Description
Book SynopsisPresented in three parts, this book explores what's alluring and what's revolting in cunning. It draws on a range of sources: tales of Odysseus; texts from Machiavelli; pamphlets from early modern England; salesmen's newsletters; Christian apologetics; sermons; philosophical treatises; famous, infamous, and obscure historical cases; and more.
Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2006 "[In] his sparkling new book ... Don Herzog doesn't say his subject changed the world, though it would be hard to imagine the world without it. He lets cunning lead us toward a broadened idea of human behavior."--Robert Fulford, National Post "In Cunning, Mr. Herzog's playful and wide-ranging new book, he meditates on the tricks played by Henry Tufts, Odysseus, and used-car salesmen, among many others. Acts of cunning, Mr. Herzog says, can teach us about social roles, the limits of rationality, and the contradictions the lie within utilitarian and Kantian moral arguments."--David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education This pleasingly original little volume is bookended by two tales of murderous priests... In prose that conveys a deliciously convivial murmur (the author is a law professor who hates most academic writing), Herzog proceeds to discuss Odysseus, Machiavelli, car salesmen and confidence tricksters, believers in angels, astrology and demons, jazz musicians and pirates, both eliciting out sympathy for the variety of human moral life and refusing the paranoiac conclusion that all around us are knaves. Very cunning indeed."--Steven Poole, The Guardian "At the start of this extraordinary book we are invited to view cunning as a nobody, and nobody as cunning. By its conclusion, we are left to struggle with the thought that cunning is everybody, and that everybody is cunning. Like Odysseus himself, the reader who undertakes this labyrinthine journey will have many tales to tell, and will be very much the wiser for it."--John C. P. Goldberg, Michigan Law Review "This study is highly original, deeply researched, and lucidly written, providing pioneering work on the history of sexuality in twentieth-century Germany and challenging and reshaping the extensive scholarship on memory and the Holocaust... By focusing on a subject seemingly far removed from Nazism, Herzog shows how pervasive debates about the Nazi past were and how complex and contradictory the attitudes of even committed antifascists were."--Mary Nolan, The Historian "Cunning is a remarkable book... It is both a pleasure and difficult to read. It is a pleasure because it is so clever and erudite, so provocative and original, and because I have learned much from it and agree with much of it. It is difficult to read because the book's 'message' is so deflationary, because the playfulness edges toward self-display, and because it is hard to trust it. Of course, this is Herzog's point, which means that my attitude and reservations are precisely what Cunning aimed to cultivate."--J. Peter Euben, Duke University, Durham, NC
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Dilemmas 13 Appearances 69 Despair? 123 Afterword 185 Index 193
