This acclaimed selection of Russell's early letters, available in paperback for the first time, reveals the full scope of his life and innermost thoughts up to the First World War.

Those who knew the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell at the turn of the century referred to him as 'the Day of Judgement'. This acclaimed selection of his early letters, available in paperback for the first time, reveals the full scope of Russell's life and innermost thoughts up to the First World War. It includes letters to his first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith, reveals the background to his now famous work in philosophy and the foundations of mathematics and how his mind was stirred by socialism, free trade and votes for women. It also contains letters on his famous affair with Ottoline Morrell, providing yet another insight into one of the great intellectual figures of the twentieth century.

The papers collected in this volume represent the main body of research arising from the International Munich Centenary Conference in 2001, which commemorated the discovery of the famous Russell Paradox a hundred years ago. The 31 contributions and the introductory essay by the editor were (with two exceptions) all originally written for the volume. The volume serves a twofold purpose, historical and systematic. One focus is on Bertrand Russell's logic and logical philosophy, taking into account the rich sources of the Russell Archives, many of which have become available only recently. The second equally important aim is to present original research in the broad range of foundational studies that draws on both current conceptions and recent technical advances in the above-mentioned fields. The volume contributes therefore, to the well-established body of mathematical philosophy initiated to a large extent by Russell's work.

Those who knew the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell at the turn of the century referred to him as 'the Day of Judgement'. This acclaimed selection of his early letters, available in paperback for the first time, reveals the full scope of Russell's life and innermost thoughts up to the First World War. It includes letters to his first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith, reveals the background to his now famous work in philosophy and the foundations of mathematics and how his mind was stirred by socialism, free trade and votes for women. It also contains letters on his famous affair with Ottoline Morrell, providing yet another insight into one of the great intellectual figures of the twentieth century.

"Yet Russell was more than a great intellect; he was also a political animal. From the beginning of his long professional life he emphasized the importance of practice as well as theory. He was twice imprisoned by the British government for his political utterances. With his razor-sharp irony and morally impassioned rhetoric, Russell took on the forces of injustice, ignorance, and cruelty; one of his chief weapons was the letter to the editor.".

This second volume of letters, only three of which have been published before, presents a picture of a philosophical genius and impassioned campaigner for peace and social reform. Includes letters to Ho Chi Minh, Tito, Jawahral Nehru and Sartre.

This long-awaited second volume of Russell's best letters reveals the inner workings of a philosophical genius and an impassioned campaigner for peace and social reform. The letters, only three of which have been published before, cover most of Russell's adult life, a period in which he wrote over thirty books, including his famous History of Western Philosophy. Richly illustrated with photographs from Russell's life, the collection includes letters to Ho Chi Minh, Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru and Albert Einstein.

Détente or Destruction, 1955-57 continues publication of Routledge's multi-volume critical edition of Bertrand Russell's shorter writings. Between September 1955 and November 1957 Russell published some sixty-one articles, reviews, statements, contributions to books and letters to editors, over fifty of which are contained in this volume. The texts, several of them hitherto unpublished, reveal the deepening of Russell's commitment to the anti-nuclear struggle, upon which he embarked in the previous volume of Collected Papers (Man's Peril, 1954-55). Continuing with the theme of nuclear peril, this volume contains discussion of nuclear weapons, world peace, prospects for disarmament and British-Soviet friendship against the backdrop of the Cold War. One of the key papers in this volume is Russell's message to the inaugural conference of the Pugwash movement, which Russell was instrumental in launching and which became an influential, independent forum of East-West scientific cooperation and counsel on issues as an internationally agreed nuclear test-ban. In addition to the issues of war and peace, Russell, now in his eighties, continued to take an interest in a wide variety of themes. Russell not only addresses older controversies over nationalism and empire, religious belief and American civil liberties, he also confronts head-on the new and pressing matters of armed intervention in Hungary and Suez, and of the manufacture and testing of the British hydrogen bomb. This volume includes seven interviews ranging from East-West Relations after the Geneva conference to a Meeting with Russell.

The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 26 covers a period of transition in Russell's political life between his orthodox and sometimes pugnacious defence of the West in the early post-war, and the dissenting advocacy of nuclear disarmament and détente that started in earnest in the mid-1950s. While some of the assembled writings echo harsh prior criticism of Soviet expansionism and dictatorship, others register growing qualms about the recklessness of American foreign policy and the baneful effects on civil liberties of anti-communist hysteria inside the United States. Whether continuing to push for western rearmament, or highlighting in a more placatory vein the folly of the Cold War's divisions and rival fanaticisms, Russell's paramount objective was avoiding a war that threatened global catastrophe. Suspended between fear and hope, he expounded his evolving political concerns–and much else besides, including autobiographical reflections and typically common-sense guidance for living well–in a constant flow of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to editors, radio broadcasts and discussions and, of special note, a Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Russell also completed two lecture tours of the United States (the last of many), as well as a landmark such visit to Australia. All three of these journeys, and the textual record they left, are examined in depth using manuscript material and unpublished correspondence from the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, which is mined extensively throughout the volume.

In Collected Papers 21 Bertrand Russell grapples with the dilemma that confronted all opponents of militarism and war in the 1930s—namely, what was the most politically and morally appropriate response to international aggression. How to Keep the Peace contains some of Russell’s best-known essays, such as the famous Auto-obituary and his treatment of The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed. Like the sixteen previous volumes in Routledge’s critical edition of Russell’s shorter writings, however, Collected Papers 21 also includes a number of unpublished manuscripts from the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University. Moreover, it recovers for Russell scholars and general readers alike a rich vein of material that has previously appeared in print only in obscure or long-defunct newspaper and periodical publications.