A democracy at war

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Lucy S. Dawidowicz

The systematic annihilation of six million Jews during World War II is the single most horrifying event of the twentieth century. Though much has been written on this subject of overwhelming terror and tragedy, the basic question persists: how could a modern state carry out the systematic murder of a whole people for no other reason than that they were Jews? In The War Against the Jews 1933-1945, Lucy Dawidowicz answers this question in a vivid historical narrative, avoiding the moral and metaphysical abstractions that have bedeviled and obscured the subject. - Jacket flap.

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Jeff Shesol

In the years before World War II, Franklin Roosevelt's fiercest, most unyielding opponent was neither a foreign power nor "fear itself." It was the U.S. Supreme Court. Beginning in 1935, in a series of devastating decisions, the Supreme Court's conservative majority left much of FDR's agenda in ruins. The pillars of the New Deal fell in short succession. It was not just the New Deal, but democracy itself, that stood on trial. In February 1937, Roosevelt struck back with an audacious plan to expand the Court to fifteen justices -- and to "pack" the new seats with liberals who shared his belief in a "living" Constitution. The ensuing fight was a firestorm that engulfed the White House, the Court, Congress, and the nation. The final verdict was a shock. It dealt FDR the biggest setback of his political life, split the Democratic party, and set the stage for a future era of Republican dominance. Yet the battle also transformed America's political and constitutional landscape, hastening the nation's march into the modern world. - Jacket flap.

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Robert K. Schaeffer

Contents: Change and the modern world -- The world after World War II -- Dollar devaluations -- Fighting inflation -- Debt and taxes in the Third World -- Debt and taxes in the United States -- Stock market and job loss -- Technology, food, and hunger -- Free trade agreements -- Population growth -- Global climate change -- Dictatorship and democracy -- The spread of separatism -- Mafias and the global drug trade.

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William Stueck

This first truly international history of the Korean War argues that its timing, its course, and its outcome made it in effect a substitute for World War III. Stueck draws on recently available materials from seven countries, plus the archives of the United Nations, presenting a detailed narrative of the diplomacy of the conflict and a broad assessment of its critical role in the Cold War. In Stueck's view, contributors to the UN cause in Korea provided support not out of any abstract commitment to a universal system of collective security but because they saw an opportunity to influence U.S. policy. At the moment of Chinese intervention in Korea in the fall of 1950, as in other instances prior to the armistice in July 1953, NATO allies and Third World neutrals succeeded in curbing American adventurism and so in blocking the spread of hostilities to other parts of the world. While conceding the tragic and brutal nature of the war, Stueck suggests that it helped to prevent the occurrence of an even more destructive conflict in Europe.