Essays by Schapiro on the political and intellectual history of late Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.

Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism is a book written by Boris Souvarine, which provides a detailed analysis of the life and political career of Joseph Stalin, the former leader of the Soviet Union. The book covers Stalin's rise to power, his role in the Bolshevik Revolution, and his policies as the leader of the Soviet Union. Souvarine offers a critical assessment of Stalin's leadership style, his use of terror and repression, and his impact on Soviet society and politics. The book also explores the broader historical context of Stalin's rule, including the development of Bolshevism and the impact of the Russian Revolution on world history. Overall, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism is a comprehensive and insightful examination of one of the most important figures in modern history.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

This important work, by one of the leading European social theorists, is arguably the best introduction to the hermeneutic tradition as a whole. It is designed to help students of sociology and philosophy place the problems of "understanding social science" in their historical and philosophical context. It does so by presenting the major current in sociological thought as responses to the challenge of hermeneutics. The idea that true knowledge of social life can be attained only if human conduct is seen as meaningful action whose meaning is accordingly grasped has been presented as a discovery of recent sociology. In fact its history is long and its connections plentiful, reaching beyond the boundaries of sociology itself. Yet it is in sociology that the hermeneutic tradition has attracted most interest but most misinterpretation. The debate is in full swing and there is no attempt to offer "correct" solutions - the emphasis instead is upon revealing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the main approaches. However it is Bauman's view that the theory of understanding may achieve valid results only if it treats the problem of understanding as an aspect of the ongoing process of social life.

The Garden of Eden story, one of the most famous narratives in Western history, is typically read as an ancient account of original sin and humanity's fall from divine grace. In this highly innovative study, Ziony Zevit argues that this is not how ancient Israelites understood the early biblical text. Drawing on such diverse disciplines as biblical studies, geography, archaeology, mythology, anthropology, biology, poetics, law, linguistics, and literary theory, he clarifies the worldview of the ancient Israelite readers during the First Temple period and elucidates what the story likely meant in its original context. Most provocatively, he contends that our ideas about original sin are based upon misconceptions originating in the Second Temple period under the influence of Hellenism. He shows how, for Ancient Israelites, the story was really about how humans achieved ethical discernment. He argues further that Adam was not made from dust and that Eve was not made from Adam's rib. His study unsettles much of what has been taken for granted about the story for more than two millennia and has far-reaching implications for both literary and theological interpreters

In what may be the most controversial book on Zionism and Israel published in the last twenty years, Yoram Hazony graphically portrays the cultural and political revolt against Israel's status as the Jewish state. Examining ideological trends in academia, literature, media, law, the armed forces, and the foreign policy establishment, Hazony contends that Israelis are preparing themselves for the final break with the Jewish past and the Jewish future. In a dramatic new reading of Israeli history, Hazony uncovers the story of how Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and other German-Jewish intellectuals bitterly fought against the establishment of Israel, and later used the Hebrew University as a base for deposing David Ben-Gurion and discrediting Labor Zionism. The Jewish State is a must-read for anyone concerned with Israel's present and future.

Poems, in both the original Hebrew and English translation, deal with childhood, life in Israel, Jewish tradition, and history.

This is a book of entertaining problems that can be solved through the use of algebra, problems with intriguing plots to excite the readers curiosity, amusing excursions into the history of mathematics, unexpected uses that algebra is put to in everyday affairs, and more. Algebra Can Be Fun has brought hundreds of thousands of youngsters into the fold of mathematics and its wonders. It is written in the form of lively sketches that discuss the multifarious (and exciting!) applications of algebra to the world about us. Here we encounter equations, logarithms, roots, progressions, the ancient and famous Diophantine analysis and much more. The examples are pictorial, vivid, often witty and bring out the essence of the matter at hand. There are numerous excursions into history and the history of algebra too. No one who has read this book will ever regard mathematics again in a dull light" Reviewers regard it as one of the finest examples of popular science writing.

