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The Arab world, writes Palestinian scholar Fouad Ajami, has been beset for years by divisions: religious, social, economic, and political. Many of these divisions came to the fore during the time of the Persian Gulf War, a "foreigners' rescue" in response to Saddam Hussein's attempt to seize Kuwait, which was, Ajami hints, in part a reaction against Iranian designs on the Gulf. Even those Arab intellectuals who supported Allied intervention at the time are now questioning whether it was the best solution to what they believe was a local problem. Ajami writes of the role of some of these intellectuals in shaping the culture of the region, among them the Lebanese writer Khalil Hawi, who committed suicide in the wake of Israel's invasion of his country in 1982. He also examines the terror that religious fundamentalists have been visiting on secular states such as Egypt, "a country with a remarkable record of political stability" that, Ajami believes, will be able to ride out the present storm. Ajami's essays will be most revealing for students of contemporary politics and Arabic history.
Book Description
From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.
For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.
Customer Reviews:
The Failed Awakening .......2005-10-23
This book is an absorbing blend of history and literary criticism. A somewhat melancholy narrative of the political and economic failure of the Arab World in the 20th century, it is also a study of Arab intellectual currents of the time. The author chronicles the lives and the thoughts of these intellectuals from the heyday of modernity in the middle of the century through pan-Arabism, secular nationalism and Nasserism.
The great dream of an Arab Awakening failed miserably. The total defeat of 1967 was a turning point in the move towards religious fundamentalism whilst the increased oil revenue after 1973 only exacerbated the fragmentation of the Arab World into brutal fascist regimes, medieval theocracies and oiligarchies.
There were and are exceptions to the majority of intellectuals who were united mainly in their hatred of Israel, like the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh and a few others. According to Ajami's insightful analyses, repeated failure led to extremism and further disasters and thus the cycle of hopelessness continued.
This book was published in 1998 so it preceded the expressions of more murderous nihilism as seen in 9/11, the further intifada against Israel and the genocide in Darfur. The embrace of religious fundamentalism has been facilitated by the nihilistic utopianism of writers like Edward Said and others. One of the results of this regrettable trend has been the more severe oppression of minorities like the Christian Copts in Egypt.
The book is illuminating on many levels: the Shia/Sunni divide, The Iranian revolution and Arab perceptions of it, The Oslo accords, Iraq's war against Iran and Kuwait, the assassination of Sadat and the attitudes of the Arab intelligentsia towards Israel.
Dream Palace Of The Arabs is a most enlightening read for those who wish to understand the tragic history of the Middle East. The work is scholarly and well researched, but the writing has a riveting and poetic quality that keeps the reader captivated throughout.
engaging.......2005-05-05
Perhaps Ajami's best: a legendary (and, for some, inconveniently seminal) text in the field of Middle Eastern studies and Arab psychology.
The basic thesis is that the hopelessness of modern Arabs (in such fields as medicine, politics, education, economics -- even warfare) stems from their insistence on perceiving and, in turn, constructing their reality out of words, out of rhetoric, out of the incantatory and soothing effect of flowery or mystical verbiage, rather than out of the zillions of nagging and undeniable clues that the external world keeps jabbing them with.
It's a lot more interesting than I'm making it sound, though.
Obituary for a modernizing generation.......2004-09-28
The extremism that seems to pervade the Middle East is neither the region's predestined endpoint nor is it a historical inevitability-rather, it is a condition that sprung out from the failure of a great generation of reformers and free-thinkers that lived in the middle of the twentieth century, and whose passing away by the 1990s marked the triumph of theocracy and backwardness in the Middle East.
"The Dream Palace of the Arabs" is the sequel to the "Arab Predicament," which Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese professor at Johns Hopkins, published in 1980; back then, Mr. Ajami was younger and "approached [his] material more eager to judge." In the "Arab Predicament," he bemoaned the Arab political experience; in "The Dream Place of the Arabs" he tries to "appreciate what had gone into the edifice that Arabs had built."
This literary journey chronicles the birth of a generation of modernizing Arabs that fought and lost the case for modernity. The history of the past seventy years is narrated through the life of authors and their works-what they wrote, how the societies around them reacted, and how the political condition merged with their literary expression, only to suppress it and silence it.
