Power and the idealists, or, The passion of Joschka Fischer and its aftermath / Paul Berman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berman, Paul, 1949-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fischer, Joschka.

Radicalism--Germany.

Radicalism.

Germany.

Politicians--Germany--Biography.

Politicians.

Social history--1960-1970.

Social history.

Social history--1970-.

Liberalism.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

311 pages ; 20 cm

Other Title:

Power and the idealists

Passion of Joschka Fischer and its aftermath

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, NY : Soft Skull Press ; [Berkeley, Calif.] : Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2005.

Summary:

In January 2001, a scandal erupted when a series of photos from 1968 emerged showing German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and a group of leftist street toughs assaulting a cop. Paul Berman, one of the leading essayists and intellectual historians of the New Left, uses this event as a springboard to reflect on a crucial question for Western democracies today: was the violence-tinged radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s a force for social good or for social ill? This wide-ranging history of anti-totalitarianism explores the Left's response to human rights abuses around the world, tracing the intellectual evolution of figures as various as Polish dissident Adam Michnik and Azar Nafisi ("Reading Lolita in Tehran) to argue that liberals willing to use power to protect human rights are the true heirs of the radical sixties, and that the Islamic totalitarian impulse he identified in the "New York Times" bestseller "Terror and Liberalism must be opposed with vigor.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

1932360913

OCLC:

60589027