"Origins" is the first fully comprehensive study of the debt owed by modern western culture to Ancient Near Eastern civilization - a debt touched upon by standard histories of the Ancient Near East but never as systematically investigated as here by William W. Hallo. The author, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of the Ancient Near East, places the emphasis on the way the Ancient Near East continues to shape our Western world. He takes an in-depth look at the ancient origins of many institutions that are most essential to contemporary life - and most often taken for granted. In the exploration of the "first half of history," Hallo shows that modern ideas of urbanism and the formation of capital were first developed between 3000-500 BC and that aspects of 20th-century agriculture, manufacturing and trade go back to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Israel. Special attention is given to the role played by women, arguing that this was an often non-traditional one; for example, women are shown to have been among the first authors in history who are actually known by their names. The scope of the work is vast: Hallo methodically examines a wide range of topics, from the order of the alphabet to the coronation of kings, and from schooling to the calendar. An intriguing touch is provided by sections on games and on the world's oldest cookbooks. This ground-breaking study leaves the reader with a full appreciation of the legacy of the Ancient Near East to modern Western society, in all its aspects. It will be essential reading for researchers and general readers alike who are interested in the cultural history of the West as well as the history of the Ancient Near East.

William 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. William Safire joined the New York Times in 1973 as a political columnist, where he also writes a Sunday column, "On Language," about grammar, usage, and etymology. The author of several books including Freedom , Full Disclosure , and Scandalmonger , he is the winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and served nine years as a member of the Pulitzer Board.

William Letwin's thorough, carefully argued, and elegantly written work is the only book length study of the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law designed to shape the economic life of a large complex society through maintaining the "correct" level of competition in the economy. This is a superb history and complete analysis of the Act, from its English and American common law antecedents to the events that led to the first revisions of the Act in the form of the Clayton Antitrust and Federal Trade Commission Acts.

In public estimation, sloths have undergone an astonishing transformation in the course of the past few years. Thanks largely to YouTube clips posted by the sloth orphanage in Costa Rica, sloths have attracted a vast audience of admirers. Instead of seeing them as ridiculous anachronisms of which we know little, they have turned into creatures considered by many to be the most endearing on earth. Over much the same period, scientific investigations have also changed our view of sloths. No longer are they seen as total misfits in the modern world but, in the words of one specialist sloth investigator, they are "masters of an alternative lifestyle." This wonderfully entertaining book reveals the fascinating history of the sloth, from the prehistoric ground sloth to modern pygmy sloths in Panama, explores the current state of the science of sloths, and reveals the truth behind sloth behavior.

May 4th, 1970. A week earlier President Nixon has ordered American ground forces into Cambodia to pursue the Vietcong. By the end of the day four students will be shot dead by the National Guards in the grounds of Kent State University. On the other side of the Atlantic, it's a brilliant sunny morning after an April of heavy rain, and at the "Concept House" therapeutic community he has set up in the London suburb of Willesden, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner has been tricked into joining a decidedly ill advised LSD trip with several of its disturbed residents. Five years later, sitting in a nearby cinema watching Steven Spielberg's Jaws , Busner realizes the true nature of the events that transpired on that dread-soaked day, when a survivor of the worst disaster in the US Navy's history - the sinking of the USS Indianapolis - came face-to-face with the British Royal Air Force observer on the Enola Gay's mission to bomb Hiroshima. Set a year before the action of his Booker-shortlisted Umbrella , Will Self's new novel Shark continues its exploration of the complex relationship between human psychopathology and human technological progress.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Grey Area demonstrates Will Self's razor-sharp wit in nine new stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. "Inclusion(R)" tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. "A Short History of the English Novel" brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors. In "The End of the Relationship" a woman who has been left by her boyfriend provokes -- "like some emotional Typhoid Mary" -- that same reaction among all the couples she goes to for comfort. The narrator of "Between the Conceits" declares without hesitation that London is controlled by only eight individuals, and, thankfully, he is one of them.

Gaining access to personal letters, albums and scrapbooks, plus spending hours with family members among some 300 interviews, has allowed the authors to craft the definitive biography of one of the most remarkable basketball stories in history. They reveal new facts and provide startling insight into Pistol Pete Maravich, who lived a life of triumph and tragedy before finding happiness in religion in the years before his death at age 40.

A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor--while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows. At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself--as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past. Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world.

