Author: William Lasser
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128886
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A key figure in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, Benjamin V. Cohen (1894–1983) was a major architect of public policy from the first days of FDR’s presidency through the early days of the Cold War. Although he kept a low public profile, Cohen’s influence extended across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. In this biography, William Lasser offers the first account of Ben Cohen’s life and career, and an assessment of his contribution to the origin and development of modern American liberalism. Cohen’s life provides an extraordinary lens through which to view the development of the evolving political philosophy of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A brilliant lawyer noted for his good judgment and experience, Cohen was a leading member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” developing ideas, drafting legislation, lobbying within the administration and in Congress, and defending the New Deal in court. The book traces his contributions to domestic financial policy, his activities during the war years in London and Washington, his service as counselor to the State Department and member of the American delegation to the United Nations after the war, and his role in the American Zionist movement. From Cohen’s life and work, Lasser draws important insights into the development of the New Deal and the evolution of postwar liberalism.
Benjamin V. Cohen
Author: William Lasser
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128886
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A key figure in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, Benjamin V. Cohen (1894–1983) was a major architect of public policy from the first days of FDR’s presidency through the early days of the Cold War. Although he kept a low public profile, Cohen’s influence extended across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. In this biography, William Lasser offers the first account of Ben Cohen’s life and career, and an assessment of his contribution to the origin and development of modern American liberalism. Cohen’s life provides an extraordinary lens through which to view the development of the evolving political philosophy of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A brilliant lawyer noted for his good judgment and experience, Cohen was a leading member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” developing ideas, drafting legislation, lobbying within the administration and in Congress, and defending the New Deal in court. The book traces his contributions to domestic financial policy, his activities during the war years in London and Washington, his service as counselor to the State Department and member of the American delegation to the United Nations after the war, and his role in the American Zionist movement. From Cohen’s life and work, Lasser draws important insights into the development of the New Deal and the evolution of postwar liberalism.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128886
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A key figure in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, Benjamin V. Cohen (1894–1983) was a major architect of public policy from the first days of FDR’s presidency through the early days of the Cold War. Although he kept a low public profile, Cohen’s influence extended across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. In this biography, William Lasser offers the first account of Ben Cohen’s life and career, and an assessment of his contribution to the origin and development of modern American liberalism. Cohen’s life provides an extraordinary lens through which to view the development of the evolving political philosophy of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A brilliant lawyer noted for his good judgment and experience, Cohen was a leading member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” developing ideas, drafting legislation, lobbying within the administration and in Congress, and defending the New Deal in court. The book traces his contributions to domestic financial policy, his activities during the war years in London and Washington, his service as counselor to the State Department and member of the American delegation to the United Nations after the war, and his role in the American Zionist movement. From Cohen’s life and work, Lasser draws important insights into the development of the New Deal and the evolution of postwar liberalism.
Prelude to Catastrophe
Author: Robert Shogan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566638313
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Looks at the relationship Franklin D. Roosevelt had with a variety of influential Jews and examines their actions and inactions regarding the Jewish Holocaust in Euorpe during World War II.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566638313
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Looks at the relationship Franklin D. Roosevelt had with a variety of influential Jews and examines their actions and inactions regarding the Jewish Holocaust in Euorpe during World War II.
