History & Theory Books - Page 6

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Chalmers Johnson

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Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now available in paperback, Chalmers Johnson's take-no-prisoners account of the consequences of American global policies, hailed as "brilliant and iconoclastic" (Los Angeles Times)

The term "blowback," invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our actions in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.

In the wake of the Cold War, the United States has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years, argues Johnson. In Blowback, he issues a warning we would do well to consider: it is time for our empire to demobilize before our bills come due.

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage)

Mark Lilla

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The History of the Great Separation 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 16 people found this review helpful.

With books about atheism doing well in bookstores (like Christopher Hitchens's _God is Not Great_ or Richard Dawkins's _The God Delusion_), believers might worry that a book titled _The Stillborn God_ (Knopf) offers more of the same. This is not the case. The book's subtitle, _Religion, Politics, and the Modern West_, gives a bit better picture of its subject and theme, but does not make its content completely clear. Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia University and frequent contributor to the _New York Review of Books_, has written a book about the separation of church and state, but you won't find here references to Thomas Jefferson or the U.S. Constitution. This is a broader and generally Eurocentric view of how theology became pried apart from politics, a process that has taken many centuries. We take for granted now that there is something inherently wrong with a government that imposes or favors one church's belief system, and we are aghast at governments who imprison or suspend rights of citizens simply because of their religious beliefs, but that was, at one time, the way all governments operated. There are plenty of Americans who feel that church and state are too separated now, but there are fewer who would insist that the government ought directly to sponsor particular church movements. The concept of what Lilla calls "the Great Separation" was long in coming, and as he tells the story, it was brought about by influential thinkers; if they had not taught in just the way they did, perhaps we would not have managed the separation at all. It wasn't inevitable. Lilla's is a serious tome which will be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates a historic explanation of this particularly important way we have come to regard both religion and politics.

Lilla explains that different conceptions of the Christian God and of the Trinity caused conflict and even bloody religious wars in Europe through the 1500s, so that theologians, and more especially philosophers, began to question whether there should even be a political theology. Lilla nominates 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes as the most important questioner of the issue. He insisted that questions about God could more practically be viewed as questions about human behavior, and that if there were any religious revelation, it had to be filtered by the human mind, perceptions, and passions, including the search for power. The intellectual separation of politics and religion had begun. John Locke and David Hume took Hobbes's ideas and built many of the concepts on which liberal democracies are founded, including that the power of government be limited and shared, and government be unable to interfere or advocate religious ideas or practice. There was reaction against this sort of thinking from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hegel, and Kant. The German liberal theology promoted Protestant bourgeois society as the highest type of moral life to which humans could aspire. The Bible was symbolic, not inerrant, and the German Protestantism derived from it was held to be essential to public life.

World War I destroyed the bourgeois smugness. Advocates of liberal Protestantism (and liberal Judaism, too) supported the initial German war effort. This led to disillusionment afterwards, the "stillborn God" of the title. It also led, after the war, to a theology that could be incorporated into totalitarian states, both Nazi and Communist, and thus again to religion bound up in worldly battles, the sort of cycle that Hobbes was trying to get us to emerge from. Lilla's is a limited history. He does not mention America's Christian conservatives, many of whom want the nation to support Christianity more openly, and some of whom are interested in turning the country over to an overt theocracy. He also does not mention the lack of church-state separation that such Christians find horrifying within some Islamic countries. Lilla's book is, however, a lucid reminder that despite the clamor of fundamentalists, the separation of theology from politics (however partial it might be) was a process that began centuries ago, not with the formation of the ACLU or "activist judges". It also is a welcome recognition that we are the fortunate heirs of philosophers and societies which understood that neither citizens nor government nor religion prosper when politics and religion are officially combined.

Editorial Review:

A brilliant account of religion's role in the political thinking of the West, from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.

The wish to bring political life under God's authority is nothing new, and it's clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging, The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.

The United States Of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

T.R. Reid

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Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In May 2004, the European Union will add ten new member states-including Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, among others-to become a union of twenty-five nations. While this might seem a fairly innocuous and minute shift of political semantics for most Americans, the enlargement will increase the population of the EU to 450 million citizens, making it larger (in population) and richer (in GDP) than the United States-not to mention that the EU has more trade than the United States and more votes on the UN Security Council and all other international organizations. This New Europe is determined to flex its political and economic muscle on the world stage. The Continent has moved much further than most Americans realize toward the dream of a "United States of Europe," to borrow Winston Churchill's term.

