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The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada
Par John Ibbitson. 2023
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLEROne of Canada’s foremost authors and journalists, offers a gripping account of the contest between John Diefenbaker and…
Lester Pearson, two prime ministers who fought each other relentlessly, but who between them created today’s Canada. John Diefenbaker has been unfairly treated by history. Although he wrestled with personal demons, his governments launched major reforms in public health care, law reform and immigration. On his watch, First Nations on reserve obtained the right to vote and the federal government began to open up the North. He established Canada as a leader in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and took the first steps in making Canada a leader in the fight against nuclear proliferation. And Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights laid the groundwork for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He set in motion many of the achievements credited to his successor, Lester B. Pearson.Pearson, in turn, gave coherence to Diefenbaker’s piecemeal reforms. He also pushed Parliament to adopt a new, and now much-loved, Canadian flag against Diefenbaker’s fierce opposition. Pearson understood that if Canada were to be taken seriously as a nation, it must develop a stronger sense of self. Pearson was superbly prepared for the role of prime minister: decades of experience at External Affairs, respected by leaders from Washington to Delhi to Beijing, the only Canadian to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Diefenbaker was the better politician, though. If Pearson walked with ease in the halls of power, Diefenbaker connected with the farmers and small-town merchants and others left outside the inner circles. Diefenbaker was one of the great orators of Canadian political life; Pearson spoke with a slight lisp. Diefenbaker was the first to get his name in the papers, as a crusading attorney: Diefenbaker for the Defence, champion of the little man. But he struggled as a politician, losing five elections before making it into the House of Commons, and becoming as estranged from the party elites as he was from the Liberals, until his ascension to the Progressive Conservative leadership in 1956 through a freakish political accident. As a young university professor, Pearson caught the attention of the powerful men who were shaping Canada’s first true department of foreign affairs, rising to prominence as the helpful fixer, the man both sides trusted, the embodiment of a new country that had earned its place through war in the counsels of the great powers: ambassador, undersecretary, minister, peacemaker. Everyone knew he was destined to be prime minister. But in 1957, destiny took a detour.Then they faced each other, Diefenbaker v Pearson, across the House of Commons, leaders of their parties, each determined to wrest and hold power, in a decade-long contest that would shake and shape the country. Here is a tale of two men, children of Victoria, who led Canada into the atomic age: each the product of his past, each more like the other than either would ever admit, fighting each other relentlessly while together forging the Canada we live in today. To understand our times, we must first understand theirs.Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich
Par Eric Kurlander. 2017
&“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . .…
. reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.&”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler&’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich&’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. &“[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.&”—The Washington Post &“Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.&”—The Spectator &“A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.&”—The Times &“A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.&”—Kirkus Reviews &“Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.&”—National ReviewChurchill's American Network: Winston Churchill and the Forging of the Special Relationship
Par Cita Stelzer. 2024
A revelatory portrait showing how the famed British statesman created a network of American colleagues and friends who helped push…
our foreign policy in Britain&’s favor during World War IIWinston Churchill was the consummate networker. Using newly discovered documents and archives, Churchill&’s American Network reveals how the famed British politician found a network of American men and women who would push American foreign policy in Britain&’s direction during World War II—while at the same time producing lucrative speaking fees to support his lavish lifestyle. Stelzer has gathered contemporary local newspaper reports of Churchill&’s lecture tours in many American cities, as well as interactions with leaders of local American communities—what he said in public, what he said at private meetings, how he comported himself. Readers observe Churchill as he is escorted by an armed Scotland Yard detective, aided by local police when Indian nationalists threaten to assassinate him, while he travels in deluxe private rail cars provided by wealthy members of his network; and as he recovers from a near-death automobile crash—with the help of liquor prescribed by a friendly doctor with no use for Prohibition. The links in Churchill&’s network include some of fascinating American figures: the millionaire financier Bernard Baruch; the railroad magnate, Averell Harriman, who became an FDR-Churchill go-between; media moguls William Randolph Hearst (and wife and mistress); Robert R. McCormick—who attacked Churchill&’s policies but enjoyed his company—and Charles Luce, who made him TIME&’s Man of the Year and later Man of the Century; and bit players such as Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, and David Niven. It is no accident that Churchill was able to put these links together into an important network that served to his, and Britain&’s, advantage. He worked at it relentlessly, remaining in close contact with his American friends by letter, signed copies of his many books, and by attending to their needs when they were in Britain. Many of these colleagues were invited to dinners at Chartwell and, later, Downing Street. Perhaps most importantly, Churchill&’s network of American allies had Franklin Roosevelt&’s ear while the president was deciding how to overcome opposition in congress to helping Britain take on the threat from Germany.The Lenin Scenario
