Academia Británica, también fue editor general de los famosos 'Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought'.
Penguin 1970 253 pages

Al Smith and his America

Handlin, Oscar
The legendary image of America as a land of opportunity was challenged in 1928 by Al Smith's race for the presidency. Could the governor from New York, a Catholic from the Lower East Side, really become president? His candidacy began a dark episode in American history as Al Smith found himself a victim of the very society that, ironically, gave him his greatest opportunity. p This sympathetic account of Smith's political career demonstrates that a changing society in the decades after World War I propelled Americans toward isolationism and a reassertion of comfortable verities about religion and ethnicity. Oscar Handlin notes that Americans were fundamentalists in 1928, and their anti-Catholicism affected the outcome of the presidential election. But religion was only one symptom of the American anxiety that prejudiced attitudes toward the city, toward foreigners, toward the League of Nations and Prohibition. Disillusioned and betrayed by an unsuccessful peace, Americans searched for external causes on which to lay blame, and Al Smith seemed to epitomize the alien forces that were undermining the nation.
Northeastern University Press 1987-10-30 207 pages

Two Models of Government A New Classification of Governments in Terms of Power

Michael Arnheim
This book offers a fresh and original analysis of the power structure of a number of societies, past and present. There are and ever have been only two essential models of government: minority rule of all types (labelled "oligocracy") and regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual (labelled "monocracy"). The present-day "democracies" of Britain and the United States are in reality composite oligocracies made up of several disparate elements. Oligocracies are by definition regimes with a high degree of inequality, but with variable levels of liberty. Oligocracy and inequality are the "default" features of human society. Equality is unattainable except by a radical monocracy like Fidel Castro's Cuba, and then only with difficulty and at the expense of liberty and probably of lives as well. Equality of opportunity must not be equated with equality. Equality of opportunity means an equal opportunity to become unequal. For genuine freedom of expression to exist there also needs to be equality, because the little man standing on his soap-box and shouting his lungs out at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park cannot compete with the media moguls -- which is why genuine freedom of expression is rare. Once these truths are recognised, it becomes clear that for a Western nation to combine "regime change" in a foreign state with an attempt to impose "democracy" and Western "liberal" values on it is likely to be doomed to failure - as is amply demonstrated by the recent history of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Black House Publishing, Limited 2016-07-29 372 pages

The Oslo Syndrome Delusions of a People Under Siege

Kenneth Levin
In the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel embraced Yasser Arafat as its "peace partner." It then installed him in Gaza and the West Bank as head of a nascent Palestinian government, allowed him to bring with him some 7,000 of his loyalist gunmen, and provided the gunmen with weapons, even as Arafat continued to support terrorist attacks on Israelis and to assure Palestinians and other Arabs his goal remained Israel's destruction.Why did Israel pursue the path of Oslo? Why did it persist on that path when, in the wake of the initial Oslo agreements, the Palestinians unleashed an unprecedented wave of anti-Israel terror? Palestinian leaders also routinely called for holy war against Israel and compared Oslo to the Treaty of Hudaibiya, which Mohammed had signed in 628 and abandoned when his forces became strong enough to overwhelm his adversaries. Arafat and his subordinates told Arab audiences that Oslo was a step in the PLO's 1974 "plan of phases," a strategy of acquiring whatever land could be won by negotiations and using that territory as a base for pursuing Israel's annihilation. Yet Israel responded with additional concessions. What psychological, historical and communal forces spawned policies that undermined Israel's security and even threatened its survival? Dr. Levin's original and powerfully persuasive analysis relates Israeli diplomacy of the nineteen-nineties to psychological responses common among chronically besieged populations, whether minorities subjected to defamation, discrimination and assault or small nations under chronic attack by their neighbors. More particularly, he demonstrates links between the evolution of Oslo and the long history of Diaspora Jews being subjected to persistent abuse. The reaction of many enduring such abuse was to seek to improve their predicament by endorsing elements of the surrounding societies' bigoted indictments and embracing delusions of salvation through self-effacement and concessions. This case study in the psychology of a community under chronic attack takes on broader significance at a time when even traditionally safe and secure societies such as the United States are confronting the psychological challenges posed by terrorist assaults.
Smith and Kraus 2005 599 pages

