University of Notre Dame Press – serie

This book presents an analysis of classical Russian Populism, shown as an ideological structure within which many positions were possible. Walicki studies the confrontation of Populism and Marxism: changing attitudes toward Marxism in the Populist milieu and the controversy between Populists and Marxists over the future of Russia.The Controversy over Capitalism, available here in paper for the first time, reinterprets the ideology of Russian Populism. Andrzej Walicki argues that Populism is a reaction to the development of capitalism in Russia and a response to the capitalist economy and socialist ideologies of the West.

Contemporary Catholic higher education finds itself at a crucial crossroad. The issues are many and complex. How is the Catholic character of the university to be preserved and fostered while avoiding secularization on the one hand and insular sectarianism on the other? Must a majority of the faculty in a college or department be Catholic? How is Catholic to be defined in terms of culture, belief, or practice? What is the level of commitment to intellectual inquiry and the possibility of dissent that must be present on a Catholic campus? These are some of the issues that prompted Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., to write a position paper and invite 29 distinguished members of the faculty and administration at the University of Notre Dame to address as they strive to envision and create a great Catholic university. The contributors explore these issues from a wide variety of religious and academic perspectives, and although their backgrounds and fields of study differ widely, they agree on a number of points. First, a great Catholic university must begin by being a great university that is also Catholic. Second, the catholicity, or universality, of a Catholic university fosters the centrality of philosophy and particularly theology as legitimate intellectual concerns, especially as they challenge the disintegration and turmoil of our modern predicament. Finally, how a Catholic university is seen as a community of service is also examined in both its intellectual and practical applications. Throughout, these essays describe a university community where reason and faith intersect and reinforce each other as they grapple with all the problems that face the transmission and growth of knowledge and the multiplication of new and complex moral problems.

This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.

Focusing on Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations in Chicago, Latino Ethnic Consciousness documents the development of a collective Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity, distinct and separate from the national and cultural affiliations of Spanish-speaking groups. Author Felix Padilla explores the internal dynamics and external conditions, which have prompted this move past individual group boundaries to a broader ethnic identity.According to Padilla, the Latino ethnic identity develops from the cultural and structural similarities of two or more Spanish-speaking groups and often in response to common experiences of social inequality. In that ethnic identities have to a large extent been encouraged by the division of the labor market in America's industrial society, he argues that the Latino consciousness represents a situational ethnic identity which functions according to the needs of the groups. He describes how such conditions as poverty and racial discrimination have necessitated the assertion of a broader Latino ethnic consciousness and behavior, often more successful in social action than individual cultural or national associations.In case studies from the early 70s, Padilla examines Affirmative Action, the Spanish Coalition for Jobs—spurred by activist Hector Franco—and the Latino Institute, and their influence on the growth of Latino solidarity and mobilization in Chicago.In refining the concept of Latino and Hispanic and establishing its significance in society, Latino Ethnic Consciousness serves as an analytic framework for further study of ethnic change in America.

Focusing on Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations in Chicago, Latino Ethnic Consciousness documents the development of a collective Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity, distinct and separate from the national and cultural affiliations of Spanish-speaking groups. Author Felix Padilla explores the internal dynamics and external conditions, which have prompted this move past individual group boundaries to a broader ethnic identity.According to Padilla, the Latino ethnic identity develops from the cultural and structural similarities of two or more Spanish-speaking groups and often in response to common experiences of social inequality. In that ethnic identities have to a large extent been encouraged by the division of the labor market in America's industrial society, he argues that the Latino consciousness represents a situational ethnic identity which functions according to the needs of the groups. He describes how such conditions as poverty and racial discrimination have necessitated the assertion of a broader Latino ethnic consciousness and behavior, often more successful in social action than individual cultural or national associations.In case studies from the early 70s, Padilla examines Affirmative Action, the Spanish Coalition for Jobs—spurred by activist Hector Franco—and the Latino Institute, and their influence on the growth of Latino solidarity and mobilization in Chicago.In refining the concept of Latino and Hispanic and establishing its significance in society, Latino Ethnic Consciousness serves as an analytic framework for further study of ethnic change in America.

Book Four of the Summa Contra Gentiles examines what God has revealed through scripture, specifically the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the end of the world.The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 3, Providence.