Par Tariq Ali. 2024
The revolutionary world leader&’s extraordinary life, published for the centenary of Lenin&’s deathCommissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015 to commemorate…
the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali&’s captivating screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin puts flesh on the bones of the historical record and gets its pulse racing. From the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, the drama captures the enigma of its central character. Ali shows Lenin in his rush from Switzerland to Petrograd by train to grasp his moment in history and the force of his personality on the tumult he found there. He made a revolution and remade a nation. Interwoven with the politics is an exploration of Lenin&’s personal life, especially his love for Inessa Armand.In the introduction, Ali argues that, despite the difficulties, a serious cinematic assessment of Lenin is still needed. Unfortunately, two very different attempts to film one failed. This first draft provides the basis for something on a grander scale at some stage in the future.Praise for The Dilemmas of Lenin &‘Aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and Soviet hag- iography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his political thought&’ David Sessions, Nation&‘An incredibly powerful, panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure of the twentieth century&’ Paul LeBlanc, author of Lenin and the Revolutionary PartyAre You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making?: Letters of Love and Lust from the White House
Par Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler. 2024
A delightful collection of love letters by American presidents to their wives—and lovers—revealing an intimate and deeply personal side of…
our leaders.Our presidents loom so large in history that we often forget they are human. Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making? is a collection of handwritten love letters that offers a surprising and intimate portrait of the men who occupied the White House. From George Washington to Barack Obama, these are not the presidents we see in history books. Instead, when they courted the women they wanted to marry, or seduced women outside of their marriage, they often showed a side the public did not see—playful, passionate, tender, consumed by desire. Some of the letters are incredibly romantic—and surprisingly so. It took Richard Nixon years to convince Pat Ryan to marry him: &“Someday let me see you again? In September? Maybe?&” Others will make you blush. Staid-looking Woodrow Wilson, about to return home from a trip, warned his wife of ten years: &“Do you think you can stand the unnumerable kisses and the passionate embraces you will receive? Are you prepared for the storm of lovemaking with which you will be assailed?&” In letters to one of his mistresses, Warren G. Harding referred to his penis as &“Jerry&”—letters which would later be used to blackmail him. All the letters show the writer at his most vulnerable. We see letters of sorrow written about the death of a child or during a time of separation while the president was away on the battlefield. This beautiful book is a captivating collection of love stories revealing a human side of the men we still honor today.Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
Par Allen C. Guelzo. 2024
An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln&’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still…
relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize"It is altogether fitting and proper that, with this meditation on democracy and its most subtle defender, Allen Guelzo again demonstrates that he is today&’s most profound interpreter of this nation&’s history and significance." —George F. WillAbraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln&’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.Allen C. Guelzo, one of America&’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president&’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln&’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln&’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.Lincoln's Legacy: Ethics and Politics
Par William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip S. Paludan, Mark Summers. 2007
The four new essays in Lincoln's Legacy describe major ethical problems that the sixteenth president navigated what can be learned…
from how he did so. The distinguished and award-winning Lincoln scholars William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip Shaw Paludan, and Mark Summers describe Lincoln’s attitudes and actions during encounters with questions of politics, law, constitutionalism, patronage, and democracy. The remarkably focused essays include an assessment of Lincoln's virtues in the presidency, the first study on Lincoln and patronage in more than a decade, a challenge to the cliché of Lincoln the democrat, and a study of habeas corpus, Lincoln, and state courts. On the eve of the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, Lincoln’s Legacy highlights his enduring importance in contemporary conversations about law, politics, and democracy.Ralph Johnson Bunche: Public Intellectual and Nobel Peace Laureate
