Bøker av Gertrude Himmelfarb

Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, this book demonstrates the primacy and wisdom of the British, exemplified in such thinkers as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke, as well as the enduring contributions of the American Founders.

From one of today''s most respected historians and cultural critics comes a new book examining the gulf in American society--a division that cuts across class, racial, ethnic, political and sexual lines. One side originated in the tradition of republican virtue, the other in the counterculture of the late 1960s. Himmelfarb argues that, while the latter generated the dominant culture of today-particularly in universities, journalism, television, and film--a "dissident culture" continues to promote the values of family, a civil society, sexual morality, privacy, and patriotism. Proposing democratic remedies for our moral and cultural diseases, Himmelfarb concludes that it is a tribute to Americans that we remain "one nation" even as we are divided into "two cultures."

In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary relevance, Himmelfarb demonstrates that the material and moral dimensions of poverty were inseparable in the minds of late Victorians, be they radical or conservative.

A biographical, historical, and philosophical study of the impact of Darwinism on the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century, challenging the conventional view of Darwin's greatness. "A thorough and masterly book."-Times Literary Supplement.

In these brilliant essays, Ms. Himmelfarb explores the many facets, public and private, of the Victorian idea of morality. She invites us to reconsider the complex and colorful panorama of ideas and attitudes, beliefs and behavior, that goes under the name of Victorianism-and it reconsiders as well our own relation to that much abused and misunderstood culture. "An important book."-New York Times Book Review.

For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on historians and historiography, Himmelfarb adds four new essays. In examining the effects of postmodernism, the illusions of cosmopolitanism, A. J. P. Taylor and revisionism, and Fukuyama's "end of history," Himmelfarb enriches her exploration of the ways historians make sense of the past.

In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America''s most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the ΓÇ£moral imagination.ΓÇ¥ Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflectionsΓÇöon politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sexΓÇösometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then. The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.