Though not a systematic theologian, Thomas Merton spent a lifetime writing in an immensely appealing way about the monastic tradition and mystical theology. One of the fundamental questions he examined was that of the self; for Merton the recovery of the true self is the "liberation of the image of God" in us. This study explores that process in the context of a few of Merton's works, showing his own development from "pious hostility" to the world to a more humbling acceptance of humanity. The first full-length appraisal of Merton as theologian, this is well written but contains a few too many abstract phrasessomething Merton in his best work eschewed.

Though not a systematic theologian, Thomas Merton spent a lifetime writing in an immensely appealing way about the monastic tradition and mystical theology. One of the fundamental questions he examined was that of the self; for Merton the recovery of the true self is the "liberation of the image of God" in us. This study explores that process in the context of a few of Merton's works, showing his own development from "pious hostility" to the world to a more humbling acceptance of humanity. The first full-length appraisal of Merton as theologian, this is well written but contains a few too many abstract phrasessomething Merton in his best work eschewed.

Eugene Wildman's latest collection offers a wide-ranging tour of the final decades of the twentieth century. In a series of related stories, The World of Glass touches on the crucial issues and events that came to define and shape this period, including the corrosive impact of the Vietnam War. Through his protagonist, Todd White, Wildman explores the theme of spiritual isolation in a variety of gritty settings.Issues of identity also play a key role in Wildman's tightly-drawn stories, with look-alikes and the erotic attraction of the "Other" featured in pieces such as "Songbird," in which there are two Juliets, and in a sense a third, and "The Waning of the Middle Ages," in which a new tenant moves into Saul Bellow's old apartment. Wildman's stories are replete with the betrayal of love and lovers. The wounds inflicted by and for love haunt his characters, and yet they try vainly to hold on to love.The stories in The World of Glass, though classic in the deepest sense, are also, in their varied way, distinctive and contemporary. This first-rate collection is the work of a powerful and accomplished writer.

John Murray Spear was one of nineteenth-century America's most interesting characters. A leading social agitator against slavery and capital punishment, Spear also became the nation's most flamboyant spiritualist, inventor of "spirit machines," and advocate of free love. In his captivating biography, John Buescher brings to life Spear's superlatively odd story. While no photograph or engraving of Spear exists, and his letters and personal papers are scarce, Buescher recreates in this book a sympathetic, even heroic, figure who spent the most energetic decades of his career absent, in a sense, from his own life, displaced by other spirits.Born in 1804, John Murray Spear started his career as a Universalist minister. He later was a close colleague of William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Parker in the abolitionist movement, an operator on the underground railroad in Boston, an influential leader in the effort to end the death penalty and to reform prison conditions, and a public advocate of the causes of pacifism, women's rights, labor reform, and socialism. Buescher chronicles Spear's work as an activist among the New England reformers and Transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Lydia Maria Child, and Dorothea Dix.In mid-life Spear turned to the new revelation of spiritualism and came under the thrall of what he believed were spirit messages. Spear's spirits dictated that he and a small group of associates embark on plans for a perpetual motion machine, an electric ship propelled by psychic batteries, a vehicle that would levitate in the air, and a sewing machine that would work with no hands. As Buescher documents, Spear's spirit-guided efforts to harness technology to human liberation—sexual and otherwise—were far stranger than anyone outside his closest associates imagined, and were aimed at the eventual manufacturing of human beings and the improvement of the race. Buescher also examines the way in which Spear's story was minimized by his embarrassed fellow radicals. In the last years of his life, retired by the spirits and regarded by fellow Gilded Age progressives as a visitor from another age, if not another planet, Spear helped organize support for anarchist, socialist, peace, and labor causes. Buescher portrays Spear's life as an odd mixture of comic absurdity and serious foreshadowing of the future—for both good and ill—that provides us with a unique perspective on nineteenth-century American religious and social life.

