Background
Mazlish, Bruce was born on September 15, 1923 in New York City. Son of Louis and Lee (Reuben) Mazlish.
( "Civilization" is a constantly invoked term. It is used...)
"Civilization" is a constantly invoked term. It is used by both politicians and scholars. How useful, in fact, is this term? Civilization and Its Contents traces the origins of the concept in the eighteenth century. It shows its use as a colonial ideology, and then as a support for racism. The term was extended to a dead society, Egyptian civilization, and was appropriated by Japan, China, and Islamic countries. This latter development lays the groundwork for the contemporary call for a "dialogue of civilizations." The author proposes instead that today the use of the term "civilization" has a global meaning, with local variants recognized as cultures. It may be more appropriate, however, to abandon the name "civilization" and to focus on a new understanding of the civilizing process.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804750831/?tag=2022091-20
( In this book of absorbing stories, Bruce Mazlish illumi...)
In this book of absorbing stories, Bruce Mazlish illuminates the lives of intellectual and political leaders with the penetrating light of psychohistory and in doing so illuminates our own lives as well. A pioneer in this field, Mazlish demonstrates that study of the origins of leaders—their personal history—can help us understand their work, and that only in a study of their context, can we grasp their impact on events. Mazlish brings the insights of psychoanalysis to bear on a wide spectrum of leaders, beginning with those who created the theories of psychoanalysis: Darwin, who began to uncover the story of the human species; Freud, whose theory of individual behavior was rooted in Darwin’s evolutionary biology; and Nietzsche, whose philosophy can be seen as a precursor to Freud. He studies intellectual leaders whose work stimulated political change: Marx, who inspired a revolution and "a great secular religion"; Thoreau, who fantasized independence within a dependent life; Jevons, whose economic theories reflected a private tension between ambition and duty; and Weber, a man of reason and passion, whose theories emerged from personal traumas. A section on political leadership examines polar opposites: the raging mystic but opportunist Khomeini; and Orwell, whose hatred for totalitarianism was less fierce than his passive fear. A final section on the psychohistory of groups focuses on the United States, exploring the polarities of American life, its light-dark dichotomies. Mazlish finds that these ambivalences explain "the American psyche"—from the Puritan’s melancholy conscience and Washington’s sense of parental betrayal that compelled a break with the father-mother country to Nixon’s uncritical self-righteousness and his conviction of being always under attack.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412851858/?tag=2022091-20
(Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel Pa...)
Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel PaperbackJacob Bronowski (Author) Bruce Mazlish (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GRO3Q0/?tag=2022091-20
( Who was the real Richard Nixon and why did he behave th...)
Who was the real Richard Nixon and why did he behave the way he did? In this innovative work, a distinguished historian, trained in psychoanalysis, unravels the riddle of Nixon’s singularly opaque political personality. Neither a political biography nor a clinical psychoanalysis, at the time of its initial publication, In Search of Nixon launched a new genre of scholarship—the “psycho-historical inquiry.” Bruce Mazlish offers insight into the subtle interplay between Nixon the man and Nixon the public figure. Why, for example, did Nixon have such personal difficulties in making decisions? Knowing how the young Nixon learned to cope with the problems of his childhood, what can we infer about his unpredictable decisions on Communist China, inflation, and the Supreme Court? Mazlish applies psychoanalysis to history in order to understand Nixon’s behavior, decisions, and political stance. He explains why Nixon characteristically projected personal crises onto the political arena—as in the famous Checkers speech, or in the Haynsworth-Carswell affair. And he examines why, conversely, political questions such as pacifism, abortion, and subversion had a peculiarly personal meaning for him. Renewed interest in Nixon, coupled with publication of a number of major books on this enigmatic figure, makes publication of this new paperback edition especially timely.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140217711/?tag=2022091-20
( The story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the ...)
