George Kennan for Our Time examines the work and thought of the most distinguished American diplomat of the twentieth century and extracts lessons for today. In his writings and lectures, Kennan outlined the proper conduct of foreign policy and issued warnings to an American society on the edge of the abyss. Lee Congdon identifies the principles Kennan applied to US relations with Russia and Eastern Europe, and to the Far and Near East. He takes particular note of Kennan's role in formulating postwar policy in Japan, measured response to North Korea's invasion of South Korea, and opposition to the war in Vietnam. Congdon also considers Kennan's strong criticisms of his own country, its egalitarianism, unrestricted immigration, and multiple addictions. He cites Kennan's call for a greater closeness to nature, a revival of religious faith, and a return to the representative government established by the Founding Fathers. George Kennan for Our Time describes the often-disastrous results of rejecting Kennan's counsel, and the dangers, international and national, posed by an ongoing failure to draw upon his wisdom. In view of America's foreign policy disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, Kennan's realist approach provides important lessons for our current age.

In this examination of Solzhenitsyn and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement. Beginning with a description of the post-revolutionary Russia into which Solzhenitsyn was born, Congdon addresses the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, the origins of the concentration camp system, the Bolsheviks' war on Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church, Solzhenitsyn's arrest near the war's end, his time in the labor camps, his struggle with cancer, his exile and increasing alienation from the Western way of life, and his return home. He concludes with a reminder of Solzhenitsyn's warning to the West—that it was on a path parallel to that which Russia had followed into the abyss.

During the 1920s-the Golden Age of sports-sports writers gained their own recognition while covering such athletes as Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, and Red Grange. The top journalists of the era were the primary means by which fans learned about their favorite teams and athletes, and their popularity and importance in the sports world continued for decades. Legendary Sports Writers of the Golden Age: Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Shirley Povich, and W. C. Heinz details the lives and careers of four sports-writing greats and the iconic athletes and events they covered. Although these writers established themselves during the 1920s, their careers extended well into the decades that followed. They reported on Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Sandy Koufax, Arnold Palmer, and many other stars from the 1920s and beyond. Lee Congdon examines not only the lives and careers of Rice, Smith, Povich, and Heinz, but the distinctive writing style that each of them developed. Taken together, these four writers lifted sports reporting to heights that it is unlikely to reach again. This book brings to life the greatest era in sports history, as seen through the eyes of four legendary sports writers. Sports fans, historians, and those interested in sports journalism will all find this a fascinating and informative look at a time when the sports world was at its peak.

Embroiled in the political events surrounding World War I and the failed Hungarian revolutions of 1918-19, a number of intellectuals fled Hungary for Germany and Austria, where they essentially created Weimar culture. Among them were Georg Lukacs, whose History and Class Consciousness recast Marxism and challenged even those who repudiated its politics; Bela Balazs, who pioneered film theory and collaborated with film-makers G. W. Pabst, Leni Riefenstahl, and Alexander Korda; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who codirected the Bauhaus during its heyday in the mid-1920s; and Karl Mannheim, whose Ideology and Utopia was the most widely discussed work of noncommunist social theory during the Weimar years. In this collective portrait combining intellectual history with biographical detail, Lee Congdon describes how Hungarian thinkers, each in a different way, passionately advocated the need for community in a Europe torn by war and revolution. Whether communist, avant-gardist, or Catholic convert, each thinker is examined within the vast tapestry of his works, his cultural and intellectual milieu, and his experience as an exile. Despite the ideological differences of these men, Congdon reveals how their personal destinies and social goals often merged. Since many were assimilated Jews, he argues that their thinking on society was inextricably intertwined with their youthful sensitivity to anti-Semitism in Hungary and with the isolating limitations of their lives in Germany and Austria.

Originally published in 1991.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905."

