71 results for "American History"

Mimesis and alterity: a particular history of the senses

Taussig, Michael T.
Mimesis: the idea of imitation. Alterity: the idea of difference, the opposition of Self and Other. In his most accomplished work to date, Michael Taussig explores these complex and often interwoven concepts. Arguing that mimesis is the nature that culture uses to create second nature, he maintains that mimesis - variously experienced in different societies - is not only a faculty but also a history. That history, Taussig writes, is deeply tied to "Euroamerican colonialism, the felt relation of the civilizing process to savagery, to aping, sensateness caught in the net of passionful images spun for several centuries by the colonial trade with wildness." For anthropologists, social scientists, cultural critics, artists and everyone else caught up in the enigma of the postmodern, framing the question "What is Reality" is crucial to gaining an understanding of what it is we know and who we are. Why is it important to understand that traditions are inventions and that social life is a construction when they grip us with all the force of the "natural"? And how is it that we understand reality as both real and really made up? In Mimesis and Alterity Taussig undertakes an eccentric history of the mimetic faculty. He moves easily from the nineteenth-century invention of mimetically capacious machines, such as the camera, backwards to the fable of colonial "first-contact" and alleged mimetic prowess of "primitives," and then forward to contemporary time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable. Utilizing anthropological theory, Taussig blends Latin American ethnography and colonial history with the insights of Walter Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer. Vigorous and unorthodox, Taussig's understanding of mimesis in different cultures deepens our meanings of ethnography, racism and society.
Routlege 1993-01 299 pages

Nonconformity: writing on writing

Algren, Nelson
The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers. "You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery." Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: "Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder." And it is about the trouble writers ask for when they try to describe America: "Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards . . . [where there] are still . . . defeats in which everything is lost [and] victories that fall close enough to the heart to afford living hope." In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer's relation to society, drawing examples from Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as utility infielder Leo Durocher and legendary barkeep Martin Dooley. He shares his deepest beliefs about the state of literature and its role in society, along the way painting a chilling portrait of the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy's heyday, when many American writers were blacklisted and ruined for saying similar things to what Algren is saying here.
Seven Stories 2025 136 pages

The Hero in History

Sidney Hook
Considered by some the most controversial American philosopher of contemporary times, SIDNEY HOOK (1902-1989) was infamous for the wild swing in his political thought over the course of his career, starting out as a young Marxist before the Great Depression and ending up a vehement anti-Communist in his later years. Hook's conception of history and the individual's impact upon it is the subject of this intriguing work, first published in 1943. Subtitled A Study in Limitation and Possibility, it examines the concept of the "hero" as it relates to leadership in the modern world, the hero as a child of crisis, how the character of rulers affects society, how history swings on the contingent and the unforeseen, and much more. With sections on the Russian revolution and the influence of the hero on democracy, this unexpectedly entertaining book is an enthralling look at the theories that shaped Hook's thought and guided his changes in political alliance.
Cosimo, Inc. 2008-12-01 292 pages

The Jewish past revisited: reflections on modern Jewish historians

David G. Myers,David N. Myers,Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History David N Myers,David B. Ruderman,Rabbi David B Ruderman, PhD
In this new collection of essays, contemporary historians examine the ways earlier historians have framed, written, and "made" the Jewish past. Probing the ideology and methodology of their professional predecessors, American and Israeli historians offer new perspectives on some of the central figures of twentieth-century Jewish historiography, including Gershom Scholem, S. D. Goitein, Yitzhak Baer, Elias Bickerman, and Cecil Roth, as well as the Israeli "New Historians." Through their critical examinations of the construction of the Jewish past, the contributors to this volume develop important insights into current attitudes toward the dominant canons and ideals of historical scholarship and the future of historiography. They shine new light on the formation of a historical worldview and the "making" of history.
Yale University Press 1998 244 pages

Religion as a public good: Jews and other Americans on religion in the public square

Alan Mittleman
Religion as a Public Good: Jews and Other Americans on Religion in the Public Square explores the often controversial topic of how religion ought to relate to American public life. The sixteen distinguished contributors, both Jewish and Christian, reflect on the topic out of their own disciplines-social ethics, political theory, philosophy, law, history, theology, and sociology. and take a stand based on their religious convictions and political beliefs. The volume is at once scholarly and committed, polemic and civil, reflective and activist. Written in the shadow of 9/11, it invites a new consideration of how religion enhances democratic public life with full awareness of the dangers that religion can sometimes pose. The volume is polemical, as befits the topic, but also civil, as befits a dialogue about an issue of profound significance for democratic citizenship.
Rowman & Littlefield 2003-12-09 336 pages

Existence in Black: an anthology of Black existential philosophy

Lewis Ricardo Gordon
This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world. In the collection, there are five previously unpublished essays. The topics covered in these new essays are women in the play, the play's debt to contemporary theater, its critical and performance histories in Germany and Japan, the metrical variety of the play, and the distinctly modern perspective on the play as containing dark and disturbing elements. To compliment these new essays, the collection features significant scholarship and commentary on The Comedy of Errors that is published in obscure and difficulty accessible journals, newspapers, and other sources. This collection brings together these essays for the first time.
Routledge 1997 328 pages

