Social and political philosophy Books

Book SynopsisSUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLERThe most important book of the year' Daily MailThe brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world's foremost political writersThe anti-Western revisionists have been out in force in recent years. It is high time that we revise them in turn'In The War on the West, international bestselling author Douglas Murray asks: if the history of humankind is one of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide and exploitation, why are only Western nations taking the blame for it? It's become perfectly acceptable to celebrate the contributions of non-Western cultures, but discussing their flaws and crimes is called hate speech. What's more it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating their contributions is also called hate speech. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning; however, some is part of a larger international attack on reason, democracy, science, progress and the citizens of the West by dishonest scholars, hatemongers, hostile nations and human-rights abusers hoping to distract from their ongoing villainy.In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows the ways in which many well-meaning people have been lured into polarisation by lies, and shows how far the world's most crucial political debates have been hijacked across Europe and America. Propelled by an incisive deconstruction of inconsistent arguments and hypocritical activism, The War on the West is an essential and urgent polemic that cements Murray's status as one of the world's foremost political writers.Trade Review‘Murray shows not just how every aspect of western society has come under the iconoclasts’ gaze – from mathematics to music, Kew Gardens to Jane Austen – but how flimsy their case often is.’ – The Sunday Times ‘Murray writes with wonderful lucidity about the many fronts on which the West is waging war against itself. And he writes with a sense of urgency.’ – Real Clear Politics ‘Well executed… a spirited defence against the Left's assault on the Western tradition.’ – The Daily Telegraph ‘The War on the West is a monumental book leading to several pivotal realisations.’ – Lotus Eaters ‘Meticulous, measured… The War on the West is Douglas Murray’s latest blast against loony left wokery.’ – The Spectator Praise for Douglas Murray and The Madness of Crowds ‘Whether one agrees with him or not, Douglas Murray is one of the most important public intellectuals today.’ – Bernard-Henry Levy ‘This is an author who specialises in expressing what everyone sort of knows already and is afraid to say…Well argued, well supported, and well observed.’ – Lionel Shriver ‘Simply brilliant. Reading it to the end, I felt as though I’d just drawn my first full breath in years. At a moment of collective madness, there is nothing more refreshing – or indeed, provocative – than sanity.’ – Sam Harris ‘His latest book is beyond brilliant and should be read, must be read, by everyone. He mercilessly exposes the hypocrisy and embarrassingly blatant contradictions that run rife through the current ‘woke’ vouge.’ – Richard Dawkins ‘Douglas Murray fights the good fight for freedom of speech… A truthful look at today’s most divisive issues.’ – Jordan B. Peterson ‘Extraordinary. Magnificent. Searing. Necessary. I salute il miglior fabbro. ‘And whether they listen or fail to listen… they will know that the prophet has been among them’ (Ezekiel 2:5)’ – Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

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Book Synopsis“We should be grateful to Schopenhauer for managing to express the truth about life so beautifully.” — Alain De Botton, author of The Consolations of PhilosophyThe Essential Schopenhauer delivers the first comprehensive English anthology of the seminal philosopher’s writings, edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher, president of the International Schopenhauer Association. This indispensable collection affords readers a uniquely accessible gateway into the monolithic thinker’s prodigious body of work. Just as the Harper Perennial Basic Writings series renders the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche accessible for English readers, The Essential Schopenhauer gives us unprecedented access to the complex ideas of this profound and influential thinker.Trade Review“Schopenhauer’s beautiful, exceptionally dark philosophy liberates us from the intolerable burden placed upon us by our contemporary optimism. The Essential Schopenhauer is a book to turn to when all others have failed.” — Alain de Botton, bestselling author of The Consolations of Philosophy and How Proust Can Change Your Life “Unquestionably one of the most profound and penetrating intellects.” — New York Times “A great philosopher” — The Guardian “Schopenhauer’s philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life’s meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Book SynopsisThe Epistemology of Protest offers a polyphonic theory of protest as a mechanism for political communication, group constitution, and epistemic empowerment. The book analyzes the communicative power of protest to break social silences and disrupt insensitivity and complicity with injustice. Philosopher José Medina also elucidates the power of protest movements to transform social sensibilities and change the political imagination. Medina''s theory of protest examines the obligations that citizens and institutions have to give proper uptake to protests and to communicatively engage with protesting publics in all their diversity, without excluding or marginalizing radical voices and perspectives. Throughout the book, Medina gives communicative and epistemic arguments for the value of imagining with protest movements and for taking seriously the radical political imagination exercised in social movements of liberation. Medina''s theory sheds light on the different ways in which protest can be silenced and the different communicative and epistemic injustices that protest movements can face, arguing for forms of epistemic activism that resist silencing and communicative/epistemic injustices while empowering protesting voices. While arguing for democratic obligations to give proper uptake to protest, the book underscores how demanding listening to protesting voices can be under conditions of oppression and epistemic injustice. A central claim of the book is that responsible citizens have an obligation to echo (or express communicative solidarity with) the protests of oppressed groups that have been silenced and epistemically marginalized. Studying social uprisings, the book further argues that citizens have a duty to join protesting publics when grave injustices are in the public eye.Trade ReviewThis is an immensely important book for our times. Medina provides new critical analyses of how dissent can be silenced and subtly disarmed in ways that escape the charge of censorship. He explores how protests challenge standard ideas about both knowledge and communication. And he also demonstrates, more hopefully, how social movements transform public spheres in a productive manner that outlives the current moment. * Linda Martín Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, City University of New York *Medina offers a theoretically nuanced and empirically rich account of protest as 'communicative resistance' that can produce new varieties of collective learning and public inquiry. He argues that we have both a duty to protest injustice and a duty to listen actively to others' protests against injustice-even when their protests seem to be 'uncivil.' He shows that the duty to take resistance to injustice seriously is among the most important democratic responsibilities that we have. * Michele Moody-Adams, author of Making Space for Justice *The Epistemology of Protest fortifies José Medina's position as one of our most influential thinkers in the field of epistemic justice. Medina brilliantly applies his groundbreaking work on epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance to street activism and protest movements. At a time when democratic ideals are threatened by reactionary white supremacist movements, this book promises to provide a much-needed path to effective liberatory activism. * Nancy Tuana, author of Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Part I: Protest as a Matrix of Communicative Resistance Chapter 1. Toward a Radical Epistemology of Protest 1.1. Protest as Democratic Communicative Resistance 1.2. Our Duties to Protest and to Listen to Protest: Expressive Harms and Communicative Resistance 1.3. Managing the Duty to Protest and to Give Proper Uptake to Protest 1.4. Uncivil Protest, Civil Death, and Liberation Movements Chapter 2. No Justice, No Peace: Uncivil Protest and the Politics of Confrontation 2.1. Social Spaces without Political Resistance? Stifling Dissent and the Difficulties of Protests in Sports 2.2. Arguments for Protesting Injustice:

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Book SynopsisFifty years on from its original publication, HLA Hart''s The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century, and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time.In this third edition, Leslie Green provides a new introduction that sets the book in the context of subsequent developments in social and political philosophy, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart''s project and highlighting central tensions and problems in the work.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Persistent Questions ; 2. Laws, Commands, and Orders ; 3. The Variety of Laws ; 4. Sovereign and Subject ; 5. Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules ; 6. The Foundations of a Legal System ; 7. Formalism and Rule-Scepticism ; 8. Justice and Morality ; 9. Laws and Morals ; 10. International Law ; Postscript

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Book SynopsisDeals with a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world, the author formulates a new framework, the four ontologies - animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism - to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“The arrival of Mehlman and Leavitt’s new translation is, then, an event. Finally, there is a fresh, agile English rendering of one of the 20th century’s greatest, strangest and most challenging works.” * London Review of Books *"An accessible new translation of the modern classic by the predominant theorist of structural anthropology, this tome displaced Western culture’s sense of its own superiority and showed the structural unity of human intellect." * The Bookseller *"The new title points to what the book subverts, namely the assumption that societies described as ‘primitive’ are intellectually undeveloped. Lévi-Srauss shows, on the contrary, an equality in their compulsion to observe and record distinctions and patterns." * The Prisma *“This new translation of Lévi-Strauss’s masterpiece is a revelation. To read Wild Thought is to marvel in the curiosity not only of its illustrious author but also of the countless people whose conceptual wizardry spills out onto the pages. In engaging and delightful prose, Wild Thought lets Anglophone readers at last relish the sheer joyousness and ingenuity of an unparalleled intellectual adventure.” * Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen *“At last, a definitive and extensively annotated translation of Lévi-Strauss’s prescient La Pensée sauvage. Cultivating wild forms of thought is more important today than Lévi-Strauss could ever have imagined.” * Eduardo Kohn, McGill University *“Wild Thought marks the turning point in Lévi-Strauss's long career, opening the way for his monumental analysis of the mythology of the Americas. But above all, it is the book that put anthropology at the forefront of the human sciences, by methodically dissolving the evolutionist and colonialist presuppositions of the whole metaphysical machinery of Reason, History, and Progress. This much-needed new English translation will reintroduce Lévi-Strauss's essential work for the next generation of scholars and expert anthropologists alike.” * Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro *“Wild Thought is a fantastic rendering—a timely translation for anthropology’s most timeless mind.” * Matthew Engelke, Columbia University *Table of ContentsTranslators’ Introductionby John Leavitt Prospectus for La Pensée sauvage, 1962 Preface 1 The Science of the Concrete 2 The Logic of Totemic Classifications 3 Systems of Transformation 4 Totem and Caste 5 Categories, Elements, Species, Numbers 6 Universalization and Particularization 7 The Individual as Species 8 Time Regained 9 History and Dialectic Appendix: On the Wild Pansy Bibliography Notes to the Translation Index

