Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
Author: Andrew S. Curran
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1590516702

Best Book of the Year – Kirkus Reviews A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world. Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity–for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire. In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.

The Politics of National Capitalism

The Politics of National Capitalism
Author: James P. Brennan
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271035722

In mid-twentieth-century Latin America there was a strong consensus between Left and Right&—Communists working under the directives of the Third International, nationalists within the military interested in fostering industrialization, and populists&—about the need to break away from the colonial legacies of the past and to escape from the constraints of the international capitalist system. Even though they disagreed about the desired end state, Argentines of all political stripes could agree on the need for economic independence and national sovereignty, which would be brought about through the efforts of a national bourgeoisie. James Brennan and Marcelo Rougier aim to provide a political history of this national bourgeoisie in this book. Deploying an eclectic methodology combining aspects of the &“new institutionalism,&” the &“new economic history,&” Marxist political economy, and deep research in numerous, rarely consulted archives into what they dub the &“new business history,&” the authors offer the first thorough, empirically based history of the national bourgeoisie&’s peak association, the Confederaci&ón General Econ&ómica (CGE), and of the Argentine bourgeoisie&’s relationship with the state. They also investigate the relationship of the bourgeoisie to Per&ón and the Peronist movement by studying the history of one industrial sector, the metalworking industry, and two regional economies&—one primarily industrial, C&órdoba, and another mostly agrarian, Chaco&—with some attention to a third, Tucum&án, a cane-cultivating and sugar-refining region sharing some features of both. While spanning three decades, the book concentrates most on the years of Peronist government, 1946&–55 and 1973&–76.

Publications

Publications
Author: Bibliographical Society of Ireland
Publisher:
Total Pages: 464
Release: 1920
Genre:
ISBN: