Book Description
In this sweeping history of United States policy toward Latin America, Lars Schoultz shows that the United States has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor, unable to manage its affairs and stubbornly underdeveloped.
This perception of inferiority was apparent from the beginning. John Quincy Adams, who first established diplomatic relations with Latin America, believed that Hispanics were "lazy, dirty, nasty...a parcel of hogs." In the early nineteenth century, ex-President John Adams declared that any effort to implant democracy in Latin America was "as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes."
Drawing on extraordinarily rich archival sources, Schoultz, one of the country's foremost Latin America scholars, shows how these core beliefs have not changed for two centuries. We have combined self-interest with a "civilizing mission"--a self-abnegating effort by a superior people to help a substandard civilization overcome its defects. William Howard Taft felt the way to accomplish this task was "to knock their heads together until they should maintain peace," while in 1959 CIA Director Allen Dulles warned that "the new Cuban officials had to be treated more or less like children." Schoultz shows that the policies pursued reflected these deeply held convictions.
While political correctness censors the expression of such sentiments today, the actions of the United States continue to assume the political and cultural inferiority of Latin America. Schoultz demonstrates that not until the United States perceives its southern neighbors as equals can it anticipate a constructive hemispheric alliance.
Customer Reviews:
Good history, bad theory........2006-10-18
This book is an attempt to combine a general text overviewing US foreign policy in Latin America (which is in general quite good) with an indictment of any Americans who view culture as important to understanding Latin America (which is based far more on ideological ferver than evidence). If Schoultz had dropped the ideological baggage, this could have been a very good book. But he did not, so I will give it 2 stars. Unfortunately, as his book progresses, the ideology gets stronger and stronger.
Lars Schoultz's book writes that American foreign policy towards Latin America has been determined "a pervasive believe that Latin Americans constitute an inferior branch of the human species (Preface)". Much of this book is filled with quotes from various members of the American government making very unpolitically correct comments about Latin Americans, but I don't think that any of them show that American officials view Latin Americans as "an inferior branch of the human species." Schoultz's has a very disappointing tendency to jump from interesting historical narrative to excessive ideological rhetoric. The author seems to think that any observation of problems in Latin American being related to traditional institutions or values is little short of racism.
The biggest problem with his thesis is that he cannot explain all the twist-and-turns over time and geographical variation of American foreign policy with an explanation that never changes (American's feeling of Latin inferiority). In most cases, he does not even try, which make me wonder how much he really believes his own theory.
Why did the US make Puerto Rico a protectorate but not Cuba (difference in American attitudes?; I doubt it).
Why intevene in Guatamala in the 1950s and not Bolivia both of whom were leftist (difference in American attitudes?; I doubt it)?
Why did the US intervene between 1898 and 1920s but not in the 1930s and 1940s (difference in American attitudes?; I doubt it)?
Are American attitudes the same for Jamaica, Haitia, Suriname and Brazil (some non-Hispanic Latin American countries?
What were Latin American attitudes towards Americans?
Schoultz gives no evidence that American attitudes towards Latins is the driving force behind these changes. Nor can he explain why some countries played a far more important role (Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Cuba) than others (Costa Rica, Brazil, etc).
Schoultz says that "Today's public opinion polls indicate that the rough outlines of the 'Latin American' mind-set are shared by the broad spectrum of the US public (pg xvii)." OK, great, so show the evidence. He does not in this page or any other. This is maddening tendency that he has.
The heart of the matter is that Schoultz seems to completely reject the use of culture as an explanation for anything. He then accuses the person who believes in cultural explanations as believing that "Latin are inherently inferior." Shoultz claims that all those who believe that cultural is an important explanation of Latin American culture and institutions are merely making an "educated guess" (pg 382). He also states that "it may be possible that such a thing as "Hispanic culture" actually exist. My guess is that the people living in Latin American would be far more offended by this belief than anything documented in this book.
HIGHLY DISTORTED!.......2003-02-17
This book presents a highly distorted analysis of U.S. policy toward Latin America that reflects the leftist political correctness of so many universities and their misguided professors, who are often members of the Latin American Studies Association. It is a perfect example of the destructive role some academics have played in U.S.-Latin American relations as so devastatingly described in Lawrence Harrison's book "The Pan American Dream".
To better appreciate the intellectual origins of Schoultz's book, readers should see "The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot" written by some of the region's most prominent writers--Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, as well as their "Fabricantes de Miseria". You should also review "The Latin Americans: Their Love Hate Relationship with the United States" by the Venezuelan Carlos Rangel. Schoultz conveniently ignores these and other books by leading Latin Americans that confirm the cultural views of many U.S. and European diplomats.
Even great luminaries like Francisco de Miranda of Venezuela and Simon Bolivar himself used cultural characteristics to describe the differences between the United States and Latin America. Modern day writers such as the famous Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, and the Argentine, Mariano Grondona, among others, continue to use similar cultural analyses to explain why the U.S. has become the most advanced country in the hemisphere while Latin America remains mired in poverty, underdevelopment, corruption and political instability.
In a similar manner, prominent European observers such as the great Alexis de Tocqueville, used cultural phenomenon to explain the reasons why the United States and Latin America evolved along different paths. The views described by Schoultz are not unique to American diplomats but reflect long-standing observations made by many analysts, including some of the region's leading intellectuals and statesmen. Schoultz's arrogant attitude that only U.S. academics understand Latin Americans does a tremendous disservice to the history of U.S.-Latin American relations and to the U.S diplomatic service.
American Ignorance and Attitudes Toward Latin American.......2002-10-01
In this readable and comprehensive book Schoultz describes the relations between the United States and Latin America. He shows the domestic politics, attitudes and individuals that made Americas relations with Latin America. We see the ignorance and attitude of superiority that was first stated by John Adams, and never totally went away. He demonstrates how England's influence in Latin America effected American relations. Schoultz also shows the ignorance, actions and attitudes of a series of diplomats, and how they made policy.
Schoultz describes how slavery effected the domestic politics that helped create the American relations toward Latin America until the Civil War. After the Civil War American began a policy of paternalism and then imperialism. America had two goals in her relations with Latin America, to help Latin America, and to replace European influence in Latin America. Good intentions and ignorance lead to a series of interventions in countries like Cuba and Nicaragua. Later America developed the policies of Dollar Diplomacy, and then the Good Neighbor policy. Finally we see the attempts to eliminate the influence of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Latin America.
.
Schoultz concludes that American policy in Latin America was dictated by security, economic interests and domestic politics. Policy was made and executed by people who often tried to help Latin America and failed through ignorance of the local conditions, and then blamed their failures on the Latin Americans, maintaining the superior attitude toward Latin Americans.
There is a series of good maps to clarify the test are included. Schoultz uses a wide variety of primary sources to tell this rarely told story
a must read book on the subject.......2002-06-15
It's worthwile the time I spent on it. At the beginning the chapters go smoothly then the author's inspiration becomes a blow by blow account. From the Revolution to the Civil war period, the US-Latin American relations are described with more clarity and vigour, a 5 stars. After the civil war, something is lost, 3 stars. However, it's a very interesting book and useful to understand how US is so involved in countries that at first sight seem to have a marginal strategic interest.
Rigourous and beautifull.......2000-07-29
The author presents the USA-latin america relations over 200 years. The aim of the author is not only to present the facts, but more importantly, the perception of Latin america by US policy makers which motivated the actions, and how this perception has lasted over this period. This is a huge research work, based nearly exclusively on original documents. The work however, is exposed in a very synthetic and elegant way. I would rate it as a classic History work.
Book Description
"Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret." -- Newsweek
Customer Reviews:
a conspiracy of silence.......2005-03-25
i had a certain agenda in reading this book . . . there is a conspiracy of silence regarding death in america/europe.
aries takes the reader on a morbid but a fascinating journey through western history of death. the conclusion is that death has become the "new pornography" (quoting gorer) in a modern/enlightenment based societies. death is the great scandal in the western culture where everything is, or at least hoped to be in the future, controlled by the development of science. but death lies beyond that hope. at least that's my take on it.
Different Perspective of History.......1998-07-10
I initially started reading this for a "Sex and Death" class I took at school. Amazingly, "Western Attitudes Towards Death" has been one of the most inciteful books I've ever read. Aries makes it interesting to look at death in a historical aspect. For me, it was most interesting in the fact that you can see how people lived during a specific time period by studying how they viewed death. The parallels between life and death in EVERY society has become astonishingly clear to me. It's short reading...definately in a day...and well worth the time.
Book Description
Before 1967, Israel had the overwhelming support of world opinion. So long as Israel's existence was in harmony with politically correct assumptions, it was supported, or at least accepted, by the majority of "progressive" Jews, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. This is no longer the case. The Jewish Divide Over Israel explains the role played by prominent Jews in turning Israel into an isolated pariah nation.
After their catastrophic defeat in 1967, Arab regimes overcame inferiority on the battlefield with superiority in the war of ideas. Their English-language propaganda stopped trumpeting their desire to eradicate Israel. Instead, in a calculated appeal to liberals and radicals, they redefined their war of aggression against the Jews as a struggle for the liberation of Palestinian Arabs. The tenacity of Arabs' rejection of Israel and their relentless campaign - in schools, universities, churches, professional organizations, and, above all, the news media - to destroy Israel's moral image had the desired impact. Many Jewish liberals became desperate to escape from the shadow of Israel's alleged misdeeds and found a way to do so by joining other members of the left in blaming Israeli sins for Arab violence.
Today, Jewish "progressives" rationalize violence against the innocent as resistance to the oppressor, excuse Arab extremism as the frustration of a wronged party, and redefine eliminationist rhetoric and physical assaults against Jews as "criticism of Israeli policy." Israel's Jewish accusers have played a crucial and disproportionate role in the current upsurge of antisemitism precisely because they speak as Jews. Eager to evade the "moral taint" of justifying Israel's right to self-defense, Israel's Jewish accusers find themselves, in an age of suicide bombers, complicit in the murder of their fellow Jews.
The essays in this book seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by such Jewish liberals and radicals as Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, George Steiner, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Seymour Hersh, and many others. Its writers demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame.
Customer Reviews:
A terrific collection of articles.......2006-04-10
There's already an excellent review of this fine book on this site (by Shalom Freedman). But I'd still like to add a few words of my own.
There are more than a few Jews who attack Israel. Are they "self-hating Jews?" Are they traitors? Well, some folks who oppose Israel, Jewish or not, are clearly under no obligation to defend it. If they side with those who would destroy it, they are not traitors, just enemies of Israel. In many cases, I would not bother to regard them as Jews. It is true that some of them are clearly embarrassed by the existence of Israel, but even that does not get me to think of them as Jews unless they show some genuine support for the human rights of Jews. Of course, what I think about this doesn't make much difference. The Jews are the ones who need to decide who they think are Jews, and they are the ones who need to decide what to think of the fact that many anti-Zionists boast about those who advertise themselves as Jews who oppose Israel.
Some actual patriots sincerely recommend surrender to one's enemies, on the grounds that fighting will likely result in obliteration while surrender gives a much greater chance for survival. In World War Two, Jews who tried this generally got killed, and for this reason, this idea has merited less respect since then. But if Jews sincerely recommended this strategy, I'd still think of them as Jews (I think I'd regard them as Jewish even if they made the absurd and immoral recommendation to, um, get rid of all Jews, on the grounds that this would end actual oppression of Jews once and for all...by the way, some of the Jews mentioned in this book come pretty close to advising this).
How do we tell if one is going over the line and betraying one's people rather than simply being moral? Well, an editor of this book, Edward Alexander has a simple test. Do you demand the same rights for you and your group that you demand for others? If you refuse to do that, you flunk his test and are being counterproductive by giving too much support for your enemies.
Still, according to the editors in the introduction to this book, "'cowardice' is the word that springs to mind most often as the suitable epithet for Israel's Jewish enemies." I agree. These Jewish accusers of Israel are generally taking some easy and immoral shots against truth, justice, human rights, and peace. They're rarely paying much of a price for this. And it is annoying to hear some of them praised for their courage.
After the introduction, there are seventeen superb articles. And they expose some of the hostility towards Israel by some of the anti-Israeli, um, cowards. But that's not the aspect of this book that I find most interesting. I'm not all that interested in tribal wars. But I am interested in truth, justice, and human rights. That's why my focus in reading this book was to witness the extent to which many of the opponents of Israel are amazingly dishonest and arbitrary. For example, Michael Neumann is quoted as saying that if an "effective strategy" means "the destruction of the state of Israel" he doesn't care. And that "to regard the shedding of Jewish blood as a world-shattering calamity...is racism, pure and simple, the valuing of one race's blood over all others." That's an eye-opener. I think those Germans who were put on trial after World War Two would have loved that argument, as it would have given moral justification for the genocide they perpetrated. Later, we see Neumann make the absurd argument that the purpose of Zionism is not to provide a refuge for Jews but simply to wage a race war in order to embark on "genocide" against the Levantine Arabs!
