Publisher's Synopsis
This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring emiment historians David Armitage, Karl Gerth, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Margaret MacMillan and Matthew Stewart providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:
I. Eating One's Own: Examining Civil War - A conversation with David Armitage, the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University. This conversation examines Armitage's extensive research on the history of ideas of civil war from Ancient Rome to the present. A salient feature of his work is a strong focus on etymology as it relates to our understanding of how people interpreted (or misinterpreted) and perceived events in history which results in a fascinating exploration of how our understanding of various concepts has been prejudiced by past societies and past beliefs.
II. China: Up Close and Personal - A conversation with Karl Gerth, Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies and Professor of History at UC San Diego. This wide-ranging conversation explores the emerging American-style consumer culture of China which is revolutionizing the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens, how it has transformed its economy and lifestyle and has the potential to reshape the world.
III. Sheathing the Bodkin: Combating Suicide - A conversation with poet, author and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht. This conversation explores the intellectual and cultural history of the most persuasive arguments against suicide from the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such 20th-century writers as Albert Camus.
IV. For the Love of History - A conversation with Margaret MacMillan, Professor of History at the University of Toronto and emeritus Professor of International History and the former warden of St Antony's College at the University of Oxford. This conversation provides a detailed examination of MacMillan's research on patriotism and nationalism, which are essential themes of her lifelong work on the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
V. The Epicurean Republic - A conversation with award-winning author and independent scholar Matthew Stewart. This comprehensive conversation explores how many of these ideals that Jefferson referred to are part of an intellectual thread that passes through key Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza and can be traced all the way back to Epicurus.
Howard Burton is the host and editor of all Ideas Roadshow conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy. Ideas Roadshow offers a series of 20 Collections, including Conversations About History, Volumes 1-3, Conversations About The History Of Ideas, Conversations About Politics, Conversations About Language and Culture, and Conversations About Religion.
