Kirjahaku

The work of E. P. Thompson as historian, socialist and peace activist has been enormously influential. Yet attempts to assess the impact of his work as a whole - perhaps because of the very diversity of his contributions - have been rare. This book attempts such an evaluation, bringing together a range of authors who, in original essays, assess the main dimensions of Thompson's work. Contributors include, Harvey Kaye, Keith McClelland, Renato Rosaldo, Kate Soper, Robbie Gray, Martin Shaw, Catherine Hall, Geoff Eley, and John Goode. The book is written from a critical but sympathetic standpoint. It makes a very substantial contribution to the scholarly and practical appraisal of Thompson's ideas.

The fascinating story of Franklin Roosevelt, the Greatest Generation, and the freedoms they won, is a "stirring, heady dose of American history by a...progressive thinker" (Kirkus Reviews). On January 6, 1941, the Greatest Generation gave voice to its founding principles, the Four Freedoms: Freedom from want and from fear. Freedom of speech and religion. In the name of the Four Freedoms they fought the Great Depression. In the name of the Four Freedoms they defeated the Axis powers. In the process they made the United States the richest and most powerful country on Earth. And, despite a powerful, reactionary opposition, the men and women of the Greatest Generation made America freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before. Harvey Kaye gives passionate voice to the Greatest Generation and argues not only that the root of their "greatness" stemmed from their commitment to equality, change, and progressive politics, but why modern generations should follow their lead. In Kaye's hands, history becomes a call for action. Now he retells this generation's full story and reclaims their progressive influence throughout the twentieth century. Through the words of civil rights protestors, authors, and congressmen, Kaye argues that the most progressive generation in America history not only stopped Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, but made America and the world freer, more equal, and more democratic--and that modern generations only honor them by following their lead. The Fight for the Four Freedoms "will stir its intended audience, while illustrating what astute politicians and historians recognize: Political struggle is as much a battle over our past as it is over our present and future" (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

From One of the Greatest Leaders in American History, a Collection of the Words and Writings that Inspired a Generation of Americans to Become the Greatest Generation In just under three decades of public life, Franklin Delano Roosevelt rose to become one of the greatest orators and leaders in American history. As the longest-serving US president, he guided the nation through two of the greatest challenges of the twentieth century—the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Fascist threat of the 1940s—and radically transformed American public life. In doing so, FDR created the conditions that enabled Americans to make the United States stronger, more prosperous, and more democratic than ever before for generations to come. Through his words—selected, annotated, and introduced here by writer and scholar Harvey J. Kaye—we rediscover the liberal and social-democratic vision and promise that FDR articulated so powerfully. We recall Roosevelt's efforts to redeem the challenge of the Declaration of Independence and renew the promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We see him empower working people and make life more secure for more Americans. And we are reminded of his desire to not simply win the Second World War, but to create a nation and a world committed to the realization of the Four Freedoms—freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear—indeed, to enact here in the United States a Second Bill of Rights, an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans. In this collection of his greatest writings and speeches, we encounter the words that inspired and encouraged Americans to remember who they were and what they were capable of accomplishing—the words that helped turn a generation of Americans into the Greatest Generation. Now more than ever, we need to recall FDR's words. Now, when FDR's democratic legacy—the legacy of a generation—is under siege, we need to remind ourselves of who we are and what we need to do to make America freer, more equal, and more democratic.

The eighteen essays and speeches in Take Hold of Our History render a manifesto – a call to remember, redeem, and embrace the American radical story and tradition in favor of cultivating American historical memory and imagination and making America radical once again. For too long we have allowed the right to hijack the past and suppress, efface, lie about, and/or appropriate the essentially radical story of America from the struggles of the Revolution to those of the Age of Roosevelt and the 1960s. And no less tragically, we on the left, apparently haunted by the worst of our national experience, have turned our back on our own story and deferred to the tales of conservatives and reactionaries. Fleeing from the past, we merely compound the tragedies and ironies of American history, for we turn our backs on both the nation’s democratic creed and radical imperative, but also the struggles from the bottom up, the struggles in which working people and others have laid hold of America’s revolutionary promise and succeeded in making the United States freer, more equal and more democratic, at times, radically so. As Bill Moyers put it in 2008: “Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America’s dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and our politics for a long time.” The time has come for us to advance that narrative.

The British Marxist Historians remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influential contemporary academic traditions in history and social theory. In this classic text, Kaye looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; Rodney Hilton on feudalism and the English peasantry; Christopher Hill on the English Revolution; Eric Hobsbawm on workers, peasants and world history; and E.P. Thompson on the making of the English working class. Kaye compares their perspective on history with other approaches, such as that of the French Annales school, and concludes with a discussion of the British Marxist historians’ contribution to the formation of a democratic historical consciousness. The British Marxist Historians is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the intellectual history of the late twentieth century.