The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism Review

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The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism Review"The whole world hates us, and we deserve it: that is what most Europeans think, at least in Western Europe". That quote is the thesis of this book by French thinker Pascal Bruckner that examines anti-Western guilt and neurosis in Europe (and, to a lesser extent, America) today.
Elites on both sides of the Atlantic are animated by hatred of the West and denounce it vehemently in an attempt to make the West feel eternally guilty for its past wrongs, and think that anyone who stands up for Western Europe or nations such as Israel or the United States is beyond the pale of respectability.
Bruckner sees in this attitude an inverted superiority complex, a sort of "You don't realize how evil Europe, America, and Western Civilization are and I do, therefore I'm more moral and enlightened than you are" type of preening narcissistic grandstanding.
The author acknowledges the West's crimes, but states that Europe, unlike Islam, is "like a jailer who throws you into prison and slips you the keys to your cell", bringing the world both despotism and liberty. For example, the West did not invent slavery, but played a major role in its abolition. Bruckner states that no country was not founded on crime and coercion, but only the West's crimes are remembered by the elites, who have one set of rules for designated victim nations and another, more stringent set for designated oppressor nations.
Bruckner thinks that Europe's guilty conscience stems from a desire to withdraw after the horrors of the twentieth century. Europe, he believes, does not feel that it any longer has the moral authority to stand up to evil, so instead it tolerates the evil around it, leading it to "take up residence in a peaceful hell".
The author provides suggestions for Europe to get out of its funk, such as having a statute of limitations for past offenses that have been repented of--being forever chained to the past injects emotional paralysis and does not free one to live in the present.
Bruckner examines European anti-Semitism, and closes this remarkable volume by comparing France to the United States, showing that America does not have the anti-West mindset to the same degree that Europe does.
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Germany: The Long Road West (v. 1) Review

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Germany: The Long Road West (v. 1) ReviewThis book is an absolutely riveting read. The author is a preeminent scholar about the development of Germany as a modern nation state. This volume, the first of two, traces the development of Germany from the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire to the fall of the Weimar Republic. It has broadened my understanding of the history of Germany and the whole of Europe as well. This book has made me reevaluate Germany's role in the development of the European Union. Don't be so fast to think France is behind the EU!
Germany: The Long Road West (v. 1) OverviewVivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbors.This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the "Reich," which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception.With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990, Germany: The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries.

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The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson Review

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The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson ReviewJFK once held a state dinner for all American-born Nobel laureates. At one point during the festivities, he rose to offer a toast, remarking that there hadn't been so much talent gathered in the White House dining room since Thomas Jefferson ate there alone.
The laureates took the unintended slight with good grace. How could they have not? Thomas Jefferson was without doubt our most cerebral president. He may not have had the academic discipline of a Woodrow Wilson or the native wisdom of a Lincoln. But as we all know, and as Kevin Hayes documents in impressive detail in his splendid Road to Monticello, there's never been a more bookish president, nor a wider-read one, than Jefferson.
Hayes has written an old-style (I mean this as a compliment, by the way) intellectual biography. Jefferson's public career is mentioned in passing, but what Hayes is primarily concerned to do is chart the course of Jefferson's thought from his earliest to his final days by charting his reading. Who were the authors that especially impressed him? That he found especially wanting? What connections between his diverse readings did he make? What were the blindspots and lacunae in his thinking and reading? Why did he select the quotes he jotted down in his Commonplace Books? In short, what Hayes wants to do in The Road to Monticello is get a clearer picture of Jefferson the thinker from examining the books he thought about.
Jefferson's erudition is impressive. He read in six languages (including Anglo-Saxon), and was interested in Asian, Indian, and Semetic languages. And he read everything: law, politics, philosophy, geography, history, the occasional theology tome, anthropology, science, music, fiction, poetry, agronomy, cookbooks. His curiosity was boundless, and never abated as the years rolled on. He cross-referenced his readings with marginalia: his law books, for example, frequently contain scribbled references to Greek tragedians and historians. He collected books avidly, during a time when book collecting wasn't all that easy. Hayes tells us that whenever Jefferson rolled into a city, he quickly made his way to the bookshops. By the end of his life, he'd amassed one of the finest collections in the early Republic, which (characteristically) he catalogued according to a system of his own invention. (Hayes' description of it is fascinating, especially for those of us who know a little about Francis Bacon.)
But Jefferson was also an extremely secretive man, and even though Hayes provides us with an excellent account of the cerebral food that fed Jefferson's intellect, I closed the book feeling that Jefferson the man still remained more enigmatic than not. Hayes tells us what Jefferson thought about, but what made him tick remains elusive. This isn't Hayes' failure so much as Jefferson's refusal to leave no personal memoirs, no tormented self-examinations in his Commonplace Books, and very few epistolary revelations. Ultimately, then, Hayes helps us penetrate the mind of Jefferson. But the third president's soul remains unexplored, as it probably always will.
Highly recommended. A genuine treat.The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson Overview

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