Race and human evolution

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Max I. Dimont

A wondrous tale of American Judaism as the world's greatest success story, by the flamboyantly upbeat author of Jews, God and History (1964) and The Indestructible Jews (1971). According to Dimont, the first Jews to arrive--in search of safety and opportunity, not a haven for orthodoxy--had it made before they landed, thanks to the Old Testament hold on Colonial life (the Mosaic commandments, the Promised Land, the Puritan ethic); and thereafter, unhampered either by prejudice or by tyrannical rabbis, they dispersed along the frontier, instituted secular reforms (anticipating the German Reform movement), and prospered as merchants and bankers. This German-Jewish ""crowd"" also, says Dimont, ""'invented' modern philanthropy"" and, to tame their unruly Russian co-religionists, sponsored Conservative Judaism, more American than orthodoxy, more traditional than Reform. Subsequently, ""all the dissident elements of American Jewish society. . . coalesced to give birth to the first 'American Jews.'"" None of this--told with an emphasis on commanding personalities--is either wholly unfounded or totally novel, but it is so highly colored, so feeble as social history, and so full of holes that one can't treat it seriously. American Jewish socialism and American Yiddish culture are disposed of in two pages; the one time American anti-Semitism rears its ugly head (apropos of the 1862 Grant affair), it's explained away; and American Zionism--without even a psychological stake in Israel--can then be altogether ""altruistic."" Neither do American Jews have an identity problem: a strong organizational life compensates for a weak religious life. Dimont, as he's demonstrated before, has no use for the ghetto image of the Jew or for Jewish history as a ""dirge of oppression,"" and those who share his antipathies will find here the American dream come true.

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Robert Southard

The Prussian School of History first predicted and advocated, then celebrated and defended, the unification of Germany by Prussia. Experts in German historiography and the history of German liberalism have often complained about the lack of a book, in any language, that traces the origins and explains the ideas of this school of history. Here is that book. Robert Southard finds that, for the Prussian School, history had an agenda. These historians generally expected history to complete its main tasks in their own time and country. The outcome of their politics was, really, an "end of history" - not a cessation to historical occurrences, but a cessation of onward historical movement because the historical process had already achieved its long-term, beneficient purposes. Leading us through the intricacies of important but untranslated works of J. G. Droysen, Max Duncker, Rudolph Hayn, and Heinrich von Sybel, Southard demonstrates their belief that the historical sequence was a continual unfolding of God's plan. Indispensable for those interested in the history of German historical writing, this book also has major implications for understanding the history of political liberalism.

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Jonathan Boulter

Written in a clear, accessible language, this guide challenges and encourages students to grapple with the difficult ideas and questions posed by Beckett's texts.

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Leonard Peikoff

Ayn Rand chose Leonard Peikoff to be her successor as the spokesman for Objectivism. And in this brilliantly reasoned, thought-provoking work we learn why, as he demonstrates how far America has been detoured from its original path and led down the same road that Germany followed to Nazism. Self-sacrifice, Oriental mysticism, racial ?truth,? the public good, doing one?s duty--these are among the seductive catch-phrases that Leonard Peikoff dissects, examining the kind of philosophy they symbolize, the type of thinking that lured Germany to its doom and that he says is now prevalent in the United States. Here is a frightening look at where America may be heading, a clarion call for all who are concerned about preserving our right to individual freedom.