The story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the great dramas of the 19thcentury. In the tense yet loving struggle of this extraordinarily influential father and son, we can see the genesis of evolution of Liberal ideas-about love, sex, and women, wealth and work, authority and rebellion-which ushered in the modern age. The result of more than a decade of research and reflection, this is a study of the relationship between James Mill, the self-made utilitarian philosopher who tried (with only partial success) to shape his son in his own image. Mazlish integrates psychology and intellectual history as part of his larger and continuing effort to spur deeper understanding of the character, limitations, and possibilities of the social sciences. John Stuart Mill’s rebellion against a joyless, loveless upbringing, one in strict accordance with the principles of Utilitarianism, was rooted ina powerful Oedipal struggle against his father’s authority. Mazlish describes this rebellion as playing an important role in the genesis of classical nineteenth century liberalism. Behind this intellectual development were the women in Mills’ life: Harriet the mother, never mentioned by her son in his autobiography, and Harriet Taylor, with whom Mill lived in a scandalous, if chaste, ménage a trois. It was this long relationship which informed his famous essay “The Subjection of Women,” one of the most eloquent feminist statements ever written. A work of brilliant historical research and psychological insights, James and John Stuart Mill shows how the nineteenth-century struggle of fathers and sons shaped the social transformation of society.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465036309/?tag=2022091-20
( The result of a lifetime of research and contemplation ...)
The result of a lifetime of research and contemplation on global phenomena, this book explores the idea of humanity in the modern age of globalization. Tracking the idea in the historical, philosophical, legal, and political realms, this is a concise and illuminating look at a concept that has defined the twentieth century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0230611621/?tag=2022091-20
( From a distinguished author in the field, The New Globa...)
From a distinguished author in the field, The New Global History is a critical inquiry into the historical process of globalization, which is seen as a distinctly twentieth century phenomenon with its roots in the age of expansion of the early modern world. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, The New Global History offers a fresh, overarching view of the process of globalization that is always empirically based and discusses the most important themes, such as policy, trade, cultural imperialism and warfare. Bruce Mazlish argues that globalization is not something that the West has imposed upon the rest of the world, but the result of the interplay of many factors across continents. Students of history, politics and international studies, will all find this a valuable resource in the pursuit of their studies.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415409217/?tag=2022091-20
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back guarantee.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012YTDANI/?tag=2022091-20
(Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, p...)
Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical and of computer robots being programmed to think. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons and discusses ideas of previous centuries and of individuals on this subject.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300054114/?tag=2022091-20
(What makes this book stand out is the way in which Mazlis...)
What makes this book stand out is the way in which Mazlish situates sociology in the broader context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century social thought. This is the most interesting treatment I have read of how there came to be a felt need for sociology, of how a place was created in the intellectual firmament for this new science. -Craig Calhoun, University of North Carolina"At a time of the breakdown of sociology, or at least the virtual loss of the idea of historicity within the discipline, this examination of the birth of sociology can provide valuable insight into the current condition no less than the glorious antecedents of a major field of social research. . . . A New Science does a great deal to explain how the field of sociology comes to reject connections, and celebrate distinctions: distinctions of class, race, nationality, and the like. And in the extended discussions of Marx, Durkheim, Toennies (who is especially deserving and often ignored in the great chain of European sociological beings) and Weber, we get a word picture of some genuine substance and innovation." -Irving Louis Horowitz, History of European Ideas"Although numerous able interpreters have attempted syntheses of the sociological tradition, Mazlish is the first to search so boldly for its ultimate intentions. . . . Beginning students will find this a stimulating, wittily written introduction to the history of sociology." -Harry Liebersohn, American Historical Review"An accessible, fascinating, erudite, and provocative tour de force with a memorable, even gripping, conclusion. It is a must for both college and general libraries." -Choice
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0271025875/?tag=2022091-20
(From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to current films like Th...)