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Book SynopsisThe philosophy of medicine has become a vibrant and complex intellectual landscape, and Care and Cure is the first extended attempt to map it. In pursuing the interdependent aims of caring and curing, medicine relies on concepts, theories, inferences, and policies that are often complicated and controversial. Bringing much-needed clarity to the interplay of these diverse problems, Jacob Stegenga describes the core philosophical controversies underlying medicine in this unrivaled introduction to the field. The fourteen chapters in Care and Cure present and discuss conceptual, metaphysical, epistemological, and political questions that arise in medicine, buttressed with lively illustrative examples ranging from debates over the true nature of disease to the effectiveness of medical interventions and homeopathy. Poised to be the standard sourcebook for anyone seeking a comprehensive overview of the canonical concepts, current state, and cutting edge of this vital field, this concise int

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Book SynopsisTrade Review...topical and timely. European Legacy The book as a whole is an enjoyable read that raises many questions from several perspectives. Each author takes a different stance, followed by a discussion section for their interactions and disputes. -- Robin Alice Roth ID: International Dialogue Very cogent and deftly argued. Muslim World Book ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen 1. "The Political": The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology Jurgen Habermas 2. Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism Charles Taylor Dialogue: Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor 3. Is Judaism Zionism? Judith Butler 4. Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization Cornel West Dialogue: Judith Butler and Cornel West Concluding Discussion: Butler, Habermas, Taylor, West Afterword Craig Calhoun

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Book SynopsisEthical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being acknowledged. Jill Stauffer examines the root causes of ethical loneliness and difficult truths about the desire and potential for political forgiveness, transitional justice, and political reconciliation.Trade ReviewA timely book-rarely has the fecundity of the Continental approach to ethics been so clearly and persuasively on display. -- Robert Bernasconi, Penn State University To read Ethical Loneliness is to undergo the page-turning yet profoundly uncomfortable experience of struggling to hear the fractured stories told by survivors. Jill Stauffer's voice leads us carefully and thoughtfully through an unsettling hell of testimonies, showing us how difficult it is for us to linger in the discomfort of hearing about violent injustice without rushing through the ugly parts, forgetting the hard parts, dismissing the odd parts, straightening out the chronology, watering down the anger, denying the complicity, enforcing forgiveness or victimhood, whitewashing the ending, and missing what is not said and what cannot be put into words. This book, or rather, this experience of listening, is destined to become, like Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain, a classic text in the field. It is really that good. -- Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac University Stauffer's book breaks through legalistic approaches to mass violence and oppression to uncover the conditions of the repair of lives and worlds in human interdependence. Her bold claims for widely diffused reparative responsibilities are built on close discussions of how together we author-or destroy-selves and worlds. Her impressive blending of contemporary events and philosophical reflection reveals the wide scope of responsibility that implicates us in the repair of others' suffering in ways we are usually glad to ignore or resist. -- Margaret Urban Walker, Marquette University Our relationship to our past is shifting, multiple, and emotive. In Ethical Loneliness, Stauffer builds on this dialogic conception of the self over time to develop a communicative theory of justice as a 'reparative' mode of giving the past its due. Lucid, attentive, and nuanced, this scintillating and surprising work installs a finely filigreed protocol of listening, a duty of hearing, in the heart of law. -- Peter Goodrich, Cardozo School of Law Stauffer involves us in ways of being and of being-together that are imperative yet elusive. And while a ready resolution is neither offered nor possible, the book itself is an absorbing vade mecum. -- Peter Fitzpatrick, Birkbeck, University of London A small book with immense breadth and insight into the difficulties of and harms incurred through the process of political reconciliation in the aftermath of atrocity. APA Newsletter on Feminism and PhilosophyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Ethical Loneliness 2. Repair 3. Hearing 4. Revision 5. Desert Epilogue Notes Index

