A dense, astute history and warning about the importance—in the face of growing illiberalism and the reawakening of...
An academic study on the long historical buildup to “liberal democracy” in Europe.
A commitment to the rule of law, a protection of minorities and individual liberties, and a respect for all members of society as political equals—these have been hard-fought democratic achievements since the collapse of the Ancien Régime and subsequent forces of authoritarianism and dictatorship in Europe. Yet, as demonstrated by elected “illiberal” governments in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, the adherence to fully democratic political systems in Europe is not guaranteed. In a history that will appeal most to scholars, Berman (Political Science/Barnard Coll.; The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century, 2006, etc.) follows several currents. In France, the dismantling of centralization under the Ancien Régime required a violent overhaul of the society and economy, as evidenced by the French Revolution. In England, however, the process toward democratization had already begun, with the emergence of Parliament, and a check on monarchical power followed more gradually and peacefully, as wrought by the Glorious Revolution. The author explores the democratic revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, which were swiftly followed by the reinstitution of monarchies. Yet the role of class conflict began to assert itself, as well as forces of nationalism and socialism. “As we have seen over and over again in European history,” writes the author, “when there is a mismatch between citizens’ demands and expectations and the willingness or ability of political institutions to respond to them, the outcome is disorder and instability.” Berman also spotlights France’s long-running Third Republic and examines the unification processes of Italy and Germany. Her treatment of the world wars is brief and cogent, as are her investigations of the staggering developments of the late-20th century—e.g., Spain’s transition to democracy and the collapse of communism in East-Central Europe.
A dense, astute history and warning about the importance—in the face of growing illiberalism and the reawakening of authoritarianism—of continuing to strengthen democratic institutions and structures.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-19-937319-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
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