{"title":"Books by David Bromwich","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781598537314","title":"On Lying and Politics","description":"\u003cb\u003eMore urgent than ever, two landmark essays by the legendary political theorist on the greatest threat to democracy, gathered with a new introduction by David Bromwich\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No one,” Hannah Arendt observed, “has ever counted truthfulness as a political virtue.” But why do politicians lie? What is the relationship between political lies and self-delusion? And how much organized deceit can a democracy endure before it ceases to function?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFifty years ago, the century’s greatest political theorist turned her focus to these essential questions in two seminal essays, brought together here for the first time. Her conclusions, delivered in searching prose that crackles with insight and intelligence, remain powerfully relevant, perhaps more so today than when they were written.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn “Truth and Politics,” Arendt explores the affinity between lying and politics, and reminds us that the survival of factual truth depends on the testimony of credible witnesses and on an informed citizenry. She shows how our shared sense of reality—the texture of facts in which we wrap our daily lives—can be torn apart by organized lying, replaced with a fantasy world of airbrushed evidence and doctored documents. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn “Lying in Politics,” written in response to the release of the Pentagon Papers, Arendt applies these insights to an analysis of American policy in Southeast Asia, arguing that the real goal of the Vietnam War—and of the official lies used to justify it by successive administrations—was nothing other than the burnishing of America’s image.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his introduction, David Bromwich (\u003ci\u003eAmerican Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us)\u003c\/i\u003e engages with Arendt’s essays in the context of her other writings and underscores their clarion call to take seriously the ever-present threat to democracy posed by lying.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43206197903538,"sku":"9781598537314","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781598537314_864a5469-a26a-4857-b769-c6223dbd0200.jpg?v=1786023469"},{"product_id":"9781598538465","title":"On Democracy","description":"\u003cb\u003eGathered together for the first time, Walt Whitman's urgently needed prose writings on the democratic spirit and the soul of the nation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e12 short works encapsulate the American Bard's fiery passions and timeless wisdom for today.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere for the first time in a convenient pocket edition are all of Walt Whitman’s essential prose writings on democracy, including his unforgettable reflections on the roots on American division, the fearful legacy of the Civil War, and shining example of Abraham Lincoln. Few writers have been as harsh in their condemnation of America’s sins and spiritual shortcomings or as abiding in his faith in democratic ideals as Whitman. His clarion voice speaks to us with renewed urgency today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGathered here are:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e“The Eighteenth Presidency!,” written during the 1856 presidential campaign, in which Whitman expresses his rage over the immediate prospects for American democracy\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eDemocratic Vistas\u003c\/i\u003e (1871), in which he dramatizes his role as poet-prophet of a better America\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe searing essay “Origins of Attempted Secession” \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eand shorter extracts on democracy from the classic book \u003ci\u003eSpecimen Days \u003c\/i\u003e(1882)\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his introduction, acclaimed political observer David Bromwich examines Whitman’s political prose writings and highlights why they matter today.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369042555253,"sku":"9781598538465","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781598538465_ce97e89c-872e-4476-baab-21fb7d2ddb3a.jpg?v=1786023495"},{"product_id":"the-fight","title":"The Fight","description":"\u003cb\u003eA lively, wide-ranging collection of writing by nineteenth-century luminary William Hazlitt—a pioneering art and theatre critic, a radical political commentator, and one of the English language’s greatest essayists.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man: but I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and I have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf the great writers of the English Romantic age, William Hazlitt comes closest to the modern sensibility. A dissident in politics, a radical commentator on the discontents of the Regency years, he was also an admired theatre and art critic, and a generous appreciator of the new poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, and others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Bromwich—the author of \u003ci\u003eHazlitt: The Mind of a Critic\u003c\/i\u003e—has selected the best of Hazlitt’s essays to represent the continuous strength and inventiveness of his prose. This volume includes familiar essays such as “On the Pleasure of Painting” and “On the Pleasure of Hating,” as well as Hazlitt’s memoir of his early encounters with Coleridge and Wordsworth, “My First Acquaintance with Poets.” Here, too, are his inimitable sketches of Shakespeare’s characters, and sharply rendered portraits of contemporaries such as Jeremy Bentham, William Godwin, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57513442869621,"sku":"9798896230267","price":21.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9798896230267.jpg?v=1787220196"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-david-bromwich.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}