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Book SynopsisSimultaneously an introduction to Hegel and a fundamental reimagining of Hegel’s project, this book presents a radical Hegel for the twenty-first century. Todd McGowan contends that the revolutionary core of Hegel’s thought is contradiction.Trade ReviewThis is the book we were waiting for after long years of being bombarded by Hegel as a closet liberal whose last word is recognition. With Todd McGowan, the revolutionary Hegel is back—however, it is not the old Marxist Hegel but the Hegel AFTER Marx, the Hegel who makes us aware that revolution is an open and risked process which necessarily entails catastrophic failures. Hegel’s problem—how to save the legacy of the French revolution after its breakdown—is our problem today: how to save the project of radical emancipation after the catastrophe of Stalinism. In a truly democratic country, Emancipation After Hegel would be reprinted in hundreds of thousands of copies and distributed for free to all students. Read this book… or ignore it at your own risk! -- Slavoj Žižek, author of Less Than Nothing and Absolute RecoilTodd McGowan's Emancipation After Hegel could not come at a more appropriate time: the time when we truly need to carefully (re)think and reestablish the idea of emancipation. The book does this in a brilliant and compelling way, taking contradiction—as understood by Hegel—as the key to the understanding of emancipation and its relationship to freedom. -- Alenka Zupančič, author of What Is Sex?In Emancipation After Hegel, Todd McGowan forges an unprecedented type of left Hegelianism. From Marx and Engels onward, leftist defenders of Hegel either downplay or repudiate Hegel's accounts of Christianity and the state. McGowan's distinctive achievement is to prove that Hegelian freedom would not exist without both the Christian legacy and the modern state. McGowan opens up new horizons precisely by venturing where traditional left Hegelianisms have feared to go. -- Adrian Johnston, author of A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical MaterialismThe ten chapters canvass a wide range of topics—logic, reason, history, love, freedom, politics, experience, universality. In each case, McGowan shows with devastating clarity how the received view of Hegel has been founded on serious misreadings, then unfolds a fresh interpretation as deeply insightful as it is far-reaching. The result is an absolute tour de force. In McGowan's book, Hegel rises from the dead and assumes the status of an indispensable resource for the next chapter of Western intellectual history. -- Richard Boothby, author of Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After LacanSparklingly articulate. * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *If Todd McGowan’s book on Hegel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. McGowan is the giant of Vermont, the Bernie Sanders of the academy, the Larry David of Lacanian theory. * Continental Thought and Theory *This book is particularly helpful for someone trying to better understand Slavoj Žižek’s thought. Žižek resonates with McGowan’s emphasis on the necessity of embracing contradiction for understanding anything. * European Legacy *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Divided He Falls1. The Path to Contradiction: Redefining Emancipation2. Hegel After Freud3. What Hegel Means When He Says Vernunft4. The Insubstantiality of Substance: Restoring Hegel’s Lost Limbs5. Love and Logic6. How to Avoid Experience7. Learning to Love the End of History: Freedom Through Logic8. Resisting Resistance, Or Freedom Is a Positive Thing9. Absolute or Bust10. Emancipation Without SolutionsConclusion: Replanting Hegel’s TreeNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisWendy Brown explains the hard-right turn in Western politics. She argues that neoliberalism’s intensification of nihilism coupled with its accidental wounding of white male supremacy generates an apocalyptic populism willing to destroy the world rather than endure a future in which this supremacy disappears.Trade ReviewWendy Brown is the great radical theorist of democracy of our time, in the grand tradition of Sheldon Wolin. This book is the best treatment we have of the aftermath of the high moments of our neoliberal age and the descent into antidemocratic darkness. Yet Brown's profound analysis and mature vision give us a glimmer of hope! -- Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard UniversityIn this fascinating book, Wendy Brown demonstrates that neoliberal rationality, more than merely economistic in spirit, also contains a reactionary moralism. The two elements dovetail in curtailing every form of equality. This has devastating effects, as we can observe in the world from Trump to Bolsonaro to Erdogan. -- Étienne Balibar, author of Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses on Religion and PoliticsWendy Brown is our most astute and far-reaching political anatomist. Here, she deepens and revises her prior, influential excavations of neoliberal reason, demonstrating how the global resurgence of far-right authoritarianism, white nationalism, and neofascism is less a reaction to economic distress or a return of repressed hatreds than a political mutation born of a long, steady corrosion of social capacities, public goods, democratic subjectivities, and information ecologies. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism exposes a novel and deadly symbiosis of neoliberal policy and reactionary politics in our time; in doing so, it provides essential orientation for all of us working to salvage democratic politics. -- Nikhil Pal Singh, New York UniversityBrown attends to the perceived puzzles of neoliberalism that have baffled other analysts and solves them outright. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism offers a complete rethinking of our current political reality. -- Nicholas Xenos, Director of the Amherst Program in Critical TheoryWhat makes Brown such a compelling political thinker — her unique ability to resist the terms in which political problematics present themselves and to reframe them in a way that opens up new lines of sight. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Brilliant. . . . Essential. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Society Must Be Dismantled2. Politics Must Be Dethroned3. The Personal, Protected Sphere Must Be Extended 4. Speaking Wedding Cakes and Praying Pregnancy Centers: Religious Liberty and Free Speech in Neoliberal Jurisprudence 5. No Future for White Men: Nihilism, Fatalism, and RessentimentNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisWhy do policies and business practices that ignore the moral and generous side of human nature often fail? Should the idea of economic manthe amoral and self-interested Homo economicusdetermine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding no. Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may crowd out ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.Trade Review"In his tightly argued and illuminating book, Bowles makes the case that appeals made to our self-interest can undercut instinctive moral impulses; and that when these impulses are weakened crucial institutions work sub-optimally, if not at all."—Robert Armstrong, Financial Times"Bowles makes an appealing case that virtue has a place in the world of economics . . . adds to a tide of research (such as the work of economist Elinor Ostrom and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson) showing that selfishness is not the only human virtue in the real world."—Bob Holmes, New Scientist“A welcome alternative. . . Bowles persuasively argues that when economists take as given (and thus plan for) a world of utility-maximising agents, they actually help create such a world.” —Rebecca L. Spang, Times Literary Supplement Won an Honorable Mention for the 2017 Robert Lane Award given by the Organized Political Sections of the APSA"The Moral Economy plows new ground in exploring how the actions we take are motivated by their meaning. Samuel Bowles is proposing a paradigm shift in how we think about our lives and about economics."—George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics"The Moral Economy convincingly shows that economic incentives and legal constraints alone will not produce a flourishing society because good – morally motivated – people are indispensable. A thought-provoking work!"—Ernst Fehr, Professor of Economics at the University of Zurich"The Moral Economy is a brilliant book. Rarely have such big ideas been communicated in such a compact package. This book should change the way political leaders, policy makers, and social scientists of all stripes do their work and understand the work that they do."—Barry Schwartz, author of Practical Wisdom and Why We Work"In this wonderful book, Sam Bowles explores—with intellectual breadth and analytical acuity—the importance of altruism and a sense of fairness in creating and sustaining decent societies. His prose is lucid, arguments compelling, and conclusions important. This is social science at its very best."—Joshua Cohen, Apple University"Sam Bowles is a visionary thinker who has done more than anyone else I know to unite the social sciences. In this superb book his combination of wisdom and rigor shines through, offering important lessons for anyone who hopes to motivate, govern, or even inspire actual humans."—Joshua Greene, author of Moral Tribes and director of the Moral Cognition Lab, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Each of the chapters of this erudite and breezy . . . tract begins with a series of assertions about Marx and Marxism, which Eagleton then proceeds to debunk . . . through excursions into philosophy, political practice and literary analogy. . . . Polemically charged and enjoyable."—Guardian"A lively defense. . . . Eagleton offers a richer, more complex and nuanced picture of the father of modern socialism. . . . Throughout, the author is witty, entertaining, and incisive."—Publishers Weekly“Not so much a good read as a romp, this is an irresistibly lively, and thought-provoking essay.”—Michael Kerrigan, Scotsman"A short, witty, and highly accessible jaunt through Marx’s thought in preparation for the second coming."—Frank Barry, Irish Times"Why Marx Was Right is no abstract argumentation but an eloquent, fact-based rebuttal of the usual criticisms of Marxism."—John Green, Morning Star"This is a wonderful book that every socialist should have on their bookshelves."—Gareth Jenkins, Socialist Worker"Why Marx Was Right is designed for a wide audience and deserves one. With flair, sparkling wit, and no fear of vigorous rebuttal, Eagleton's book seeks to address some of the most often heard criticisms of Marx and Marxist thought. . . . Terry Eagleton has taken much of the best the Marxist tradition has to offer in thinking about class, nature, revolution, history, and many such grand subjects, and summarized it briefly with clarity, intelligence, and a sense of humor. And for this he deserves our thanks."—Matthijs Krul, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books"Refreshing and challenging. . . . [A] most compelling read."—Michael O’Sullivan, Tablet (Books of the Year)"Terry Eagleton takes on some of the most common objections to Marxism and answers each in turn, in a clear, non-technical and often humorous way."—London Review of Books “Much of it is illuminating” —Jonathan Wolff, Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril."—President Barack Obama"Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order."—David Brooks, New York Times"Bracing. . . . Deneen comes as a Jeremiah to announce that Tocqueville's fear that liberalism would eventually dissolve all [its] inheritances . . . may now be fully upon us."—Ross Douthat, New York Times"Mr. Deneen has written a serious book offering a radical critique of modernity, and he has taken the trouble to do so both concisely and engagingly. His insights as well as his crotchets in pursuit of his argument are often arresting. He writes compellingly on the growth of government in tandem with the spread of liberal market principles, for example, noting that a supposed preference for 'limited government' has been no match for the demand for expanding government enforcement of individual rights."—Tod Lindberg, Wall Street Journal“One of the most talked-about books of the moment.”—Scott Reyburn, The New York Times"[Deneen's] exhortations to embrace the local over the global and the cultural over the political are sound and well expressed."—Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal, Books on Politics: Best of 2018"Few books challenge the core assumptions of modern liberalism as unapologetically as the suggestively titled Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen."—Shadi Hamid, TheAtlantic.com“Deneen makes an excellent case for the flaws of liberal theory and practice… [He] also presents an excellent place to begin in understanding (but also critiquing) the new National Populism.” —Joshua Penduck, Church of England NewspaperFinalist for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 2018 Conservative Book of the Year prize, the Paolucci Book Award.“Liberalism is clearly in everybody’s sights, and Why Liberalism Failed will be an important contributor to the conversation, suggesting that we cannot work within the existing paradigm anymore. The philosophers will not solve our problems; working with our neighbors will.”—Joshua Mitchell, Professor of Political Theory, Georgetown University"Deneen writes with clarity, candor and superior scholarship to create one of the most absorbing political philosophy books of the past decade. No one who reads it, no one who considers its substance, will be able to think about the dynamics and the consequences of the American democratic experiment in quite the same way."—Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, author of Author of Strangers in a Strange Land"This courageous and timely book is a major contribution to understanding the rude awakening in the Trump moment. It shows that we must transcend the death grip of the two oscillating poles of classical liberalism (of Republican and Democratic parties) and examine the deep assumptions that hold us captive. It also reveals that if we remain tied to liberalism's failure, more inequality, repression, and spiritual emptiness await us."—Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard"Patrick Deneen is a probing and gifted cultural critic, afire with controlled moral passion. Why Liberalism Failed provides a bracing antidote to the pieties of left and right by showing how an impoverished, bipartisan conception of liberty has imprisoned the public life it claims to have set free. One could not ask for a timelier or more necessary enrichment of our depleted political discourse."—Jackson Lears, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, Rutgers University“A path-breaking book, boldly argued and expressed in terms that might justifiably be called prophetic in character.”—Wilfred M. McClay, G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, University of Oklahoma

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Book SynopsisAn eloquent call to draw on the lessons of the past to address current threats to international orderTrade Review“A brilliant new book.”—Philip Bobbitt, Wall Street Journal "In this spare, almost mathematical primer, Hal Brands and Charles Edel deliver a rebuke to complacency and a defense of constructive pessimism in the service of America’s engagement with the world."—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century"Hal Brands and Charles Edel have written a crucial reminder that being so safe for so long has dulled our imagination of how dangerous and destructive the alternatives are to the ‘flawed masterpiece’ of post-World War II order the U.S. created. Read this to relish two fine minds expertly marshaling 5,000 years of western culture to motivate our communal resolve to preserve the liberal international order. What an education!"—Kori Schake, author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony"Brands and Edel show that the tragedy of international relations is not, as some would argue, that nations are doomed to war—but rather that war comes when leaders and the public fail to learn from the past how to preserve the peace. This is a compelling account of the dangers of “historical amnesia” at time when many question the need for sustained U.S. global leadership. The Lessons of Tragedy does more than warn of the dangers; it draws on the demonstrable achievements of past U.S. statecraft to chart a more hopeful course for the future."—James B. Steinberg, Professor at Syracuse University and former Deputy Secretary of State“This powerful book by two of America's most brilliant historians and theorists of grand strategy writing at the top of their game provides a timely reminder that the history of international relations has been replete with catastrophes and costly disasters."—Eric Edelman, former Ambassador to Turkey, Finland and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 2005-2009“This compact, engaging, and evocative volume packs a sharp, lasting punch. Brands and Edel argue persuasively for a return to the “tragic sensibility” that spurred the creation of all previous international orders. Reading The Lessons of Tragedy would benefit politicians, national security professionals, and civilians alike—in the same way that the great theatrical tragedies benefited ancient Greek society. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”—Robert Work, 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense

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Book SynopsisFeaturing an extensive, provocative introduction by historian Martin Malia, this authorized English translation of The Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated by Engels, with prefaces to editions published between 1872 and 1888, provides a new opportunity to examine the document that shook the world.In 1848, two young men published what would become one of the defining documents of modern history, The Communist Manifesto. It rapidly realigned political faultlines all over the world and its aftershock resonates to this day. In the many years since its publication, no other social program has inspired such divisive and violent debate. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world’s first regime to adopt the Manifesto’s tenets, historians have debated its intent and its impact. In the current era of market democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe, nationalism on every continent, and an ever tightening global economy, does the specter of Communism still haunt the world? Were the seeds of Communism’s ultimate destruction already planted in 1848? Is there anything to be learned from Marx’s envisioned utopia?  With an Introduction by Martin Maliaand an Afterword by Stephen Kotkin 

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Book SynopsisCan one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities -- St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka''s grave to conversations with Hitler''s impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

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Book SynopsisFrom one of the most important contemporary thinkers we have, a compelling, forceful tract about women and motherhood that demands immediate attention. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl's ''Matilda'' to observations about motherhood in the ancient world, from and thoughts about the stigmatization of single mothers in the UK, Mothers delivers a groundbreaking report into something so prevalent we hardly notice.