As a parallel history, "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" could accompany any book. But in looking at the literary interplay between modernizing authors and their surroundings, Mr. Ajami has not only dug deeper in his probe of what brought about the present Arab political condition, but has analyzed the issue on a whole other level.
The reader who is familiar with Middle Eastern history will not feel burdened by the material. The refreshing tone and approach allows Mr. Ajami to deal with such issues as the Iranian revolution, the Egyptian peace with Israel, the Palestinian battle with Israel, or the Iran-Iraq with refreshing erudition and acumen that always excites and never bores.
"The Dream Palace of the Arabs" cannot serve as an introduction to the Middle East; it is too subtle and perceptive for that; but for anyone who is tired of reading about oil politics, religious fundamentalism and elusive peace deals, and who is actually interested in the underlying intellectual currents upon which the Arab political storm thrives, "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" is a sure bet.
Uncle Tom.......2003-12-19
As was written by another "(Fouad Ajami) has no axe to grind unlike Ed (sic) Said". True anough Ajami is far too busy being a perfect hound fetching and in his case delivering his master's newspaper. If you want to hear the message you expect to hear because it comforts you read this. But if you wish to know about what is out there give it a rain check
Just OK..........2003-03-11
I found any of Tom Friedman's books to be an easier and more comprehensible read. I am not a full time student of the middle east, although I like Dr. Ajami.
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Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America 1895-1896
Manufacturer: Merrell Holberton
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Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America
ASIN: 1858940672 |
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Sultan's Court
Alain Grosrichard
Manufacturer: Verso
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ASIN: 1859841228 |
Book Description
An engaging critique of Western misconceptions about the mysterious East. Edward Said's Orientalism has been much praised for its account of Western perceptions of the Orient. But the English-speaking world has for too long been unaware of another classic in the same field which appeared in France only a year later. Alain Grosrichard's The Sultan's Court is a fascinating survey of Western accounts of "Oriental despotism" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses particularly on portrayals of the Ottoman Empire and the supposedly enigmatic structure of the despot's court -- the seraglio -- with its viziers, janissaries, mutes, dwarfs, eunuchs and countless wives.. Drawing on the writing of Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire, Grosrichard examines their intense fascination with the seraglio He describes the way in which they constructed a fantasized Other in contrast to their own projections of a rational society. The Sultan's Court explores the nature of these fantasies and what they reveal about the foundations of modern political thought.
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Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Ideas in Context)
Peter N. Miller
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The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 17151785 (Past and Present Publications)
ASIN: 0521442591 |
Book Description
This book discusses the crisis of the early modern state in eighteenth-century Britain and sets it in its European context. The American Revolution and the simultaneous demand for wider religious toleration at home challenged the principles of sovereignty and obligation that underpinned arguments about the character of the state. At stake was a fundamental challenge to the way in which politics was described. The Americans and their British supporters argued that individuals, by voting and thinking freely, ought to determine the "common good." These influential ideas continue to resonate today in the principles of "one man, one vote" and "freedom of thought."
Book Description
The late Perry Miller once stated, "I have been compelled to insist that the mind of man is the basic factor in human history," and his study of the mind in America has shaped the thought of three decades of scholars.
The fifteen essays here collected--several of them previously unpublished--address themselves to facets of the American consciousness and to their expression in literature from the time of the Cambridge Agreement to the Nobel Prize acceptance speeches of Hemingway and Faulkner. A companion volume to Errand into the Wilderness, its general theme is one adumbrated in Mr. Miller's two-volume masterpiece, The New England Mind--the thrust of civilization into the vast, empty continent and its effect upon Americans' concept of themselves as "nature's nation."
The essays first concentrate on Puritan covenant theology and its gradual adaptation to changing conditions in America: the decline in zeal for a "Bible commonwealth," the growth of trade and industy, and the necessity for coexisting with large masses of unchurched people. As the book progresses, the emphasis shifts from religion to the philosophy of nature to the development of an original literature, although Mr. Miller is usually analyzing simultaneously all three aspects of the American quest for self-identity. In the final essays, he shows how the forces that molded the self-conscious articulateness of the early New Englanders still operate in the work of contemporary American writers.