Of course, Neumann's claims are preposterous. But even so, I feel that even his lies do not necessarily support his conclusions. Suppose it really would be better for your enemies if you and your family were to be murdered, robbed, and slandered. Would it be best for you to allow this to happen, and to refuse to fight for your lives, property, and honor? It would depend on the circumstances, but the answer might well be no.
Edward Alexander makes quite a few good points. For example, he suggests that a good response by West Bank settlers to David Grossman would be "my dear fellow, we will imagine ourselves as Arabs if you will imagine yourself as a Jew."
Other articles discuss in detail some counterproductive writings by George Steiner, Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Tanya Reinhart, Norman G. Finkelstein, Peter Novick, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Judith Butler, Martin Jay, Jerome Segal, Thomas Friedman, Seymour Hersh, and Benny Morris. It says on the back flap of this book that these articles "seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by" these folks and that the writers "demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame." I agree. And I very highly recommend this book.
An important analysis of an extremely sad phenomenom .......2006-04-07
This book is a collection of essays in which the phenomenom of Jewish self- hatred most particularly in the form of hatred of the Jewish state is analyzed and to a degree explained. It deals with many of the most well- known haters, including Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shahak, Daniel Boyarin , Jacqueline Rose, Joel Beinin, Michael Neumann(Canada), and others.
In the opening essay Alvin Rosenfeld considers how important a part 'shame' plays in these intellectuals life, how many of them feel the need to 'apologize' for imaginary crimes of the state of Israel. The book goes on to chronicle some of the most amazing and remarkable actions of hypocrisy, and moral idiocy of the modern era. Imagine the kind of prevarications which a Jew must go through to defend as many of these haters do, Palestinian Arab suicide bombers who deliberately kill women and children, just because they are Jewish.
This book exposes a great deal of biased and inaccurate thought about Israel and its history. However it also signals a very worrisome phenomenom and trend which must be contended with as openly and vociferously as possible, especially on the university campus where many of these 'Jewish Anti- Semites' have prestige and power.
This book is recommended highly to all those who care about Israel and the Jewish people.
It also provides a great deal of information which I believe would be excellent material for psychologists interesting in understanding the form of self- hatred , which focuses not upon oneself as individual but upon the collective, religious , national, ethnic to which one ostensibly belongs.
Customer Reviews:
Foundational scholarship.......2005-01-02
Any scholarship that addresses the evolution of Christian perspectives on warfare generally references this book. Although the scholarship of this work is now outdated and critiqued, Bainton's work is foundational in the area. Bainton believes that the Christian community started out pacifistic, then developed the just war doctrine, and finally adopted holy war ideals. He traces this trajectory from the Early Church up through the wars and conflicts of the 20th century (this book was written in 1960). Finally, Bainton adds his critique of current militaristic ideas (especially in regards to atomic warfare). This book is well written and written for all audiences, however, it is best to supplement this book with more recent scholarship to get current ideas on Christian perspectives on warfare.
Book Description
"Arthur Neslen¹s sharp insights into the Israeli Jewish mentality are a must read for anyone wishing to understand that society beyond simplistic and reductionist descriptions."
Ilan Pappe, author of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples
"This book is a fascinating journey through the Israeli Jewish psyche in its multiple manifestations. It invites us to understand the Israeli predicament through Israeli eyes."
Ghada Karmi, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
"Brutal and searingly honest accounts. ... A compelling book."
Yvonne Ridley, Political editor of the Islam Channel
Israel's founders sought to create a nation of new Jews who would never again go meekly to the death camps. Yet Israel's strength has become synonymous with an oppression of the Palestinians that provokes anger throughout the Muslim world and beyond. How are Israelis able to see themselves as victims while victimising others? What does Israeli Jewish identity mean today?
Arthur Neslen explores the dynamics, distortions and incredible diversity of Israeli society. From the mouths of soldiers, settlers, sex workers and the victims of suicide attacks, Occupied Minds is the story of a national psyche that has become scarred by mental security barriers, emotional checkpoints and displaced outposts of self-righteousness and aggression.