It is often argued that a very special sort of consciousness went into creating Islamic art, that Islamic art is very different from other forms of art, that Muslims are not allowed to portray human beings in their art, and that calligraphy is the supreme Islamic art form. Oliver Leaman challenges all of these ideas, and argues that they are misguided. Instead, he suggests that the criteria we should apply to Islamic art are identical to the criteria applicable to art in general, and that the attempt to put Islamic art into a special category is a result of orientalism.Leaman criticizes the influence of Sufism on Islamic aesthetics and contends that it is generally misleading regarding both the nature of Islam and artistic expression. He discusses issues arising in painting, calligraphy, architecture, gardens, literature, films, and music and pays close attention to the teachings of the Qur'an. In particular he asks what it would mean for the Qur'an to be a miraculous literary creation, and he analyzes two passages in the Qur'an—those of Yusuf and Zulaykha (Joseph and Zuleika) and King Sullayman (Solomon) and the Queen of Sheba. His arguments draw on examples from history, art, philosophy, theology, and the artefacts of the Islamic world, and raise a large number of difficulties in the accepted paradigms for analyzing Islamic art.

It is often argued that a very special sort of consciousness went into creating Islamic art, that Islamic art is very different from other forms of art, that Muslims are not allowed to portray human beings in their art, and that calligraphy is the supreme Islamic art form. Oliver Leaman challenges all of these ideas, and argues that they are misguided. Instead, he suggests that the criteria we should apply to Islamic art are identical to the criteria applicable to art in general, and that the attempt to put Islamic art into a special category is a result of orientalism.Leaman criticizes the influence of Sufism on Islamic aesthetics and contends that it is generally misleading regarding both the nature of Islam and artistic expression. He discusses issues arising in painting, calligraphy, architecture, gardens, literature, films, and music and pays close attention to the teachings of the Qur'an. In particular he asks what it would mean for the Qur'an to be a miraculous literary creation, and he analyzes two passages in the Qur'an—those of Yusuf and Zulaykha (Joseph and Zuleika) and King Sullayman (Solomon) and the Queen of Sheba. His arguments draw on examples from history, art, philosophy, theology, and the artefacts of the Islamic world, and raise a large number of difficulties in the accepted paradigms for analyzing Islamic art.

Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico is a cultural history of the missionary enterprise in sixteenth-century Mexico, seen primarily through the work of Catholic missionaries and the native populations, principally the Aztecs. Also known as the Mexica or Nahuas, speakers of the Nahuatl tongue, these Mesoamerican people inhabited the central plateau around Lake Texcoco and the sacred metropolis of Tenochtitlan, the site of present-day Mexico City. It was their language that the mendicant missionaries adopted as the lingua franca of the evangelization enterprise. Conceived as a continuation of his earlier, well-received City, Temple, Stage, Jaime Lara's new work addresses the inculturation of Catholic sacraments and sacramentals into an Aztec worldview in visual and material terms. He argues that Catholic liturgy—similar in some ways to pre-Hispanic worship—effectively "conquered"the religious imagination of its new Mesoamerican practitioners, thus creating the basis for a uniquely Mexican Catholicism. The sixteenth-century friars, in partnership with indigenous Christian converts, successfully translated the Christian message from an exclusively Eurocentric worldview to a system of symbols that made sense to the indigenous civilizations of Central Mexico. While Lara is interested in liturgical texts with novel or recycled metaphors, he is equally interested in visual texts such as neo-Christian architecture, mural painting, feather work, and religious images made from corn. These, he claims, were the sensorial bridges that allowed for a successful, if not wholly orthodox, inculturation of Christianity into the New World. Enriched by more than 280 color images and eleven appendices of translations from Latin and Nahuatl, Lara's study provides rich insights on the development of sacramental practice, popular piety, catechetical drama, and parish politics. Song, dance, flowers, and feathers—of utmost importance in the ancient religion of the Aztecs—were reworked in ingenious ways to serve the Christian cause. Human blood, too, found renewed importance in art and devotion when the indigenous religious leaders and the mendicant friars addressed the fundamental topic of the Man on the cross. An important work on worship, liturgy, and the visual imagination, Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico is a vivid look at a unique cultural adaptation of Christianity. "I have deeply enjoyed and have been intellectually enriched by reading Jaime Lara's Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico. This book will transform how we understand the process of evangelization of Mexico in the sixteenth-century. Clearly written and persuasively argued, Lara reveals how metaphor allows for cross-cultural communication as the deepest level of the Human experience, religious belief. This is demonstrated by a nuanced but richly documented history of the period. Drawing upon architecture, painting and a variety of different kinds of primary sources, this study blends a deep understanding of Aztec religious beliefs so as to articulate the very complex development of Colonial Mexican Christianity. Most importantly, Lara demonstrates how Aztec beliefs and practices were not only incorporated into Catholic teaching and ritual practice, but how they transformed that teaching and practice. Moreover, Lara makes so very evident the centrality of Music and Art in this complicated interaction."—Thomas Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art, Harvard University. "We have seen many interpretations of the story of the faith in America; some have called it 'black,' and others 'white' or 'grey.' Whatever version one may appropriate, Jaime Lara has provided us with a unique, rich focus: the worship experience of a people called to be renewed by Christianity and the creative expressions of Christian faith in unique images and paintings. Jaime Lara's book is a treasure to cherish for many years, an addition to any personal or public Library, and a legacy that engages readers to embark on a journey in which history, liturgical theology, and good art become one's traveling companions."—Rev. Fr. Juan J. Sosa, Presidente, Instituto Nacional Hispano de Liturgia, Inc.

A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the "war between science and religion." In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism. Scientific materialism grew out of scientific discoveries made from the time of Copernicus up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These discoveries led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel's Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist's view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe. Written in clear language, Barr's rigorous and fair text explains modern physics to general readers without oversimplification. Using the insights of modern physics, he reveals that modern scientific discoveries and religious faith are deeply consonant. Anyone with an interest in science and religion will find Modern Physics and Ancient Faith invaluable.

This volume, in honour of the great historian Emmet Larkin, is organized around the two themes that have shaped his work on the Catholic Church in modern Ireland—the role of the church in the creation of the modern Irish state, and the role of the church in defining a distinctive Irish national identity through the "devotional revolution". The various chapters explore different themes—political, social, ecclesiastical, and literary—but are united by their common engagement with aspects of Larkin's work on Irish culture and consciousness between the late eighteenth century and the present.

Despite the fact that we all die, humans do not share the same view of death. In Death: A Reader, Mary Ann G. Cutter explores prominent themes that emerge and reemerge in the history of ideas regarding the nature of death from prominent global perspectives that span ancient to contemporary discussions. Thirteen themes are presented in order to convey a sense of major views of death that are found in the philosophical and sacred literature of Asia, the Near and Middle East, and the West. Each chapter contains the context of the theme, primary source selections, reflections, and suggestions for further reading.Four features of this volume distinguish it from other philosophical texts on death. First, Cutter provides a culturally diverse selection of primary source readings on the nature of death. Second, along with the more traditional discussions of death, she provides discussion on emerging topics in death studies—namely, medical immortality and digital immortality. Third, she presents some of the key ethical issues regarding death, notably suicide, treatment refusal, and physician-assisted suicide, through the lens of the nature of death. Finally, she offers engaging practical exercises that challenge readers to think through their own personal and legal wishes regarding death and dying.

Despite the fact that we all die, humans do not share the same view of death. In Death: A Reader, Mary Ann G. Cutter explores prominent themes that emerge and reemerge in the history of ideas regarding the nature of death from prominent global perspectives that span ancient to contemporary discussions. Thirteen themes are presented in order to convey a sense of major views of death that are found in the philosophical and sacred literature of Asia, the Near and Middle East, and the West. Each chapter contains the context of the theme, primary source selections, reflections, and suggestions for further reading.Four features of this volume distinguish it from other philosophical texts on death. First, Cutter provides a culturally diverse selection of primary source readings on the nature of death. Second, along with the more traditional discussions of death, she provides discussion on emerging topics in death studies—namely, medical immortality and digital immortality. Third, she presents some of the key ethical issues regarding death, notably suicide, treatment refusal, and physician-assisted suicide, through the lens of the nature of death. Finally, she offers engaging practical exercises that challenge readers to think through their own personal and legal wishes regarding death and dying.

In John Hume in America: From Derry to DC and its accompanying documentary, In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America, Maurice Fitzpatrick chronicles the rise of John Hume from the riot-torn streets of Northern Ireland to his work with American presidents, from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, and the United States Congress to leverage U.S. support for peace in Northern Ireland.Hume is widely considered the architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, and he engaged the attention and assistance of the "Four Horsemen"—Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Hugh Carey, and Ted Kennedy—to his cause, lending his effort worldwide credibility and putting significant pressure on the British and Irish governments to strive for peace.Supported by the Hume family, Fitzpatrick's critical work is the missing piece in the jigsaw of Hume's political life, tracing his philosophy of non-violence during the Civil Rights movement to his indispensable work with allies in the United States towards the creation of a new political framework in Northern Ireland. Both the book and its companion documentary will be of keen interest to historians and students of political science and Irish, peace, and conflict studies, as well as non-academic audiences.