The introduction to this collection is by Kenneth Murdock, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University, who, with Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot Morison, accomplished what has been called "one of the great historical re-evaluations of this generation."
Customer Reviews:
A Consensus Approach to the Ideology of Early Puritan New England.......2006-09-06
Perry Miller (1905-1963) was one of the most important of the consensus historians of the middle part of the twentieth century and his work on the American Puritans was required reading for all students of history when I attended graduate school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century" was one of his masterworks, exploring the intellectual history of the Puritans through a deep investigation of the thought of the Puritan divines. In this book, as well as its successor, "The New England Mind: From Colony to Province" (Harvard University Press, 1953), Miller asserted a single mind for America that could be traced to the Puritan belief system. Even while there was an "American mentality" it was tormented by self-doubt and a certain schizophrenia. He suggested that the spiritual unrest present among all Americans that may be traced to the early Puritans.
This volume emphasizes the rise of a religious utopian experiment by the Puritans. He finds much of value that the Puritans bequeathed to the United States and suggests that America has always been about noble ideals accepted by all. Miller's consensus interpretation celebrated the long tradition of shared American ideals and values while de-emphasizing conflict. He believed that this made the United States and the people that made it up somehow better than everyone else. Miller questioned the ideas and people who challenged the cherished principles that he saw so well expressed in the writings of Puritan elites, noting in many of them strains of authoritarianism, anarchy, and narrow- and simple-mindedness of all varieties. Much of this approach to the American past in vogue when Miller was involved in his work advocated a basic idealism that he believed was in constant jeopardy from forces of fear, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarianism present in society.
This is an important book, and having recently reread it, I find it still valuable as a statement of Puritan intellectual thought. Its creation of a single mindset, however, is certainly questionable. For instance, the "other" of Puritan society is not represented. What of the dispossessed, minorities of all types, non-Puritans, and women in Miller's recounting of Puritan thought? They are essentially omitted from the story and including their perspectives would certainly have altered Miller's account. His concept of Puritanism was essentially the same one that was offered by the elites of early New England. Nonetheless, this work represents a seminal statement in American historiography and remains worthy of consideration for any student of the subject.
this is a scholarly book, it's good for CHARACTER STUDY.......2005-08-31
A PURITAN MIND is not the normal kind of book one would read about Puritan life in the 1600s, Colonial America, as it pulls more on quotes from religious Puritan documents. You have to already know the history of all the A, B and C-list people in Puritan history to appreciate this book.
I'm a playwright who is focused on a story that crosses into the Puritans in their utopian society in Massachusetts.
A Great Scholarly Achievement.......2005-05-18
Contrary to what a previous reviewer might have you believe, Miller's book is not a propaganda piece advocating Puritan theology; it's an examination of the intellectual history of America, specifically New England in the time of the Puritans. Americans all live under the shadow of the Puritans; to not understand this is simply ignorant. To attack a serious and brilliant scholarly work as though it were right-wing rhetoric is just plain silly.
The Puritans are far too easy to caricature by our modern standards, but are much more complex and interesting to look at from within the context of their own times. Truly, theirs was an amazingly complicated (though logically tortured and ultimately impossible) faith to sustain. Few point out the complexities and contradictions of this faith from such an informed perspective as Miller. In my opinion, this is his masterwork.
I implore readers to avoid the (incorrect) characterization that the modern right-wing ministers (Dobson, Falwell, etc.) are the direct intellectual descendents of such giants as Jonathan Edwards; Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather; and Anne Hutchinson. Theology changes radically over time, and the Protestant Christianity being preached today is radically different than it was in the 1600s. Though the ideological foundation of this "New Jerusalem" called America was built by the Puritans, there are few ministers who now possess their eloquence, their willingness to sacrifice everything for their beliefs, and their dedication to their craft. (Not to mention a VERY rigid doctrine of predestination, much more rigid than you will find virtually anywhere in America today.) I don't advocate their philosophy or theology as something to live by. However, if your desire is to better understand the true Puritans and the history of America, it would be hard to do better than Perry Miller's great work on the subject.
