From Abraham Lincoln's stance on international slavery to George W. Bush's incursions on the world stage, American presidents and other leaders have taken decisive actions to shape our country's foreign policy. This new collection of essays provides analytical narratives of how and why policies were devised and implemented that would determine the place of the United States in the international arena from the 1860s to the present. Showing what individuals do-or choose not to do-is central to understanding diplomacy in peace and war. These writings-by such prominent historians as Terry H. Anderson and Eugene P. Trani-examine presidents and other diplomats at their best and worst in the practice of statecraft. They take on issues ranging from America's economic expansion abroad to the relations of democracies with authoritarian leaders and rogue nations to advocacy of such concepts as internationalism, unilateralism, nation building, and regime change. In so doing, they take readers on a virtual tour of American diplomatic history, tracing the ideas and actions of individuals in shaping our foreign policy, whether George F. Kennan as author of Soviet containment or Ronald Reagan as progenitor of "Star Wars." The essays range over a variety of scenarios to depict leaders coming to grips with real-world situations. They offer original views on such topics as American diplomacy toward Nicaragua, origins of U.S. attitudes toward Russia and the Soviet Union, FDR's idiosyncratic approach to statecraft, and food diplomacy as practiced by LBJ and Richard Nixon. And in considering post-Cold War crises, they address Bill Clinton's military interventions, George W. Bush's war against Iraq, and the half-century background to the current nuclear standoff with Iran. Additional articles pay tribute to the outstanding career of Robert H. Ferrell as a scholar and teacher. Throughout the volume, the authors seek to exemplify the scholarly standards of narrative diplomatic history espoused by Robert Ferrell-especially the notion that historians should attempt to explain fully the circumstances, opportunities, and pressures that influence foreign policy decisions while remembering that historical actors cannot with certainty predict the outcomes of their actions. Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals is both a collection of compelling historical studies and an overarching case study of the role of individuals in foreign policy making and an insightful review of some of history's most important moments. Taken together, these essays provide a fitting tribute to Ferrell, the trailblazing scholar in whose honor the book was written.
This book is both a personal and a philosophical autobiography of Robert S. Hartman, the creator of formal axiology. After experiencing first-hand the horrible effects of World War I and the beginnings of Nazism in Germany, Hartman wondered what could be done to organize goodness instead of badness - for a change. First, the concept of good must be defined. Next, different kinds of goodness, like intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic, must be differentiated. Then this understanding must be used to comprehend and to change the world, including its economic, political, military, religious, educational, intellectual, and psychological dimensions. By telling his own story, Hartman gives his readers a glimpse of the form of the good and of a much better world.
The final volume of the Taft papers This fourth and final volume of a selected edition of the papers of Robert A. Taft documents Taft's post-World War II and congressional experiences until his death in 1953. Regardless of his conservative commitments, Taft saw the need for responsible reform. In the immediate postwar years, he recognized the need for federal aid to education, for social welfare legislation that assisted the poor, and for federal support for public housing. Out of political necessity, Taft became more partisan as the 1950 senatorial campaign approached, convinced he had to win reelection in Ohio by a large margin if he was to establish himself as a frontrunner in the primary campaign for the 1952 presidential election. Moderate Republicans spurned Taft and doubted that the serious, partisan senator could successfully head a national ticket. His support, nevertheless, was essential to the 1952 Eisenhower presidential campaign. Taft's service as Senate majority leader proved indispensable to President Eisenhower during the early months of his first term, helping the president navigate the byways of the nation's capital. Even after his diagnosis of cancer in April 1953, he continued to work at his senatorial duties until he died in July 1953. This volume completes the contribution that The Papers of Robert A. Taft provides to the study of United States political and diplomatic history, Ohio history, and conservative political theory.