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Book SynopsisArgues that various forms of life are connected in a vast, entangling mesh and this interconnectedness penetrates different dimensions of life. This title investigates the profound philosophical, political, and aesthetic implications of the fact that these life forms are interconnected.Trade ReviewMorton writes from inside the ecological thought, not as its cheerleader or architect but as a latter-day Romantic. The great strength of this book is its genre inventiveness, and its main contribution is its performance of a thinking keyed to our time and place, a thinking with clear and immediate ethical implications. The Ecological Thought is crucial right now. -- Marjorie Levinson, University of MichiganPicking up where his most obvious predecessors, Gregory Bateson and Felix Guattari, left off, Morton understands mental ecology as the ground zero of ecological thinking, as that which must be redressed before anything else and above all. Morton goes beyond both his forebears, however, in repairing the rift between science and the humanities, which the Enlightenment opened up and against which Romanticism reacted. Perhaps most pleasantly surprising, given its erudition, is that in its stylistic elegance The Ecological Thought is as satisfying to read as it is necessary to ponder. -- Vince Carducci, College for Creative StudiesTimothy Morton has a unique take on ecology that challenges much of the alternative consciousness that floats around on the periphery of environmental circles. He offers a profound take on human possibilities. To Morton, human society and Nature are not two distinct things but rather two different angles on the same thing. * Tikkun *By suggesting imaginative ways to resolve other crises, could humanities scholars stave off the crisis engulfing their own subjects? Morton proposes a future in which the venerable ideas of "nature" and "environment" are so much detritus, useless for addressing a looming ecological catastrophe. His book exemplifies the "serious" humanities scholarship he makes a plea for. My head's still spinning. -- Noel Castree * Times Higher Education *Morton's The Ecological Thought rejects the romantic concept of nature as a passive foil to human action. The natural world, as it turns out, is not something outside of us; or, put another way: there is no difference between humans and our environment...He asks us to engage in "radical openness" as a way of practicing "radical coexistence," a state of being that we live even when we do not think much about it...Morton's book allows us to see our stirrings of sympathy for nonhuman beings such as strawberries as the beginning of a recognition that we have all--people and plants alike--lost long ago our presumed roots in an imagined natural world. -- Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThe fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In this title, the author argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question.Trade ReviewIn a sustained, profound, and richly textured argument that will, from now on, be essential to all debate on the matter, Ronald Dworkin makes the case for…the unity of value… Dworkin writes as an applied philosopher; the topics he discusses are matters of practical importance. They affect whether and how people can give meaning to their lives. They make a difference in legislatures and courts of law whose decisions touch hundreds of millions of lives. That is what gives the overall argument its urgency, for Dworkin's principal aim in establishing the unity of value is the familiar and central one for him: to show how law and government can be based on political morality… He completes, in [the] final chapter, a chain of reasoning that can be seen as uniting convictions of personal morality with principles of political justice, and then showing how these are all gathered together in a larger system of moral ideals that he believes lawyers and judges must deploy in discovering what the abstract principles of the American Constitution really mean and require. We are in at the birth, here, of a modern philosophical classic, one of the essential works of contemporary thought. It is bound to be a major debate-changer, because even the many who will find much to disagree with—Dworkin, after all, disagrees with them in advance, and robustly—will not be able to ignore the challenges he poses. And out of the heat to come, much light will shine. -- A. C. Grayling * New York Review of Books *The most profound legal book of the season is Justice for Hedgehogs… This book is [Dworkin's] theory of everything and rests on the notion that 'value' is the one big philosophical thing… For the first time, all pieces of Dworkin's jurisprudential thinking fall formidably into place. -- Richard Susskind * The Times *[Dworkin's arguments] display great intellectual rigour… A daring and demanding treatise… Defining morality as the standards governing how we ought to treat other people, and ethics as the standards governing how we ought to live ourselves, Dworkin argues that living morally and living ethically are inseparable. What we achieve is less important than the manner in which we live our lives, and that is judged in part by how we treat other people. To live well, Dworkin writes, is to live one's life as if it were a work of art. In a work of art the value of what is created is inseparable from the act of creating it. A painting is not only a product; it embodies a particular performance. For Dworkin, it isn't the product value of a human life that is most important but its performance value. A life should be an achievement 'in itself, with its own value in the art in living it displays.' …Justice for Hedgehogs attempts to give human beings their due, not in any spirit of self-congratulation but so that we may build a better life for all. -- Richard King * The Australian *Justice for Hedgehogs represents a powerful account of what our moral world would have to be for our moral life to be harmonious. -- William A. Galston * Commonweal *The 79-year-old professor of philosophy's grand, perhaps culminating, statement of what truth is, what life means, what morality requires and justice demands… [Dworkin] builds up a comprehensive system of value—embracing democracy, justice, political obligation, morality, liberty, equality—from his notions of dignity and self-respect. -- Stuart Jeffries * The Guardian *The first thing to strike you about this remarkable book is its ambition… In Justice for Hedgehogs all of Dworkin's great talent is on display, the themes overwhelming in their sheer bigness. The basic point is that like the hedgehog in a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, there is one big thing Dworkin knows above all else—it is what makes sense of how we act as persons, how we relate to others and how we construct our society… The nineteen substantive chapters stand as a great statement of a life well lived (and with, it is hoped, many years still to go). -- Conor Gearty * New Humanist *Justice for Hedgehogs is Dworkin's most ambitious book to date… It is full of sustained argument and arresting observations drawn from a lifetime of thought and a great armory of knowledge. -- Jonathan Sumption * The Spectator *

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Book SynopsisTracing constitutional thought from the Enlightenment to the present, Martin Loughlin shows how a tool for the protection of self-government has become a means for subverting popular will. Across the globe, constitutions now displace democratic decision-making, as courts interpret values in the law that ultimately trump legislative action.Trade ReviewLoughlin has written a short, dense book of considerable intellectual and political importance. Against Constitutionalism is an essential argument, forcefully made, and bristling with both learning and thinking. -- Jedediah Purdy, author of This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New CommonwealthAgainst Constitutionalism does a wonderful job detailing the change in the nature of constitutional government that has taken place over the past hundred years and why those changes matter. This is a book that every serious student of constitutional government needs to read and think about. -- Mark A. Graber, author of Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional EvilIn this forceful critique of constitutionalism, Loughlin supplies us not only with an account of the emergence of a new ideology but also with a compelling analysis of its pathologies. It will surely engage the minds of jurists and legal scholars, but it should also be closely read by democratic theorists, who will find in these pages answers to questions they have been pondering for some time. -- Chandran Kukathas, author of Immigration and FreedomConstitutionalism and democracy, two notions that we are used to perceiving as a pair, are here opposed to each other. Loughlin’s thesis—that constitutionalism must cede if democracy shall thrive—is provocative enough to make this brilliantly written book one with which scholars will have to contend. -- Dieter Grimm, former Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court of GermanyA tightly-presented but far-ranging survey of both legal theory and practical example, Against Constitutionalism is a thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction to and analysis of the subject-matter. * Complete Review *The United States is in the grip of an ideology. Constitutionalism, a distinctive philosophy of governance, has quietly come to dominate and be taken for granted. So argues Against Constitutionalism, Loughlin’s ambitious account of how constitutionalism emerged, developed, and spread. The book’s central insight is that constitutionalism is not an empty vessel into which other commitments can be poured, but rather that it has its own values, logic, and normative commitments. -- Jonathan S. Gould * Harvard Law Review *Provocative…Loughlin is highly critical of the juridification of politics and identifies the EU as one of the main culprits in this process…Loughlin’s key aim is thus to defend constitutional democracy against constitutionalism—a task that can only be pursued at local and national level against the hubris of ‘the cosmopolitan project. -- Stefan Auer * Contemporary Political Theory *An important book that will occupy a prominent place in the contemporary discussion of constitutional theory. It is, perhaps, Loughlin’s most important book, one in which the author revisits and recreates theoretical concerns that he has been working on for decades…Both for its singular virtues and for the intensity of the controversies it is bound to arouse, Against Constitutionalism represents a remarkable work. -- Roberto Gargarella * University of Toronto Law Journal *[This book] brilliantly targets the principal legal dogma of the past 40 years: that well-ordered societies need elite protection from democracy, not least for the sake of rights. It isn’t, Loughlin contends, just that the juristocratic turn has elicited popular backlash while harmonising with economic liberalism. It has increasingly undone self-government. -- Samuel Moyn * New Statesman *Against Constitutionalism is a brilliant book—an erudite study not only of the historical evolution of the concept of constitutionalism but also of the contested meanings of associated concepts, including sovereignty, constituent power, and the state…A must-read book for anyone who is interested in the fate of constitutional democracy. -- Yasmin Dawood * Balkinization *