T. R. Reid's The United States of Europe lays bare the ways in which the EU is positioning itself to be a global counterweight and second superpower, on equal footing with the U.S.A. Reid traces the rise of the EU from the days when Churchill and other visionaries set out in the post-World War II rubble to find a means to end war in Europe. He shows how this remarkably successful effort to "create peace" also created a global economic and political power that is often at odds with the United States. This drive toward unity has been accelerated by the powerful mood of anti-Americanism (or, at least, anti-Bushism) that has swept the Continent since the war in Iraq.

In addition to the political ramifications of the EU, The United States of Europe shows the great impact this alliance is having on the global economic market. The euro, which now has more daily users than the dollar, is fast becoming a reserve currency and a new standard for global finance, a globally recognized replacement for the once-almighty dollar. Unification has spawned a generation of European corporate managers who have led firms like Nokia, Airbus, BP, Vodafone, and Red Bull to catch and surpass their U.S. competitors in global markets.

The European Union, from its beginnings as an experiment in statecraft, has rapidly emerged as a resounding success; yet Americans have so far managed to ignore the geopolitical revolution under way across the Atlantic. Reid's book shows how quietly-and not so quietly-Europe is developing itself into an economic, political, and cultural powerhouse.

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

Sean Wilentz

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Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of the nation's leading historians offers a groundbreaking and provocative chronicle of America's political history since the fall of Nixon.

The past thirty-five years have marked an era of conservatism. Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right has dominated American politics and government. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and the momentous consequences that followed.

Ronald Reagan has been the single most important political figure of this age. Without Reagan, the conservative movement would have never been as successful as it was. In his political persona as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even a bit of the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history there have been a few leading figures who, for better or worse, have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt—and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism's ascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the preeminent political figure.

Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past.

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls

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Comic reviews 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 29 people found this review helpful.

I suppose one of the great attributes of the internet is that it allows the juxtaposition of the good, the bad and the ugly. Where else could one find reviews of one of the twentieth century's towering works that variously describe it as a recipe for a police state, an incitement to theft, or as written by someone with no understanding of philosophy (my personal favourite - thanks Adrian!)

Editorial Review:

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book.

Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Susan Jacoby

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Total reviews: 75 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Jacoby accomplishes her task with clarity, thoroughness, and an engaging passion."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review

At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today.

Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War On Terror

Richard A. Clarke

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Total reviews: 485 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Buyer Beware 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

As targets of the political mass suggestion discussed in my reviews of: Propaganda, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication), and Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s, we must be careful with books like this from an "insider". The pattern is the same on all these books "written" by insiders who have "left" the administration: There is one and ONLY one controversial assertion given in the book (the hook to generate sales and publicity), with the remainder of the book running parallel with the party line.

I have no doubt, given corroborating evidence from other authors, that Clarke is correct that Bush and his cabinent were planning an Iraq invasion well before 9/11. The "Downing Street Memo" is the smoking gun on this.

The much bigger purpose of this book, in my opinion, is simply to disseminate the party line, yet again, that Osama bin Laden is the boogeyman, that his world-threatening military is al-qaeda, and that they can deliver mass destruction anytime, anywhere (you know, the Cold War program). It's the repeat, repeat, repeat that we get from George Tenet, Michael Scherer (sp) and all others who are wittingly or unwittingly part of the propaganda campaign.

The only question on Clarke is: is he witting or unwitting? The answer, however, is moot. As long as he is spewing party-line propaganda, his books are worthless to a suspicious public.

Editorial Review:

A #1 New York Times Bestseller

"The Bush administration has squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda." No one has more authority to make that claim than Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He knows, better than anyone, why we failed to prevent 9/11 and how President Bush reacted to the attack. Against All Enemies is both a powerful history of our confrontation with terrorism and a searing indictment of the current administration.

Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Thomas Hobbes

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

DO NOT BUY THIS CLASSIC IN THIS EDITION!!!! 1 out of 5 stars.
16 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This is not a review of the work itself.

