Search results for ""Author Waller R. Newell""

Book SynopsisThe forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin''s imperialism, or the ambitions of China''s dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and ''enlightened despots'' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today''s world.Table of ContentsIntroduction: the strange career of tyranny; Part I. The Rage of Achilles: From Homeric Heroes to Lord and God of the World; Part II. City of God or City of Man? The Tyrant as Modern State-Builder; Part III. The Eagles Will Drop Dead from the Skies: Millenarian Tyranny from Robespierre to Al Qaeda; Conclusion: how democracy can win.

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Book SynopsisThis book will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world, the psychology of tyranny, and how it is shaped by the history of fiction, art, and architecture. Written in a clear, colorful style, the book is suitable for readers of all levels.Trade Review'The world is currently engulfed by all sorts of strongmen, authoritarians, and totalitarians. Are they all alike? Not always. In an engaging review of some 2,500 years of tyranny - drawing on a considerable knowledge of Western history and literature - Waller Newell masterfully sorts out tyrannies, ancient and modern, to remind us how they rise and why they fall - again and again. Tyrannies are the existential enemies of democracies - but not always in the same manner and to the same degree. And why that it is true makes fascinating reading.' Victor Davis Hanson, Martin and Illie Anderson Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, California'If I could think of one book for a young lover of democracy, or democratic politician to read about tyranny - supposedly a thing of the past - it would be Waller Newell's eloquent, approachable, fascinating Tyrants. Based on an astoundingly broad knowledge of history, from ancient times to the present, from high culture to pop culture, this book penetrates into the soul of the tyrant … This is the biography of tyranny we have been waiting for.' Norman Doidge, MD, Columbia University, New York and the University of Toronto, and author of The Brain That Changes Itself'This is a wonderful book, learned and insightful, acute and often brilliant. It is both a monument of scholarship and a call to action. Newell's Tyrants is as morally serious as a work of political philosophy and as sparkling with wit as an evening with the Marx Brothers.' Barry Strauss, Cornell University, New York'Waller Newell is the most brilliant interpreter of tyranny now alive. His stories of ancient and traditional tyranny, often left to narrow scholars, are absorbing, sometimes funny, but it is the accounts of Soviet Communism and Nazism that are most intellectually compelling and passionate. Newell can sweep untidy piles of facts into elegant phrases - 'the beautification of violence' - that capture their hidden meaning. At a moment when tyranny is coming back, everyone alert to the strangeness of our world ought to be reading this book.' Charles Fairbanks, The Hudson Institute'Waller Newell's Tyrants is a profound and original assessment of the evolution of the mass psychological basis evolving techniques of imposition of tyrannical government from ancient to modern times. It is a reinterpretation of Machiavelli's impact on the 500th anniversary of his The Prince, and attacks the relatively benign assessment of that writer as a perceptive and amoral cynic. It is a brilliant updating of the characteristics of tyranny, including its ever more pervasive banality and its comparatively recent exploitation of false ideologies and the adaptation of technology to impose totalitarian control and disguise the false and often absurd nature of the regime. This is a valuable and important book that will make a durable contribution to the vast, but not entirely up-to-date literature on the subject.' Lord Conrad Black'In a time when tyranny is resurgent all over the globe, in a bewildering variety of forms - military and civilian, theocratic and kleptocratic, ideological and tribal - this book provides a synoptic historical and philosophic perspective that does full justice to the manifold phenomenon in all its range and complexity.' Thomas L. Pangle, Joe R. Long Endowed Chair in Democratic Studies, University of Texas, Austin'Tyranny remains the oldest and most durable political phenomenon. Tyrants provides a stunning refutation of those who still believe that the historical process or the logic of the market will bring about a more peaceful democratic world. This book is a must-read for any serious student of political science.' Steven B. Smith, Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science, Yale University, Connecticut'At the highest levels of government, diplomacy and academia, are otherwise intelligent people who have convinced themselves that tyrants and tyrannies are anachronisms bound to be replaced by more enlightened forms of government. They apparently believe in a 'clock of human progress' and that the 'arc of the moral universe bends toward justice'. This rosy scenario is unsupported by the historical evidence as Waller R. Newell makes clear in his timely exploration of the durability and persistent appeal of repression.' Clifford D. May, President, Foundation for the Defence of Democracies'Since it has its roots in the angry soul, tyranny is a permanent feature of politics, and it is one of the delusions of liberal democracy and global capitalism that universal prosperity will remove the threat of tyranny forever. For Newell, tyranny is an independent factor in human life, impossible to predict or prevent, an evil that, when it arises, must simply be resisted.' Peter J. Leithart, First Things“Having published the very fine Tyranny: A New Interpretation in 2013, Tyrants is his less technical, less esoteric, more historical follow-up, and considering the internal and external pressures on liberal democracies at the moment, perhaps this engaging new contribution can do some good.' Aaron MacLean, Washington Free Beacon'Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror is a well rounded political science book with the high concentration on historical accuracy and eloquence … [a] highly recommended book for political analysts and world history enthusiast[s].' cjleger.com'Newell offers a thought-provoking and engaging overview of injustice and terror over thousands of years.' Allan Levine, Maclean's'In his new book, Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror, Waller Newell provides us with a new way to make sense of the jumble of political forces at work in the world … [i]n his sweeping history, Newell doesn't explain precisely how we are to win against today's tyrants, but he does point us in the right direction, and he does warn us of the peril of failing.' Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post“Tyrants is, more than anything, a book to learn from. It's as if an important television documentary series has been encapsulated in text, expanded and explained, the importance and relevance of various historical details all making a coherent point. The author has set a bar for this sort of narrative.” UNRV History (unrv.com)'… provides an accessible overview and survey of tyranny, ancient and modern. It is full of fascinating and often frightening historical characters vividly depicted, and contains a carefully considered account of the would-be tyrant's motivations.' Tod Lindberg, Claremont Review of BooksTable of ContentsIntroduction: the strange career of tyranny; Part I. The Rage of Achilles: From Homeric Heroes to Lord and God of the World; Part II. City of God or City of Man? The Tyrant as Modern State-Builder; Part III. The Eagles Will Drop Dead from the Skies: Millenarian Tyranny from Robespierre to Al Qaeda; Conclusion: how democracy can win.