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Book SynopsisTwenty-five years after his prescient Democracy’s Discontent, Michael Sandel updates his classic work for our more fractious age. He shows how, since the 1990s, Democrats and Republicans embraced a market faith that led to the toxic politics of our time. To rescue democracy, he argues, we must reimagine the economy and revitalize the civic project.Trade ReviewAmericans have lost faith in the possibility of self-government, and they are frightened by the disintegration of community they see happening all around them. Twenty-six years since Democracy’s Discontent was first published, Sandel writes that this way of thinking has brought us to a political precipice—a moment when the combination of frayed social bonds and intense political polarization calls into question the very future of the American experiment. -- Win McCormack * New Republic *Few books are as relevant a quarter-century after their appearance as when published—but Michael Sandel has made his classic Democracy’s Discontent even more so. Rethinking how the political economy of the middle of the twentieth century has mutated to the detriment of American citizenship, substituting consumerism and globalization for community and self-rule, this is a touchstone study for our times. -- Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal WorldMichael Sandel’s deeply insightful analysis of the erosion of the political economy of citizenship has never been more timely than at the present moment. Essential—and ultimately hopeful—reading for all those who wonder if our democratic experiment will survive in the twenty-first century. -- Greta R. Krippner, author of Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance

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Book SynopsisIt is tempting to believe that dehumanization is an excess of rhetoric—that no one thinks his foe is truly monstrous. David Livingstone Smith argues otherwise, showing that when we dehumanize our enemies, we consider them both human and not. Dehumanization is a genuine psychological response to political manipulation, with harrowing consequences.Trade ReviewNo one is doing better work on the psychology of dehumanization than David Livingstone Smith, and he brings to bear an impressive depth and breadth of knowledge in psychology, philosophy, history, and anthropology. Making Monsters is a landmark achievement which will frame all future work on the psychology of dehumanization. -- Eric Schwitzgebel, author of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical MisadventuresA fascinating and rich book that combines philosophical and historical sophistication. Even—indeed especially—those who disagree markedly with Smith’s views about dehumanization, like me, will benefit from wrestling with his lucid, important arguments. -- Kate Manne, author of Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts WomenMaking Monsters is a wonderful book in so many ways. It is thoughtful, scholarly, and accessible, comprehensive and compelling—a tremendous accomplishment that will enrich our understanding of some of the darker part of our human condition. -- Lori Gruen, author of Entangled EmpathyMaking Monsters is a historically informed and theoretically rich exploration of how and why we dehumanize one another. Scientifically sophisticated and interdisciplinary in scope, Smith’s vivid use of examples transforms his book from a valuable scholarly treatise into an urgent and timely manifesto. -- Charlotte Witt, author of The Metaphysics of GenderIf you’ve ever wondered “How could they?” David Livingstone Smith’s brilliant Making Monsters will help you understand the callous brutality of race crimes and the psychology of dehumanization. With a steady hand, Smith leads us through a wide swath of the worst of human crimes and distills into his own insightful account the research explaining the social and psychological mechanisms that enable ordinary people to do monstrous deeds. This illuminating book is a major contribution to the urgent project of understanding the psychology of dehumanization in the hope of preventing future atrocities. -- Lynne Tirrell, University of ConnecticutIlluminating…It is cutting insights…along with thoughtful speculations on how dehumanization is nurtured—through racism, ideology, and the power of hierarchical structures—that makes this such an invaluable study, particularly at this time. -- Bill Marx * Arts Fuse *In this book, David Livingstone Smith’s concern is how human beings can come to conceive of other human beings ‘as subhuman creatures’—a phenomenon that is not limited to a single culture or a specific, isolated historical period…A very worthwhile read. -- Linda Roland Danil * Human Rights Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisDemocracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of people, sexual and racial equality - these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. This book deals with this topic.Trade Review"Spinoza's radicalism was certainly frightening in its time, and Israel has valuably if aggressively opened the question of its influence on the Enlightenment and the era of revolution."--Samuel Moyn, Nation "Israel is right to emphasize the importance of this intellectual movement, but since his is such a sweeping revision of so many generations of received ideas, his work raises the question of why the radical Enlightenment has been misunderstood or obscured for so long in favor of such colorful figures as Voltaire (in Israel's telling, a witty, snobbish sycophant)... We are lucky that a historian of Israel's caliber has taken these subjects on and lucky, too, that he has now produced a readable introduction to them."--Benjamin Moser, Harper's Magazine "Israel's reasoned assertion for the influence of the Radical Enlightenment on democratic thought is certainly compelling, making this essential reading for students of the Enlightenment era as well as anyone interested in the foundations of modern democracy."--Library Journal "Israel's new book is a breathtaking rethinking of the Enlightenment and its impact in the modern world."--Choice "Perhaps no active scholar has shaped the conversation about the sources and meaning of the Enlightenment more than Jonathan Israel... Almost miraculously, Israel manages to embody the greatest intellectual virtues and vices."--Christian Century "Israel succeeds commendably in a great evaluation and dissemination of generally unknown texts from beyond the familiar territories of France, England, and America. In this respect, he broadens the common conception of where Enlightenment ideas were debated and implemented, unlike Isaiah Berlin, who failed to notice the American Enlightenment."--Rivka Weisberg and Carl Pletsch, 1650-1850 "In telling this fascinating story, A Revolution of the Mind reveals the surprising origins of our most cherished values--and helps explain why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked even today."--World Book Industry "The book is obligatory reading."--Antal Szantay, Israel, European History Quarterly "[T]hanks to Israel's engaging narrative style, this is an accessible and entertaining, yet hugely informative read."--Sinead Fitzgibbon, Marginalia "Israel's book is itself a demonstration of just how alive Enlightenment values and ideals still are."--Alan Apperley, European LegacyTable of ContentsPreface vii CHAPTER I: Progress and the Enlightenment's Two Conflicting Ways of Improving the World 1 CHAPTER II: Democracy or Social Hierarchy? The Political Rift 37 CHAPTER III: The Problem of Equality and Inequality: The Rise of Economics 92 CHAPTER IV: The Enlightenment's Critique of War and the Quest for "Perpetual Peace" 124 CHAPTER V: Two Kinds of Moral Philosophy in Conflict 154 CHAPTER VI: Voltaire versus Spinoza: The Enlightenment as a Basic Duality of Philosophical Systems 199 CHAPTER VII: Conclusion 221 Notes 243 Index 267

