Did the New Deal represent the true American way or was it an aberration that would last only until the old order could reassert itself? This original and thoughtful study tells the story of the New Deal, explains its origins, and assesses its legacy. Alan Lawson explores how the circumstances of the Great Depression and the distinctive leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt combined to bring about unprecedented economic and policy reform. Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that the New Deal was not an improvised response to an unexpected crisis, but the realization of a unique opportunity to put into practice Roosevelt’s long-developed progressive thought. Lawson focuses on where the impetus and plans for the New Deal originated, how Roosevelt and those closest to him sought to fashion a cooperative commonwealth, and what happened when the impulse for collective unity was thwarted. He describes the impact of the Great Depression on the prevailing system and traces the fortunes of several major social sectors as the drive to create a cohesive plan for reconstruction unfolded. He continues the story of these main sectors through the last half of the 1930s and traces their legacy down to the present as crucial challenges to the New Deal have arisen. Drawing from a wide variety of scholarly texts, records of the Roosevelt administration, Depression-era newspapers and periodicals, and biographies and reflections of the New Dealers, Lawson offers a comprehensive conceptual base for a crucial aspect of American history.

A bold new interpretation of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its place in political life When it comes to politics, Augustine of Hippo is renowned as one of history’s great pessimists, with his sights set firmly on the heavenly city rather than the public square. Many have enlisted him to chasten political hopes, highlighting the realities of evil and encouraging citizens instead to cast their hopes on heaven. A Commonwealth of Hope challenges prevailing interpretations of Augustinian pessimism, offering a new vision of his political thought that can also help today’s citizens sustain hope in the face of despair. Amid rising inequality, injustice, and political division, many citizens wonder what to hope for in politics and whether it is possible to forge common hopes in a deeply polarized society. Michael Lamb takes up this challenge, offering the first in-depth analysis of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its profound implications for political life. He draws on a wide range of Augustine’s writings—including neglected sermons, letters, and treatises—and integrates insights from political theory, religious studies, theology, and philosophy. Lamb shows how diverse citizens, both religious and secular, can unite around common hopes for the commonwealth. Recovering this understudied virtue and situating Augustine within his political, rhetorical, and religious contexts, A Commonwealth of Hope reveals how Augustine’s virtue of hope can help us resist the politics of presumption and despair and confront the challenges of our time.

Was the New Deal an aberration in American history? This look at its origins and legacy is “truly refreshing . . . the author makes a good case for his ideas” (Journal of Economic History). Did the New Deal represent the true American way or was it an aberration that would last only until the old order could reassert itself? This original and thoughtful study tells the story of the New Deal, explains its origins, and assesses its legacy. Alan Lawson explores how the circumstances of the Great Depression and the distinctive leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt combined to bring about unprecedented economic and policy reform. Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that the New Deal was not an improvised response to an unexpected crisis, but the realization of a unique opportunity to put into practice Roosevelt’s long-developed progressive thought. Lawson focuses on where the impetus and plans for the New Deal originated, how Roosevelt and those closest to him sought to fashion a cooperative commonwealth, and what happened when the impulse for collective unity was thwarted. He describes the impact of the Great Depression on the prevailing system and traces the fortunes of several major social sectors as the drive to create a cohesive plan for reconstruction unfolded. He continues the story of these main sectors through the last half of the 1930s and traces their legacy down to the present as crucial challenges to the New Deal have arisen. Drawing from a wide variety of scholarly texts, records of the Roosevelt administration, Depression-era newspapers and periodicals, and biographies and reflections of the New Dealers, Lawson offers a comprehensive conceptual base for a crucial aspect of American history.

The civil rights movement was arguably the most successful social movement in American history. In a provocative new assessment of its success, David Chappell argues that the story of civil rights is not a story of the ultimate triumph of liberal ideas after decades of gradual progress. Rather, it is a story of the power of religious tradition. Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how northern liberals' faith in the power of human reason to overcome prejudice was at odds with the movement's goal of immediate change. Even when liberals sincerely wanted change, they recognized that they could not necessarily inspire others to unite and fight for it. But the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament--sometimes translated into secular language--drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Their impassioned campaign to stamp out "the sin of segregation" brought the vitality of a religious revival to their cause. Meanwhile, segregationists found little support within their white southern religious denominations. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

The essays in this volume take stock of recent scholarly developments and revisit old assumptions about the significance of Augustine of Hippo for political thought. They do so from many different perspectives, examining the anthropological and theological underpinnings of Augustine's thought, his critique of politics, his development of his own political thought, and some of the later manifestations or uses of his thought in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and today. This new vision is at once more bracing, more hopeful, and more diverse than earlier readings could have allowed.

A broad treatment of politics and society in Britain by the Chief Rabbi of the Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Sacks proposes a new politics of responsibility in which all portions of society have a part to play - a politics not of interest but of involvement - and hope.

A “persuasive . . . heartfelt and vividly written” call to counter systemic racism and build national solidarity in America (Publishers Weekly). The American Promise enshrined in our Constitution states that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet racism continues to corrode our society. If we cannot overcome it, Theodore Johnson argues, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died. In When the Stars Begin to Fall, Johnson presents a compelling blueprint for the kind of national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving together history, personal memories, and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, Johnson posits that solutions can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise. Fueled by Johnson’s ultimate faith in the American project, grounded in his family’s longstanding optimism and his own military service, When the Stars Begin to Fall is an urgent call to undertake the process of overcoming what has long seemed intractable.

Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness. Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. While democracy eventually won the struggle against totalitarianism in much of the world, democracy itself is not immune to the pitfall of do-goodery: moral correctness at home and atomic or "humanitarian" bombs abroad. Todorov explores the history of the past century not only by analyzing its spectacular political conflicts but also by offering moving profiles of several individuals who, at great personal cost, resisted the strictures of the communist and Nazi regimes. Some--Margarete Buber-Neumann, David Rousset, Primo Levi, and Germaine Tillion--were deported to concentration camps. Others--Vasily Grossman and Romain Gary--fought courageously in World War II. All became exemplary witnesses who described with great lucidity and humanity what they had endured. This book preserves the memory of the past as we move into the twenty-first century--arguing eloquently that we must place the past at the service of a just future.

[Omslag] The thought of Saint Augustine stands as one of the central fountainheads of not only theology but Western social and political theory. Political Augustinianism examines modern political readings of Augustine, providing an extensive account of the pivotal French, British, and American schools of interpretation. Bruno guides readers through these modern strands of interpretation, examines their historical, theological, and socio-political context, and discusses the hermeneutical underpinnings of the modern discussion of Augustine's social and political thought.