International Political Economy
Author: Benjamin J. Cohen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828325
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
The field of international political economy gained prominence in the early 1970s--when the Arab oil embargo and other crises ended the postwar era of virtually unhindered economic growth in the United States and Europe--and today is an essential part of both political science and economics. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of this important field's development, the contrasting worldviews of its American and British schools, and the different ways scholars have sought to meet the challenges posed by an ever more complex and interdependent world economy. Benjamin Cohen explains the critical role played by the early "intellectual entrepreneurs," a generation of pioneering scholars determined to bridge the gap between international economics and international politics. Among them were brilliant thinkers like Robert Keohane, Susan Strange, and others whose legacies endure to the present day. Cohen shows how their personalities and the historical contexts in which they worked influenced how the field evolved. He examines the distinctly different insights of the American and British schools and addresses issues that have been central to the field's development, including systemic transformation, system governance, and the place of the sovereign state in formal analysis. The definitive intellectual history of international political economy, this book is the ideal volume for IPE scholars and those interested in learning more about the field.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828325
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
The field of international political economy gained prominence in the early 1970s--when the Arab oil embargo and other crises ended the postwar era of virtually unhindered economic growth in the United States and Europe--and today is an essential part of both political science and economics. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of this important field's development, the contrasting worldviews of its American and British schools, and the different ways scholars have sought to meet the challenges posed by an ever more complex and interdependent world economy. Benjamin Cohen explains the critical role played by the early "intellectual entrepreneurs," a generation of pioneering scholars determined to bridge the gap between international economics and international politics. Among them were brilliant thinkers like Robert Keohane, Susan Strange, and others whose legacies endure to the present day. Cohen shows how their personalities and the historical contexts in which they worked influenced how the field evolved. He examines the distinctly different insights of the American and British schools and addresses issues that have been central to the field's development, including systemic transformation, system governance, and the place of the sovereign state in formal analysis. The definitive intellectual history of international political economy, this book is the ideal volume for IPE scholars and those interested in learning more about the field.
Dealers and Dreamers: A New Look at the New Deal
Author: Joseph P. Lash
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 493
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Joseph Lash’s last work is an account of the men and women who helped Roosevelt pull the country out of the Great Depression. When FDR took office in 1933, he set into motion the promise he made when he was first nominated: the New Deal, also called the Roosevelt Revolution, charged the energies and imaginations of some of the most brilliant minds in the country. Lash draws heavily on the private and unpublished papers of Thomas Corcoran and Benjamin Cohen, the two most influential brain trusters of the time, whose policies invigorated the nation and who, independently and together, were driven to promote the social and economic transformations of the thirties. “This ‘new look at the New Deal,’ as the book is subtitled,... [is] a history of New Deal legislation, from the banking bill that recast the Federal Reserve System, on through the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Bill and the creation of the alphabetocracy that, as Mr. Lash believes, helped to shift control of the American economy from Wall Street to Washington... a dual biography of two young New Deal lawyers, Benjamin V. Cohen and Thomas G. Corcoran... a roster of New Deal players — Adolph A. Berle, William O. Douglas, Marriner Eccles, Jerome Frank, Leon Henderson, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Hugh S. Johnson, James Landis, Max Lowenthal, Isador Lubin, Raymond Moley, Frances Perkins, Joseph Rauh, Samuel I. Rosenman and Rexford G. Tugwell [and] Harvard Law professor (and later Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter... the ideological struggle that went on between people like Tugwell, who wanted to plan the economy, and those like Frankfurter and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who wanted to break up the trusts and restore freedom to the marketplace. Dealers and Dreamers will be valuable to any reader with certain specific questions about the New Deal in mind.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times “Dealers and Dreamers is a fascinating, informative book, indispensable for students of the Roosevelt presidency.” — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The New York Review of Books “The story of how our present-day institutions were created... [Lash’s] excellent exploitation of the papers of both Cohen and Corcoran, plus judicious use of interviews, makes this a valuable work.” — Warren F. Kimball, Los Angeles Times “Joseph P. Lash’s last book is a fitting capstone to a noble career. Dealers and Dreamers is a vivid evocation of an era and a fascinating portrait, written with the skill of a master, of some of the most wonderfully engaging figures of a glorious age in American history. But more than that, it is — like all of Joe Lash’s books, and like Joe Lash’s life itself — a work of the most rare sincerity and integrity. What shines forth from every page — as it shines forth from Mr. Lash’s life — is his unshakable determination