Par Lorenzo DuBois Baber, John Hope Franklin, Charles P. Henry, Jonathan Scott Holloway, Ben Keppel, Beverly Lindsay, Princeton Lyman, Edwin Smith, Hanes Walton Jr.. 2007
Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-71) was one of the twentieth century’s foremost diplomats and intellectuals. In the…
wake of centennial celebrations of his birth, leading scholars and diplomats assess Bunche’s historical importance and enduring impact on higher education, public policy, and international politics. Their essays reveal not only the breadth of Bunche’s influence, such as his United Nations work to broker peace during times of civil war in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but also the depth of his intellectual perspectives on race, civil rights, higher education, and international law. Probing his publications, speeches, and public policy initiatives, the volume offers telling insights into the critical roles of universities, public intellectuals, and diplomats in working together to find solutions to domestic and international problems through public and scholarly engagement. In this way, the volume highlights the very connections that Bunche exhibited as an academic, intellectual, and diplomat. Contributors include Lorenzo DuBois Baber, John Hope Franklin, Jonathan Scott Holloway, Charles P. Henry, Ben Keppel, Beverly Lindsay, Princeton Lyman, Edwin Smith, and Hanes Walton Jr.Forbes Burnham: The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader (Critical Caribbean Studies)
Par Linden F. Lewis. 2024
It is virtually impossible to understand the history of modern Guyana without understanding the role played by Forbes Burnham. As premier…
of British Guiana, he led the country to independence in 1966 and spent two decades as its head of state until his death in 1985. An intensely charismatic politician, Burnham helped steer a new course for the former colony, but he was also a quintessential strongman leader, venerated by some of his citizens yet feared and despised by others. Forbes Burnham: The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader is the first political biography of this complex and influential figure. It charts how the political party he founded, the People’s National Congress, combined nationalist rhetoric, socialist policies, and Pan-Africanist philosophies. It also explores how, in a country already deeply divided between the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants, Burnham consolidated political power by intensifying ethnic polarizations. Drawing from historical archives as well as new interviews with the people who knew Burnham best, sociologist Linden F. Lewis examines how his dictatorial tendencies coexisted with his progressive convictions. Forbes Burnham is a compelling study of the nature of postcolonial leadership and its pitfalls.Kenneyism: Jason Kenney's Pursuit of Power
Par Jeremy Appel. 2024
The harsh moralistic worldview of Jason Kenney has spurred right-wing populism to the mainstream in Canadian politics, but he unleashed…
forces he couldn’t control.From Jason Kenney’s days as an anti-abortion activist at the University of San Francisco, and through his years as a Canadian Taxpayers Federation lobbyist, Reform MP, top cabinet minister in the Harper government, and Alberta premier, he has been single-mindedly driven to bring his harsh moralistic worldview into the mainstream. Kenney took on the old guard of Canada’s liberal consensus and won, playing a key role in shifting the country’s political discussion to the right. But the very right-wing populist forces Kenney cultivated would come back to haunt him.Jeremy Appel has observed Alberta politics and reported on various aspects of Kenney’s agenda since 2017, when Kenney made his way across the province in his big blue pickup truck to rile up aggrieved conservatives. Kenneyism examines Kenney's political beliefs, his rise through federal political ranks, and his ultimate resignation from the leadership of the United Conservative Party.From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (20/21 #8)
Par Ruth Leys. 2007
Why has shame recently displaced guilt as a dominant emotional reference in the West? After the Holocaust, survivors often reported…
feeling guilty for living when so many others had died, and in the 1960s psychoanalysts and psychiatrists in the United States helped make survivor guilt a defining feature of the "survivor syndrome." Yet the idea of survivor guilt has always caused trouble, largely because it appears to imply that, by unconsciously identifying with the perpetrator, victims psychically collude with power. In From Guilt to Shame, Ruth Leys has written the first genealogical-critical study of the vicissitudes of the concept of survivor guilt and the momentous but largely unrecognized significance of guilt's replacement by shame. Ultimately, Leys challenges the theoretical and empirical validity of the shame theory proposed by figures such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Giorgio Agamben, demonstrating that while the notion of survivor guilt has depended on an intentionalist framework, shame theorists share a problematic commitment to interpreting the emotions, including shame, in antiintentionalist and materialist terms.Josephine Roche (1886–1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin…