Reason and Politics explores the central phenomena of political life and, by extension, of human affairs in general.Amidst the seemingly endless books on more and more narrowly specialized topics within politics, Mark Blitz offers something very different. Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena examines the central phenomena of political life in order to clarify their meaning, source, and range. Blitz gives particular attention to the notions of freedom, rights, justice, virtue, power, property, nationalism, and the common good. At the same time, Blitz shows how, in order to understand political matters correctly, we must also understand how they affect us directly. We do not merely theorize over political questions; we experience them. Blitz also considers matters such as the powers and motions of the soul, the nature of experience, and the varieties of pleasure and attachment.Living at a time when technological change makes it difficult even to claim convincingly that there are defining human characteristics and natural limits that we simply cannot change, Reason and Politics proposes that there are in fact basic phenomena not only in politics, but that make up human affairs as such. In examining these central phenomena in a lucid and articulate manner, this book makes a unique contribution not only to the study of politics but also to the study of philosophy more broadly.

Taking the Fight South provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if racial justice is to be fully realized.Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South, arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when, against the advice of friends and colleagues in New York, he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice.Ball, with breathtaking historical authority, narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: "No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome." From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. He was briefly an observer but quickly became an activist, confronting white racists stubbornly holding on to a Jim Crow white supremacist past and fighting to create a more diverse, equitable, and just society.Ball's story is one of an imitable advocate who didn't just observe as a passive spectator but interrupted injustice. Taking the Fight South will join the list of required books to read about the Black Lives Matter movement and the history of racism in the United States. The book will also appeal to readers interested in Judaism because of its depiction of anti-Semitism directed toward Starkville's Jewish community, struggling to survive in the heart of the deep and very fundamentalist Protestant South.

Stories from Palestine profiles Palestinians engaged in creative and productive pursuits in their everyday lives in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Their narratives amplify perspectives and experiences of Palestinians exercising their own constructive agency.In Stories from Palestine: Narratives of Resilience, Marda Dunsky presents a vivid overview of contemporary Palestinian society in the venues envisioned for a future Palestinian state. Dunsky has interviewed women and men from cities, towns, villages, and refugee camps who are farmers, scientists, writers, cultural innovators, educators, and entrepreneurs. Using their own words, she illuminates their resourcefulness in navigating agriculture, education, and cultural pursuits in the West Bank; persisting in Jerusalem as a sizable minority in the city; and confronting the challenges and uncertainties of life in the Gaza Strip. Based on her in-depth personal interviews, the narratives weave in quantitative data and historical background from a range of primary and secondary sources that contextualize Palestinian life under occupation.More than a collection of individual stories, Stories from Palestine presents a broad, crosscut view of the tremendous human potential of this particular society. Narratives that emphasize the human dignity of Palestinians pushing forward under extraordinary circumstances include those of an entrepreneur who markets the yields of Palestinian farmers determined to continue cultivating their land, even as the landscape is shrinking; a professor and medical doctor who aims to improve health in local Palestinian communities; and an award-winning primary school teacher who provides her pupils a safe and creative learning environment. In an era of conflict and divisiveness, Palestinian resilience is relatable to people around the world who seek to express themselves, to achieve, to excel, and to be free. Stories from Palestine creates a new space from which to consider Palestinians and peace.

