Bernard-Henri Levy's Books

The Genius of Judaism

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

From world-renowned public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy comes an incisive and provocative look at the heart of Judaism. “A smart, revealing, and essential book for our times.”—The Washington Post For more than four decades, Bernard-Henri Lévy has been a singular figure on the world stage—one of the great moral voices of our time. Now Europe's foremost philosopher and activist confronts his spiritual roots and the religion that has always inspired and shaped him—but that he has never fully reckoned with. The Genius of Judaism is a breathtaking new vision and understanding of what it means to be a Jew, a vision quite different from the one we’re used to. It is rooted in the Talmudic traditions of argument and conflict, rather than biblical commandments, borne out in struggle and study, not in blind observance. At the very heart of the matter is an obligation to the other, to the dispossessed, and to the forgotten, an obligation that, as Lévy vividly recounts, he has sought to embody over decades of championing “lost causes,” from Bosnia to Africa’s forgotten wars, from Libya to the Kurdish Peshmerga’s desperate fight against the Islamic State, a battle raging as we speak. Lévy offers a fresh, surprising critique of a new and stealthy form of anti-Semitism on the rise as well as a provocative defense of Israel from the left. He reveals the overlooked Jewish roots of Western democratic ideals and confronts the current Islamist threat while intellectually dismantling it. Jews are not a “chosen people,” Lévy explains, but a “treasure” whose spirit must continue to inform moral thinking and courage today. Lévy’s most passionate book, and in many ways his most personal, The Genius of Judaism is a great, profound, and hypnotic intellectual reckoning—indeed a call to arms—by one of the keenest and most insightful writers in the world. Praise for The Genius of Judaism “In The Genius of Judaism, Lévy elaborates on his credo by rebutting the pernicious and false logic behind current anti-Semitism and defends Israel as the world’s most successful multi-ethnic democracy created from scratch. Lévy also makes the case for France’s Jews being integral to the establishment of the French nation, the French language, and French literature. And last, but certainly not least, he presents a striking interpretation of the Book of Jonah. . . . A tour de force.”—Forbes “Ardent . . . Lévy’s message is essentially uplifting: that the brilliant scholars of Judaism, the authors of the Talmud, provide elucidation into ‘the great questions that have stirred humanity since the dawn of time.’ . . . A philosophical celebration of Judaism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Lévy (Left in Dark Times), a prominent French journalist and politically engaged philosopher, turns his observations inward here, pondering the teachings of Judaism and the role they have played in contemporary European history as well as in his own life and intellectual inquiry. . . . [Lévy’s] musings on the meaning of the story of Jonah and the relevance of symbolic Ninevahs in our time are both original and poetic. . . . A welcome addition to his oeuvre.”—Publishers Weekly

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

258

Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812982517

ISBN 13

9780812982510

Public Enemies

Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy,Michel Houellebecq

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Public Enemies

Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy,Michel Houellebecq

The international publishing sensation is now available in the United States—two brilliant, controversial authors confront each other and their enemies in an unforgettable exchange of letters. In one corner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, creator of the classic Barbarism with a Human Face, dismissed by the media as a wealthy, self-promoting, arrogant do-gooder. In the other, Michel Houellebecq, bestselling author of The Elementary Particles, widely derided as a sex-obsessed racist and misogynist. What began as a secret correspondence between bitter enemies evolved into a remarkable joint personal meditation by France’s premier literary and political live wires. An instant international bestseller, Public Enemies has now been translated into English for all lovers of superb insights, scandalous opinions, and iconoclastic ideas. In wicked, wide-ranging, and freewheeling letters, the two self-described “whipping boys” debate whether they crave disgrace or secretly have an insane desire to please. Lévy extols heroism in the face of tyranny; Houellebecq sees himself as one who would “fight little and badly.” Lévy says “life does not ‘live’” unless he can write; Houellebecq bemoans work as leaving him in such “a state of nervous exhaustion that it takes several bottles of alcohol to get out.” There are also touching and intimate exchanges on the existence of God and about their own families. Dazzling, delightful, and provocative, Public Enemies is a death match between literary lions, remarkable men who find common ground, confident that, in the end (as Lévy puts it), “it is we who will come out on top.”

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

321

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1588369196

ISBN 13

9781588369192

Left in Dark Times

A Stand Against the New Barbarism

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Left in Dark Times

A Stand Against the New Barbarism

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

In this unprecedented critique, Bernard-Henri Lévy revisits his political roots, scrutinizes the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those on the horizon, and argues powerfully for a new political and moral vision for our times. Are human rights Western or universal? Does anti-Semitism have a future, and, if so, what will it look like? And how is it that progressives themselves–those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism–have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes: an unthinking loathing of Israel; an obsessive anti-Americanism; an idea of “tolerance” that, in its justification of Islamic fanaticism, for example, could become the “cemetery of democracies”; and an indifference, masked by relativism, to the greatest human tragedies facing the world today? At a time of ideological and political transition in America, Left in Dark Times articulates the threats we all face–in many cases without our even being aware of it–and offers a powerful new vision for progressives everywhere.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