From vignettes to in-depth interviews, more than fifty Israelis offer their accounts. What they reveal is in turn powerful, haunting, subtle and disturbing. Illustrated throughout with photographs, this unique book offers an unrivalled insight into Israeli consciousness, private and public.
They chart the evolution of a communal self-image based on cultural and religious values towards one formed around a single militaristic imperative: national security.
Arthur Neslen was until recently the London correspondent for Aljazeera.net and the website's only Jewish journalist. For five years he was Red Pepper Magazine's international editor and between 2001 and 2004, he worked as a broadcast journalist at the BBC. He has also written for publications including the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the New Statesman and Private Eye.
Book Description
New in paperback Jordan's classic and award-winning work on the history of American race relations.
Customer Reviews:
Superiority Trumps Morality.......2005-12-24
This work is a well-crafted, non-polemical theoretical chronology of the history of race and racism in Western and American culture. Winthdrop Jordan, now a professor at the University of Mississippi, is a careful writer and respected historian. His treatment, although non-polemical, still is very much a white-centered rendition of the formation of racism, with an historical bent and a heavy flavor of the "blacks are still a White Man's Burden" genre.
He sets forth the thesis that racism was not caused by slavery but in fact preceded it by at least a century. Attitudes and myths about dark skinned people formed by European sailors during the era of sea exploration to Africa, gelled and cross-fertilized upon reaching the "New World," where an abundance of land and a scarcity of labor conspired to reduce the Negro to the bottom of the American social and economic heap.
Negroes as slaves were always morally problematic, and American whites were forced to continue fashioning, revising and updating the rationalizations needed to justify their mistreatment and continued enslavement of them. The most stable result was an ideology of racial superiority that melded together the sailors' myths and attitudes about blacks, and a self-serving rendition of white, mostly Protestant, religion. This ideological concoction was so successful that over time maltreatment of blacks was pretty much taken as normal.
Primarily to avoid endangering their souls, only a handful of well-off religious zealots, the abolitionists, failed to accept these rationalizations. They chose adherence to higher moral and religious principles over racist ideology. But interestingly, they did not give up notions of superiority and continued to despise and would not consort with Negroes.
The strength of the book, in addition to being well-written, is that Jordan uses his keen psychological insights to touch on all of the very sensitive issues such as interracial sex, America being a white man's country, founding fathers attitudes towards Negroes, racism in the Caribbean, etc., and does so with a great deal of academic facility.
This is a very worthy effort and its very scholarly nature sets it apart from other books on this topic. Four stars
Highly recommended--especially the first half of the book........2004-11-11
This book was written in 1968 during a time of tremendous turmoil concerning race and race relations, but this book is still valid for anyone interested in the development of slavery and race relations in North America. Granted, his work is not without flaws. Jordan seems to overemphasize the "unthinking decision" aspect of slavery, and sometimes he has a tendency to repeat himself, but this book should not be dismissed simply as "politically correct" unless one wants to dismiss the fact that, for some reason, slavery and segregation were a part of our history.
The Birth of Racial Attitudes from "First Impressions".......2002-08-14
Winthrop D. Jordan answers the question, "what were the attitudes of white men toward Negroes during the first two centuries of European and African settlement in what became the United States of America?" in his book, White Over Black: Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812 (vii). Jordan answers this question comprehensively; his book is sectioned off chronologically into six parts. The first part covers the evolution of the American attitudes regarding the Negroes with references to English perspectives, interpretations, and hypotheses, and topics of enslavement. The second part, "Provincial Decades," involves topics on freedom and control in a slave society, interracial sex, and of the spiritual and physical nature of a Negro. This is followed with an overview on the revolutionary era in which the Americans impose self-scrutiny on their behavior. Part four, "Society and Thought," gives in-depth descriptions on economic interest and national identity, limitations of antislavery, revolution, and result of separation. The last section involves Thomas Jefferson's actions and his impact on society, the "chain of being of the Negro," erasing Nature's "Stamp of Color," and actions toward a white man's country. The organization of these topics demonstrates analytically to the reader the development of racial "attitudes" as time passes.
Jordan's basic perspective of this issue was that slavery was not caused by racism or vice versa, these two factors both attributed to each other's development. This book is predominantly focused on how the Americans and their historical encounters formed and were fashioned by people different from themselves. The impression one seemed to receive upon reading this book was not biased, but of understanding and sympathy for both the whites and blacks; the author wished for equal treatment for the Negroes while having an accepting tone of the white's treatments of black people.
