Author: Daniel J. Mahoney
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641772425
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
In The Statesman as Thinker, Daniel J. Mahoney provides thoughtful and elegant portraits of statesmen who struggled to preserve freedom during times of crisis: Cicero using all the powers of rhetoric to preserve republican liberty in Rome against Caesar’s encroaching autocracy; Burke defending ordered liberty against Jacobin tyranny in revolutionary France; Tocqueville defending liberty and human dignity against blind reaction, democratic impatience, and revolutionary fanaticism; Lincoln preserving the American republic and putting an end to chattel slavery; Churchill defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism; de Gaulle defending the honor of France during World War II; and Havel fighting Communism before 1989 and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace. Mahoney makes sense of the mixture of magnanimity and moderation that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That admirable mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical and Christian wisdom and to the noble desire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and destructive despotic regimes and ideologies.
Author: Plato
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521442626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
The Statesman is Plato's neglected political work, but it is crucial for an understanding of the development of his political thinking. In its presentation of the statesman's expertise, The Statesman modifies, as well as defending in original ways, this central theme of the Republic. This new translation makes the dialogue accessible to students of political thought and the introduction outlines the philosophical and historical background necessary for a political theory readership.
Author: Peter Clarke
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408831236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
In 1953, Winston Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In fact, Churchill was a professional writer before he was a politician, and published a stream of books and articles over the course of two intertwined careers. Now historian Peter Clarke traces the writing of the magisterial work that occupied Churchill for a quarter century, his four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples.As an author, Churchill faced woes familiar to many others; chronically short of funds, late on deadlines, scrambling to sell new projects or cajoling his publishers for more advance money. He signed a contract for the English-Speaking project in 1932, a time when his political career seemed over. The magnum opus was to be delivered in 1939, but in that year, history overtook history-writing. When the Nazis swept across Europe, Churchill was summoned from political exile to become Prime Minister. The English-Speaking Peoples would have to wait.The book would indeed be written and become a bestseller, after Churchill left public life. But even before he took office, the massive project was shaping his worldview, his speeches and his leadership. In these pages, Peter Clarke follows Churchill's monumental quest to chronicle the English-Speaking Peoples - a quest that helped to define the enduring 'special relationship' between Britain and America. In the process, Clarke gives us not just an untold chapter in literary history, but a fresh perspective on this iconic figure: a life of Churchill the author.
Author: Mark Zwonitzer
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616205989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
In a dual biography covering the last ten years of the lives of friends and contemporaries, writer Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and statesman John Hay (who served as secretary of state under presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt), The Statesman and the Storyteller not only provides an intimate look into the daily lives of these men but also creates an elucidating portrait of the United States on the verge of emerging as a world power. And just as the narrative details the wisdom, and the occasional missteps, of two great men during a tumultuous time, it also penetrates the seat of power in Washington as the nation strove to make itself known internationally--and in the process committed acts antithetical to America’s professed ideals and promises. The country’s most significant move in this time was to go to war with Spain and to eventually wrest control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. In what has to be viewed as one of the most shameful periods in American political history, Filipinos who believed they had been promised independence were instead told they were incapable of self-government and then violently subdued in a war that featured torture and execution of native soldiers and civilians. The United States also used its growing military and political might to grab the entirety of the Hawaiian Islands and a large section of Panama. As secretary of state during this time, Hay, though a charitable man, was nonetheless complicit in these misdeeds. Clemens, a staunch critic of his country’s imperialistic actions, was forced by his own financial and family needs to temper his remarks. Nearing the end of their long and remarkable lives, both men found themselves struggling to maintain their personal integrity while remaining celebrated and esteemed public figures. Written with a keen eye--Mark Zwonitzer is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker--and informed by the author’s deep understanding of the patterns of history, The Statesman and the Storyteller has the compelling pace of a novel, the epic sweep of historical writing at its best, and, in capturing the essence of the lives of Hay and Twain, the humanity and nuance of masterful biography.
Author: Mitchell Miller
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972431
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
In the Statesman, Plato brings together--only to challenge and displace--his own crowning contributions to philosophical method, political theory, and drama. In his 1980 study, reprinted here, Mitchell Miller employs literary theory and conceptual analysis to expose the philosophical, political, and pedagogical conflict that is the underlying context of the dialogue, revealing that its chaotic variety of movements is actually a carefully harmonized act of realizing the mean. The original study left one question outstanding: what specifically, in the metaphysical order of things, motivated the nameless Visitor from Elea to abandon bifurcation for his consummating non-bifurcatory division of fifteen kinds at the end of the dialogue? Miller addressed in a separate essay, first published in 1999 and reprinted here. In it, he opens the horizon of interpretation to include the new metaphysics of the Parmenides, the Philebus, and the "e;unwritten teachings."e;
Author: Plato
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226670392
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
The Being of the Beautiful collects Plato’s three dialogues, the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesmen, in which Socrates formulates his conception of philosophy while preparing for trial. Renowned classicist Seth Benardete’s careful translations clearly illuminate the dramatic and philosophical unity of these dialogues and highlight Plato’s subtle interplay of language and structure. Extensive notes and commentaries, furthermore, underscore the trilogy’s motifs and relationships. “The translations are masterpieces of literalness. . . . They are honest, accurate, and give the reader a wonderful sense of the Greek.”—Drew A. Hyland, Review of Metaphysics
Author: Shimʿon Peres
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0805242821
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
A revelatory portrait of Israel's first prime minister, written by its current president, includes coverage of his support of the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine, his granting of first exemptions to Orthodox military servicepeople and his peaceful overtures toward post-Holocaust Germany.
Author: William Montgomery Watt
Publisher: London : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198810780
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
A biography of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
Author: Edward Faith
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1663207097
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
In and around Rough Edge (The western side of the village of St. Stephens, Alabama) several crusty old gentlemen lived. In his young days Edward was often enthralled by the tales these old men told. Over the years many tales accumulated in his repertory. Edward often regaled gatherings of the good people of St. Stephens with those stories. He was told by many, “you should write a book containing these stories.” In considering writing a book of anecdotes Edward chose, “Tales of the Elder Statesman,” as the title. One of the old men who spun many of the stories considered himself to be an authority on Washington County politics. In reality just the opposite was true. If you wanted to vote for a winning candidate, vote against the person Rufus was backing. In jest Edward began calling him the Elder Statesman. In the book the stories of several crabby old men are recorded and the term, “The Elder Statesman” is used to refer to each of these old men. Thus, The Elder Statesman,” applies to a number of different men. It became a compilation of all those different personalities. Most of the stories are humorous, some are heartwarming morality revelations, while a few are pure fiction. The real beauty of, “Tales of the Elder Statesman”, lies in the fact that the reader does not have to keep up with a complicated plot. He can read a few tales, put the book down for a week then read some more tales without missing a beat. This book is dedicated to preserving the memory of those wonderful old men
Author: Beatriz Bossi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110605546
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
This volume tackles both the apparent lack of unity and the perplexing philosophical content of the Statesman as it explores, in what is now Plato's second account, subsequent to that of the Republic, of what would constitute the best society, the role and nature of the statesman in it; the art of governance of it; the role and nature of its laws; the role and status of its female citizens; and how the virtues are interwoven within it, along with many other topics, including (in a major Myth) that of the origins of the universe and of humankind. Coming as they do from often widely differing hermeneutical traditions, the authors in the volume offer responses to substantive and intriguing questions that the dialogue raises which are frequently divergent, but by that very token of much value in any attempt to interpret a complex and multifaceted work.
