Harvey Mitchell's book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire's treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of, and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire's nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism's memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history-a project in which he failed.

Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism's future.

Alexis de Tocqueville is recognized as one of the most important nineteenth-century historians. In this perceptive study, Harvey Mitchell examines Tocqueville's works, in particular Souvenirs of 1848 and his voluminous correspondence, to shed new light on Tocqueville's philosophy of history. Professor Mitchell exposes the tensions which Tocqueville perceived between determined actions and choice, continuity and change, asking what happens to individual liberty if it is impossible to make a clean break with the past, and if past developments continue to influence the future. Professor Mitchell draws on the full range of Tocqueville's writings to find in them a unity of thought and a deep involvement with the philosophical questions raised by historical continuity and change.

Harvey Mitchell's book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire's treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of, and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire's nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism's memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history-a project in which he failed. Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism's future.

America after Tocqueville complements Harvey Mitchell's previous book, Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised (1996). This study draws on Democracy in America to study the condition of democracy in the United States in our own time. Three aspects of Americanism inform Harvey Mitchell's book, and cannot be separated from Tocqueville's consideration of the three races. First, he addresses tensions in the United States between ideas of equality and a political system that tries to keep it within bounds. He turns to the relationship between this system and the dynamics of American capitalism. and he analyses the criteria for inclusion and exclusion in American life. Overall, he asks if Americans have surrendered to what Tocqueville called the materialization of life; if that compromise means their abandonment of their original spiritual quest; and, if they are on the way to a radical alienation from politics.

Alexis de Tocqueville is recognized as one of the most important nineteenth-century historians. In this perceptive study, Harvey Mitchell examines Tocqueville's works, in particular Souvenirs of 1848 and his voluminous correspondence, to shed new light on Tocqueville's philosophy of history. Professor Mitchell exposes the tensions which Tocqueville perceived between determined actions and choice, continuity and change, asking what happens to individual liberty if it is impossible to make a clean break with the past, and if past developments continue to influence the future. Professor Mitchell draws on the full range of Tocqueville's writings to find in them a unity of thought and a deep involvement with the philosophical questions raised by historical continuity and change.

Mitchell's new study uses Tocqueville's Democracy in America to study the condition of democracy in the United States in our own time. First, he addresses tensions in the United States between ideas of equality and the American political system. He then turns to the relationship between this system and American capitalism, and analyzes inclusion and exclusion in American life. Finally, he asks whether Americans have surrendered to what Tocqueville called the materialization of life, and have abandoned their original quest and become radically alienated from politics.

Religion in the American South emerged as part of a globalized, transnational movement of peoples from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Ironically, it then came to be seen as the most localized, provincial kind of religion in America, one famously hostile to outside ideas, influences, and agitators. Yet southern religious expressions, particularly in music, have exercised enormous intellectual and cultural influence. Despite southern religion's provincialism during the era of evangelical dominance and racial proscriptions, the kinds of expressions coming from the American South have been influential across the globe. With this book Paul Harvey takes up the theme of southern religion in global contexts through a series of biographical vignettes that illustrate its outreach. In the first segment he focuses on Frank Price, the Presbyterian missionary to China and advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek. In the second he focuses on Howard Thurman, the mystic, cosmopolitan, preacher, intellectual, poet, hymnist, and mentor for the American civil rights movement. In the third he looks to the musical figures of Rosetta Tharpe, Johnny Cash, and Levon Helm, whose backbeat, harmonies, and religious enthusiasms contributed to much of the soundtrack of the world through the second half of the twentieth century.

Religion in the American South emerged as part of a globalized, transnational movement of peoples from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Ironically, it then came to be seen as the most localized, provincial kind of religion in America, one famously hostile to outside ideas, influences, and agitators. Yet southern religious expressions, particularly in music, have exercised enormous intellectual and cultural influence. Despite southern religion's provincialism during the era of evangelical dominance and racial proscriptions, the kinds of expressions coming from the American South have been influential across the globe. With this book Paul Harvey takes up the theme of southern religion in global contexts through a series of biographical vignettes that illustrate its outreach. In the first segment he focuses on Frank Price, the Presbyterian missionary to China and advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek. In the second he focuses on Howard Thurman, the mystic, cosmopolitan, preacher, intellectual, poet, hymnist, and mentor for the American civil rights movement. In the third he looks to the musical figures of Rosetta Tharpe, Johnny Cash, and Levon Helm, whose backbeat, harmonies, and religious enthusiasms contributed to much of the soundtrack of the world through the second half of the twentieth century.