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Book SynopsisInspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, this book provides a perspective from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions. It describes an anarchist sensibility that celebrates the local knowledge, common sense, and creativity of ordinary people.Trade Review"In a new book, Two Cheers for Anarchism, James C. Scott, a highly regarded professor of anthropology and political science at Yale, commends anarchism precisely for its 'tolerance for confusion and improvisation.'... Two Cheers for Anarchism conducts a brief and digressive seminar in political philosophy, starting from the perspective of the disillusioned leftist."--Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker "With the 'A' on its covered circled in red, Two Cheers might at first appear to be preaching to the converted, but in fact it's an attempt to explain and advocate for an anarchist perspective to a readership not already disposed to smash the state... Touching all the familiar progressive touchstones along the way, Scott makes the case for everyday insubordination and disregard for the rules in pursuit of freedom and justice."--Malcolm Harris, Los Angeles Review of Books "[I]ntriguing."--Michael Weiss, Wall Street Journal "Alternately insightful, inciteful, and insulting, Scott makes an idiosyncratically intellectual case that technocratic elites aren't to be trusted, and insubordination is a virtue to be cherished... Two Cheers for Anarchism deserves more than two cheers in review because Scott usefully expands the vocabularies that leaders and managers need to have around the critical issues of power, control, and resistance. Every effective leader I know loses sleep over how best to empower their talent and constructively align their people. And all the successful leaders I know--especially the entrepreneurs--have at least a little streak of anarchism--of creative destruction--inside of them. For this reason alone, they will find Scott's insights and incites worth their time."--Michael Schrage, Fortune "Scott selects wonderful anecdotes to illustrate his tribute to the anarchist way of seeing the world, his prose is always on the verge of breaking into a smile. Political theory rarely offers so much wry laughter."--Chris Walters, Acres USA "[E]ngaging... Scott's eye for spontaneous order in action demonstrates that anarchy is all around us: that it's no abstract philosophy but an essential part of all our lives."--Reason "James C. Scott ... has a new book just out: Two Cheers for Anarchism. I've just started reading it, but bits of it are so good that I just can't hold off blogging about them."--Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog "Yale professor James C. Scott and Princeton University Press have recently published Two Cheers for Anarchism, an easy to read book that will help illuminate the concept of anarchism for anyone under misconceptions about the sophisticated ideology of anarchy. Rather than attempt to convince readers to join their local anarchist party, Scott's goal in writing Two Cheers for Anarchism is to make 'a case for a sort of anarchist squint' by relating anecdotes that demonstrate the fundamental ideas of anarchism."--Coffin Factory "In Two Cheers for Anarchism James C. Scott ... [makes the case] for a kinder, gentler form of rebellion than the sort of bomb-throwing, street-fighting revolution typically associated with anarchism."--Nick Gillespie, Wilson Quarterly "The aspects of Scott's work that I have been able to examine ... demonstrate that the typical left-right axis by which political positions are classified is seriously inadequate to the task of handling a thinker like Scott. His case against big government is going to appeal to libertarians. His demonstrations of the wisdom often contained in traditions and customs will be attractive to conservatives. And his concerns with lessening inequalities of wealth and power will be congenial to progressives. So where does he fit on the left-right axis? Nowhere, I'd say: he is his own man. And, setting aside its many other virtues, that alone makes this a book worth reading."--Gene Callahan, American Conservative "In Two Cheers for Anarchism, James C. Scott, a professor of political science at Yale, takes a fresh and often bracing look at the philosophy espoused by (the Russian philosopher Mikhail) Bakunin and asks whether it may afford some clues as to how to proceed in the 21st century."--Richard King, Australian "Written in a highly engaging series of what he calls 'fragments,' Scott's work links together a series of brief reflections on social cooperation in the absences of (or despite opposition from) hierarchy, tying such cooperation to a sense of autonomy, freedom, and human flourishing... There is much of value in this short book and, hopefully, much that is inspirational."--Choice "The book taken as a whole is a great leap forward and will form the basis of current and future engagements in political philosophy. In my own view, the book answers Noam Chomsky call for 'intellectual responsibility'; the responsibility to speak the truth and insist upon it."--Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha, Symbolic Interaction "Though Scott's kaleidoscope of touching stories, challenging thoughts and well-chosen examples is at all times diverting and often mind-blowing, this panoply of loose ideas remains connected to a strong underlying argument. He is radical but hardly polemical, utopian but deeply rooted to the ground."--Pascale Siegrist, Cambridge Humanities Review "[A]ll readers, even those sympathetic to Scott's anarchist theme, will find themselves unsettlingly but usefully challenged by this beautifully written and argued book, especially by his call to pay more attention to the beliefs and actions of ordinary people and to avoid overly abstract theorizing that serves to aid centralized hierarchies and technocratic elites."--John A. Rapp, Review of Politics "Two Cheers for Anarchism is an insightful contemplation of the everydayness of anarchism... I can still recommend the book insofar is it casts some much needed light on the everydayness of anarchism, which is particularly important owing to the weight of Scott's name and the of clarity of his pen. Few authors are better positioned than Scott to render anarchist ideas more luminous and less threatening in the wider social sciences."--Simon Springer, Antipode "Two Cheers for Anarchism is an unusual, affecting, and useful book... The insights contained in this small volume are useful in addressing contemporary concerns about the post-political landscape as well as connecting with recent calls for autonomous geographies including alternative practices in organizing households, economies, and engagements with ecologies."--Stephen Healy, AntipodeTable of ContentsIllustrations vii Preface ix one The Uses of Disorder and "Charisma" 1 two Vernacular Order, Official Order 30 three The Production of Human Beings 57 four Two Cheers for the Petty Bourgeoisie 84 five For Politics 101 six Particularity and Flux 129 Notes 143 Acknowledgments 149 Index 151

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWinner of the 2016 PROSE Award in Philosophy, Association of American Publishers "Provides valuable insights into an important and timely subject."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Book Review "[T]he book crackles with brilliant insights and erudition, while also managing to explain the arcane preoccupations of analytic philosophy in a way that's accessible to a wider audience."---Bookforum "How Propaganda Works deserves huge praise and should be read by anyone who cares about politics and language. Its trove of tools and insights is impossible to completely summarise here."--The National "As with other books that expose hidden patterns in American political life from a great height (those that come to mind are Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow), the lofty perspective of How Propaganda Works challenges researchers to fill in gaps with more detailed, particular explanations of how and why."--Stephen Siff, Journalism & Mass Communications Quarterly "Rich and thoughtful... The best way to fight propaganda is to become savvier about how it manipulates, how it actually works, as Stanley does in his work."--Desmog Canada "Brilliant and incisive."--Survival: Global Politics and Strategy "[A] timely and important work that contributes a good deal of theoretical understanding to a crucial yet relatively neglected topic of inquiry."--Spinwatch "A book uniquely suited to its time... An example of political philosophy at its finest."--Voegelinview "Stanley tracks propaganda's history across continents and through decades, illuminating its power to make people vote against their own best interests. And what he has found is [that] the words being used may be as important as the politics behind them."--Nick Osbourne, Boston Globe "Citing examples ranging from historical racism in America to Citizens United, Stanley's critique of propaganda and ideology will only prove more influential as public and political opinion is further polarized... [A] useful examination of propaganda's pervasiveness."--Kirkus Reviews "Stanley has produced a highly stimulating book that brings the issue of propaganda to the attention of political philosophers and draws on an impressive range of philosophical and social scientific sources to illustrate his analysis and provide support for his claims. It is bound to be widely discussed and debated."--Jonathan Wolff, Analysis "A searching, eclectic, lively and personal book."--Matthew Festenstein, Political TheoryTable of ContentsPreface IX Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda 1 1 Propaganda in the History of Political Thought 27 2 Propaganda Defined 39 3 Propaganda in Liberal Democracy 81 4 Language as a Mechanism of Control 125 5 Ideology 178 6 Political Ideologies 223 7 The Ideology of Elites: A Case Study 269 Conclusion 292 Acknowledgments 295 Notes 305 Bibliography 335 Index 347