The Devil and Uncle Sam: a users guide to the friendly tyrants dilemma

Adam M. Garfinkle
For more than forty years, the American government has struggled with the challenge of maintaining useful relations with a special breed of regime: one whose rulers profess a community of interests with the United States while they rule through authoritarian means. Relationships with such "friendly tyrants" almost invariably generate tensions between the need for prudent security strategies and the ideal of promoting liberty and human rights worldwide. The Devil and Uncle Sam: A User's Guide to the Friendly Tyrants Dilemma distills the policy lessons of over four decades and offers practical approaches to negotiating these obstinate ambiguities of contemporary political life.This User's Guide brings together a team of eminent authors with diverse talents and experience to present a comparative study of the Friendly Tyrants phenomenon in recent history and to devise a systematic set of guidelines for dealing with it. The book is organized around ten essential maxims (Beware Dependence, Be Nimble, Promote Democracy, Chastise with Care, Define Goals, Know the Country, Think It Through, Coordinate Policy, Hedge Bets, Plan for Crises) and a larger number of specific Do's and Don'ts.The Devil and Uncle Sam draws richly upon historical examples to illustrate general principles that will prove invaluable to policymakers and political analysts. The Persian Gulf*War has shown that the Friendly Tyrants problem is still with us, even in the post-Cold War environment. The authors' understanding of past patterns yields insights that should help to prevent the preventable. While new situations will create possibilities for new mistakes, old ones must not be repeated. Contributors to The Devil and Uncle Sam include, in addition to Adam Garfinkle, Daniel Pipes, Kenneth Adelman, Patrick Clawson, Mark Falcoff, and Douglas J. Feith.
Transaction Publishers 1992 135 pages

The Search for Historical Meaning Hegel and the Postwar American Right

Paul Gottfried
Praised by President Richard Nixon as his favorite read for 1987, The Search for Historical Meaning presents the postwar American conservative movement against a background of ideas with which it has only rarely been identified. This important book--updated with a new preface--examines the influence of Hegelian concepts on the historical attitudes and cultural judgments of prominent postwar conservatives who, because of their concern with personal freedom as a political and ontological value, denounced Hegel while ascribing their own Hegelian ideas to less offensive sources. Gottfried argues that the lack of a true historical perspective was a serious defect in the postwar American conservative movement, and it grew worse in the years that followed. Essential reading for conservative thinkers, political philosophers, and American political historians, The Search for Historical Meaning concludes with an incisive examination of the American conservative movement that has implications for today.
Northern Illinois University Press 2010 178 pages

Songs of experience: modern American and European variations on a universal theme

Jay, Martin
Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis―qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful―Songs of Experience explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience―epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical―Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures.
University of California Press 2005-01-10 431 pages

The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians

Franz Boas
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2022-10-27 130 pages

Chance, Love, and Logic

Peirce, Charles S (Charles Sanders),Dewey, John,Cohen, Morris R (Morris Raphael)
Explore the foundations of modern thought with Charles S. Peirce's "Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Essays." This collection showcases Peirce's groundbreaking contributions to philosophy, logic, and metaphysics, revealing the roots of pragmatism and semiotics. Peirce, a pivotal figure in American intellectual history, delves into the nature of scientific inquiry, the role of chance in the universe, and the power of love as a cosmic principle. These essays offer a window into Peirce's complex and influential ideas, demonstrating his commitment to rigorous reasoning and his innovative approach to understanding the world. Spanning a range of topics central to philosophical discourse, "Chance, Love, and Logic" presents Peirce's enduring insights in a clear and accessible manner. Perfect for anyone interested in the history of philosophy, the development of logic, or the intersection of science and metaphysics, this volume is a valuable resource for both students and seasoned scholars. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Anson Street Press 2025-03-29 202 pages

The Prospect of Immortality in Bilingual American English and Traditional Chinese 永生的期盼美式英文-繁體中文雙語版本