The first full-length biography of William Still, one of the most important leaders of the Underground Railroad.William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia is the first major biography of the free Black abolitionist William Still, who coordinated the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad and was a pillar of the Railroad as a whole. Based in Philadelphia, Still built a reputation as a courageous leader, writer, philanthropist, and guide for fugitive enslaved people. This monumental work details Still's life story beginning with his parents' escape from bondage in the early nineteenth century and continuing through his youth and adulthood as one of the nation's most important Underground Railroad agents and, later, as an early civil rights pioneer. Still worked personally with Harriet Tubman, assisted the family of John Brown, helped Brown's associates escape from Harper's Ferry after their famous raid, and was a rival to Frederick Douglass among nationally prominent African American abolitionists. Still's life story is told in the broader context of the anti-slavery movement, Philadelphia Quaker and free black history, and the generational conflict that occurred between Still and a younger group of free black activists led by Octavius Catto.Unique to this book is an accessible and detailed database of the 995 fugitives Still helped escape from the South to the North and Canada between 1853 and 1861. The database contains twenty different fields—including name, age, gender, skin color, date of escape, place of origin, mode of transportation, and literacy—and serves as a valuable aid for scholars by offering the opportunity to find new information, and therefore a new perspective, on runaway enslaved people who escaped on the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad. Based on Still's own writings and a multivariate statistical analysis of the database of the runaways he assisted on their escape to freedom, the book challenges previously accepted interpretations of the Underground Railroad. The audience for William Still is a diverse one, including scholars and general readers interested in the history of the anti-slavery movement and the operation of the Underground Railroad, as well as genealogists tracing African American ancestors.

The first full-length biography of William Still, one of the most important leaders of the Underground Railroad.William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia is the first major biography of the free Black abolitionist William Still, who coordinated the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad and was a pillar of the Railroad as a whole. Based in Philadelphia, Still built a reputation as a courageous leader, writer, philanthropist, and guide for fugitive enslaved people. This monumental work details Still's life story beginning with his parents' escape from bondage in the early nineteenth century and continuing through his youth and adulthood as one of the nation's most important Underground Railroad agents and, later, as an early civil rights pioneer. Still worked personally with Harriet Tubman, assisted the family of John Brown, helped Brown's associates escape from Harper's Ferry after their famous raid, and was a rival to Frederick Douglass among nationally prominent African American abolitionists. Still's life story is told in the broader context of the anti-slavery movement, Philadelphia Quaker and free black history, and the generational conflict that occurred between Still and a younger group of free black activists led by Octavius Catto.Unique to this book is an accessible and detailed database of the 995 fugitives Still helped escape from the South to the North and Canada between 1853 and 1861. The database contains twenty different fields—including name, age, gender, skin color, date of escape, place of origin, mode of transportation, and literacy—and serves as a valuable aid for scholars by offering the opportunity to find new information, and therefore a new perspective, on runaway enslaved people who escaped on the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad. Based on Still's own writings and a multivariate statistical analysis of the database of the runaways he assisted on their escape to freedom, the book challenges previously accepted interpretations of the Underground Railroad. The audience for William Still is a diverse one, including scholars and general readers interested in the history of the anti-slavery movement and the operation of the Underground Railroad, as well as genealogists tracing African American ancestors.

This fascinating study traces sixteenth-century German colonialism in Venezuela through the lens of racialized capitalism and the subsequent memorialization of the period through to the twentieth century.Giovanna Montenegro investigates one of the strangest and often-ignored episodes in the conquest and colonization of the Americas—the governance of the Province of Venezuela by the Welsers, a German banking family from Augsburg, in the sixteenth century. Using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book chronicles the Welsers' business expansion beyond banking to colonization and the slave trade in the Spanish Indies and the eventual failure of the colony. Montenegro follows the money that financed the Habsburg empire, tackling a multifaceted, multilingual corpus of primary documents. She examines numerous legal documents, from contracts granting colonization and slave trade rights (capitulaciones, asientos) to complex financial transactions (interests, exchange rates). She also analyzes maps, literary texts, and various chronicles and poems of the period. The book examines a history of violence perpetrated upon enslaved Indigenous and African people, but it is also the story of how different generations across the Atlantic, up to Nazi Germany in the twentieth century, have remembered and recalled this Welser period of governance in Venezuela to serve other social and political purposes. Montenegro positions her research in relation to current critical discussion on inequality, slavery, white supremacy, and neoconservative nationalist movements in contemporary Latin America and Germany.