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOne of Zocalo's 10 Favorite Books of 2016 "Brennan has a bright, pugilistic style, and he takes a sportsman's pleasure in upsetting pieties and demolishing weak logic. Voting rights may happen to signify human dignity to us, he writes, but corpse-eating once signified respect for the dead among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. To him, our faith in the ennobling power of political debate is no more well grounded than the supposition that college fraternities build character."--Caleb Crain,New Yorker "A brash, well-argued diatribe against the democratic system. There is much to mull over in this brazen stab at the American electoral process... [I]n the current toxic partisan climate, Brennan's polemic is as worth weighing as any other."--Kirkus Reviews "A brash, well-argued diatribe against the democratic system. There is much to mull over in this brazen stab at the American electoral process... Sure to cause howls of disagreement, but in the current toxic partisan climate, Brennan's polemic is as worth weighing as any other."--Kirkus "Important."--Ilya Somin, Washington Post Volokh Conspiracy "Against Democracychallenges a basic precept that most people take for granted: the morality of democracy... Brennan presents a variety of strategies by which the quality of the electorate could be improved, while still keeping it large, and demographically representative... [A] powerful challenge to the conventional wisdom about democracy... [W]orth serious consideration."--Ilya Somin, Washington Post "Compelling... This is theory that skips, rather than plods."--Los Angeles Times "The book makes compelling reading for what is typically a dry area of discourse. This is theory that skips, rather than plods."--Molly Sauter, Los Angeles Times "Among the best works in political philosophy in recent memory."--Zachary Woodman, Students for Liberty "Challenging and insightful."--Alexander William Salter, Public Choice "Lucidly written in provocative, sometimes brash tones, it is especially useful for the undergraduate classroom."--Choice "Against Democracy seems scarily prescient today. Writing well before the twin shocks of the Brexit and the U.S. elections, the Georgetown political scientist makes a powerful case that popular democracy can be dangerous--and, provocatively, that irrational and incompetent voters should be excluded from democratic decision-making. The case for elitism in governance never read so well."--Zocalo Public Square "Meticulous [and] crisply written."--Tom Clark, Prospect "Mercilessly well-argued."--Niko Kolodny, Boston Review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Popular books on the illusion of self tend to be crass and sensationalist, the academic ones dull and turgid. Jay L. Garfield has successfully followed the less trodden middle way. As a result, the promise of losing yourself in a book has never been more literal."---Julian Baggini, Times Literary Supplement"Passionate, logical, and thought-provoking."---David Greder, Reading Religion"Incisive. . . .This book makes a valuable contribution."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Best First Book Prize, Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association""A fresh and splendidly clear guide to the intellectual history of monetary policy. . . . The Currency of Politics is an invaluable guide to why — and how to think about what comes next."---Felix Martin, Financial Times"Eich’s extraordinary book provides an essential guide to thinking about the politics of money." * Adam Tooze *"Eich offers a rich treatment of each historical episode. But the chapters on the two Englishmen, Locke and Keynes, stand out. . . . pathbreaking."---Jonathan Levy, Project Syndicate"Eich’s book is ultimately a call to revive democratic debate about money…this excellent book…does not tell us what to do, but he does show us something can be done."---Geoff Mann, New Statesman"A pathbreaking new intellectual history of monetary policy. In examining how key thinkers approached the economic crises of their respective times, Eich offers a map for navigating the politics of money today."---Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, The Nation"Eich’s work is sure to be a landmark in political science. His argument is bold and ambitious; his writing clear and engaging; and his message timely, persuasive and imperative."---Erik Jones, Survival"A deep ex­amination of the theoretical and political foundations of money that rescues the money discus­sion from economists."---Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Open Magazine"An intellectual history of money that theoretically grounds the works of others working on democratizing money. The Currency of Politics is a great addition to the philosophy of money."---Valerie Schreur, Oeconomia"A very good book. . . . Eich takes us on a fascinating journey."---Paul Sagar, Perspectives on Politics"Exquisitely written."---Jorge González-Gallarza, The Critic"Eich’s contribution demarcates a new space for political thought on money, and brings together key theorists on the structuration of money both to show that political thought often has a direct effect on the type of monetary system that is maintained, and to show that democratic agency vis-a-vis money is often wilfully ignored."---Dominic Burbidge, Politics and Poetics"[The Currency of Politics] fits well into the growing critical debate on neoliberal policies that have dominated the economic discussion in the latest decades. . . . [and] helps us to understand that monetary policy must be the prerogative of a healthy and fruitful public and thus political debate."---Giampaolo Conte, The Journal of European Economic History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[Singer] is persuasive on so many topics that he makes you wish we could turn the world off, then on again, in an attempt to reset it."---Dwight Garner, New York Times"A terrific recent book . . . that wrestles with how much we should donate to charity, and whether wearing a $10,000 watch is a sign of good taste, or of shallow narcissism."---Nicholas Kristof, New York Times"Could well inspire conversations—and arguments—that deepen and complicate the crucial moral and ethical issues that Singer presents." * Kirkus Reviews *"An accessible introduction to the work of a philosopher who would not regard being described as ‘accessible' as an insult. . . . Despite their brevity, the essays do not shirk the big moral questions." * The Economist *"Philosophy should be a more public endeavor, and Singer's work is an excellent entry point. In a fall that will be shaped by a political contest in many ways detached from genuinely pressing moral issues, it might also serve as a refreshingly complex source of ethical questioning."---Talya Zax, Forward"Singer demonstrates how to write pungently and succinctly about moral philosophy."---Daniel Johnson, Standpoint"The essays in the present volume address issues well beyond Singer's normal range of commentary. In sum, this book not only provides a broad-based introduction to Singer¹s moral philosophy but also will serve . . . as an excellent textbook for any course in applied ethics. For philosophers, Singer's work provides a model for how to transition from the ivory tower to the domain of public philosophy." * Choice *"Singer is a provocative, well-informed and hands-on philosopher, with a lucid and engaging writing style. The collection provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of themes that are central to Singer's ethics. . . . His essays are well-structured, engaging, and exemplarily clear. Moreover, his arguments tend to be nuanced and non-dogmatic, in spite of his well-known ethical agenda: here is an ethicist not looking for arguments to support a preconceived conclusion, but sincerely pondering the implications of his utilitarian stance."---Jeroen Hopster, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics"Inspiring and enlivening; each essay is an easily digested nugget of acute, inventive reasoning and moral urgency, focused on practical, achievable results and the resistance of lazy, dogmatic thinking. . . . Any reader will find the book accessible; every reader will find it both thought-provoking and challenging."---Shane N. Glackin, Quarterly Review of Biology"The way Singer approaches his subject matter is awesome and instructive. He picks up news, anniversaries, but also personal encounters, and—within three or four sentences—shows the deeper ethical questions that lie behind these snippets."---Jan Friedrich, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice"This is a lovable book which deserves to be read and discussed."---Tommi Lehtonen, European Legacy"This book of clear analysis and challenging thinking encourages readers towards radical shifts of thinking and action."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer"Quick, punchy and clear. . . . [Singer] has an enviable mastery of his form, and the book provides a representative introduction to the breadth of his public thought."---Simone Gubler, Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Foreign Affairs Best of Books""Bartels, a leading analyst of electoral democracy and public opinion in the United States, turns here to a central question in European politics: Do right-wing populist parties pose a threat to democracy, moderate politics, and multilateral cooperation? His point in this important book is simple yet powerful."---Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs"Eye-opening."---Jan-Werner Mueller, Project Syndicate

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Book SynopsisWhy is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight. -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history.   Liberty is hardly the natural order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of enlightenment. This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not just the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

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Book SynopsisA critique of liberal rights exposing the paradox between 'good' capitalism and the reality of its actions.Trade Review'The book many of us have been waiting for - brilliant, radical, and essential thinking for our times.' -- Aziz Choudry, Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production, McGill University'A brilliant interrogation of the powerful hold the concept of rights has over social movements ... An absolute must read for everybody concerned with rights as a means for realising justice' -- Sunera Thobani, Asian Studies/Critical Race Feminist Studies, University of British Columbia'This persuasively written book helps us to trace the location of rights in capitalism and imperialism' -- Shahrzad Mojab, Professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, University of Toronto, and co-author of Revolutionary Learning (Pluto, 2017)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Preface Part I: The Rights Resurgence 1. Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations 2. What’s Wrong With Rights? 3. Rights in the ‘Epoch of Imperialism’ Part II: Re-Scripting Rights 4. International Election Monitoring: From ‘Will of the People’ to the ‘Right to Free and Fair Elections’ 5. The Rights of Victims: From Authorisation to Accountability 6. Intangible Property Rights: The IMF as Underwriters 7. Rights in International Neoliberal Risk-Governance Regime Part III: Concluding Reflections 8. Rights and Social Movements in the ‘Epoch of Imperialism' Postscript Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe concept of democratic freedom refers to more than the kind of freedom embodied by political institutions and procedures. Democratic freedom can only be properly understood if it is grasped as the expression of a culture of freedom that encompasses an entire form of life.Trade Review"Highly Recomennded" ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction: Aestheticization Ð An Apologia Part I: An Antique Diagnosis of a Crisis 1. The Provocative Beauty of Democracy: Plato I. Freedom and Indeterminacy 2. The Slavery of the Tyrant 3. The Unstable Democrat 4. Clear-sighted, Processual and Totalized Weakness of Will 5. Weakness of Will or the Freedom from Oneself 6. The Unfree Opportunist 7. Many Jobs and Much Trespassing 8. The Occurrence of an Inner Nature or the Freedom Toward Self 9. Democrats and Theatre Types 10. Theatrocracy: The Fearlessly Judging Multitude 11. Masses and Mimesis 12. Self-Difference and Perfection Part II: The Ethical-Political Right of Irony 2. The Morality of Irony: Hegel 1. The Beginning of Morality in Socratic Irony 2. Socrates’ Divisive Work 3. Irony and the Practice of Truth 4. Hegel’s Critique of Kant 5. A Socratic Reformulation of the Moral Principle 6. Critique of the Romantics 7. Abstract and Subjective Freedom 8. Evil and the “Natural Will” 9. The Dialectic of Freedom 10. A Less Rigorous Concept of Self-Determination 11. Conflicts with and in Morality 12. Hegel’s Expulsion of Subjective Freedom from Ethical Life 13. The Riddle of Socratic Virtue and the Historicity of the Good 3. The Ethics of Aesthetic Existence: Kierkegaard 1. The Negative Freedom of Socratic Irony and its Romantic Superseding 2. Self-Enhancement and Forgetfulness-of-Self 3. The Impotent Seducer 4. The “Helmeted” Will and its Desperation in the Face of the Aesthetic 5. Repentance and Duty: The Freedom to Choose What One Already Is 6. One Sexism for Another 7. The Love of Divorced Society Ladies 8. Aesthetic and Aristocratic Exception 9. Common sinners 10. The Leap of Faith 11. Repetitions 4. Sovereignty in Romanticism: Schmitt 1. Aestheticization and Neutralization 2. A Look at an Orange 3. Alien Power 4. The Other in the Own and Decision 5. Political Anthropology 6. Schmitt and Kierkegaard 7. Political Theology 8. “Concrete Life” and Decision 9. Schmitt’s Rousseauism 10. Politics as a Critique of Politics Part III: Democracy and Aestheticization 5. The Spectacle of Democracy: Rousseau 1. The Irony of the Actor 2. The Public Expression of Indeterminacy 3. The Actress and Her Parodies 4. The Golden Mean 5. “Thy Magic Powers Reunite What Custom’s Sword Has Divided”: The Feast of the Brothers 6. All Brothers are also Men: The Problem of Male Self-Difference 7. The Two Paradoxes of the Social Contract 8. The Sovereignty of the Legislator and the Judgment of the “Common Man” 9. Another Kind of Equality 10. A Politicizable Boundary 11. The Two Bodies of the People 12. Representation and the Coding of Contingency 6. The Anaestheticization of the Political in Fascism: Benjamin 1. Charisma versus Ratio 2. Politicizing Art 3. Astonishment, Not Sympathy 4. The Look of the Stranger 5. Alienation 6. Adaptability and Revolution 7. Charisma and Democracy 8. Political Theatre 9. Post-Democracy and the Anaesthetizing of the Political: A Look Forward Notes Acknowledgements Origins of the Text Index

