When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995-2010 - Hardcover

Judt, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594206007 ISBN 13: 9781594206009

Publisher: Penguin Pr, 2015

Synopsis

In an age in which the lack of independent public intellectuals has often been sorely lamented, the historian Tony Judt played a rare and valuable role, bringing together history and current events, Europe and America, what was and what is with what should be. In "When the Facts Change," Tony Judt s widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last fifteen years of Judt s life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt s concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11; and issues of social inclusion and social justice in an age of increasing inequality. Judt was at once most at home and in a state of what he called internal exile from his native England, from Europe, and from America, and he finally settled in New York between them all. He was a historian of the twentieth century acutely aware of the dangers of ethnic exceptionalism, and if he was shaped by anything, it was the Jewish past and his own secularism. His essays on Israel ignited a firestorm debate for their forthright criticisms of Israeli government polices relating to the Palestinians and the occupied territories. Those crucial pieces are published here in book form for the first time, including an essay, never previously published, called What Is to Be Done? These pieces are suffused with a deep compassion for the Israeli dilemma, a compassion that instilled in Judt a sense of responsibility to speak out and try to find a better path, away from what he saw as a road to ruin. "When the Facts Change" also contains Judt s homages to the culture heroes who were some of his greatest inspirations: Amos Elon, Francois Furet, Leszek Kolakowski, and perhaps above all Albert Camus, who never accepted the complacent view that the pro

About this title

Review:

"Mark Mazower, Financial Times"
"Tony Judt was a historian whose journalism includes some of the finest things he wrote... In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, his essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip."
"Samuel Moyn, The New York Times Book Review"
"Scintillating journalism... This collection is a reminder of Judt's clear mind and prose and, as Homans says in her lovely introduction, his fidelity to hard facts and to honest appraisal of the modern scene.... No wonder this book, and Judt's assumption of the role of political critic after the Cold War, remain so relevant."
--Tony Judt

Mark Mazower, "Financial Times"
"Tony Judt was a historian whose journalism includes some of the finest things he wrote... In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, his essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip."
Samuel Moyn, "The New York Times Book Review"
"Scintillating journalism... This collection is a reminder of Judt's clear mind and prose and, as Homans says in her lovely introduction, his fidelity to hard facts and to honest appraisal of the modern scene.... No wonder this book, and Judt's assumption of the role of political critic after the Cold War, remain so relevant."

Mark Mazower, "Financial Times"
Tony Judt was a historian whose journalism includes some of the finest things he wrote... In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, his essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip.
Samuel Moyn, "The New York Times Book Review"
Scintillating journalism... This collection is a reminder of Judt s clear mind and prose and, as Homans says in her lovely introduction, his fidelity to hard facts and to honest appraisal of the modern scene.... No wonder this book, and Judt s assumption of the role of political critic after the Cold War, remain so relevant. "

Mark Mazower, Financial Times
Tony Judt was a historian whose journalism includes some of the finest things he wrote... In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, his essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip.
Samuel Moyn, The New York Times Book Review
Scintillating journalism... This collection is a reminder of Judt s clear mind and prose and, as Homans says in her lovely introduction, his fidelity to hard facts and to honest appraisal of the modern scene.... No wonder this book, and Judt s assumption of the role of political critic after the Cold War, remain so relevant. "

Book Description:

A great thinker's final testament: a characteristically wise and forthright collection of essays from the author of Postwar and Thinking the Twentieth Century, spanning a career of extraordinary intellectual engagement. Edited and introduced by Jennifer Homans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Pr
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1594206007
• ISBN 13: 9781594206009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386
• Editor: Homans Jennifer