Political thought and political thinkers

Shklar, Judith N.
Ethics described Judith Shklar as "a towering presence" at Harvard for decades, an "influential teacher and mentor to many of the best known political theorists working today in the United States." One of this century's most important liberal scholars, she is remembered for her "sharp intellect, forceful personality, and passionate intellectual honesty and curiosity." Political Thought and Political Thinkers makes startlingly clear her role in the reinvigoration of liberal theory that has been taking place over the last two decades. This second volume of Shklar's work—which follows the 1997 publication of Redeeming American Political Thought —brings together heretofore uncollected (and several unpublished) essays on a number of themes, including the place of the intellect in the modern political world and the dangers of identity politics. While many of these essays have been previously published, they remain far from accessible. In collecting the work scattered over the past forty years in journals and other publications, noted political theorist Stanley Hoffmann provides an essential guide to Shklar's thought, complemented by George Kateb's comprehensive introduction to her work. Hoffmann's selection, which includes Shklar's classic essay "The Liberalism of Fear," showcases her distinctive defense of liberalism and follows her explorations in this history of moral and political thought as she engages with Bergson, Arendt, and Rousseau. Political Thought and Political Thinkers displays one of the century's most compelling and flexible intellects in action and is the definitive collection of her work on European history and thinkers. "Shklar's legacy is an inspiring example of liberal thought at its arresting best, unflinchingly courageous and unmoved by the dreary and unmeaning harmonies conjured up by theories of justice and rights."—John Gray, Times Literary Supplement Judith N. Shklar (1928-1992) was Cowles Professor of Government at Harvard University and the author of nine books in political theory.
University of Chicago Press 1998-03-28 402 pages

The Border Canada, the US and Dispatches From the 49th Parallel

James Laxer
Insightful, prescient and often funny, The Border explores what it means to be Canadian and what Canada means to the giant to our south. If good fences make good neighbours, do we have the sort of fence that will allow us to maintain neighbourly relations with the world’s only superpower? In The Border , well-known political scientist and journalist James Laxer explores this question by taking the reader on a compelling 5000-mile journey into culture, politics, history, and the future of Canadian sovereignty. Long ignored (or celebrated) as “the world’s longest undefended border,” the line between us and the US is now a stress point. The attacks on the World Trade Center announced to the world that North America is no longer a quiet neighbourhood and made our relationship with the US one of the most pressing questions facing Canadians. The porousness of the border is sure to be more problematic as the world becomes more troubled. Canadian officials complain of American pornography, drugs, untaxed cigarettes and, especially, guns moving northwards. For their part, the FBI and US Customs Service blame Canada for the infiltration of Chinese gangs smuggling immigrants and, more urgently, third-world terrorist cells based north of the border. Drawing deeply from history and anecdote, Laxer shows that for all our neighbourly good will, the Canada-US border has been contentious since the American War of Independence. In the mid-1800s the Americans tried to seize the west coast up to the 54th parallel. On the other hand, until 1931 the Canadian Army’s “Defence Scheme Number One” was to launch a surprise attack on the US with Mexico and Japan as allies. But beyond the fraught politics of the border, Laxer discovers another legacy as well. Travelling the country from Campobello island in the east to Richmond BC in the west all the way up to the Alaska panhandle in the north, Laxer meets people who live within a stone’s throw of the foreigners on the other side, and who share with him tales of friendship and rivalry, smuggling and trade that have shaped the character of their communities.
National Geographic Books 2004-09-21 400 pages

The royalist revolution: monarchy and the American founding

Nelson, Eric
Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey Finalist, George Washington Prize A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015 Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch. “ The Royalist Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and Nelson is to be commended for reviving discussion of the complex ideology of the American Revolution. He reminds us that there was a spectrum of opinion even among the most ardent patriots and a deep British influence on the political institutions of the new country.” —Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Wall Street Journal “A scrupulous archaeology of American revolutionary thought.” —Thomas Meaney, The Nation “A powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy.” —Colin Kidd, London Review of Books “[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution.” —John Brewer, New York Review of Books
Harvard University Press 2014-10-06 390 pages

