If the trenches of the First World War were not enough to cast doubt upon the idea of progress' prospects, certainly Auschwitz and Hiroshima more than sufficed. The holdouts thereafter--those liberals and Marxists still upholding the Enlightenment
A policy consensus is emerging that stresses economic enrichment through open markets, allows for the inclusion of less developed countries with their acts together and seeks to alleviate or at least contain troubles in other parts of the world at
South Africa today, to paraphrase Marx, is haunted by a specter: the specter of the rest of Africa. This ghost hovers not only over whites, and over investors who are influenced by them, but over blacks as well.
The "park of fallen heroes" is the ironical name Muscovites have given to the patch of waste land across Krymsky Val from Gorky Park, where the statues of Soviet leaders are dumped.
An ambition, inordinate and immense, one of those ambitions whichcould only possibly spring in the bosoms of the oppressed, and couldonly find nourishment in the miseries of a whole nation, ferments inthe heart of the Russian people.
Itamar Rabinovich's The Brink of Peace is a masterly chronicle of the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations of 1993-96, in which Israel and Syria--and America--once staked so much hope.
James Ceaser's Reconstructing America locates the "real America" in the ideas and values of the Founders. But a purely political conception of America is inadequate.
Marton's qualifications to write a book about the Middle East are slightly higher than Bernadotte's were to make peace there, but in the end it comes to the same: two boy scouts setting up pup-tents in minefields.