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Book SynopsisThe theories of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, sometimes called the Philosophy of Freedom, launched a protest against modern liberalism individualism, feeding political catastrophes of tyranny, genocide and revolution. For readers interested in philosophy, political theory, revolution, tyranny, terrorism and extremism.Trade Review'This is the best study we have of the problems and paradoxes of the German philosophy of freedom, from Rousseau to Heidegger. Newell is a master communicator of deep and complex ideas. His readings bring clarity and coherence to notoriously difficult works. Newell's book stands as an admirable companion and update of Karl Lowith's classic study From Hegel to Nietzsche.' Steven B. Smith, Yale University'Utterly profound and urgently immediate. It shows how and why our major political attempts to find a life that is more communal, noble, free, meaningful and dignified than the pursuit of mere material self-interest have led, paradoxically, not to more freedom, connection, and dignity, but to powerful extremist longings which emboldened revolutionary tyrannies to practice utopian genocide and terror, to build slave states and to crush freedom and the soul, and how these same longings for a better life are at this moment inflaming anti-liberal authoritarian tendencies in the democracies. One puts this volume down changed, and in awe.' Norman Doidge MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself'Revolution, terror and violence have shadowed modernity. As Newell demonstrates in this demanding study, philosophers have contributed to raising this monster by arguing that only a changed politics would bring us true happiness – a happiness that classical liberalism with its defense of negative liberty, serving the pursuit of self-interest, could not provide. This brilliant work should generate heated discussions, especially the long chapter on Heidegger.' Karsten Harries, Yale University'Anyone who imagined that liberal democracy would have an easy run in the twenty-first century surely realizes that was a vain fantasy. With new anti-liberal ideologies on the rise, Newell's animating question – 'How could the desire to ennoble modern life lead to the political catastrophes of totalitarianism and utopian genocide?' – seems more timely than ever.' Ronald Beiner, University of Toronto'Like all Waller Newell's books, this one is bold and dramatic, presenting a sweeping new perspective on the types of political thinking since Rousseau that have confronted liberal constitutionalism with its most provocative intellectual challenges and its gravest revolutionary upheavals.' Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin'This book is a remarkable capstone and a formidable tour de force. With clarity, elegance, and depth, Waller Newell illuminates how and why some of the greatest modern philosophers since Rousseau, who aroused such fervent hopes for the future of humanity, instead caused those inspired by their thought to produce some of the worst catastrophes in human history: tyranny and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Newell manages to persuasively unravel the riddle, explaining it brilliantly and powerfully, while also clarifying the challenge that the West faces if it is to assure itself of a better future.' Kenneth Hart Green, University of Toronto'Professor Newell swings gracefully from one great thinker to another, lightening his vast learning with wit and pop-culture analogies. Amid the luxuriant concepts, Newell opens sudden vistas of perfect clarity, explaining how Nietzsche's “death of God” happened: '…the God of the Torah was still a person - he walked in the Garden, he was capable of love, jealousy and vengeance … All of these traits that made God a person had to be eradicated. In other words, God had to be sacrificed for the Idea of God'.' Charles H. Fairbanks, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute'Among [Leo Strauss'] students, none has written more comprehensively on the theoretical and philosophical questions surrounding tyranny than Waller R. Newell.' The New Criterion'Among modern writers, Newell has a strong claim to the territory of tyrants and tyranny.' Applied Political Theory'Newell sets out to show the philosophers in question effected 'a massive metaphysical shift in the meaning of existence, the transition from nature to history,' from natural law to historical law and sometimes to the denial of any metaphysically grounded law at all.' Will Morrissey, Hillsdale CollegeTable of Contents1. Escape to Lake Bienne: how Rousseau turned the world upside down; 2. Redeeming modernity: the erotic ascent of Hegel's phenomenology; 3. The will to power and the politics of greatness: Nietzsche's revelation; 4. The distant command of the Greeks: Heidegger and the community of destiny; 5. The fragmented legacy of the Philosophy of Freedom; Bibliography; Index.

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