Download or read book The Tyranny of History written by William John Francis Jenner and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1994 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines China's political, economic and social structures which have resulted in a culture that has stifled creative thinking - He argues that China has been both held together and held back by its extreme deference to history - Boxer movement - Cultural Revolution - Great Leap Forward.

Download or read book Tyrants written by Waller R. Newell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of tyranny from Achilles to today's jihadists, this volume shows why tyrannical temptation is a permanent danger.

Download or read book The Tyranny of the Majority written by Tamás Nyirkos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tamás Nyirkos provides a timely and essential reassessment of the concept of the "tyranny of the majority" for the study of democracy today. The analysis is divided into three parts: the first discusses the "prehistory" of majority tyranny; the second reviews the elements of the "standard theory" in the modern era; while the third deals with the current "postmodern" challenges to the prevailing order of liberal democracy. Combining different elements of theories dating from the Middle Ages to the present, Nyirkos theorizes that while the term "the tyranny of the majority" may be misleading, the threat that tyrannical governments justify themselves by reference to the majority will remain with us for the foreseeable future. He shows how some of the greatest political philosophers of the past – democrats and antidemocrats alike – shared the same fears about the majoritarian principle. The Tyranny of the Majority will offer all those who read it a better understanding of what is meant not only by this term, but also by related terms like democratic despotism, populism, or illiberal democracy. It will be of interest to scholars of politics and international relations, political philosophy, political theology, and intellectual history.

Download or read book The Path to Tyranny written by Michael Newton and published by Michael Newton. This book was released on 2010-05-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how many free societies have fallen to tyranny and looks at the possibility that the United States could be next.

Download or read book On Tyranny written by Timothy Snyder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times) “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

Download or read book Teaching What Really Happened written by James W. Loewen and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2018-09-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled "Truth" that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.

Download or read book Ancient Tyranny written by Sian Lewis and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyrants and tyranny are more than the antithesis of democracy and the mark of political failure: they are a dynamic response to social and political pressures.This book examines the autocratic rulers and dynasties of classical Greece and Rome and the changing concepts of tyranny in political thought and culture. It brings together historians, political theorists and philosophers, all offering new perspectives on the autocratic governments of the ancient world.The volume is divided into four parts. Part I looks at the ways in which the term 'tyranny' was used and understood, and the kinds of individual who were called tyrants. Part II focuses on the genesis of tyranny and the social and political circumstances in which tyrants arose. The chapters in Part III examine the presentation of tyrants by themselves and in literature and history. Part IV discusses the achievements of episodic tyranny within the non-autocratic regimes of Sparta and Rome and of autocratic regimes in Persia and the western Mediterranean world.Written by a wide range of leading experts in their field, Ancient Tyranny offers a new and comparative study of tyranny within Greek, Roman and Persian society.

Download or read book On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order written by Aoife O'Donoghue and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since classical antiquity debates about tyranny, tyrannicide and preventing tyranny's re-emergence have permeated governance discourse. Yet within the literature on the global legal order, tyranny is missing. This book creates a taxonomy of tyranny and poses the question: could the global legal order be tyrannical? This taxonomy examines the benefits attached to tyrannical governance for the tyrant, considers how illegitimacy and fear establish tyranny, asks how rule by law, silence and beneficence aid in governing a tyranny. It outlines the modalities of tyranny: scale, imperialism, gender, and bureaucracy. Where it is determined that a tyranny exists, the book examines the extent of the right and duty to effect tyrannicide. As the global legal order gathers ever more power to itself, it becomes imperative to ask whether tyranny lurks at the global scale.

Download or read book The Future Is History written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

Download or read book Procopius of Caesarea written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-01-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Justinian governed the Roman empire for more than thirty-eight years, and the events of his reign were recorded by Procopius of Caesarea, secretary of the general Belisarius. Yet, significantly, Procopius composed a history, a panegyric, as well as a satire of his own times. Anthony Kaldellis here offers a new interpretation of these writings of Procopius, situating him as a major source for the sixth century and one of the great historians of antiquity and Byzantium. Breaking from the scholarly tradition that views classicism as an affected imitation that distorted history, Kaldellis argues that Procopius was a careful student of the classics who displayed remarkable literary skill in adapting his models to the purposes of his own narratives. Classicism was a matter of structure and meaning, not just vocabulary. Through allusions Procopius revealed truths that could not be spoken openly; through anecdotes he exposed the broad themes that governed the history of his age. Elucidating the political thought of Procopius in light of classical historiography and political theory, Kaldellis argues that he owed little to Christianity, finding instead that he rejected the belief in providence and asserted the supremacy of chance. By deliberately alluding to Plato's discussions of tyranny, Procopius developed an artful strategy of intertextuality that enabled him to comment on contemporary individuals and events. Kaldellis also uncovers links between Procopius and the philosophical dissidents of the reign of Justinian. This dimension of his writing implies that his work is worthy of esteem not only for the accuracy of its reporting but also for its cultural polemic, political dissidence, and philosophical sophistication. Procopius of Caesarea has wide implications for the way we should read ancient historians. Its conclusions also suggest that the world of Justinian was far from monolithically Christian. Major writers of that time believed that classical texts were still the best guides for understanding history, even in the rapidly changing world of late antiquity.

Download or read book History of the Idea of Progress written by Robert Nisbet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.

Download or read book The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by Hugo Falcandus 1154 69 written by Ugo Falcando and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This addition to the Manchester Medieval Sources Series provides a translation of, and the historical background to, the History of the Tyrants of Sicily by Hugo Falcandus. The text also offers a historiographical examination of the text.

Download or read book The Tyranny of Nations written by Palak Patel and published by Bifocal. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tyranny of Nations places the ground-shaking political and economic events of modern times in context. Palak Patel draws on his experience investing in government bond markets to demonstrate how the present fits a specific historical pattern that has defined the past 500 years. Modern-day trade liberalization and financial expansion all share distinct parallels with similar events in the 1600s and 1800s. Likewise, China's economic trajectory matches that of 19th-century Prussia and 17th-century France. And a certain British Prime Minister, foreshadowing Donald Trump's populism 150 years later, launched a similar attack on globalization after the financial crisis of 1866. In The Tyranny of Nations, there are no "isms"--no capitalism, socialism, or feudalism--but instead, only privileged interests vying for power. Challenging both the mainstream and its critics, Palak Patel shows how an endless cycle of cooperation and conflict between nations drives societal change. This unique perspective on the intersection of macroeconomics, history, and politics offers the reader a compass for navigating the future.

Download or read book The Age of Tyrants written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts of the tyrants *Includes a bibliography for further reading "States are as the men are; they grow out of human characters. Like State, like man." - Plato, The Republic Tyranny in ancient Greece was not a phenomenon limited to any particular period. Tyrants could be found in power throughout Greece, ruling poleis from the 7th century B.C. right through to the 2nd century B.C., when Roman domination effectively put an end to this form of government throughout the Hellenistic world. That said, the heyday of tyranny was undoubtedly the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and it is in this period, known as the "Age of Tyrants," that large numbers of tyrannies arose, particularly in the Peloponnese. The "Age of Tyrants" ended on the Greek mainland with the expulsion of the Peisistratidai in 510 B.C., but it continued in other parts of the Greek world, particularly in the Greek cities of Sicily, where tyranny did not finally end until the removal of Dionysius II of Syracuse in 344 B.C. In Asia Minor, tyranny survived the Persian conquest until the days of the Roman conquest. The governments of the majority of the Greek states in the Archaic and Classical periods were in the hands of local aristocrats, and it is a modern preoccupation with the Athenian democracy or Sparta's unique system that has tended to obscure this fact. Oligarchy was the norm, and political power derived from wealth and birth. As the wealth of city states grew, so, too, did the number of citizens who, despite personal wealth, found themselves outside the very limited aristocratic elite that conspired to maintain the political power of the few. These disenfranchised "new" men came, more and more, to resent their lack of political influence, and this dissatisfaction was fueled by the increasing use of the hoplite as the main weapon of the period, which brought all male citizens closer to each other and emphasized the interdependence that existed between individuals. The sense of camaraderie engendered a growing understanding of the potential power of the armed citizen. With that realization came the emergence of individuals who were not prepared to accept the status quo but instead were willing to exploit the discontent and the power of the citizen body to seize power for themselves. Aristotle noted that tyrants generally combined the role of a general with that of a popular leader, demagogos. To the ruling elites such a usurper was known as turannos or tyrant. The Age of Tyrants: The History of the Early Tyrants in Ancient Greece looks at the various people, places, and reigns during a crucial part of Ancient Greek history. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about tyrants in Greece like never before.

Download or read book The Irony of American History written by Reinhold Niebuhr and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-22 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction

Download or read book Philosophy History and Tyranny written by Timothy W. Burns and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive examination of the debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève on the subject of philosophy and tyranny. On Tyranny remains a perennial favorite, possessing a timelessness that few philosophical or scholarly debates have ever achieved. On one hand, On Tyranny is the first book-length work in Leo Strauss’s extended study of Xenophon, and his “Restatement” retains a vivacity and directness that is sometimes absent in his later works. On the other, “Tyranny and Wisdom” is perhaps the most succinct yet fullest articulation of Alexandre Kojève’s overall political thought, and it presents what may be the most uncompromising alternative to Strauss’s position as a whole. This volume contains for the first time a comprehensive and critical examination of the debate from scholars well versed in the thought of Strauss, Kojève, Hegel, Heidegger, and the end of history thesis. Of particular interest will be the appendix, which offers for the first time Kojève’s unabridged response to Strauss, a response previously available only from the Fonds Kojève at Le Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Accessible to students and scholars alike, this volume works equally well in the classroom and as a resource for more advanced research. Timothy W. Burns is Professor of Political Science at Baylor University and the editor of Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought. Bryan-Paul Frost is Elias “Bo” Ackal Jr./BORSF Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the coeditor (with Jeremy J. Mhire) of The Political Theory of Aristophanes: Explorations in Poetic Wisdom, also published by SUNY Press.

Download or read book Bloodlands written by Timothy Snyder and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.