A perennial best-seller, this critical anthology introduces students to influential concepts, enabling them to analyze and understand the major crises of our time. A unique mix of classic and contemporary essays, this thought-provoking text covers the entire field of comparative politics. A review panel of political scientists drawn from the most prestigious universities in China singled out Brown's Comparative Politics as 'a classic of the literature of the West,' calling it 'the most famous work in the field.' Special attention in the new edition is given to issues and trends brought to the fore by the attacks of 9/11: clash and dialogue of civilizations, with reference notably to Islamism; the impact of modernization/globalization on the traditional state; and the growing uncertainties of democratization in post-communist systems and developing countries.

'A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.' This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Levy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Levy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings.

La sua vita comincia con un «mormorio di vento leggero» e si conclude nell'uragano di un amore divorante: questa è Teresa di Lisieux, uno dei più grandi geni della spiritualità cristiana. Proclamata dottore della Chiesa nel 1997, da più di un secolo - in una costante ammirazione per le sue virtù - nove papi e milioni di fedeli l'amano in profondità. E tuttavia il suo pensiero resta ancora misconosciuto. Perché? Che bilancio possiamo fare del secolo che si è appena concluso? Potrà la promulgazione del dottorato di Teresa inaugurare un nuovo periodo per la teologia cristiana? La santa aveva sperimentato in prima persona che cosa significa il ferro portato a incandescenza, quello dei due abissi che ogni persona incontra: la sua libertà e un interlocutore che si chiama Dio.

L'autore, domenicano, da cinquant'anni studioso degli scritti e della spiritualità di Santa Teresa, ricostruisce la figura, la vita e la spiritualità della santa, illuminandola con aspetti nuovi e originali. Il libro esce in occasione del primo centenario della morte della santa e, nella prospettiva che essa venga dichiarata 'Dottore della Chiesa', ne mette in risalto la sua fede e il suo insegnamento sui grandi temi della libertà, della Provvidenza, di Dio, della sofferenza e dell'amore.

Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought reflects the present transitory nature of rhetoric and society. Its purpose is to relate the rhetorical theory and critical approaches of American critic Kenneth Burke to four major European philosophers - Jurgen Habermas, Ernesto Grassi, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida - as they discuss the nature of language and its central role in society.
Supporting transitory forces in society, all these thinkers reject traditional, scientific, objective, reductionist thought and point to language or symbols as the basis for understanding experience and knowledge. Burke, Habermas, and Grassi approach language by establishing global theories.
In contrast to these global approaches, Foucault and Derrida attack language and the human situation microscopically. Michel Foucault examines 'discursive practices' to discover relationships among the concepts of rhetoric, knowledge, and power. Derrida focuses on the methods of difference and deconstruction because he believes human beings are trapped by their own language, which inherently carries multiple meanings that need to be unpacked or deconstructed.

In questo libro incontriamo il Curato d'Ars non solo come l'eroe di austerità sorprendenti, ma innanzitutto come il confidente dell'essenziale, colui che consola, colui che ascolta il più vicino, colui che dà vita alle note musicali più segrete che abitano in tutti noi perché lui stesso era investito e posseduto da una tenerezza: quella di Dio per l'umanità.