258

Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812974727

ISBN 13

9780812974720

The Empire and the Five Kings

America's Abdication and the Fate of the World

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Empire and the Five Kings

America's Abdication and the Fate of the World

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

One of the West’s leading intellectuals offers a provocative look at America’s withdrawal from world leadership and the rising powers who seek to fill the vacuum left behind. The United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western worldand to oppose autocracy and repression. Even when America did not live up to its ideals, it still recognized their importance, at home and abroad. But as Bernard-Henri Lévy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence. Lévy shows how these five—Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism—are taking steps to undermine the liberal values that have been a hallmark of Western civilization. The Empire and the Five Kings is a cri de coeur that draws upon lessons from history and the eternal touchstones of human culture to reveal the stakes facing the West as America retreats from its leadership role, a process that did not begin with Donald Trump's presidency and is not likely to end with him. The crisis is one whose roots can be found as far back as antiquity and whose resolution will require the West to find a new way forward if its principles and values are to survive. As seen on Real Time with Bill Maher (2/22/2019) and Fareed Zakaria GPS (2/17/2019).

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

139

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250203023

ISBN 13

9781250203021

Israel Alone

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Israel Alone

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Israel Alone is a passionate and outraged cri-de-coeur, about the loneliness of Israel and the tragedy of October 7, starting with Lévy’s eyewitness account the day after the pogroms. On October 8, 2024, Bernard-Henri Lévy flew to Israel to bear witness to the unprecedented invasion and massacre committed by Hamas. Israel Alone begins here and weaves in Lévy’s fifty years on the ground in Israel, from his first trip in 1967, his experiences writing on all the conflicts since, and his participation in various peace plans and contacts with all the Israeli leaders from Menachem Begin to Shimon Peres and from Ariel Sharon to Yitzak Shamir and Yitzak Rabin. From his unique philosophical and humanist perspective, Lévy analyzes the ultimate evil unleashed on Israel on October 7 and delves into how the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russia, radical Islamist groups, Turkey, and China have played roles and profited from this tragedy. The book addresses how October 7, though historic in scope, became, within weeks, a “detail” in the global consciousness amid a worldwide eruption of anti-Semitism, cloaked in anti-Zionism. Lévy deconstructs the arguments of those calling for a “cease-fire now” without the release of all hostages and of those who demand that October 7 be seen within a greater “context.” Lévy’s meditation on the soul of Zionism and Israel shows why this war is existential, not only for Israel but for the global West. And yet, despite the urgency and critical nature of this war, Israel takes it on alone. Lévy analyzes, today, why this is so and why Israel’s solitude is greater than ever.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

125

Publisher

Wicked Son

Published Date

ISBN 13

9798888457849

American Vertigo

Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

American Vertigo

Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

304

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307430626

ISBN 13

9780307430625

Sartre

The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century

By: Bernard-Henri Levy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Sartre

The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century

By: Bernard-Henri Levy

‘A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.’ This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Lévy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre’s complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Lévy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Lévy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century’s catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

536

Publisher

Blackwell Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

074563009X

ISBN 13

9780745630090

The Virus in the Age of Madness

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Virus in the Age of Madness

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

A trenchant look at how the coronavirus reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around the world. In this sharp essay, world-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic—and what they tell us about ourselves. Drawing on the philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Lacan and Foucault, Lévy asks uncomfortable questions about reality and mythology: he rejects the idea that the virus is a warning from nature, the inevitable result of global capitalism; he questions the heroic status of doctors, asking us to think critically about the loci of authority and power; he challenges the panicked polarization that dominates online discourse. Lucid, incisive, and always original, Lévy takes a bird’s-eye view of the most consequential historical event of our time and proposes a way to defend human society from threats to our collective future.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

127

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300257384

ISBN 13

9780300257380

The Will to See

Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Will to See

Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope

By: Bernard-Henri Lévy

An unflinching look at the most urgent humanitarian crises around the globe, from one of the world’s most daring philosopher-reporters “Call[s] on people not just to see the world, but to be moved and interested by what they find there, and to do something about it.”—Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic “Fierce and elegant, Lévy’s musings will be of profound interest to any reader of modern continental philosophy.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Over the past fifty years, renowned public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy has reported extensively on human rights abuses around the world. This new book follows the intrepid Lévy into eight international hotspots—in Nigeria; Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan; Ukraine; Somalia; Bangladesh; Lesbos, Greece; Libya; and Afghanistan—that have escaped global attention or active response. In a deeply personal introduction, Lévy recounts the intellectual journey that led him to advocacy, arguing that a truly humanist philosophy must necessarily lead to action in defense of the most vulnerable. In the second section, he reports on the eight investigative trips he undertook just before or during the coronavirus pandemic, from the massacred Christian villages in Nigeria to a dangerously fragile Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban talks, from an anti-Semitic ambush in Libya to the overrun refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. Part manifesto, part missives from the field, this new book is a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

208

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300260555

ISBN 13

9780300260557

Book's by Bernard-Henri Levy

The Genius of Judaism

The Genius of Judaism

Public Enemies

Public Enemies

Left in Dark Times

Left in Dark Times

The Empire and the Five Kings

The Empire and the Five Kings

Israel Alone

Israel Alone

American Vertigo

American Vertigo

Sartre

Sartre

The Virus in the Age of Madness

The Virus in the Age of Madness

The Will to See

The Will to See

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email