Best of
Politics

1951

The Origins of Totalitarianism


Hannah Arendt - 1951
    Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements


Eric Hoffer - 1951
    The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

Memoirs of a Revolutionary


Victor Serge - 1951
    This facsimile edition brings Charles Lamb's critically acclaimed and revered "Elia" essays back into print.

American Diplomacy


George F. Kennan - 1951
    Kennan offers an informed, plain-spoken appraisal of United States foreign policy. His evaluations of diplomatic history and international relations cut to the heart of policy issues much debated today.This expanded edition retains the lectures and essays first published in 1951 as American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 and adds two lectures delivered in 1984 as well as a new preface by the author. In these additional pieces, Kennan explains how some of his ideas have changed over the years. He confronts the events and topics that have come to occupy American opinion in the last thirty years, including the development and significance of the Cold War, the escalation of the nuclear arms race, and the American involvement in Vietnam."A book about foreign policy by a man who really knows something about foreign policy."—James Reston,New York Times Book Review"These celebrated lectures, delivered at the University of Chicago in 1950, were for many years the most widely read account of American diplomacy in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . The second edition of the work contains two lectures from 1984 that reconsider the themes of American Diplomacy"—Foreign Affairs, Significant Books of the Last 75 Years.

The Forest Passage


Ernst Jünger - 1951
    No matter how extensive the technologies of surveillance become, the forest can shelter the rebel, and the rebel can strike back against tyranny. Jünger's manifesto is a defense of freedom against the pressure to conform to political manipulation and artificial consensus. A response to the European experience under Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, The Forest Passage has lessons equally relevant for today, wherever an imposed uniformity threatens to stifle liberty.

Two Centuries of Silence


Abdolhosein Zarrinkob - 1951
    The book is a historical account of the events and circumstances of the first two centuries of Islam in Persia (modern day Iran) following the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century AD. The history covers the events from the invasion of the Arabs to the rise of the Tahirid Dynasty.Zarrinkoub presents a lengthy discussion on the large flux and influence of the Arabs on the literature, language, culture and society of Persia during the two centuries following the Islamic conquest of Iran. Zarrinkoub discusses how the Arab/Islamic conquest was followed by almost "two centuries of silence" socially, culturally and politically by native Persians. Zarrinkoub describes the Arab conquerors as uncivilized, brutal, and unsophisticated during the Iranian "period of silence." Zarrinkoub penned the history during an era of Iranian nationalism and the text is widely recognized as a seminal source of Iranian history.

White Collar: The American Middle Classes


C. Wright Mills - 1951
    Wright Mills is considered a standard on the subject of the new middle class in twentieth-century America. This landmark volume demonstrates how the conditions and styles of middle class life - originating from elements of both the newer lower and upper classes - represent modern society as a whole.By examining white-collar life, Mills aimed to learn something about what was becoming more typically "American" than the once-famous Western frontier character. He painted a picture instead of a society that had evolved into a business-based milieu, viewing America instead as a great salesroom, an enormous file, and a new universe of management.Russell Jacoby, author of The End of Utopia and The Last Intellectuals, contributes a new Afterword to this edition, in which he reflects on the impact White Collar had at its original publication and considers what it means to our society today."A book that persons of every level of the white collar pyramid should read and ponder. It will alert them to their condition for their better salvation." - Horace M. Kaellen, The New York Times (on the first edition)

Britain's Road to Socialism: Programme of the Communist Party


Communist Party of Britain (CPB) - 1951
    This is the updated 8th edition of Britain's Road to Socialism, the published manifesto of the Communist Party of Britain.

The Gila: River of the Southwest


Edwin Corle - 1951
    A changeable ricer, at one time the Gila resembled the Everglades; in 1950 the lower river—fully half it six-hundred-mile length—was dry as dust. The Gila has never known a steamboat, very few rowboats, and only a fair assortment of fish, but from its ice caves and mountain torrents, through its torturous canyons, to its parched and sun-baked confluence with the Colorado, it has a history as dramatic and significant as any river in America. Civil War generals, Apaches, Mexicans, Mormons, and pioneers figure in the cast of characters, for since Spanish times the Gila has been a crossroads of the Southwest and in the direct line of march of the westward movement.