The Rape of Palestine

William B. Ziff
Reprint of 1938 edition. The Rape of Palestine is a scathing indictment of the British administration in Palestine. It is well documented and makes full use of quotations from the writings of non-Jewish persons who served under that administration and themselves complained of the anti-Semitism shown by government officials. Among them was Douglas V. Duff, who complained that "it did not pay for one's seniors to think that one had any undue sympathy for the returning Jews". Even if only one-half of the evidence amassed by the author were true, he would have proved that nearly all the persons sent out to administer Palestine were anti-Semitic and determined to evade the Mandate and destroy the Jewish national home.
Martino Fine Books 2010-03 630 pages

A Test of the News An Examination of the News Reports in the New York Times on Aspects of the Russian Revolution of Special Importance to Americans, March 1917 - March 1920

Walter Lippmann,Charles Merz
"...Enlighten me now, o Muses, Tenants of Olympian homes, For you are goddesses, inside on everything, know everything. But we mortals hear only the news, and know nothing at all...." --The Iliad, Book II 484-486 A Test of the News, published as a supplement to The New Republic in 1920, was a study by the journalists Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz into the press coverage by the New York Times of the Bolshevik revolution. They found many inaccuracies and distortions in the Times' coverage and stated that "the news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see." In addition, they established that the Times reported ninety-one occasions that the revolutionary regime was near collapse. This study supported Lippmann's belief that "the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism." Even though his statement applied to the 1920s, the same could be said in 2019 where the reliability of mainstream news and the prevalence of "fake news" is at the forefront of many discussions. A Test of the News is a must-read for journalists, historians, and all who are interested in the importance of the media and current affairs.
COSIMO CLASSICS 2020-02-19 50 pages

The First How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump

Stanley Fish
From celebrated public intellectual, New York Times bestselling author, and “America’s most famous professor” ( BookPage ) comes an urgent and sharply observed look at freedom of speech and the First Amendment offering a “ nonpartisan take on what it does and doesn’t protect and what kind of speech it should and shouldn’t regulate” ( Publishers Weekly ). How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First . From the rise of fake news, to the role of tech companies in monitoring content (including the President’s tweets), to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest, First Amendment controversies continue to dominate the news cycle. Across America, college campus administrators are being forced to balance free speech against demands for safe spaces and trigger warnings. With “thoughtful, dense provocations that will require close attention” ( Kirkus Reviews ), Fish ultimately argues that freedom of speech is a double-edged concept; it frees us from constraints, but it also frees us to say and do terrible things. Urgent and controversial, The First is sure to ruffle feathers, spark dialogue, and shine new light on one of America’s most cherished—and debated—constitutional rights.
Simon and Schuster 2020-12-08 240 pages

The Accumulation of Capital

Rosa Luxemburg
2015 Reprint of 1951 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. First published in 1913 and generally held to be her finest achievement, this volume reveals Luxemburg as a Marxist critical of Karl Marx. It offers a theory of the dynamic development of capitalism which is of continued relevance to contemporary scholarship. Taking Marx as her starting point, she offers an independent and fiercely critical explanation of the economic and political consequences of capitalism in the context of the turbulent times in which she lived, reinterpreting events in the United States, Europe, China, Russia and the British Empire. Most today believe there is no alternative to global capitalism. This book is a timely and forceful statement of an opposing view. Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1870 in Russian Poland. She was murdered in Germany while on way to prison. Contains an introduction by Joan Robinson.
Martino Fine Books 2015-02-25 476 pages

Winning the Right War The Path to Security for America and the World

Philip H. Gordon
“An absolutely brilliant book . . . the most clearly argued critique yet of the Bush administration’s flawed approach to defeating jihadist terrorism.”—Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. Six years into the “war on terror,” are the United States and its allies safer than they were before it started? Sadly, we are not, and the reason is that we are fighting—and losing—the wrong war. In this paradigm-shifting book, Philip H. Gordon presents a new way of thinking about the war on terror and a new strategy for winning it. He draws a provocative parallel between the war on terror and the Cold War, showing how defense, development, diplomacy, and the determination to maintain our own values can again be deployed alongside military might to defeat a hostile and insidious ideology. Gordon also asks, “What would victory look like?”—a topic sorely missing from the debate today. He offers a positive vision of the world after the war on terror, which will end not when we kill or capture all potential terrorists but when their hateful ideology collapses. Gordon’s strategy for achieving this goal is achievable and realistic, but only if the United States changes course before it is too late.
Henry Holt and Company 2008-08-05 224 pages