This fascinating study traces sixteenth-century German colonialism in Venezuela through the lens of racialized capitalism and the subsequent memorialization of the period through to the twentieth century.Giovanna Montenegro investigates one of the strangest and often-ignored episodes in the conquest and colonization of the Americas—the governance of the Province of Venezuela by the Welsers, a German banking family from Augsburg, in the sixteenth century. Using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book chronicles the Welsers' business expansion beyond banking to colonization and the slave trade in the Spanish Indies and the eventual failure of the colony. Montenegro follows the money that financed the Habsburg empire, tackling a multifaceted, multilingual corpus of primary documents. She examines numerous legal documents, from contracts granting colonization and slave trade rights (capitulaciones, asientos) to complex financial transactions (interests, exchange rates). She also analyzes maps, literary texts, and various chronicles and poems of the period. The book examines a history of violence perpetrated upon enslaved Indigenous and African people, but it is also the story of how different generations across the Atlantic, up to Nazi Germany in the twentieth century, have remembered and recalled this Welser period of governance in Venezuela to serve other social and political purposes. Montenegro positions her research in relation to current critical discussion on inequality, slavery, white supremacy, and neoconservative nationalist movements in contemporary Latin America and Germany.

George Hawley, who has written extensively on conservatism and right-wing ideologies in the U.S., presents a telling portrait of conservatism's relationship with identity politics.The American conservative movement has consistently declared its opposition to all forms of identity politics, arguing that such a form of politics is at odds with individualism. In this persuasive study, George Hawley examines the nature of identity politics in the United States: how conservatives view and understand it, how they embrace their own versions of identity, and how liberal and conservative intellectuals and politicians navigate this equally dangerous and potentially explosive landscape.Hawley begins his analysis with a synopsis of the variety both of conservative critiques of identity politics and of conservative explanations for how it has come to define America's current political terrain. This historical account of differing conservative approaches to identitarian concerns from the post-war era until today—including race, gender, and immigration—foregrounds conservatism's lack of consistency in its critiques and ultimately its failure to provide convincing arguments against identity politics. Hawley explores the political right's own employment of identity politics, particularly in relation to partisan politics, and highlights how party identification in the United States has become a leading source of identity on both sides of the political spectrum. Hawley also discusses this generation's iteration of American white nationalism, the Alt-Right, from whose rise and fall conservatism may develop a more honest, realistic, and indeed relevant approach to identity politics.

In this masterfully written book, Tomáš Halík calls upon Christians to touch the wounds of the world and to rediscover their own faith by loving and healing their neighbors.One of the most important voices in contemporary Catholicism, Tomáš Halík argues that Christians can discover the clearest vision of God not by turning away from suffering but by confronting it. Halík calls upon us to follow the apostle Thomas's example: to see the pain, suffering, and poverty of our world and to touch those wounds with faith and action. It is those expressions of love and service, Halík reveals, that restore our hope and the courage to live, allowing true holiness to manifest itself. Only face-to-face with a wounded Christ can we lay down our armor and masks, revealing our own wounds and allowing healing to begin.Weaving together deep theological and philosophical reflections with surprising, trenchant, and even humorous commentary on the times in which we live, Halík offers a new prescription for those lost in moments of doubt, abandonment, or suffering. Rather than demanding impossible, flawless faith, we can look through our doubt to see, touch, and confront the wounds in the hearts of our neighbors and—through that wounded humanity, which the Son of God took upon himself—see God.

U.S. flag officers are intended to be exemplary defenders of duty, honor, and country—but what can we learn by exposing the bad leaders lurking within these venerable ranks?There is an ugly strain of criminal and unethical leadership in the upper ranks of the American military. Despite the exemplary service of most American military members, a persistent minority of U.S. flag officers (Navy admirals and Army, Air Force, and Marine generals) have embroiled the profession in scandal since the Revolutionary War. In Generals and Admirals, Criminals and Crooks, award-winning author Jeffrey J. Matthews examines bad leadership in American military history over the past one hundred years, beginning with war crimes in the Philippine-American War and ending with the recent Fat Leonard corruption scandal.Scrutinizing a range of leadership failures, including moral cowardice, sex crimes, insubordination, toxic leadership, and obstruction of justice, Matthews offers a fascinating analysis of the bases and motives leading to these missteps and explores what could be done to curtail future misconduct of generals and admirals. The book also includes an up-to-date examination of President Trump's term in office that highlights the vital role honorable military leadership plays in our democracy. Confronting the dark side of criminal and unethical conduct among U.S. flag officers, this frank and historically grounded book offers valuable lessons in leadership that will stimulate further debate and critical self-assessment within the U.S. military..