Puritan Historiography.......2003-11-16
In the 20th century the study of the Puritan Origins of New England and the US as a whole, took a new start. Perry Miller was to 'blame' for this. With his studies of Puritans he has shown that Puritans were not as harsh, narrow-minded and alienated from the rest of the world, as was the image throughout the 19th and early 20th century. In fact especially the Puritans were very interested in new scientific and religious developments from the enlightenment onwards. They did however use them for their own purposes. In New England Mind, The Seventeenth Century, Perry Miller goes into this. He tries to explain how the Puritans tried to balance between hart en mind. How they incorporated new scientific developments into their worldview, yet never allowed for any limits on Gods authority and power. Miller succeeds very well in showing how their religion was a whole out of two very different parts and how they as humans found their in our eyes harsh religion consoling. This book only goes into the ideological legacy of the 17th century. If you would like to read more try the sequel; From Colony to Province. This is an excellent book, which opened up an entire era to our modern minds. Even though the ideas put for the floodlight are rather heavy-handed, Miller succeeds in explaining them clearly and even got me to smile.
Book Description
Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis--qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful--Songs of Experience explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history.
As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience--epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical--Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures.
Customer Reviews:
The Varieties of "Experience" from the Greeks to Foucault.......2007-03-13
Berkeley historian and critic, Martin Jay, offers a roadmap to trace the many vicissitudes of the idea of "experience" from the Greeks to Foucault. No other book out there does so with the thoroughness and detail for which Jay is justly known. Showing its roots in the Greek stress on reason and its capacities, Jay goes on to describe the humanist appropriation of it in Montaigne (1533-1592), whose holistic concept inevitably splits off into epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political and historical variants. In a novel move, Jay then shows how various 20th-century traditions (dialectical, pragmatist, phenomenological and poststructuralist) all try to reconstitute a more holistic version of the concept with varying degress of success. Or rather, "success," he tells us, is not entirely the right word, for there is no putatively correct version toward which the story leads. Although Jay provides hints sometimes about why a variant of the idea should have taken the form it did, he generally eschews rooting the ideas in the life-experiences of the authors he considers. "Such attempts," he explains, "generally presuppose a given notion of the experience out of which the ideas are alleged to emerge" (5). His whole book is aimed against this presupposition.
The book is very rich and fairly luxuriates in the many relevant primary and secondary texts turned up in his research. These are not just window-dressing but themselves play a large role in informing the reader about Jay's statements and judgments of specific authors and the peculiarities of their arguments. The last chapter on poststructuralism may come as a surprise, for it shows how Bataille, Barthes, and Foucault--who are usually taken to be destroyers of the centered self and its unproblematic inner experience--actually push for concepts and practices that yield a somewhat more positive notion of experience. In this new light, Bataille appears as a devotee of a Nietzschean experimental life that is not automatically nihilistic. An admirer of Bataille, the literary critic Roland Barthes offers an image of a desiring body drawn to whatever takes its fancy in spite of the specter of death that haunts his whole "cruising" mentality. Yet another supporter of Bataille, Michel Foucault, combines Bataille, Barthes and Nietzsche to propose a daredevil savant ceaselessly juggling "the subject, truth and the constitution of experience" (394). Although Jay wouldn't endorse Foucault's concept as the latest and thus correct verson, he does admire its combination of the moments contained within it: Bildung, aesthetic self-fashioning, prereflective existence and postreflective reconstruction. It is therefore not surprising that Jay ends his "experience-book" (Foucault's term) (409) with the idea that experience is a constant opening out to the world of the other, or the new, so that you may be transformed. It's a voyage he urges on us all even though we may encounter a shipwreck or two. The alternative, to remain inside our narrow and comforting circles of rectitude, leads to an identity politics of a shrill and crabbèd sort Jay can only reject. Whether or not the poststructuralist re-animation of experience actually recovers Montaigne's capacious humanist approach is debatable. What is certain is that, after Jay, we can no longer appeal to the "irreducibility of experience" as if it were self-evident. The result is a breakthrough for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, ethnic groups and their others--indeed, for civilizations as a whole--in their vexed attempts to communciate across the experience-line.