to be truthful, honest and scrupulously fair. Joe has always been the standard of integrity to which I tried to hold fast, and this book is a final, triumphant example of the fact that he held that standard high to the last.” — Robert Caro “I found Dealers and Dreamers a veritable treasure trove of historical information about Roosevelt’s Washington. For that reason alone it is an important book.” — Thomas Fleming “Dealers and Dreamers not only reports the achievements and operations of the New Deal, but also the spirit of the participants, a spirit which I think was very much like that which must have existed among the persons who drafted the U.S. Constitution and put it in force — in each case, reflecting the excitement and satisfaction of participating in a successful revolution, not against government but for government.” — Eugene McCarthy “By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Eleanor and Franklin, this is a fresh and admiring look at the original ‘brain trusters’ (Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, Adolf Berle) and others crucial to the legislated social transformation presided over by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression years. Among the ‘others’ Lash pays particular attention to are Thomas G. Corcoran, ‘the unofficial whip of the New Deal,’ and Benjamin V. Cohen, principal draftsman of several ground-breaking bills sent to Congress. The author describes Cohen as the intellectual coordinator of the New Deal and the keeper of its conscience. Working from Corcoran and Cohen’s private papers, he sheds light on the significance of the Securities Exchange Act, FDR’s court-packing attempt, the 1936 presidential campaign, the effect of the New Deal on black Americans and other issues throughout the decade before Pearl Harbor.” — Publishers Weekly “Lash focuses on two talented technocrats — Benjamin V. Cohen and Thomas C. Corcoran, protégés of Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School. Though neither had held high office, both played important, frequently pivotal, roles in drafting and ensuring passage of vital New Deal measures like the Securities Exchange Act of 1934... Pragmatists as well as idealists, Cohen and Corcoran viewed politics as the art of the possible. With revolution a decided possibility, they opted for trial-and-error reform as the best means to the end of preserving any vestige of a free-enterprise, constitutional system.” — Kirkus Reviews “Lash has written an absorbing narrative that captures the spirit of those yeasty times when a heady generation of young intellectuals was ready to roll up its sleeves to rescue America.” — R. Frank Saunders, Jr., The Georgia Historical Quarterly “Dealers and Dreamers conveys an unmistakable sense that there was something special about the experience of the generation of lawyers who entered public service in the 1930’s.” — G. Edward White, Harvard Law Review
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 493
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Joseph Lash’s last work is an account of the men and women who helped Roosevelt pull the country out of the Great Depression. When FDR took office in 1933, he set into motion the promise he made when he was first nominated: the New Deal, also called the Roosevelt Revolution, charged the energies and imaginations of some of the most brilliant minds in the country. Lash draws heavily on the private and unpublished papers of Thomas Corcoran and Benjamin Cohen, the two most influential brain trusters of the time, whose policies invigorated the nation and who, independently and together, were driven to promote the social and economic transformations of the thirties. “This ‘new look at the New Deal,’ as the book is subtitled,... [is] a history of New Deal legislation, from the banking bill that recast the Federal Reserve System, on through the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Bill and the creation of the alphabetocracy that, as Mr. Lash believes, helped to shift control of the American economy from Wall Street to Washington... a dual biography of two young New Deal lawyers, Benjamin V. Cohen and Thomas G. Corcoran... a roster of New Deal players — Adolph A. Berle, William O. Douglas, Marriner Eccles, Jerome Frank, Leon Henderson, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Hugh S. Johnson, James Landis, Max Lowenthal, Isador Lubin, Raymond Moley, Frances Perkins, Joseph Rauh, Samuel I. Rosenman and Rexford G. Tugwell [and] Harvard Law professor (and later Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter... the ideological struggle that went on between people like Tugwell, who wanted to plan the economy, and those like Frankfurter and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who wanted to break up the trusts and restore freedom to the marketplace. Dealers and Dreamers will be valuable to any reader with certain specific questions about the New Deal in mind.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times “Dealers and Dreamers is a fascinating, informative book, indispensable for students of the Roosevelt presidency.” — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The New York Review of Books “The story of how our present-day institutions were created... [Lash’s] excellent exploitation of the papers of both Cohen and Corcoran, plus judicious use of interviews, makes this a valuable work.” — Warren F. Kimball, Los Angeles Times “Joseph P. Lash’s last book is a fitting capstone to a noble career. Dealers and Dreamers is a vivid evocation of an era and a fascinating portrait, written with the skill of a master, of some of the most wonderfully engaging figures of a glorious age in American history. But more than that, it is — like all of Joe Lash’s books, and like Joe Lash’s life itself — a work of the most rare sincerity and integrity. What shines forth from every page — as it shines forth from Mr. Lash’s life — is his unshakable determination to be truthful, honest and scrupulously fair. Joe has always been the standard of integrity to which I tried to hold fast, and this book is a final, triumphant example of the fact that he held that standard high to the last.” — Robert Caro “I found Dealers and Dreamers a veritable treasure trove of historical information about Roosevelt’s Washington. For that