The Principles of State and Government in Islam

Muhammad Asad
2016 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Although the Muslims are for the most part imbued with enthusiasm for the idea of a truly Islamic state - that is, a state based not on the concepts of nationality and race but solely on the ideology of the Qur'an and Sunnah, they have as yet not realized a concrete vision of this form of government embodying a distinctly Islamic character. The very fact that none of the existing Muslim countries has so far achieved a form of government that could be termed genuinely Islamic, makes a discussion of the principle which ought to underlie the constitution of Islamic state imperative. By surveying nearly fourteen hundred years-beginning with the "Hijra", the formal origin of the Islamic calendar-this book demonstrates how manifold forms of the Islamic state may emerge from Islamic foundations, and how, essentially, any state that emerges, to be truly Islamic, must incorporate the doctrine of government by consent and counsel.
Martino Fine Books 2016-03-13 122 pages

House of Karls

Karl Kruszelnicki
Australia's favourite popular scientist returns with a new book of scintillating science. His latest book is packed with fun facts and breakthrough science to thrill, amuse and entertain. Dazzling and daring, the inimitable Dr Karl has all the answers to the questions you never thought to ask! Prepare to discover the truth about Green Tea; why crime pays (but not very well); how you can out-run a deer; the world of Big Data; why Space is the Hostile Frontier; and just what takes the title of the world's most expensive book
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited 2014-11 304 pages

A Season in Bethlehem Unholy War in a Sacred Place

Joshua Hammer
Newsweek' s Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002. A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets. The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.
Simon and Schuster 2004-06-03 304 pages

Company C An AmericanS Life As a Citizen-Soldier in the Israeli Army

Haim Watzman
When American-born Haim Watzman immigrated to Israel, he was drafted into the army and, after eighteen months of compulsory service, was assigned to Company C, the reserve infantry unit that would define the next twenty years of his life. From 1984 until 2002, for at least a month a year, Watzman, who had never aspired to military adventure, was a soldier. Watzman was a soldier as he adjusted to his new country, raised his children, and pursued a career as a writer and translator. At times he defended his adopted country’s borders; at other times he patrolled beyond them, or that gray area, the occupied territories. A religiously observant Jew who opposed Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he served in uniform in conflicts that he demonstrated against in civilian clothes. Throughout, he developed a deep and abiding bond with the diverse men of Company C--a fellowship that cemented his commitment to reserve service even as he questioned the occupation he was enforcing. In this engrossing account of the first Intifada, the period of the Oslo Accords, and Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank as lived by citizen-soldiers in the field, Watzman examines our obligations to country, friends, family, and God--and our duty to protect our institutions even as we fight to reform them.
Argo Navis 2012-10-20 328 pages

Irving Howe

Gerald Sorin
A New York Times “Books for Summer Reading” selection Winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award for History By the time he died in 1993 at the age of 73, Irving Howe was one of the twentieth century’s most important public thinkers. Deeply passionate, committed to social reform and secular Jewishness, ardently devoted to fiction and poetry, in love with baseball, music, and ballet, Howe wrote with such eloquence and lived with such conviction that his extraordinary work is now part of the canon of American social thought. In the first comprehensive biography of Howe’s life, historian Gerald Sorin brings us close to this man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in the 1930s to become one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Known most widely for his award-winning book World of Our Fathers, a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, Howe also won acclaim for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American culture and as an indefatigable promoter of democratic socialism as can be seen in the pages of Dissent, the journal he edited for nearly forty years. Deeply devoted to the ideal of democratic radicalism and true equality, Howe was constantly engaged in a struggle for decency and basic fairness in the face of social injustice. In the century of Auschwitz, the Gulag, and global inter-ethnic mass murder, it was difficult to sustain political certainties and take pride in one's humanity. To have lived a life of conviction and engagement in that era was a notable achievement. Irving Howe lived such a life and Gerald Sorin has done a masterful job of guiding us through it in all its passion and complexity.
New York University Press 2002 386 pages