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Book SynopsisDavid Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse; globalization and the body.Trade ReviewAn inspiring, well written and beautifully illustrated book, and one that I hope will help to change the trajectory of social existence as well as academic inquiry. -- Diane Perrons It is refreshing to read a book that not only represents a major scholarly achievement, but that also breathes enthusiasm, commitment, displays a clearly situated positionality, and is energised by the belief that a better world is there to be fought for and made. Students of the urban condition should be grateful to David Harvey for his rigorous and challenging scholarship and for the creativity of his imaginative vision. There is much to praise. One thing I love is the way it is written. Harvey's prose is so clear and precise ... I was reminded of how consistently Harvey has insisted on the centrality of the geographical to both the critique of this world and the possibility of the next. We could not wish for a more compelling ambassador. This is a very intriguing book. It bristles with ideas and the scope of Harvey's interests seem to be ever growing ! his analyses are rich with insight. An inspiring, well written and beautifully illustrated book, and one that I hope will help to change the trajectory of social existence as well as academic inquiry. It is refreshing to read a book that not only represents a major scholarly achievement, but that also breathes enthusiasm, commitment, displays a clearly situated positionality, and is energised by the belief that a better world is there to be fought for and made. Students of the urban condition should be grateful to David Harvey for his rigorous and challenging scholarship and for the creativity of his imaginative vision. There is much to praise. One thing I love is the way it is written. Harvey's prose is so clear and precise ... I was reminded of how consistently Harvey has insisted on the centrality of the geographical to both the critique of this world and the possibility of the next. We could not wish for a more compelling ambassador. This is a very intriguing book. It bristles with ideas and the scope of Harvey's interests seem to be ever growing ! his analyses are rich with insight.

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Book SynopsisIn this follow-up to The Kingdom and the Glory and The Highest Poverty, Agamben investigates the roots of our moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy. Beginning with the New Testament and working through to late scholasticism and modern papal encyclicals, Agamben traces the Church''s attempts to repeat Christ''s unrepeatable sacrifice. Crucial here is the paradoxical figure of the priest, who becomes more and more a pure instrument of God''s power, so that his own motives and character are entirely indifferent as long as he carries out his priestly duties. In modernity, Agamben argues, the Christian priest has become the model ethical subject. We see this above all in Kantian ethics. Contrasting the Christian and modern ontology of duty with the classical ontology of being, Agamben contends that Western philosophy has unfolded in the tension between the two. This latest installment in the study of Western political structures begun in HTrade Review"Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty is a bold and engaging book, opening up much fertile ground for future work. I find it to be both insightful and admirable, and a masterly success."—Analysis & Metaphysics

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Book SynopsisWith simple prose and straightforward logic, this book offers lessons for managers and business leaders. It is suitable reading for anyone in the realm of business or politics.Table of ContentsDedication 5 I Of the Various Kinds of Princedom, and of the Ways in Which They are Acquired 9 II Of Hereditary Princedoms 11 III Of Mixed Princedoms 15 IV Why the Kingdom of Darius, Conquered by Alexander, Did Not, on Alexander’s Death, Rebel Against His Successors 31 V How Cities or Provinces Which Before Their Acquisition Have Lived Under Their Own Laws are to Be Governed 37 VI Of New Princedoms Which a Prince Acquires With His Own Arms and by Merit 41 VII Of New Princedoms Acquired By the Aid of Others and By Good Fortune 49 VIII Of Those Who By Their Crimes Come to Be Princes 63 IX Of the Civil Princedom 71 X How the Strength of All Princedoms Should Be Measured 79 XI Of Ecclesiastical Princedoms 83 XII How Many Different Kinds of Soldiers There are, and of Mercenaries 89 XIII Of Auxiliary, Mixed, and National Arms 99 XIV Of the Duty of a Prince In Respect of Military Affairs 107 XV Of the Qualities In Respect of Which Men, and Most of all Princes, are Praised or Blamed 113 XVI Of Liberality and Miserliness 117 XVII Of Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It is Better to Be Loved or Feared 123 XVIII How Princes Should Keep Faith 129 XIX That a Prince Should Seek to Escape Contempt and Hatred 135 XX Whether Fortresses, and Certain Other Expedients to Which Princes Often Have Recourse, are Profitable or Hurtful 153 XXI How a Prince Should Bear Himself So As to Acquire Reputation 161 XXII Of the Secretaries of Princes 169 XXIII That Flatterers Should Be Shunned 173 XXIV Why the Princes of Italy Have Lost Their States 179 XXV What Fortune Can Effect in Human Affairs, and How She May Be Withstood 183 XXVI An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians 191

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Book SynopsisThe newest deluxe edition in the bestselling Capstone Classics Series This ancient classic has had a make-over. In recent years these Capstone Classic deluxe editions have caught the book buying public's imagination.Table of ContentsAn Introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon vii About Tom Butler-Bowdon xxiii The Republic 1

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Book SynopsisThe essential political writings of Montesquieu--a substantial abridgment of The Spirit of the Laws, plus judicious selections from The Persian Letters and Considerations of the Romans'' Greatness and Decline--are masterfully translated by Melvin Richter. Prefaced by a new fifty-page introduction by Richter for this revised edition, The Selected Political Writings displays the genius and virtuosity of Montesquieu the philosopher, social critic, political theorist, and literary stylist, whose work commands the attention of all students of the Enlightenment and of modern constitutional thought.Trade ReviewProfessor Richter has long been one of our most knowledgeable commentators on the French intellectual tradition. Having written on Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Durkheim, he is well positioned to provide us not only with an historically informed translation of Montesquieu’s major writings, but also with an excellent introduction to what is important about Montesquieu as a thinker. --Lawrence Dickey, University of WisconsinI am delighted that you are getting out a new edition of Melvin Richter’s translation. Again and again when I have had occasion to give serious attention to Montesquieu, I have turned to this work. --Samuel H. Beer, Harvard UniversityRichter has done us a real service by providing a version that is both scholarly and handy for teaching. The translation is generally sound, often clearer and more readable than the older version. There is a useful introduction and a helpful and reliable set of notes. . . . Richter's version will now become the standard version for many of us. --Nannerl O. Keohane, Political Science Review VI (1976)

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A scholar's edition at a student price!" --Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University"The translation of Latin variants and the index of Biblical citations mark this off as by far the best edition of the Leviathan." --Thomas Pangle, University of Toronto"Plainly the best edition of Leviathan. Superbly edited and indexed, with footnote passages from the Latin edition, a helpful glossary, biographical and autobiographical material, and a translation of Hobbes on the Nicene Creed, it will be an indispensable study tool. Curley’s introduction is masterly." --Jerome Schneewind, Johns Hopkins University

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAdding the selections from the Speech on Capital Punishment is an excellent idea. --Mark Migotti, University of Calgary

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPerfect for presenting the core of St. Thomas' teachings on law, morality, and politics.--Charles E. Butterworth, University of MarylandThe best available selection of texts for the study of Aquinas' natural law doctrine.--Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisTaking full extent of S.R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation at once both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page.Trade Review"Taking full advantage of S. R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page. Reeve's brilliant decision to cast the dialogue into direct speech produces a compelling impression of immediacy unmatched by other English translations currently available." —Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto"Reeve's new translation can be highly recommended for its accurate and readable rendering of the original. . . . Those who read the Republic for the first time or for pleasure are sure to find this the most attractive and accessible translation currently available." —Naoko Yamagata, in Journal of Classics Teaching"David Reeve's long and devoted engagement with Plato's Republic, evidenced in his highly-regarded revision of George Grube's translation, issues now in a completely new translation of his own. In this version, Socrates' narration of his conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus et al. is converted so far as possible into dramatically gripping and effective direct speech. Its increased accessibility promises to make it the number-one choice for undergraduate courses." —John Cooper, Princeton University "Reeve's new translation of Plato's Republic will be of value both to students approaching the work for the first time and, and a handy version for the more advanced reader. The translation is solid, the format and scholarly apparatus make it very accessible." —Thomas Cooksey, in The Classical OutlookTable of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements; Maps. Genealogical Charts. Time Line; SELECTIONS: Acusilaus; Aelian; Aeschylus; Andron; Antoninus Liberalis; Apollodorus; Archilochus; Arrian; Babrius; Bacchylides; Bion; Callimachus; Cleanthes; Conon; Cornutus; Critias; Diodorus of Sicily; Eratosthenes; Euripides; Fulgentius; Hellanicus; Heraclitus; Herodorus; Herodotus; Hesiod; The Homeric Hymns; Horace; Hyginus; Longus; Lucian; Lucretius; Ovid; Palaephatus; Parthenius; Pausanias; Pherecydes; Pindar; Plato; Plutarch; Proclus; Sallustius; Sappho; Semonides; Simonides; Sophocles; Statius; Theocritus; Theophrastus; Thucydides; Vergil; Xenophanes; Xenophon; Appendix One: Linear B Sources (by Thomas G. Palaima); Appendix Two: Inscriptions; Appendix Three: Papyri; Note on Texts and Translations. Names and Transliterations. Index/Glossary.

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