Synopses & Reviews
Over ten years ago, Benjamin Fain, a physicist now living in Tel Aviv, attempted to hold a conference on Jewish culture in Moscow, an effort that was foiled by the KGB. Many of the participants were eventually able to flee, most emigrating to Israel. In this book, these distinguished scholars and others from around the world present their personal and professional views of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union.
The book explores a wide range of topics, including underground literature, religious revival, and the rise of a national Jewish consciousness. Some writers claim that the refuseniks are not the leaders of the Soviet Jews but rather an isolated minority, with most Jews being assimilated, acculturated, and uninterested in fleeing. Other essayists look at the ambivalent role traditionally played by the Soviet Union in both allowing some forms of cultural expression and suppressing any efforts at individual religious practice. Others explore the revival of Jewish culture as instanced by underground teaching of Hebrew. A major debate involves the Nature of Jewish emigration, whether the Jews will go to Israel or to America.
Review
"The best introduction to global environmental politics I have seen."-Andrew Hurrell,Oxford University
Synopsis
Human activity is changing the global environment on a scale unlike that of any other era. Environmental deterioration is now a global issue--ecologically, politically, and economically--that requires global solutions. Yet there is considerable disagreement over what kinds of strategies we should adopt in order to halt and reverse damage to the global ecosystem.
What kinds of international institutions are best suited to dealing with global environmental problems? Why are women and indigenous peoples still marginalized in global environmental politics? What are the consequences of the global ecological crisis for economic and security policies? The Global Politics of the Environment makes sense of the often seemingly irreconcilable answers to these questions. It focuses throughout on the tensions between mainstream strategies, which seek to build support for reforms through existing institutions, and radical critiques, which argue that environmental degradation is a symptom of a dysfunctional world order that must itself be transformed if we are to meet the challenge of saving the planet.
About the Author
Martin Gilbert, 1936 - Martin Gilbert was born in London in 1936 to a jeweler. He was sent to Canada at the age of 3 and a half in an effort to escape the war, but was returned home soon thereafter. He attended Highgate School from 1945 til 1954. Gilbert then joined the British Army for a few years, and went on to Magdalen College at Oxford. He graduated from Oxford in 1960 and wrote his first book, called "The Appeasers."In 1961, after a year of research and writing, Gilbert was asked to join a team of researchers working for Winston Churchill. At the age of 25, he was formally inducted into the team, doing all of his own research. Gilbert became known as Churchill's official biographer and has remained so for thirty years. He is a fellow of Oxford College at Merton and has written over 40 books, some on Churchill, such as his multivolume treatise called "Churchill"as well as books on the Holocaust, "Surviving the Holocaust"and books on the war itself, "The Second World War."Long after Churchill died, Gilbert chronicled his efforts in the war and in making the world a better place for all her people to exist. He continues to write on the struggles of Jews during the war and the histories of this world, from culture to culture.