Available for the first time in paperback, The Strange Deaths of President Harding challenges readers to reexamine Warren G. Harding's rightful place in American history. For nearly half a century, the twenty-ninth president of the United States has consistently finished last in polls ranking the presidents. After Harding's untimely death in 1923, a variety of attacks and unsubstantiated claims left the public with a tainted impression of him. In this meticulously researched scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, Robert H. Ferrell, distinguished presidential historian, examines the claims against this unpopular president and uses new material to counter those accusations. At the time of Harding's death there was talk of his similarity, personally if not politically, to Abraham Lincoln. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes described Harding as one of nature's noblemen, truehearted and generous. But soon after Harding's death, his reputation began to spiral downward. Rumors circulated of the president's death by poison, either by his own hand or by that of his wife; allegations of an illegitimate daughter were made; and question were raised concerning the extent of Harding's knowledge of the Teapot Dome scandal and of irregularities in the Veterans' Bureau, as well as his tolerance of a corrupt attorney general who was an Ohio political fixer. Journalists and historians of the time added to his tarnished reputation by using sources that were easily available but not factually accurate. In The Strange Deaths of President Harding, Ferrell lays out the facts behind these allegations for the reader to ponder. Making the most of the recently opened papers of assistant White House physician Dr. Joel T. Boone, Ferrell shows that for years Harding suffered from high blood pressure, was under a great deal of stress, and overexerted himself; it was a heart attack that caused his death, not poison. There was no proof of an illegitimate child. And Harding did not know much about the scandals intensifying in the White House at the time of his death. In fact, these events were not as scandalous as they have since been made to seem. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, as well as the deathblows dealt his reputation by journalists, Ferrell asks for a reexamination of Harding's place in American history.
In this collection honoring Robert A. Koch, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, eight of his former students employ a variety of methods to investigate topics in Northern Renaissance art and society. Drawing on approaches as disparate as archival research and mycology, these papers reflect the richly varied modes of inquiry currently being pursued in Northern Renaissance studies. Cryptic iconography is unveiled by Gregory Clark, who examines sinister plant symbolism in Bosch, and by Charles Minott, who detects significant patterns in the painted and carved scenes of the Baerze-Broederlam altarpiece. Lynn Jacobs draws on contemporary documents to construct a detailed account of the commissioning of Early Netherlandish carved altarpieces, while David Farmer provides a wide- ranging study of evolving workshop practices in the atelier of Bernard van Orley. Images with both theological and social implications are the subjects of Craig Harbison's reading of the sexuality of Christ in a print by Burgkmair, and of Dorothy Limouze's study of the reception of prints by Jan Sadeler and Joos van Winghe in Catholic and Protestant milieus. John Hand introduces a Saint Jerome in His Study, attributing it to Joos van Cleve and placing it in the broader context of van Cleve's images of Jerome; and the late Burr Wallen investigates the meaning and influence of the concepts of gloire and vaine gloire within the Burgundian chivalric ethos.
For the Introductin by Robert Holt: Late in July 2011, I had an unexpected call from Arnold D. Richards, an old acquaintance. He asked if I happened to have any unpublished papers on psychoanalysis; if so, he offered to make them available to their most likely audience through International Psychoanalysis. It happened that, for about a year, I had been trying to find a publisher for a collection of letters between David Rapaport and me during his final 12 years (1948-1960). When I mentioned that to Dr. Richards, he at once expressed interest, and at last here we are. How vividly these letters helped me relive twelve years of some of the most intellectually stimulating experiences of my life I felt the obligation to share them with any interested colleagues, especially because Rapaport had been in the most productive years of his psychoanalytic scholarship. Many of our exchanges give an insight into his way of working, of thinking through difficult issues by discussion. Those who knew him well were aware of the many drafts his papers would go through, but few of us were privy to his ways of working ideas out, making them at once more subtle and clearer. The letters also display Rapaport as a critic, a mentor and teacher, as he sent me his critiques of my various attempts, often to follow in his footsteps and at times to branch out on my own. He set the example of close reading, responding empathically as well as unsparingly in pointing out difficulties, lapses in reasoning, omissions of relevant data or of treatments of apposite points in the literature. Though he never succeeded in writing English like one born to it, he was a fine critic of grammatical and rhetorical lapses--as the reader will soon see. I did my best not only to meet his criticism but to learn from it his style and technique of editing and advising, and to apply that learning to the drafts that he sent me.
This third volume in the series documents Robert A. Taft's experiences through World War II and his early postwar years. After winning a tough reelection battle as senator from Ohio in 1944, Taft moved steadily upward in the leadership ranks of his party and assumed a preeminent position among the bipartisan group of conservatives that increasingly dominated Congress. Taft was most widely known for his leadership of the postwar effort to revise federal labor law. In 1947 he cosponsored the Taft-Hartley Act, the single most important piece of labor legislation passed in the aftermath of World War II. These amendments to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act defined unfair union practices, banned closed shops, and authorized court injunctions that would delay strikes that harmed national security by imposing an eighty-day cooling-off period. In the immediate postwar years Taft recognized the need for federal aid to education, social welfare legislation that assisted the poor, and federal support for public housing. The senator campaigned vigorously for education-assistance legislation (which failed to pass the House of Representatives) and cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housi
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