One comment only: surprisingly enough, the editor of this volume, the 'world renowned' Richard Tuck DOES NOT PROVIDE NOTES, please pay attention: the book was originally published in 1651 (or something) but nevertheless the so called Hobbes scholar does not provide scholarly notes... and this is supposed to be a 'student's edition'... ha ha

Shame on you, Mr. Tuck!

What to do with Modern World 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This huge work is the foundation of classical liberalism; it is the basis for Locke, for Smith, and all economic neo-liberalists all the way up to the current period. Written during the English Reformation, Hobbes was confronted with the problem of absolute individualism; he begins this work of political theory with a demolishment of objective truth swift enough to impress any post-modernist. He then proceeds to demonstrate the logical conclusion of man in a state of nature, and compels the modern world to enter into his social contract, or Leviathan out of necessity and fear. It is tempting to write off Hobbes as a cynic, but who can deny that much of what motivates individuals in the modern world is simply a fear to maintain survival and acceptance. It is the driving force of modern societies in terms of economic competition, and inter-national conflicts. Hobbes was a thinker of true depth and insight, though his ideas are so commonly ingrained in modern society that it is difficult to see why they were revolutionary when they were composed.

Editorial Review:

Hobbes' Leviathan is arguably the greatest piece of political philosophy written in the English language. Since its first publication, Richard Tuck's edition of Leviathan has been recognized as the single most accurate and authoritative text, and for this revised edition Professor Tuck has provided a much-amplified and expanded introduction. Other vital study aids include an extensive guide to further reading, a note on textual matters, a chronology of important events and brief biographies of important persons mentioned in Hobbes' text.

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

Cullen Murphy

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good book but not surprising.. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Cullen Murphy's book allows us to compare us and the Romans, in our thoughts, ideals and, sometimes, our actions. With him we compare the same merits and flaws we hold dear along with the Romans. We look at on how we treat ourselves, other nations, our military, our borders, and our brand new citizens. While interesting it isn't really very surprising and, for those who know their history, somewhat boring. A good first read but not really a re-read. Kind of a light read also, so OK for bus or air travel. You should know some Roman history to enjoy it, so it is not really for beginners but too simple for those who already have a small library on Roman history.

Editorial Review:

The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our republic.Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warning of imminent collapse. In Are We Rome? the esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of bribery in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic through various forms of privatization. Murphy persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside -- two things that must be changed if we are to avoid Rome's fate.

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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Editorial Review:

As the twentieth century draws to a close, the United States has emerged as the world’s only superpower: no other nation possesses comparable military and economic power or has interests that bestride the globe. Yet the critical question facing America remains unanswered: What should be the nation’s global strategy for maintaining its exceptional position in the world? Zbigniew Brzezinski tackles this question head-on in this incisive and pathbreaking book.The Grand Chessboard presents Brzezinski’s bold and provocative geostrategic vision for American preeminence in the twenty-first century. Central to his analysis is the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass, which is home to the greatest part of the globe’s population, natural resources, and economic activity. Stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait, from Lapland to Malaysia, Eurasia is the ”grand chessboard” on which America’s supremacy will be ratified and challenged in the years to come. The task facing the United States, he argues, is to manage the conflicts and relationships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so that no rival superpower arises to threaten our interests or our well-being.The heart of The Grand Chessboard is Brzezinski’s analysis of the four critical regions of Eurasia and of the stakes for America in each arena—Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and East Asia. The crucial fault lines may seem familiar, but the implosion of the Soviet Union has created new rivalries and new relationships, and Brzezinski maps out the strategic ramifications of the new geopolitical realities. He explains, for example: Why France and Germany will play pivotal geostrategic roles, whereas Britain and Japan will not. Why NATO expansion offers Russia the chance to undo the mistakes of the past, and why Russia cannot afford to toss this opportunity aside. Why the fate of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are so important to America. Why viewing China as a menace is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why America is not only the first truly global superpower but also the last—and what the implications are for America’s legacy. Brzezinski’s surprising and original conclusions often turn conventional wisdom on its head as he lays the groundwork for a new and compelling vision of America’s vital interests. Once, again, Zbigniew Brzezinski provides our nation with a philosophical and practical guide for maintaining and managing our hard-won global power.