You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This grand novel encompasses nearly all of Yugoslavia’s tumultuous twentieth century, from the decline of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, the breakup of the nation, and the terror of the shelling of Dubrovnik. Tackling universal themes on a human scale, master storyteller Miljenko Jergovic traces one Yugoslavian family’s tale as history irresistibly casts the fates of five generations. What is it to live a life whose circumstances are driven by history? Jergovic investigates the experiences of a compelling heroine, Regina Delavale, and her many family members and neighbors. Telling Regina’s story in reverse chronology, the author proceeds from her final days in 2002 to her birth in 1905, encountering along the way such traumas as atrocities committed by Nazi Ustashe Croats and the death of Tito. Lyrically written and unhesitatingly told, The Walnut Mansion may be read as an allegory of the tragedy of Yugoslavia’s tormented twentieth century.
Whether one favors the U.S. global projection of force or is horrified by it, the question stands - where do we go from here? What ought to be the new global architecture? Amitai Etzioni follows a third way, drawing on both neoconservative and liberal ideas, in this bold new look at international relations. He argues that a "clash of civilizations" can be avoided and that the new world order need not look like America. Eastern values, including spirituality and moderate Islam, have a legitimate place in the evolving global public philosophy. Nation-states, Etzioni argues, can no longer attend to rising transnational problems, from SARS to trade in sex slaves to cybercrime. Global civil socie...
A washed-up, middle-aged British philosopher teams up with an incompetent, one-armed bank robber to plan the ultimate bank job.
Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.
In examining the intellectual history in contemporary South Africa, Eze engages with the emergence of ubuntu as one discourse that has become a mirror and aftermath of South Africa s overall historical narrative. This book interrogates a triple socio-political representation of ubuntu as a displacement narrative for South Africa s colonial consciousness; as offering a new national imaginary through its inclusive consciousness, in which different, competing, and often antagonistic memories and histories are accommodated; and as offering a historicity in which the past is transformed as a symbol of hope for the present and the future. This book offers a model for African intellectual history indignant to polemics but constitutive of creative historicism and healthy humanism.
Many have argued that ubuntu was a formative influence on the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa’s famous transitional justice mechanism. A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and Transitional Justice in South Africa challenges and contextualizes this view in a way that not only provides new findings and reflections on ubuntu and the TRC, but also contributes to the field of African philosophy. One of Christian B. N. Gade’s key findings, founded on qualitative interviews in South Africa, is that some former TRC commissioners and committee members question the importance of ubuntu in the TRC process. Another is that there are se...
"Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand history – and then go out and change it." –President Barack Obama Nelson Mandela was one of the great moral and political leaders of his time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. After his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela was at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multir...
Liberal philosophy came to Africa through colonialism: it was taught in schools, preached and supported by the churches, and maintained and encouraged by an economic system characterized by competition and maximizing profit—capitalism. Thirty years after independence, liberal philosophy continues to erode traditional values in Africa. To redirect Africans to symbols of common life and respect for persons, nationalist leaders have tried other philosophies: negritude, African socialism, and humanism. This book shows the limitations of these philosophies, and the failure of African philosophy and theology to offer a paradigm for social change. The author proposes a new paradigm for transformation, one rooted in traditional thought, found in the concepts of moyo (life) and umunthu (personhood).
A highly original analysis of Bishop Tutu's theology of ubuntu, an African concept that identity is formed by community, Battle draws on Tutu's many unpublished addresses and sermons to portray a man for whom the conventions of Anglicanism serve as roots and resources in the ongoing struggle against apartheid. Foreword by Desmond Tutu.