Confronting Leviathan

A History of Ideas

David Runciman

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Paperback

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English

Proficiency Press
20 September 2022

History of ideas; Politics & government; Political science & theory

'Bracingly intelligent ... a wonderful read' - Guardian

'Incredibly timely ... presented [with] wonderful elegance and clarity' - Irish Times

Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, Confronting Leviathan explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down.

While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises - revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics - generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what's happening today.

By: David Runciman
Imprint: Proficiency Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 128mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 229g
ISBN: 9781788167833
ISBN 10: 178816783X
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 20 September 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University. He is the author of six previous books, including Where Power Stops, How Democracy Ends, Political Hypocrisy and The Confidence Trap. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books and hosts the widely acclaimed weekly podcast Talking Politics, which has been downloaded 25 million times.

Reviews for Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas

Praise for the author: Presented in pellucid prose free of the jargon of academic political science, How Democracy Ends is a strikingly readable and richly learned contribution to understanding the world today ... surely one of the most luminously intelligent books on politics to have been published for many years. -- John Gray * New Statesman * Bracingly intelligent ... a wonderful read -- Mark Mazower * Guardian * Full of intriguing new lines of thought -- Gideon Rachman * FT * Clear-headed, compact and timely * Irish Times * Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to. . . . [H]e argues lucidly, persuasively, even exhilaratingly at times. The nightly news will never appear exactly the same again * Australian * Refreshingly, rather than a knicker-twisting diatribe about Trump and Brexit, Runciman offers a thoughtful analysis about what popular democracy means, and its alternatives -- Katrina Gulliver * Spectator *