Product Description
Discover the best and most unusual places to visit in all of Ohio. Longtime TV travel reporter Neil Zurcher has made a career of showing fellow Ohioans how to take delightful mini-vacations close to home. This book collects Neil's all-time favorite Ohio getaway ideas, including . . .
- A museum dedicated entirely to popcorn.
- A historic village where you can ride an authentic replica canal boat.
- Factory tours, antique malls, flea markets, and other lively shopping destinations.
- Animal preserves featuring exotic varieties like bison, lions, rhinos, miniature donkeys . . .
- An Amish hardware store that sells all non-electric appliances.
- Mysterious prehistoric mounds and creepy caverns.
- Romantic country inns, historic hotels, cozy bed-and-breakfasts . . .
- More than 500 places in all!
Customer Reviews:
A "must-have" supplement for anyone visiting or vacationing in Ohio!.......2007-08-07
Experienced TV travel reporter Neil Zurcher presents Ohio Road Trips with Neil Zurcher, a collection of his all-around favorite Ohio getaways. Ohio Road Trips is packed cover to cover with descriptions (usually one or two paragraphs long) of unforgettable Ohio restaurants, lighthouses, malls, animal preserves, prehistoric mounds, romantic country inns, and much more. Each entry is accompanied by the phone number and street address of the location mentioned, and the entries are categorized by subject with an index in the back for quick reference. A "must-have" supplement for anyone visiting or vacationing in Ohio!
My husband read it through in three days and he never reads!.......2007-01-19
I bought this for my husband, who loves to take us to new and interesting places. We actually had been to more than half that were written about in the book, but he loved reading about them and saying " Hey, we've been there!" Great book, glad to see him reading.
Book Description
Revised and updated, the fifth edition of this now standard two-volume anthology brings together some of the most historically significant writings in American intellectual history. Uniquely comprehensive, The American Intellectual Tradition includes classic works in philosophy, religion, social theory, political thought, economics, psychology, and cultural and literary criticism. Organized chronologically into thematic sections, the two volumes trace the evolution of intellectual writing and thinking from its origins in Puritan beliefs to the most recent essays on diversity and postmodernity. Pedagogical features include introductions and headnotes to the selections, updated bibliographic material throughout, and detailed chronologies at the end of each book. Addressing such highly contested subjects as race, class, gender, aesthetics, political religion, and the role of the United States in the world, The American Intellectual Tradition, Fifth Edition, is invaluable for undergraduate courses in intellectual history. It is also an excellent supplement for graduate seminars and classes in American history, American studies, and American literature. Volumes I and II now offer new selections from Roger Williams, John Humphrey Noyes, Asa Gray, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Augustus Briggs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walter Lippmann, Thurman Arnold, Henry Luce, Henry A. Wallace, Albert Einstein, Aldo Leopold, James Baldwin, George Kennan, Milton Friedman, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, Gloria Anzaldua, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Joan W. Scott, Samuel Huntington, and Carl Sagan.
Customer Reviews:
An Excellent Compendium of American Thought.......2003-01-01
This volume by Hollinger and Capper is the first of two in their ambitious goal to "round up" and compile a representative sampling of documents in American Intellectual History. They succeed brilliantly.
Volume I logically starts with the Pilgrims and ends with the Civil War and is divided neatly into component chapters with contributions from John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards ("Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is just breathtaking...), Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams (the founding fathers section), on through Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalism), to Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to John C. Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, Martin Delaney, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
The editors provide a small biographical sketch of each author that precedes the selection and the selections track a wide range of issues including race relations, relations between the North and the South, the enfranchisement of women, American exceptionalism (Winthrop's "City on a Hill"), the formation of the United States, transcendentalism (the seedling for America's first original philosophy, Pragmatism). These issues are picked up later and expanded (or concluded) in Volume II of the work.
An Excellent Compendium of American Thought.......2003-01-01
Volume II of Hollinger and Capper's work is as excellent as the first.