reason alone it is an important book.” — Thomas Fleming “Dealers and Dreamers not only reports the achievements and operations of the New Deal, but also the spirit of the participants, a spirit which I think was very much like that which must have existed among the persons who drafted the U.S. Constitution and put it in force — in each case, reflecting the excitement and satisfaction of participating in a successful revolution, not against government but for government.” — Eugene McCarthy “By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Eleanor and Franklin, this is a fresh and admiring look at the original ‘brain trusters’ (Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, Adolf Berle) and others crucial to the legislated social transformation presided over by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression years. Among the ‘others’ Lash pays particular attention to are Thomas G. Corcoran, ‘the unofficial whip of the New Deal,’ and Benjamin V. Cohen, principal draftsman of several ground-breaking bills sent to Congress. The author describes Cohen as the intellectual coordinator of the New Deal and the keeper of its conscience. Working from Corcoran and Cohen’s private papers, he sheds light on the significance of the Securities Exchange Act, FDR’s court-packing attempt, the 1936 presidential campaign, the effect of the New Deal on black Americans and other issues throughout the decade before Pearl Harbor.” — Publishers Weekly “Lash focuses on two talented technocrats — Benjamin V. Cohen and Thomas C. Corcoran, protégés of Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School. Though neither had held high office, both played important, frequently pivotal, roles in drafting and ensuring passage of vital New Deal measures like the Securities Exchange Act of 1934... Pragmatists as well as idealists, Cohen and Corcoran viewed politics as the art of the possible. With revolution a decided possibility, they opted for trial-and-error reform as the best means to the end of preserving any vestige of a free-enterprise, constitutional system.” — Kirkus Reviews “Lash has written an absorbing narrative that captures the spirit of those yeasty times when a heady generation of young intellectuals was ready to roll up its sleeves to rescue America.” — R. Frank Saunders, Jr., The Georgia Historical Quarterly “Dealers and Dreamers conveys an unmistakable sense that there was something special about the experience of the generation of lawyers who entered public service in the 1930’s.” — G. Edward White, Harvard Law Review
Benjamin Franklin's Science
Author: I. Bernard Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674066595
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Examines the scientific work of Benjamin Franklin in fields ranging from heat to astronomy ; provides accounts of the theoretical backgroung of his science, the experiments he performed, and their influence throughout Europe and the U.S.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674066595
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Examines the scientific work of Benjamin Franklin in fields ranging from heat to astronomy ; provides accounts of the theoretical backgroung of his science, the experiments he performed, and their influence throughout Europe and the U.S.
The Green New Deal and the Future of Work
Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231556063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
Catastrophic climate change overshadows the present and the future. Wrenching economic transformations have devastated workers and hollowed out communities. However, those fighting for jobs and those fighting for the planet have often been at odds. Does the world face two separate crises, environmental and economic? The promise of the Green New Deal is to tackle the threat of climate change through the empowerment of working people and the strengthening of democracy. In this view, the crisis of nature and the crisis of work must be addressed together—or they will not be addressed at all. This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. Together, they examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption—building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically. Contributors also debate urgent questions: What is the value of a federal jobs program, or even a jobs guarantee? How do we alleviate the miseries and precarity of work? In key economic sectors, including energy, transportation, housing, agriculture, and care work, what kind of work is needed today? How does the New Deal provide guidance in addressing these questions, and how can a Green New Deal revive democracy? Above all, this book shows, the Green New Deal offers hope for a better tomorrow—but only if it accounts for work’s past transformations and shapes its future.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231556063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
Catastrophic climate change overshadows the present and the future. Wrenching economic transformations have devastated workers and hollowed out communities. However, those fighting for jobs and those fighting for the planet have often been at odds. Does the world face two separate crises, environmental and economic? The promise of the Green New Deal is to tackle the threat of climate change through the empowerment of working people and the strengthening of democracy. In this view, the crisis of nature and the crisis of work must be addressed together—or they will not be addressed at all. This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. Together, they examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption—building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically. Contributors also debate urgent questions: What is the value of a federal jobs program, or even a jobs guarantee? How do we alleviate the miseries and precarity of work? In key economic sectors, including energy, transportation, housing, agriculture, and care work, what kind of work is needed today? How does the New Deal provide guidance in addressing these questions, and how can a Green New Deal revive democracy? Above all, this book shows, the Green New Deal offers hope for a better tomorrow—but only if it accounts for work’s past transformations and shapes its future.
