Month: July 2012

Book Review: The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty Author: Nicholas Buccola Publisher: New York University Press Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar The ideas and life struggles of Frederick Douglass – the African-American slave who agitated for the abolition of slavery for much of his life – are the subject of this book. Nicolas Buccola, the author, is assistant professor of political science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. His essays have appeared in a number of journals, including the Review of Politics and the Journal of Social Philosophy. Buccola’s focus in the book is...

Book Review: The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals and Israel Author: Caitlin Carenen Publisher: New York University Press Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar This book discusses the history of the relationship – including changing attitudes – between Jews and Christians and between Israel and the United States from the 1930s to around the end of the twenty-first century. The author Caitlin Carenen, assistant professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University, writes that this work “traces the divisions in American Protestantism over reactions to the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel (in 1948), and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.” Carenen...

Authors: Jamie Bronstein and Andrew Harris Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar This is a book not only on the history of modern Great Britain’s a century before and the years since 1830, but also a sweeping overview of that country’s expansive (and later, contracting) international empire; the changing nature of its political institutions over the decades at home and abroad; its influence over world events; its changing economics; its political and intellectual ideas and its culture; and much more. The year 1830 is not in any particular way significant in British history. The authors write that “this...