D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche’s persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society.Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche’s unrealized dreams.In Relentless Reformer, Muncy uses Roche’s dramatic life story—from her stint as Denver’s first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972—as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Par Jeremy Adelman. 2013
The life and times of one of the most provocative thinkers of the twentieth centuryWorldly Philosopher chronicles the times and…
writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman’s remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman’s riveting narrative traces how Hirschman’s personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany
Par Atina Grossmann. 2007
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among…
their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives. In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters. Jews, Germans, and Allies shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort
Par Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer. 2013
A groundbreaking book that gathers key wartime intelligence reportsDuring the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School—Franz…
Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer—worked as intelligence analysts for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. This book brings together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them published here for the first time.These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as a coherent plan for the reconstruction of postwar Germany as a democratic political system with a socialist economy. These reports played a significant role in the development of postwar Allied policy, including denazification and the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials. They also reveal how wartime intelligence analysis shaped the intellectual agendas of these three important German-Jewish scholars who fled Nazi persecution prior to the war.Secret Reports on Nazi Germany features a foreword by Raymond Geuss as well as a comprehensive general introduction by Raffaele Laudani that puts these writings in historical and intellectual context.Roosevelt's Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War
Par Frank Costigliola. 2013
How the Grand Alliance of World War II succeeded—and then collapsed—because of personal politicsIn the spring of 1945, as the…
Allied victory in Europe was approaching, the shape of the postwar world hinged on the personal politics and flawed personalities of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Roosevelt's Lost Alliances captures this moment and shows how FDR crafted a winning coalition by overcoming the different habits, upbringings, sympathies, and past experiences of the three leaders. In particular, Roosevelt trained his famous charm on Stalin, lavishing respect on him, salving his insecurities, and rendering him more amenable to compromise on some matters.Yet, even as he pursued a lasting peace, FDR was alienating his own intimate circle of advisers and becoming dangerously isolated. After his death, postwar cooperation depended on Harry Truman, who, with very different sensibilities, heeded the embittered "Soviet experts" his predecessor had kept distant. A Grand Alliance was painstakingly built and carelessly lost. The Cold War was by no means inevitable.This landmark study brings to light key overlooked documents, such as the Yalta diary of Roosevelt's daughter Anna; the intimate letters of Roosevelt's de facto chief of staff, Missy LeHand; and the wiretap transcripts of estranged adviser Harry Hopkins. With a gripping narrative and subtle analysis, Roosevelt's Lost Alliances lays out a new approach to foreign relations history. Frank Costigliola highlights the interplay between national political interests and more contingent factors, such as the personalities of leaders and the culturally conditioned emotions forming their perceptions and driving their actions. Foreign relations flowed from personal politics—a lesson pertinent to historians, diplomats, and citizens alike.Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front
Par Konrad H. Jarausch. 2011
An ordinary German soldier’s letters home from Poland and Russia during World War IIReluctant Accomplice is a volume of the…
wartime letters of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, a German high-school teacher of religion and history who served in a reserve battalion of Hitler's army in Poland and Russia, where he died of typhoid in 1942. He wrote most of these letters to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, acclaimed German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, brings them together here to tell the gripping story of a patriotic soldier of the Third Reich who, through witnessing its atrocities in the East, begins to doubt the war's moral legitimacy. These letters grow increasingly critical, and their vivid descriptions of the mass deaths of Russian POWs are chilling. They reveal the inner conflicts of ordinary Germans who became reluctant accomplices in Hitler's merciless war of annihilation, yet sometimes managed to discover a shared humanity with its suffering victims, a bond that could transcend race, nationalism, and the enmity of war.Reluctant Accomplice is also the powerful story of the son, who for decades refused to come to grips with these letters because he abhorred his father's nationalist politics. Only now, late in his life, is he able to cope with their contents—and he is by no means alone. This book provides rare insight into the so-called children of the war, an entire generation of postwar Germans who grew up resenting their past, but who today must finally face the painful legacy of their parents' complicity in National Socialism.The behind-the-scenes story of how today's war crimes tribunals came to beWithin days of Madeleine Albright's confirmation as U.S. ambassador…
to the United Nations in 1993, she instructed David Scheffer to spearhead the historic mission to create a war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As senior adviser to Albright and then as President Clinton's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, Scheffer was at the forefront of the efforts that led to criminal tribunals for the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, and that resulted in the creation of the permanent International Criminal Court. All the Missing Souls is Scheffer's gripping insider's account of the international gamble to prosecute those responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and to redress some of the bloodiest human rights atrocities in our time.Scheffer reveals the truth behind Washington's failures during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the anemic hunt for notorious war criminals, how American exceptionalism undercut his diplomacy, and the perilous quests for accountability in Kosovo and Cambodia. He takes readers from the killing fields of Sierra Leone to the political back rooms of the U.N. Security Council, providing candid portraits of major figures such as Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake, Richard Goldstone, Louise Arbour, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark, among others.A stirring personal account of an important historical chapter, All the Missing Souls provides new insights into the continuing struggle for international justice.Did America's fortieth president lead a conservative counterrevolution that left liberalism gasping for air? The answer, for both his admirers…
and his detractors, is often "yes." In Morning in America, Gil Troy argues that the Great Communicator was also the Great Conciliator. His pioneering and lively reassessment of Ronald Reagan's legacy takes us through the 1980s in ten year-by-year chapters, integrating the story of the Reagan presidency with stories of the decade's cultural icons and watershed moments-from personalities to popular television shows. One such watershed moment was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. With the trauma of Vietnam fading, the triumph of America's 1983 invasion of tiny Grenada still fresh, and a reviving economy, Americans geared up for a festival of international harmony that-spurred on by an entertainment-focused news media, corporate sponsors, and the President himself-became a celebration of the good old U.S.A. At the Games' opening, Reagan presided over a thousand-voice choir, a 750-member marching band, and a 90,000-strong teary-eyed audience singing "America the Beautiful!" while waving thousands of flags. Reagan emerges more as happy warrior than angry ideologue, as a big-picture man better at setting America's mood than implementing his program. With a vigorous Democratic opposition, Reagan's own affability, and other limiting factors, the eighties were less counterrevolutionary than many believe. Many sixties' innovations went mainstream, from civil rights to feminism. Reagan fostered a political culture centered on individualism and consumption-finding common ground between the right and the left. Written with verve, Morning in America is both a major new look at one of America's most influential modern-day presidents and the definitive story of a decade that continues to shape our times.The Hand of Compassion: Portraits of Moral Choice during the Holocaust
Par Kristen Renwick Monroe. 2004
Through moving interviews with five ordinary people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Kristen Monroe casts new light on a…
question at the heart of ethics: Why do people risk their lives for strangers and what drives such moral choice? Monroe's analysis points not to traditional explanations--such as religion or reason--but to identity. The rescuers' perceptions of themselves in relation to others made their extraordinary acts spontaneous and left the rescuers no choice but to act. To turn away Jews was, for them, literally unimaginable. In the words of one German Czech rescuer, "The hand of compassion was faster than the calculus of reason." At the heart of this unusual book are interviews with the rescuers, complex human beings from all parts of the Third Reich and all walks of life: Margot, a wealthy German who saved Jews while in exile in Holland; Otto, a German living in Prague who saved more than 100 Jews and provides surprising information about the plot to kill Hitler; John, a Dutchman on the Gestapo's "Most Wanted List"; Irene, a Polish student who hid eighteen Jews in the home of the German major for whom she was keeping house; and Knud, a Danish wartime policeman who took part in the extraordinary rescue of 85 percent of his country's Jews. We listen as the rescuers themselves tell the stories of their lives and their efforts to save Jews. Monroe's analysis of these stories draws on philosophy, ethics, and political psychology to suggest why and how identity constrains our choices, both cognitively and ethically. Her work offers a powerful counterpoint to conventional arguments about rational choice and a valuable addition to the literature on ethics and moral psychology. It is a dramatic illumination of the power of identity to shape our most basic political acts, including our treatment of others. But always Monroe returns us to the rescuers, to their strong voices, reminding us that the Holocaust need not have happened and revealing the minds of the ethically exemplary as they negotiated the moral quicksand that was the Holocaust.