Embroiled in the political events surrounding World War I and the failed Hungarian revolutions of 1918-19, a number of intellectuals fled Hungary for Germany and Austria, where they essentially created Weimar culture. Among them were Georg Lukacs, whose History and Class Consciousness recast Marxism and challenged even those who repudiated its politics; Bela Balazs, who pioneered film theory and collaborated with film-makers G. W. Pabst, Leni Riefenstahl, and Alexander Korda; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who codirected the Bauhaus during its heyday in the mid-1920s; and Karl Mannheim, whose Ideology and Utopia was the most widely discussed work of noncommunist social theory during the Weimar years. In this collective portrait combining intellectual history with biographical detail, Lee Congdon describes how Hungarian thinkers, each in a different way, passionately advocated the need for community in a Europe torn by war and revolution. Whether communist, avant-gardist, or Catholic convert, each thinker is examined within the vast tapestry of his works, his cultural and intellectual milieu, and his experience as an exile. Despite the ideological differences of these men, Congdon reveals how their personal destinies and social goals often merged. Since many were assimilated Jews, he argues that their thinking on society was inextricably intertwined with their youthful sensitivity to anti-Semitism in Hungary and with the isolating limitations of their lives in Germany and Austria. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Based upon recently found manuscripts and correspondence, "The Young Lukacs" is the first comprehensive and fully researched portrait of Georg Lukacs to appear in any language. Lee Congdon finds in the young Lukacs's estrangement from his family and from Hungarian society roots for his continuing concern with the philosophic problem of alienation.
The chance discovery in 1972 of Lukacs's early manuscripts and correspondence has made possible an authoritative intellectual biography of this major Marxist thinker. Congdon has mined the wealth of material in the Lukacs Archives in Budapest and drawn upon Hungarian scholarship that is all but unknown in the West. The result is a biography that reveals the relationship between the ideas Lukacs entertained, the world in which he lived, and the conditions of his personal existence.
Congdon argues that Lukacs's understanding of Simmel, Dostoevski, and Hegel was profoundly affected by the world of fin de siecle Europe, the Great War, and the Russian Revolution. The evolution of Lukacs's own ideas, Congdon finds, was an expression of his relationships with three women -- Irma Siedler, Ljena Grabenko, and Gertrud Bortstieber. No one, writing in any language, has previously examined Lukacs's life and work in this context.
Although Congdon acknowledges some sympathy for the young Lukacs and his enthusiasms, he shows that the brilliant and sensitive thinker, in the words of Dostoevski, "started out with the idea of unrestricted freedom and . . . arrived at unrestricted despotism." The tragedy of Lukacs, he concludes, was that he hated injustice more than he loved human beings.
Originally published in 1983.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In this examination of Solzhenitsyn and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement. Beginning with a description of the post-revolutionary Russia into which Solzhenitsyn was born, Congdon addresses the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, the origins of the concentration camp system, the Bolsheviks' war on Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church, Solzhenitsyn's arrest near the war's end, his time in the labor camps, his struggle with cancer, his exile and increasing alienation from the Western way of life, and his return home. He concludes with a reminder of Solzhenitsyn's warning to the West—that it was on a path parallel to that which Russia had followed into the abyss.

This study of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his writings focuses on his reflections on the religiopolitical trajectories of Russia and the West, understood as distinct civilizations. In his examination of the author and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement. Beginning with a description of the post-revolutionary Russia into which Solzhenitsyn was born, Congdon outlines the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, the origins of the concentration camp system, and the Bolsheviks' war on Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church. He then focuses on Solzhenitsyn's arrest near the war's end, his time in the labor camps, and his struggle with cancer. Congdon describes his time in exile and increasing alienation from the Western way of life, as well as his return home and his final years. He concludes with a reminder of Solzhenitsyn's warning to the West-that it was on a path parallel to that which Russia had followed into the abyss. This important study will appeal to scholars and educated general readers with an interest in Solzhenitsyn, Russia, Christianity, and the fate of Western civilization.

In this historical/philosophical reflection, Lee Congdon writes of the ways in which baseball spurs memory. This is particularly important at a time when many Americans suffer from a form of amnesia that renders them defenseless in the face of concerted efforts to seize possession of the past. "Who controls the past controls the future," George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, "who controls the present controls the past." Baseball can, and does, stand in the way of those whose ambition it is to gain and maintain power by pretending that memory cannot be trusted; what was once thought to be "the past" was merely a fiction that served the interests of a ruling class. This, Congdon argues, is asself-serving as it is untrue. Memory can play tricks on us, but, supported as it often is by confirming evidence, it alone can tell us who we are - and more. When we remember important moments and players from the game's past, we soon discover that they are inextricably intertwined with particular eras in our common history: Babe Ruth and the Jazz Age, Joe DiMaggio and the country at war, Willie Mays and the 1950s. In often revelatory ways, those eras come alive again, and as a result we gain greater self-understanding, as individuals and as a people. Although he draws upon the entire history of baseball, Congdon focuses primarily on the decade of the 1950s because he believes it to have been the game's golden age - and a far better time in the nation's history than Americans have been taught to think. Baseball's continual invitation to communal remembrance can, he concludes, help us to avoid the fate reserved for those who forget.