Volume II contains contributions from American writers such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan Sontag, Malcolm X, Rienhold Niebuhr, Noam Chomsky, John Crowe Ransom, Betty Friedan, John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, H.L. Mencken, Jane Addams, Woodrow Wilson, Samuel Huntington, etc.
Volume II traces the developments of race relations in America, the advancement of minorities and women in America, American foreign relations, insight into the state of the South after the Civil War, the effect of transportation revolutions on interstate travel as well as traces the development of Pragmatism, America's contribution to the world of Philosophy from Charles Sanders Peirce to William James to Thomas Kuhn to Richard Rorty.
Simply put, the topical treatment of this work is first rate and the collection of these various works is a creditable contribution to the field of American Intellectual History.
Customer Reviews:
Hard Going.......2001-06-26
The thought in this book is profound and enlightening, the style and language are clear enough, but I found it unbearably hard going to get through it.
Creative Platonist's Perspective on History and Civilization.......2001-06-06
There are four parts to this text: "Sociological," "Cosmological," "Philosophical," and "Civilization." The first part is a history of how ideas, especially moral ideas, have influenced the progress of civilization. Whitehead is by training mathematician and by nature a philosopher, not a historian. As a consequence, he covers a great deal of historical ground at a high level of generality which, in Whitehead's case, I consider a virtue. He has a beautiful, long-term perspective; his account of the transition from a world in which slavery was taken for granted to one in which it is no longer legitimate, and the role that the ideas of Platonism and Christianity played in that 2500 year transition, makes me quite optimistic about the long-term possibility of humane progress in the world.
I describe the first section in depth because it is among the more accessible pieces of Whitehead's writing. The remainder of the book calls upon his unique metaphysical perspective to some extent, and is thus more of a struggle for the casual reader. It, too, is beautiful and valuable for those who are willing to learn how to read Whitehead, but it is not easy. Buy the book for the first part, then if you like Whitehead's highly idiosyncratic view of reality, train yourself to read the rest of the book.
Personally, although Whitehead has fallen out of favor of academic philosophers for most of this century, I think that his work is more likely to be read 200 years from now than are most other works written this century. Whitehead is definitely thinking of the big picture with a certain serene timelessness. Far more people should be exposed to his 20th century articulation of the eternal search for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (and the Adventure).
The Ideas Are Still Adventurous.......2001-01-26
Whitehead was the foremost twentieth-century advocate of Process Philosophy--he called it "The Philosophy of Organism"--the conviction that reality is composed of processes rather than of substances or matter.
Students of process thought frequently focus on Whitehead's major work, _Process and Reality_, sometimes to the neglect of his other books. But Whitehead's thought was, fittingly, in continual flux; and _Adventures of Ideas_, written after _Process and Reality_, contains new themes which, some would say, provide needed correctives to some of the notions in Whitehead's earlier books. _Adventures of Ideas_ is also considerably more readable than _Process and Reality_. It should not be passed over.
One of the best.......2000-11-13
Excellently written. I was somewhat fan of Whitehead's philosophical ideas before I picked up this book. However, since I started reading this book I have become quite fascinated by his works. I recommend this book for all who seek knowledge or would like to further their command over making an inquiry into pre thought process.
Book Description
Challenging De Gaulle tells the story of the Algerian counterrevolution from the viewpoint of the ordinary foot soldier in the O.A.S. (Organisation Armee Secrete). In a series of interviews with former O.A.S. participants, and using many unpublished documents and personal diaries, Alexander Harrison examines the motives of these defenders of French Algeria. "Were they criminals, sociopaths, or honorable men more sensitive to their country's fate than were many of their contemporaries?" Harrison poses this question in the book's introduction and then seeks the answer with an objective eye. Students and scholars of twentieth century history, as well as the general reader interested in this fascinating period, will find this volume superb reading. The book begins with a historical view of French colonization of Algeria, outlining the roots of the counter-revolution. Further chapters discuss the three abortive efforts to grant native Algerians their independence. The O.A.S. emerged in the wake of these defeats. Harrison also examines the evolution of counter-terrorism into a full-fledged coalition, under the O.A.S. label, to challenge DeGaulle. Finally, those who fought give personal accounts of the movement's defeat.
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