The Political Economy of Regionalism
Author: Edward D. Mansfield
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231106634
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Exploring regionalism from a political economic perspective, this text investigates why regional arrangements are formed, the conditions under which these arrangements solidify, and why they take on different institutional forms.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231106634
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Exploring regionalism from a political economic perspective, this text investigates why regional arrangements are formed, the conditions under which these arrangements solidify, and why they take on different institutional forms.
Inventing the Immigration Problem
Author: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674985648
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts—women and men trained in the new field of social science—fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation’s place in the world. Katherine Benton-Cohen argues that the Dillingham Commission’s legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later. Within a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission’s recommendations—including a literacy test, a quota system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy—were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics. The Dillingham Commission—which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States—reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America’s immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674985648
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts—women and men trained in the new field of social science—fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation’s place in the world. Katherine Benton-Cohen argues that the Dillingham Commission’s legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later. Within a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission’s recommendations—including a literacy test, a quota system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy—were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics. The Dillingham Commission—which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States—reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America’s immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.
Witz (American Literature Series)
Author: Joshua Cohen
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
ISBN: 156478617X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 826
Book Description
One of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt . . . Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
ISBN: 156478617X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 826
Book Description
One of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt . . . Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
Benjamin's -abilities
Author: Samuel Weber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674033957
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 374
Book Description
“There is no world of thought that is not a world of language,” Walter Benjamin remarked, “and one only sees in the world what is preconditioned by language.” In this book, Samuel Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing on a little-discussed stylistic trait in his formulation of concepts. Weber’s focus is the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The “-ability” (-barkeit, in German) of concepts and literary forms traverses the whole of Benjamin’s oeuvre, from “impartibility” and “criticizability” through the well-known formulations of “citability,” “translatability,” and, most famously, the “reproducibility” of “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Nouns formed with this suffix, Weber points out, refer to a possibility or potentiality, to a capacity rather than an existing reality. This insight allows for a consistent and enlightening reading of Benjamin’s writings. Weber first situates Benjamin’s engagement with the “-ability” of various concepts in the context of his entire corpus and in relation to the philosophical tradition, from Kant to Derrida. Subsequent chapters deepen the implications of the use of this suffix in a wide variety of contexts, including Benjamin’s Trauerspiel book, his relation to Carl Schmitt, and a reading of Wagner’s Ring. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674033957
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 374
Book Description
“There is no world of thought that is not a world of language,” Walter Benjamin remarked, “and one only sees in the world what is preconditioned by language.” In this book, Samuel Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing on a little-discussed stylistic trait in his formulation of concepts. Weber’s focus is the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The “-ability” (-barkeit, in German) of concepts and literary forms traverses the whole of Benjamin’s oeuvre, from “impartibility” and “criticizability” through the well-known formulations of “citability,” “translatability,” and, most famously, the “reproducibility” of “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Nouns formed with this suffix, Weber points out, refer to a possibility or potentiality, to a capacity rather than an existing reality. This insight allows for a consistent and enlightening reading of Benjamin’s writings. Weber first situates Benjamin’s engagement with the “-ability” of various concepts in the context of his entire corpus and in relation to the philosophical tradition, from Kant to Derrida. Subsequent chapters deepen the implications of the use of this suffix in a wide variety of contexts, including Benjamin’s Trauerspiel book, his relation to Carl Schmitt, and a reading of Wagner’s Ring. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.