The content of this work is mostly theoretical; Jordan used many opinions of white men, such as their initial expression after exposure to Negroes, and he described the outlooks of various religious groups, such as the Puritans and Quakers. Jordan's theorizing is also well rounded from many aspects, involving political, economic, social, and cultural perspectives of both the black and white men. These theories and facts are organized chronologically, which support the thesis effectively as the reader can see how the different racial attitudes develop over time.
Jordan concludes that this debate over the Negro's racial standing stands within each white American's conscience. The cultural conscience of a white man insists the Negro be treated as his equal based on religious traditions and humanitarianism, whereas the strong feelings of domination and identity demanded the Negro be treated as inferior. He explains, "At a closer view, though, the duel appears more complex than a conflict between the best and worst in the white man's nature, for in a variety of ways the white man translated his `worst' into his `best'" (Jordan 582). This conclusion agrees with the thesis as he explains the behavior of white men understandingly, the slavery and racism coexisted as proof of the white domination.
Winthrop D. Jordan has summed up many aspects of the subject of racial issues in one book with both perspectives of the white Americans and Negroes. I recommend this book to readers who wish to be enlightened with a deep historical analysis of an American dilemma on race.
the best book in the field.......2000-12-09
I write to refute the reviewer who gave Jordan's great book one star. White Over Black is probably the best single work of scholarship in any field on race in American history--still current and trenchant after more than thirty years. Jordan's Jefferson chapters remain definitive, his examination of Europeans' "first impressions" of Africans is classic, and his basic perspective--that one cannot say that slavery caused racism or vice versa, but intertwined--completely persuasive. His insistence that racial attitudes intertwine with sexual stereotypes, prejudices, and self-doubts reshaped the field. The book is brilliantly written and rests on an unmatched mastery of literally thousands of sources. Anyone interested in the history of race in America should read it.
More White Bashing from an Educator!.......2000-06-01
It's amazing how someone can get a Doctorate degree yet be so singularly focused, narrow minded and misinformed about White motivations and insight. Bill Cosby as a Doctorate too. Point taken.
Book Description
With this colorful collection of documents, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz overturns the monolithic picture of Victorian sexual repression to reveal four contending views at play during the antebellum period: earthy American folk wisdom, the anti-flesh teachings of evangelical Christianity, moral reform grounded in science, and the utopian free love movement. Horowitz's introduction discusses how these diverse views shaped the antebellum conversation about the moral, social, and physical implications of sex and reflected the larger cultural and economic changes of this period of rapid industrialization and urban migration. Helpful headnotes contextualize this selection of hard-to-find documents, which includes scientific manuals, religious pamphlets, advertisements, and popular fiction. Contemporary illustrations, a chronology, and a bibliography foster students' understanding of antebellum sexual attitudes.
Book Description
This revisionist reading of early anti-Judaism offers a richer and more varied picture of the Jews and Christians of antiquity.
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Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 15601640
John Morgan
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Book Description
Godly Learning attempts to establish the relationship which Puritans worked out between faith and reason in the eighty years before the Civil War. This was a period of rapid expansion of educational facilities, of a clash between humanist values of the Renaissance and the fideism of the Reformation, and of confrontations between traditionalist (primarily Aristotelian) approaches to knowledge and the new experimental path signalled by Bacon. Taking an existential approach to the question of meaning, Puritans sought their solution in the development of a covenant theology based on a life of active faith. They argued vehemently that natural reason was incapable of finding the path to salvation; as well, only faith could regenerate reason to its proper capabilities. At the same time, Puritans emphasised the value of learning for comprehension of Scripture and preparation of sermons. Starting with a fresh approach to the question of defining Puritans, Godly Learning proceeds to delineate the infrequently studied puritan mentalité which informed the better-known public political and ecclesiological positions. Not since the work of Perry Miller has there been such a thorough attempt to comprehend the Puritan view of reason, and the implications of that view.
Books:
- Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
- Caleb's Story (Sarah, Plain and Tall)
- CPT 2007 Professional Edition (Cpt / Current Procedural Terminology (Professional Edition))
- Critique of Pure Reason
- Deconstructing Jesus
- Einstein: His Life and Universe
- Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
- Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
- Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature
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