Alan Ryan, after decades at Princeton University, was warden of New College, University of Oxford, where he was a professor of political theory. He is the author of John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism and Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, among other works.
"With an unmatched magisterial command, Alan Ryan powerfully
reminds and teaches us how the leading thinkers since classic times
can and must inform our debates over how to envision the better
world we must build."
*Anthony W. Marx, President, New York Public Library*
"Alan Ryan has created a vision of the entire surge of Western
political thought which is equal to the heroic venture of George
Sabine, which I studied in my youth. Ryan demonstrates throughout
vivacity, and a tenacious grasp of the human meaning of everything
that has transpired in political speculation from the ancients on
through the threshhold of our own dark age. I commend particularly
his terse eloquence, his capacious erudition, and the verve and
judicious intensity with which he somehow allows his whole being to
inform his vast scope and deep concern of our human
limitations."
*Harold Bloom*
"In a work of astonishing scope and ambition, Alan Ryan, surveying
the whole vast field, concisely charts the welter of conflicting
positions and tracks the sometimes thrilling, sometimes
catastrophic consequences of political thought."
*Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became
Modern*
"If you want to understand why we think as we do, go back to the
ancient Greeks. Alan Ryan brilliantly explains why that is true—and
why it matters."
*Mary Beard, author of The Roman Triumph*
"Alan Ryan has taken a vast range of challenging material written
over twenty five centuries in the West and engaged with it in prose
of stunning clarity. He displays the intrinsic interest of
reflection on writers from Herodotus to yesterday, while showing
how it can be a powerful resource for dealing with politics today.
It is an amazing achievement to combine so much learning with such
lucidity."
*Anthony Appiah, author of Cosmopolitanism*
"In an age of specialization, we have lost much of the sense of the
sweep of the story of Western thinking about politics. In his new
book, Alan Ryan has recovered the greatness and deficiencies of
that experience. ...Written with an exceptional clarity and
presence of voice, Ryan’s book is the best comprehensive statement
of the achievements and failures of the Western liberal
tradition."
*Tracy B. Strong, UCSD Distinguished Professor, Political Science
Department, University of California, San Diego*
"In lucid, precise and accessible prose, Alan Ryan has written an
unparalleled guide for our times to the Western tradition of
political thought. From Herodotus through the Christian world and
the rise of modernity to our own time, readers will be stimulated
to reflect on historical, contemporary and perennial
questions."
*Steven Lukes, author of Power: A Radical View*
"Alan Ryan’s marvelous survey brings the major thinkers to the
table, orchestrating a provocative and enlightening conversation
across the centuries that offers fresh and illuminating
perspectives on perennial political problems. Scholars and engaged
citizens will delight in partaking of Ryan’s intellectual
feast."
*Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson’s Empire*
"Magisterial… In more than a thousand pages, Alan Ryan, a longtime
Oxford professor who now teaches at Princeton, undertakes to
introduce the reader to most of the major political thinkers in
Western history…The tensions of modern liberal democratic societies
are the intellectual motor of the book… Lively and intellectually
engaging… On Politics, like the great works of philosophy it
examines, constitutes a powerful brief against the unexamined
life."
*Adam Kirsch - New Yorker*
"Monumental… At the heart of the project is a belief that this
stuff matters, that the thinkers it revolves around—Plato,
Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx—remain relevant
and fresh… The book is a distillation of [Alan Ryan’s] thinking,
both intellectual and practical, and although it can be daunting,
the triumph is how, as Ryan takes us through the material, he makes
it so much more."
*David Ulin - Los Angeles Times*
"Starting with Herodotus and concluding with current debates over
the environment and humanitarian intervention, Alan Ryan covers an
extraordinary range of material with fluency and wisdom… As an
accessible introduction to the nature of political thought as well
as a guide to what is greatest exponents have argued, On Politics
could scarcely be bettered. …On Politics is an outstanding and
original work."
*Oliver Kamm - Times of London*
Those disillusioned and distressed by contemporary politics may find themselves renewed by turning to this book. They would certainly get the long view, in every sense, while immersing themselves in more than 1000 pages of Western political thought. Ryan (political theory, retired, Univ. of Oxford; The Making of Modern Liberalism) now presents reviewers with a difficulty: his prior works have already been described as "magisterial"-what word to use now? Perhaps best to quote the author himself, which the reviewer could happily do from any page. Here, for example, is Ryan on Karl Marx: "a frustrated academic with a professor's incapacity to finish anything properly, a man of many deep insights who was unable to complete any project before being distracted by the next." Thankfully, Ryan, to whom this book was first suggested as a project more than 30 years ago, possessed more discipline than Marx and has now finished this analytical overview-written with wit, grace, and lucidity-encompassing every major thinker since the Greeks on this eternally contentious human endeavor. VERDICT There is a danger that the publisher's boxed presentation of these two volumes will suggest simply a handsome object rather than a superb book that both general and academic readers will relish. Very highly recommended.-Robert Nardini, Niagara Falls, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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