The Method of Freedom was written at a time of deep anxiety for America and Europe. The worst depression in modem history gripped the world and the rise of dictatorships in Europe and Asia posed a mortal challenge to the essentials of free government. In this volume of a continuing series on the major works of Walter Lippmann, a model for economic recovery and social stability is outlined under a "regime of liberty." Lippmann's work takes on a special pertinence in the 1990s as the nations of Eastern Europe embark on the historically unprecedented transition from Communist centralization to democracy and free market economies. Rejecting both laissez-faire and centrally enforced collectivization, Lippmann described the salutory economic functions of a government with a mandate that rested on the consent of a middle-class constituency, which he termed a "free collectivism." Capitalism, in his view, had become too complex to be regulated by private initiative, and it became the function of government to ensure a compensatory redistribution of income and property in order to make its citizens comfortably secure. Lippmann recognized that market regulation needed to be safeguarded from political demagoguery and the tyranny of the majority. The Method of Freedom calls for the formation of an informed and competent managerial class to direct economic policy within the bounds of legislative consent. Lippmann's effort to balance the competing claims of capitalism and democracy anticipated the New Deal achievements of the 1930s and influenced a generation of American statesmen in their understanding of what constituted a good society. The Method of Freedom is a work of enduring interest

The Receiving is the literal translation of the word Kabbalah, the body of Jewish Mysticism that has been passed down from men to men for centuries. Ironically, the art of receiving, that is, opening to the divine spirit as it manifests in the here and now, is one of the undocumented triumphs of women's spirituality. Now, re-spected rabbi and Jungian therapist Tirzah Firestone sets out to correct the enormous error of history that has omitted the contributions of Jewish women mystics, sages, and holy women from the Jewish annals. In what might be called an act of spiritual archaeology, Firestone searches for the traces of the divine feminine in the Jewish tradition in order to answer the question, "What is a woman's way to God?" Drawing on the remarkable stories of seven historical holy women -- who, despite all the obstacles, found ways to embrace the sacred feminine in their lives -- Firestone teaches us the mysteries of Jewish Kabbalah from a woman's vantage point. This groundbreaking book finally empowers women to reclaim their rightful -- and historic -- connection to the mystical lineage within Judaism. This is a provocative work of scholarship and passion that restores the forgotten voices of Jewish women mystics, using their remarkable journeys as a spring-board into the feminine mysteries that have been hidden from women's use for millennia. In The Receiving, these ancient teachings have finally been made available in a relevant, accessible, and life-enriching manner for women -- and men -- of all spiritual persuasions.

"'Socrates' is a witty and endlessly fascinating drama about a complicated man who changed how the Western world thought. This powerful play is an intellectual thrill ride from the philosopher's growing prominence in democratic Athens through the military and social upheavals that led to one of the most infamous executions in Western history. 'Socrates' is a passionate tribute to the man who continues to inspire us to question authority and defend freedom of belief."--publisher description.

Deep within the earth's crust there exists a second biosphere, composed of very primitive heat-loving bacteria and containing perhaps more living matter than is present on the earth's entire surface. That is the astounding premise of this new book by Thomas Gold, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished scientists and a man with a long history of proposing seemingly preposterous theories that later prove correct. Gold joins the deep hot biosphere argument to another, perhaps even more controversial theory for which he has marshalled evidence: that so-called fossil fuels originate not from compressed biological matter at all but from deep within the earth, present there since the planet's formation, long before our oxygen-rich surface biosphere came into existence.

An award-winning actor on screen and stage ( The Defiant Ones , The African Queen , The Sound of Music , My Fair Lady , Fiddler on the Roof ), an activist for civil rights and progressive causes worldwide, and a singer whose voice has won him great applause, Theodore Bikel here tells his own compelling life story. Born in Austria, raised in Palestine, educated in England, and with a stellar career in the United States and around the world, Bikel offers a personal history parallel to momentous events of the twentieth century. In an eloquent, fiercely committed voice, he writes of the Third Reich, the birth of the State of Israel, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, and the tumultuous 1960s in America. In a new postscript to this paperback edition, he looks at recent events in the Middle East and takes both sides to task for their excesses.