Joseph Davis – författare

Tracing the troubled roots of American capitalism and imperialismCoedited by noted Masters scholar, Jason Stacy, and his class, “Editing History,” this annotated edition of Edgar Lee Masters’s The New Star Chamber and Other Essays reappears at a perilous time in US history, when large corporations and overseas conflicts once again threaten the integrity of American rights and liberties, and the United States still finds itself beholden to corporate power and the legacy of imperial hubris. In speaking to his times, Masters also speaks to ours.These thirteen essays lay bare the political ideology that informed Spoon River Anthology. Masters argues that the dangerous imperialism championed by then-President Theodore Roosevelt was rooted in the Constitution itself. By debating the ethics of the Philippine-American War, criticizing Hamiltonian centralization of government, and extolling the virtues of Jeffersonian individualism, Masters elucidates the ways in which America had strayed from its constitutional morals and from democracy itself. The result is a compelling critique of corporate capitalism and burgeoning American imperialism, as well as an exemplary source for understanding its complicated author in the midst of his transformation from urban lawyer to poet of rural America.In print again for the first time since 1904, this edition includes an introduction and historical annotations throughout. Edited and annotated by students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and designed and illustrated by students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, this volume traces economic and political pathologies to the origins of the American republic. The New Star Chamber and Other Essays is as vital now as it was over 100 years ago.

Before the Enlightenment, before Spinoza had rejected traditional beliefs about the Bible, came the humanistic sceptics of the Renaissance. Alongside oft-cited Christian thinkers, Eliezer Eilburg now takes his rightful place. Comparable in view to Christopher Marlowe or Noël Journet, Eilburg perhaps uniquely represents the possibilities of Jewish scepticism in his day. Eliezer Eilburg: The Ten Questions and Memoir of a Renaissance Jewish Skeptic makes available for the first time a bilingual edition of two key works by the Jewish rationalist sceptic, kabbalist, and memoirist, Eliezer Eilburg. The text of the two works by Eilburg is presented in English translation and in the original Hebrew. The Ten Questions--addressed to the Maharal of Prague and two of his colleagues--is one of the most radical statements of Jewish scepticism written in the sixteenth century. Published here in its entirety, this text is especially remarkable for its critical approach to the Bible, foreshadowing later intellectual trends. Although many of his opinions were considered heretical by Jewish authorities, Eilburg argued that his doubts were innocent, and that there was room within Judaism for his scepticism. He presented himself as a penitent whose eyes had been opened through the study of medicine and philosophy and who had merited angelic visions and kabbalistic dreams. The second text, Eilburg's experimental memoir, is one of the very first modern Jewish efforts at autobiography. Put together from many smaller pieces, this patchwork of brag and bile is a unique document of sixteenth-century Jewish life. It is a testimony, if not to the "emergence of the individual" in this period, then at least to the emergence of new Jewish ways of imagining and writing about the self. Eilburg was an enigmatic man, a unique and as yet mostly unstudied Jewish thinker. Though his works are directed to audiences of Jews, and argue for the improvement of Judaism, this volume will appeal to historians and scholars of intellectual traditions both in and outside of Jewish studies.

Thisstudy portrays a man and an age. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (1578-1654), author ofthe famous Mishnah commentary Tosafot yomtov, was a major talmudist, a disciple of the legendary Rabbi Judah Loew ofPrague, and himself the distinguished chief rabbi of Prague and Cracow. Thetime in which he lived began as a ‘golden age’ for the Jews of Prague and theJews of Poland, an age of prosperity and the rise of Jewish mysticism. DuringHeller’s lifetime, however, the golden age changed to darkness, and prosperitygave way to war, persecution, plague, and massacres. It was the end of theMiddle Ages, the last generation before Spinoza and Shabbetai Zevi.Scholar, preacher,religious and communal leader, Heller embodied a religious and cultural ideal;he was the very model of a seventeenth-century rabbi. Born in Germany, he movedfrom one end of the world of Ashkenazi Jewry to the other, first to Prague, andthen to Poland and the Ukraine. His life was enmeshed in a web of family ties,and bounded by complex rules of class and religion. His writing reflects notonly the full heritage of medieval Jewish thought and its crystallization inthe seventeenth century, but also the time and place in which he lived. In manyways, he exemplified his age, its achievements, and its limitations.Carefully researchedand well written, Joseph Davis’s work is the definitive biography of Heller. Hepresents a richly detailed study of Heller’s worldview, his conception ofJudaism, of the world around him, and of himself within it: the seventeenthcentury seen through seventeenth-century eyes. Heller was eyewitness tomomentous, epoch-making events: the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War and themassacres of 1648. He lived through a time of tumultuous change. Texts such asthe sermon in which Heller responded to the new astronomy of Brahe and Kepler,or a poem on the massacres of 1648 in which he enlarged the capacity of Hebrewpoetry to express horror are significant in the larger context of Jewish andEuropean history.Heller’sworld-view was not static or motionless. His world changed greatly during hislifetime, and his views of it likewise changed greatly over the fifty yearsfrom his first writings to his last, from youth to middle age to old age. Hispersonal circumstances also contributed to this: the experience of betrayal,arrest, imprisonment, the death of his children, and other misfortunes led himto wrestle with such questions as the differences between Jews and non-Jewsand  the meaning of suffering. Davisweaves these developments succinctly into a fascinating narrative that doesfull justice both to Heller and the momentous events he experienced.

This book presents a unique blend of articles which combines both conceptual and practical concerns related to devising and implementing sustainable Knowledge Management systems and solutions in contemporary global organizations. The book's contributors are among the leading thinkers and practitioners in this growing field. The seamless synthesis of the human, organizational, and technological dimensions of Knowledge Management makes this book a definitive guide for academics and practising managers alike.

This book presents a unique blend of articles which combines both conceptual and practical concerns related to devising and implementing sustainable Knowledge Management systems and solutions in contemporary global organizations. The book's contributors are among the leading thinkers and practitioners in this growing field. The seamless synthesis of the human, organizational, and technological dimensions of Knowledge Management makes this book a definitive guide for academics and practising managers alike.