LIVING TOGETHER – Thoughts on Politics & Society – Page 4

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, PAST PRESENT - Readings in History

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama and http://legacy2.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama) prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. The […]

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama Read More »

Political Fictions by Joan Didion

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

In these coolly observant essays, Joan Didion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion) looks at the American political process and at ‘that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life’. Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals

Political Fictions by Joan Didion Read More »

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn) reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression, the state within the state, that ruled the lives of millions. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims, men, women, and children, we encounter

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Read More »

To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, PAST PRESENT - Readings in History

Edmund Wilson’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Wilson) magnum opus, To the Finland Station (1940), is a stirring account of revolutionary politics, people, and ideas from the French Revolution through the Paris Commune to the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. The work is really a history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from its inception in France to the arrival

To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson Read More »

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, TRAVEL AND TRANSPORT

Written on the brink of World War II and then published in 1941, Rebecca West’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_West and http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rwest.htm) classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) probes the

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West Read More »

The Proper Study of Mankind by Isaiah Berlin

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

‘The Proper Study of Mankind is Man’ appears as a line in the poem ‘An Essay on Man‘ by Alexander Pope in 1734. Isaiah Berlin chooses this as a title for a collection of his essentially humanistic writings. Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin) was one of the leading thinkers of the last century and one of its finest writers.

The Proper Study of Mankind by Isaiah Berlin Read More »

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, MORALITY - Goodness in reasons

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic of moral and political philosophy. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original work. Rawls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls) aims to express an essential part of the common core

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls Read More »

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society, REASONABLE TASTE - Aesthetics & Literary Criticism

The Liberal Imagination (1950) by Lionel Trilling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Trilling and http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4079615/index.html) is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published at one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling Read More »

The City in History by Lewis Mumford

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

In this book from 1961 Lewis Mumford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford) argues for a world not in which technology reigns, but rather in which it achieves a balance with nature. His ideal vision is what can be described as an ‘organic city’, where culture is not usurped by technological innovation but rather thrives with it. Mumford contrasts these cities with

The City in History by Lewis Mumford Read More »