Intellectual Warfare

This book uncovers the problems that Western education poses for people of African descent. It re-establishes the importance of African scholarship, defines the nature of the present war on African Studies programs in academia, and identifies the champions of African civilization. A powerful collection of essays that goes beyond the current debate on multiculturalism in our nation's universities and encourages black readers to rediscover their heritage, ideas, and spirituality.

A longtime agitator against war and social injustice, Lawrence Wittner has been tear-gassed, threatened by police with drawn guns, charged by soldiers with fixed bayonets, spied upon by the U.S. government, arrested, and purged from his job for political -reasons. To say that this teacher-historian-activist has led an interesting life is a considerable understatement. In this absorbing memoir, Wittner traces the dramatic course of a life and career that took him from a Brooklyn boyhood in the 1940s and ’50s to an education at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin to the front lines of peace activism, the fight for racial equality, and the struggles of the labor movement. He details his family background, which included the bloody anti-Semitic pogroms of late-nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and chronicles his long teaching career, which comprised positions at a small black college in Virginia, an elite women’s liberal arts college north of New York City, and finally a permanent home at the Albany campus of the State University of New York. Throughout, he packs the narrative with colorful vignettes describing such activities as fighting racism in Louisiana and Mississippi during the early 1960s, collaborating with peace-oriented intellectuals in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, and leading thousands of antinuclear demonstrators through the streets of Hiroshima. As the book also reveals, Wittner’s work as an activist was matched by scholarly achievements that made him one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of the peace and nuclear disarmament movements—a research specialty that led to revealing encounters with such diverse figures as Norman Thomas, the Unabomber, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Caspar Weinberger, and David Horowitz. A tenured professor and renowned author who has nevertheless lived in tension with the broader currents of his society, Lawrence Wittner tells an engaging personal story that includes some of the most turbulent and significant events of recent history. Lawrence S. Wittner, emeritus professor of history at the University at Albany, SUNY, is the author of numerous scholarly works, including the award-winning three-volume Struggle Against the Bomb. Among other awards and honors, he has received major grants or fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Aspen Institute, the United States Institute of Peace, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

A hundred-thousand years ago one of the biggest differences between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom was that we were better at catching them than they were at catching us. Today things have changed...somewhat. Thinking is easy. Anyone can think. What's important is thinking intelligently. The problem is that a battle for our minds is taking place, and most people don't even notice. We're influenced from the news, social gatherings, what we read, what we are told, and what everyone else is thinking. Salespeople, marketers, and politicians know thousands of ways to push our minds in one direction or another. The result is that society is littered with people who retain beliefs they cannot explain for reasons they do not know. What you think matters. People fight for their beliefs, defend them, and in some cases even die for them. Lesser minds might be content with easy answers and poorly thought out explanations. But if you seek a strong mind, you first must ensure that you are capable of overcoming the elements that influence the way you think. Intellectual Warfare is designed to equip you with the tools necessary to win the battle for your mind. The book spans a host of topics ranging from the human ego, natural biases, cognitive illusions, and an entire section on the weapons of persuasion constantly attacking your thought process. Aimed at anyone seeking to improve their intellect, this book will ensure you are making the most of your mind.

Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to Global Intellectual History explore the different ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.

Exposing fallacies and reestablishing new and undistorted ways of viewing the formation of Western society, the book shows how classic literature shaped the contemporary world in intricate and sometimes startlingly and brutally honest detail. Not satisfied with simply challenging the reader to think about things differently, the volume goes further, citing specific examples and offering instruction on how to begin to retrain oneself to think about the origins of modern society in other terms.

War is often characterised as one percent terror, 99 per cent boredom. Whilst much ink has been spilt on the one per cent, relatively little work has been directed toward the other 99 per cent of a soldier's time. As such, this book will be welcomed by those seeking a fuller understanding of what makes soldiers endure war, and how they cope with prolonged periods of inaction. It explores the issue of military boredom and investigates how soldiers spent their time when not engaged in battle, work or training through a study of their creative, imaginative and intellectual lives. It examines the efforts of military authorities to provide solutions to military boredom (and the problem of discipline and morale) through the provisioning of entertainment and education, but more importantly explores the ways in which soldiers responded to such efforts, arguing that soldiers used entertainment and education in ways that suited them. The focus in the book is on Australians and their experiences, primarily during the First World War, but with subsequent chapters taking the story through the Second World War to the Vietnam War. This focus on a single national group allows questions to be raised about what might (or might not) be exceptional about the experiences of a particular national group, and the ways national identity can shape an individual's relationship and engagement with education and entertainment. It can also suggest the continuities and changes in these experiences through the course of three wars. The story of Australians at war illuminates a much broader story of the experience of war and people's responses to war in the twentieth century.

Anything but a detached theorist, Clausewitz was as fully engaged in the intellectual and cultural currents of his time as in its political and military conflicts. Late-eighteenth century thought helped shape the analytic methods he developed for the study of war. The essays in this volume follow his career in a complex military society, together with that of other students of war, both friends and rivals, providing a broad perspective that leads to significant documents so far unknown or ignored. They add to our understanding of Clausewitz’s early ideas and their expansion into a comprehensive theory that continues to challenge our thinking about war today.

Die Vorstellung, China sei ein "schwacher Staat", der in einer zunehmend darwinistisch konzipierten Welt nicht konkurrenzfähig sei, beherrschte vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, besonders seit dem verlorenen Krieg gegen Japan (1894/95), bis in die 1930er-Jahre den politischen Diskurs in China selbst wie auch in anderen Ländern der Welt. Der Band zeichnet diese "Untergangsgeschichte" des "kranken Mannes Asiens" nach und hilft somit, das Selbstverständnis und die Identität des heutigen China zu verstehen.