"The State" is the most powerful of political ideas but where does it come from? This broad-ranging new study traces the history of the word and the concept back to the systems of law and justice created by medieval kings and shows how legal institutions acquired political force.
Classical Athenian literature often speaks of democratic politics in sexual terms. Citizens are urged to become lovers of the polis, and politicians claim to be lovers of the people. Victoria Wohl argues that this was no dead metaphor. Exploring the intersection between eros and politics in democratic Athens, Wohl traces the private desires aroused by public ideology and the political consequences of citizens' most intimate longings. Love among the Ruins analyzes the civic fantasies that lay beneath (but not necessarily parallel to) Athens's political ideology.
This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of today’s under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings. Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up?
Detective Lindsay Boxer and Assistant District Attorney Jill Bernhardt are enjoying a quiet afternoon in San Francisco when a townhouse across the street explodes in flames. A sinister note signed "August Spies" is found at the scene of the disaster, and the body of an infant who was asleep in the house at the time of the explosion cannot be found. Soon a wave of violent incidents, all with links to political terrorism and involving "August Spies," sweeps through the city. An upcoming economic summit of the world's most powerful nations will surely be a target.
A great contemporary German philosopher attacks the explosive problem of political myth in our day, and reveals how the myth of the state evolved from primitive times to prepare the way for the rise of the modern totalitarian state. "A brilliant survey of some of the major texts in the history of political theory.