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to current films like The Terminator about menacing androids, writers have expressed concern about computers and biogenetic creations taking over or altering human life. In this engrossing and lively book, Bruce Mazlish discusses the complex relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical (our bodies increasingly hooked up to artificial parts), and of computer robots being programmed to think. Mazlish argues that just as Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud overturned our illusions of separation from and domination over the cosmos, the animal world, and the unconscious, it is now necessary to relinquish a fourth fallacy or discontinuity--that humans are discontinuous and distinct from the machines they make. Drawing on history and legend, science and science fiction, Mazlish examines how events and individuals have shaped the ways that humans relate to machines. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons (forerunners of the robot); he discusses the seventeenth-century debate over what was called the "animal machine"; he shows how the Industrial Revolution created a truly mechanical civilization; he looks at what thinkers such as Descartes, Linnaeus, Darwin, Freud, Pavlov, Charles Babbage, T.H. Huxley, and Samuel Butler contributed to our understanding of human nature as contrasted with animal or machine; and he surveys the modern revolutions in biogenetics and computer and brain sciences that have brought humans and machines closer together than ever before. Mazlish argues provocatively that human nature is best understood in the context of the machines and tools we have created and that humans and our creations-computer robots-will eventually evolve into two new species coexisting in a symbiotic relationship.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300065124/?tag=2022091-20
(The Great Speculators are those historians who, rather th...)
The Great Speculators are those historians who, rather than concentrating on one period and amassing the facts limited to that period, see in history the workins of a large system that can be applied to all times and all peoples.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J0KO70/?tag=2022091-20
( Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern time...)
Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern times—from Robespierre to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung—so often been ascetics, austere "puritans" with few emotional ties? What functions, political as well as personal, do these ascetic traits perform for the modern revolutionary leader and for his followers? Noted historian and author Bruce Mazlish is convinced that, beginning in the nineteenth century, the needs of modernizing revolutions have produced a distinct new type of political leader, the revolutionary ascetic. This individual’s denial of personal pleasures and commitments both enables him to perform politically necessary, if personally repulsive, revolutionary acts, and to command the allegiance of his more worldly followers. Starting with Cromwell and the religious ascetics of the Puritan Revolution, Mazlish shows, in a series of fascinating personality sketches, how this asceticism first became secularized with the French Revolution and then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was put to the service of a new kind of "total" modernizing revolution in Russia, China, and elsewhere. In two remarkably vivid portraits of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, Mazlish shows us precisely how two of the century’s best-known revolutionaries consciously and unconsciously used their personal asceticism to induce revolutionary change.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412852986/?tag=2022091-20
Mazlish, Bruce was born on September 15, 1923 in New York City. Son of Louis and Lee (Reuben) Mazlish.
Bachelor of Arts, Columbia University, 1944; Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1947; Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1955.
Instructor history, U. Maine, 1946-1948; instructor history, Columbia University, 1949-1950; instructor history, Massachusetts Institute Technology, 1950-1953; director, American School in Madrid, Spain, 1953-1955; member of faculty, Massachusetts Institute Technology, since 1955; professor of history, Massachusetts Institute Technology, since 1965; chairman history section, Massachusetts Institute Technology, 1965-1970; head department humanities, Massachusetts Institute Technology, 1974-1979.
( Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern time...)
(In this book Mazlish examines the historical origins of s...)
( From a distinguished author in the field, The New Globa...)
(The Great Speculators are those historians who, rather th...)
( Who was the real Richard Nixon and why did he behave th...)
( In this book of absorbing stories, Bruce Mazlish illumi...)
(From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to current films like Th...)
(Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, p...)
(What makes this book stand out is the way in which Mazlis...)
( The result of a lifetime of research and contemplation ...)
(Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel Pa...)
(Traces the development of thought through historical move...)
( The story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the ...)
( "Civilization" is a constantly invoked term. It is used...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Paperback in good shape. Text is unmarked. I am liquidati...)
(Book by Mazlish, Bruce)
(. dw, 1976, 330pp)
Board directors Rockefeller Family Fund, 1987-1997. Vice president Mount Desert Festival of Chamber Music, since 1985. Board directors Toynbee Prize Foundation, since 1992, president, 1997—2006.
Member governor board Rockefeller Archives Center, 1999-2005. Served with infantry and Office of Strategic Services, Army of the United States, 1943-1945. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences Clubs: Cambridge Tennis, Badminton and Tennis.
Harbor (Seal Harbor, Maine).
Married Neva Goodwin, November 22, 1988. Children from previous marriage: Cordelia, Peter, Anthony, Jared.