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The book is written from a perspective of someone who after having lived for many years under communism and then for more than two decades under a liberal democracy has discovered that those two political systems have a lot in common, stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, ...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Jan 03, 2021From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Third Edition
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This is the third edition of Shaye J. D. Cohen's important and seminal work on the history and development of Judaism between 164 BCE to 300 CE. Cohen's synthesis of religion, literature, and history offers deep insight into the nature of Judaism at this key period, including the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, the function of Jewish religi...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Dec 13, 2020In this classic work, Thomas Sowell analyzes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the “constrained” vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the “unconstrained” vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. He describes how these two radically ...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Dec 03, 2020Appears in 0 articles
The White Man's Burden
Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
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From one of the world's best-known development economists--an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West's efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing worldIn his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was prom...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Nov 29, 2020This book is about the complex relationship between fear, danger, and the law. Cass Sunstein argues that the precautionary principle is incoherent and potentially paralyzing, as risks exist on all sides of social situations and there is no 'general' precautionary principle as such. His insight into The Laws of Fear represents a major statement for ...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Nov 29, 2020Limits of Orthodox Theology
Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
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It is commonly asserted that Maimonides' famous Thirteen Principles are the last word in Orthodox Jewish theology. This is a very popular notion, and is often repeated by scholars from all camps in Judaism. Yet such a position ignores the long history of Jewish theology in which Maimonides' Principles have been subject to great dispute. The book be...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Aug 24, 2020The Quest for Cosmic Justice
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This book is about the great moral issues underlying many of the headline-making political controversies of our times. It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting ...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Aug 04, 2020Also recommended by
Ben ShapiroThomas Sowell's provocative critique of liberalism's failures The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in educa...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Aug 04, 2020Social Vision
The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Transformative Paradigm for the World (Jewish Spiritual Traditions and Contempo)
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Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century and the only rabbi ever awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Despite wide recognition of Schneerson's impact, this is the first volume to seriously explore his social ideas and activism. Schneerson not onl...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Jul 22, 2020As America descends deeper into polarization and paralysis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done the seemingly impossiblechallenged conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum. Drawing on his twenty five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, he shows ...
The Fractured Republic
Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism
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Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish, and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges. No wonder, then, that Americans -- and the politicia...
Rabbi Josh Yuter
Jun 26, 2020Evil by Roy Baumeister
Inventing Human Rights by Lynn Hunt