Robert C W Ettinger
THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY IN BILINGUAL AMERICAN ENGLISH AND TRADITIONAL CHINESE 永生的期盼美式英文-繁體中文雙語版本 by Robert C.W. Ettinger 羅伯艾丁格著 with a new (2010) foreword by the author 內有新原作者前言(2010年) -- Sinclair T. Wang, Translator 王振祥,翻譯者 -- is available in hardback (ISBN 978-1-934297-00-1) and paperback (ISBN 978-1-934297-01-8) editions. HERE IS MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOOK (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH IN 1964): In the 1960s Ettinger founded the cryonics (cryonic hibernation) movement and authored The Prospect of Immortality. Ettinger sees "discontinuity in history, with mortality and humanity on one side -- on the other immortality and transhumanity." Cryonic hibernation (experimental long-term suspended animation) of humans may provide a "door into summer" unlike any season previously known. Ettinger argues for his belief in "the possibility of limitless life for our generation." 在1960年代艾丁格創始了冰凍人 (冰凍休眠) 運動,並且著作了永生的期盼一書 。 艾丁格洞見了 "歷史上的不連續, 一邊是會死和凡人 -另一邊則是不死和超人。" 人類的冰凍休眠 (實驗性的長期活體休眠) 可能可以提供一道"進入盛夏之門", 而且是一個不像任何前所熟悉之季節。 愛丁格爲他在 "我們世代中無窮盡生命可能性" 的信念進行了辯解。 KEYWORDS: biostasis; cryonics; death; future medicine; immortality; life extension; personal identity; suspended animation; technological singularity; transhumanism. HERE IS A TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE BILINGUAL (IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH AND/OR YOUR CHINESE?) BOOK OF 552 PAGES: ((CONTENTS IN ENGLISH: )) ---Preface by the Translator ● viii ---FOREWORD 2010 BY ROBERT ETTINGER ● xxii ---Preface by Jean Rostand ● 2 ---Preface by Gerald J. Gruman ● 12 ---Chapter I. Frozen Death, Frozen Sleep, and Some Consequences ● 28 ---Chapter II. The Effects of Freezing and Cooling ● 52 ---Chapter III. Repair and Rejuvenation ● 140 ---Chapter IV. Today's Choices ● 184 ---Chapter V. Freezers and Religion ● 220 ---Chapter VI. Freezers and the Law ● 264 ---Chapter VII. The Economics of Immortality ● 302 ---Chapter VIII. The Problem of Identity ● 364 ---Chapter IX. The Uses of Immortality ● 398 ---Chapter X. Manners, Modes, and Morals of Tomorrow ● 428 ---Chapter XI. The Freezer-Centered Society ● 468 ---References ● 497 ((CONTENTS IN CHINESE: )) ---譯者前言 ● ix ---ROBERT ETTINGER 2010年前言 ● xxiii ---Jean Rostand 前言 ● 3 ---Gerald J. Gruman 前言 ● 13 --- 第一章死亡冰凍,睡眠冰凍,以及其一些後果 ● 29 --- 第二章冰凍和冷卻的一些效應 ● 53 --- 第三章修復和回春 ● 141 --- 第四章當今的選擇 ● 185 --- 第五章冰凍主義和宗教 ● 221 --- 第六章冰凍主義和法律 ● 265 --- 第七章永生的經濟學 ● 303 --- 第八章身分上的問題 ● 365 --- 第九章永生的利用 ● 399 --- 第十章明日的態度,模式和道德 ● 429 --- 第十一章以冰凍人為中心的社會 ● 469 --- 參考資料 ● 497
Ria University Press 2010-08 554 pages

Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Social Historian

Beichman, Arnold
Arnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning. Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including War and Remembrance and The Winds of War; The Traitor, one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, A Hole in Texas, his twelfth. Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.
[distributor] Taylor & Francis, c/o Bookpoint 2017-08-02 144 pages

Lessons from an American Stoic

Matousek, Mark
"This is a beautiful book, full of ideas that could help restore America’s genius for freedom and promise.” — Thomas Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul A lifelong Emerson lover, teacher, and spiritual seeker reveals how American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s twelve essential teachings hold the answer to living an authentic and fulfilling life, one that is in har[Bokinfo]
HarperCollins UK Publishers 2023-06-13 288 pages

Varieties of Marxism

Shlomo Avineri
The essays included in this volume are based on papers delivered at the International Symposium on Varieties of Marxism, held at the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation on June 16-19,1974, and dedicated to the memory of George Lichtheim. When the idea of such a symposium was first raised, the organizers planned to have George Lichtheim as one of the main speakers at the event. In our last and brief meeting in London, I suggested this to him and Lichtheim gave his consent to attend the symposium, though at that time no date was yet fixed. His tragic death a few months later left a gap not only in the program of the symposium but in Marxist studies generally; it was felt that per haps one way of paying tribute to his contribution to the study of a subject so near to his mind would be to name the symposium in his memory and devote an introductory paper to an attempt at an intel lectual portrait of George Lichtheim as an historian of ideas. The volume as published includes all papers delivered at the sym posium, with the excep,tion of the papers of J. L. Talmon (Jerusalem) on 'Marxism and Nationalism' and Gajo Petrovic (Zagreb) on 'Yugo slav Marxism'. Appended is also a short obituary written by me on Lichtheim for the journal Political Science published by the American Political Science Association.
Springer Netherlands 2011-10-12 404 pages

Fisch Stories Reflections on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Robert O. Fisch
"I have been a Jew during Fascism, a bourgeois under Communism, a rebel defeated in an uprising, a refugee among the free, and a have-not amid plenty. This book contains over 60 stories that range from my youth in Hungary, the ordeal of a death march and concentration camps, the oppression of the Communist dictatorship, the promise and defeat of the Hungarian Revolution and, finally, my American years"--Preminary pages
R. Fisch 2009 154 pages

Nicholas Rescher - Collected Papers

Nicholas Rescher
5-Volume Set. Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical Society, the American G W Leibniz Society, and the C S Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. Includes the following: Volume 10, Studies in the History of Logic; Volume 11, Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Volume 12, Studies in Metaphysical Optimalism; Volume 13, Studies in Leibniz's Cosmology; Volume 14, Studies in Autobiography.
Transaction Publishers 2006 124 pages