General Books - Page 5

The Laws of Plato

Plato

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Laws, Plato's longest dialogue, has for centuries been recognized as the most comprehensive exposition of the practical consequences of his philosophy, a necessary corrective to the more visionary and utopian Republic. In this animated encounter between a foreign philosopher and a powerful statesman, not only do we see reflected, in Plato's own thought, eternal questions of the relation between political theory and practice, but we also witness the working out of a detailed plan for a new political order that embodies the results of Plato's mature reflection on the family, the status of women, property rights, criminal law, and the role of religion and the fine arts in a healthy republic.

"Because it succeeds in being both literal and comprehensive, it is by far superior to any translation available. By reproducing dramatic detail often omitted, such as oaths, hesitations, repetitions, and forms of address, Pangle allows the reader to follow the dialogue's interplay between argument and dramatic context. . . . Pangle's translation captures the excitement and the drama of Plato's text."—Mary P. Nichols, Ancient Philosophy

"Pangle's achievement is remarkable. . . . The accompanying interpretive essay is an excellent distillation of a dialogue three times its size. The commentary is thoughtful, even profound; and it amply demonstrates the importance of reading Plato carefully and from a translation that is true to his language."—Patrick Coby, American Political Science Review

Democracy And Democratization 2E: Processes And Prospects In A Changing World, Second Edition (Dilemmas in World Politics)

Georg Sorensen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Good overview 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book to help me teach a course. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of clarity and straight talk. It defines democracy, and says a few things about controversies and how to promote democratization. Given the complexity of the issues involved, you could do no better by way of an introductory text. I will, in fact, be assigning it in my course.

Editorial Review:

This book evaluates the current prospects for democracy in the world, clarifying the concept of democracy, and questioning whether democratic advancement will continue.

Taming the Prince

Harvey C. Mansfield

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A book for the dire-hard student of executive power 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Mansfield deals with a wide array of conceptions of executive power in this very complex yet brilliantly comprehensive examination. If you want to know why the American executive faces its current problems of ambivalence and demagoguery, read "Taming the Prince" to find the difficult theoretical answers

Inscrutable - not written for readability 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 11 people found this review helpful.

The problem with Mansfield, other than his Straussian proclivity (a troubling method of political-philosophical interpretation of texts), is that when he writes, he is intentionally wordy and difficult. He acknowledged as much in his translation of Tocqueville's Democracy In America. Indeed, he believes in the Straussian notion of esoteric textual knowledge, and writes to this end: you are supposed to find the true meaning of his work below the surface of his extremely verbose, unnecessarily difficult prose.

He is naturally hailed by only a small cadre of supporters (usually neoconservative) who are on the fringes of academia for a reason. I studied at Hillsdale College under a professor who was a graduate student under Mansfield, and not one moment was spent trying to justify his methods, because, really, they can't be justified.

Although there are indeed insightful observations to be found when Mansfield writes about Machiavelli especially, the chapter on Aristotle is simply inscrutable. This book is not worth your time, and if it is required reading for a political science course, you have my sympathies.

Editorial Review:

Looks at the development of the concept of executive power, discusses the philosophical influences and considers the role of the executive in business and politics.

Lineages of the absolutist state

Perry Anderson

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The political nature of Absolutism has long been a subject of controversy within historical materialism. Developing considerations advanced in Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, this book situates the Absolutist states of the early modern epoch against the prior background of European feudalism. It is divided into two parts. The first discusses the overall structures of Absolutism as a state-system in Western Europe, from the Renaissance onwards; and the difficult question of the relations between monarchy and nobility institutionalised by it, for which it suggests a general periodization. It then looks in turn at the trajectory of each of the specific Absolutist states in the dominant countries of the West - Spain, France, England and Sweden, set off against the case of Italy, where no major indigenous Absolutism developed. The second part of the work sketches a comparative prospect of Absolutism in Eastern Europe. It begins with an enquiry into the reasons why the divergent social conditions in the more backward half of the continent should have produced political forms apparently similar to those of the more advanced West. The peculiarities, as well as affinities, of Eastern Absolutism as a distinct type of royal state, are examined. The variegated monarchies of Prussia, Austria and Russia are surveyed, and the lessons asked of the counter-example of Poland. Finally, the structure of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans is taken as an external gauge by which the singularity of Absolutism as a European phenomenon is assessed. The work ends with some observations on the special position occupied by European development within universal history, which draws themes from both Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State together into a single argument -- within their common limits -- as materials for debate. Two postscript notes treat, respectively, the notion of the 'Asiatic mode of production,' with particular reference to Islamic and Chinese history, and the experience of Japanese feudalism, as relevant controls for a study of the evolution of Europe up to the advent of industrial capitalism.

Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 (The Richard B. R)

Jack P. Greene

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Editorial Review:

An analysis of the development of the political relationship between Britain and her American colonies between 1607 and 1788.

Feudalism In Japan

Peter Duus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well written explination of Japanese Feudalism 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book for a class entitled, "The History of East Asia before 1800." This book details from 6th century Japan up until the Meiji Restoration. The epilogue contains some useful insights into modern Japanese culture.

It's very well written, and outlines the rise and fall of Japanese Feudalism. To be sure, it's a broad overview of the rise and fall of Japanese Feudalism. It covers the broader details, and paints a good historical view of Japan.

Editorial Review:

This book offers a systematic comparison between Japanese and Western political institutions in the premodern period. It offers a brief discussion of the meaning and significance of the term Feudalism, and it suggests ways in which the term might be used for explorations in comparative history. Because of its brevity, it can be used as one of many paper backs in the premodern Japanese history course, or as background reading for courses on modern Japanese history and modern Japanese politics. Given its comparative approach, it can also be used as supplement in Western or world civilization course.

Grasping the Democratic Peace

Bruce Russett

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

A nice summary 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is a collection of Russet's earlier work on the democratic peace, the finding that no two democracy have ever gone to war with one another, with an emphasis on those works that expand the empirical realm of testing. The first two chapters essentially summarize the literature on the democratic peace (up until 1993) explaining both its empirical roots and the theoretical arguments. After summarizing the normative and structural explanations, Russett (with William Antholis) attempts to discover if the democratic peace extended to Ancient Greece. Finding only minor support Russett hypothesizes that peace needs not only the simple institutions of democracy, but also the perception, by other democracies, of the type of regime. Without the mutual recognition the norms and institutions democracy may fail to prevent conflict. Russett (with Zeev Maoz) then applies the democratic peace to the post World War II era and finds that joint democracy does in fact promote peace. The last empirical study in the book deals with non-industrial societies (done with Carol and Melvin Ember). While it remains difficult to gain a strong relationship, they do find that participation, joint participatory societies, matters in reducing conflict. In general, this book is a good summary of Russett's early work on the democratic peace and provides some interesting tests as the theory is applied to non-nation-state eras. For those new to this literature it is a good place to start.

Editorial Review:

By illuminating the conflict-resolving mechanisms inherent in the relationships between democracies, Bruce Russett explains one of the most promising developments of the modern international system: the striking fact that the democracies that it comprises have almost never fought each other. By illuminating the conflict-resolving mechanisms inherent in the relationships between democracies, Bruce Russett explains one of the most promising developments of the modern international system: the striking fact that the democracies that it comprises have almost never fought each other.

DEMOCRACY AND LEADERSHIP

Irving Babbitt

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Irving Babbitt was a leader of the intellectual movement called American Humanism, or the New Humanism, and a distinguished professor of French literature at Harvard. Democracy and Leadership, first published in 1924, is his only directly political book, and in it he applies the principles of humanism to the civil social order. Babbitt offers a compelling critique of unchecked majoritarianism and addresses the great problem of how to discover leaders with standards.

Empires (Cornell Studies in Comparative History)

Michael W. Doyle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Its pretty ordinary 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 33 people found this review helpful.

It started off pretty good with some interesting examples but then I found it pretty ordinary. Their is little I found particular interesting or new in what the writer had to say. I certainly do not feel that I have learnt a great deal about this subject since reading this book

The Democracy Sourcebook

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporary scholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essential theorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influential modern scholars as Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Przeworski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen. The book is divided into nine self-contained chapters: "Defining Democracy," which discusses procedural, deliberative, and substantive democracy; "Sources of Democracy," on why democracy exists in some countries and not in others; "Democracy, Culture, and Society," about cultural and sociological preconditions for democracy; "Democracy and Constitutionalism," which focuses on the importance of independent courts and a bill of rights; "Presidentialism versus Parliamentarianism"; "Representation," discussing which is the fairest system of democratic accountability; "Interest Groups"; "Democracy's Effects," an examination of the effect of democracy on economic growth and social inequality; and finally, "Democracy and the Global Order" discusses the effects of democracy on international relations, including the propensity for war and the erosion of national sovereignty by transnational forces.