Berlin Notes

BERLIN--East and West, day and night--in the 80s before the Wall fell. Through the eyes of a U.S. philosophy student. And Jewish, which makes for moments awkward, poignant, crass, funny, and always lurking. A city was divided, America the occupier, and the cigarettes not named Salem because it sounds too Jewish. The debut memoirs from the author of Moral Clarity, a N.Y. Times "2008 Notable Book."

A leading expert on the 20th-century history of Berlin, employing new and little-known German sources to track Hitler's attitudes and plans for the city, presents a fascinating new account of Hitler's relationship with Berlin, a place filled with grandiose architecture and imperial ideals, which he used as a platform for his political agenda.

Berlin Notes 120 pages notebook. Notizbuch Liniert.

"When I go to sleep at night I try not to think about Berlin," said Dean Rusk; and in this first comprehensive reconstruction of that crucial period, Jack M. Schick demonstrates that Rusk's nightmare did not end for decades. He traces the East-West pattern of impatient negotiation followed by military posturing and pressuring. He sheds new light on Dulles' intellectualized diplomacy, Kennedy's cautiously balanced Berlin strategy, and Ulbricht's urgent gamble on the Berlin Wall. Against a detailed back­ ground of diplomatic verbiage and tension-ridden events he points up the blind convictions and dangerous misunderstandings on both sides that inevitably led to each incident in the continual crisis—and ultimately brought us to the impasse that remained "frozen in splendid ambiguity" for decades. Berlin's fragile armistice could have been shattered by the merest trifle. And the pattern of the early 1960s repeated itself, with East and West squaring off for new rounds of negotiation-posturing-pressure. The frightening lessons of the past, as Schick presents them, became vital warnings of the present, to a time when our ultimate survival could have depended upon our ability to heed these warnings.

Since the three volume edition ofHegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (1978, 19792) has been so well received, I have been encouraged to select that part of it most suitable for teaching purposes, and to publish it here as a separate work. As a teaching text, the Berlin Phenomenology has several important advan­ tages. Unlike so many ofHegel's writings, must notably theJena Phenomeno­ logy of 1807, it is concise and to the point, and concemed with issues already familiar to most students of philosophy. Since it consists for the most part of a searching and radical analysis of Kant's epistemology, Fichte's ethics and Schelling's system-building, it provides tirst-rate insight into Hegel's assessment of his immedi~te predecessors. When considered in context, as part of the Encyclopaedia if the Philosophical Sciences, it enables us to distinguish dearly between the systematic, the logical and the psychological aspects of Hegelianism, and is therefore also relevant to some of the central issues in modem phenomenology. It is to be hoped that the introduction and notes prepared for the present edition will prove helpful to both teachers and students. Every effort has been ma de to produce a thoroughly reliable ba sic text and an accurate translation. The text published in 1978 was prepared at the Hegel Archive in Bochum from photocopies, and I am most grateful to the Central Interfaculty of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, for having made it possible for me to check the printed version against the original manuscripts.

In this compelling work, Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Ladd surveys the urban landscape, excavating its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past. "Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is not just another colorless architectural history of the German capital. . . . Mr. Ladd's book is a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present."—Katharina Thote, Wall Street Journal "If a book can have the power to change a public debate, then The Ghosts of Berlin is such a book. Among the many new books about Berlin that I have read, Brian Ladd's is certainly the most impressive. . . . Ladd's approach also owes its success to the fact that he is a good storyteller. His history of Berlin's architectural successes and failures reads entertainingly like a detective novel."—Peter Schneider, New Republic "[Ladd's] well-written and well-illustrated book amounts to a brief history of the city as well as a guide to its landscape."—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books

Originally published in 1973. This book uses the Berlin Crisis of 1961 as a starting point to investigate Soviet-American relations in the Kruschev period. The book first chronicles the timeline of the succession of events during the Berlin Crisis and their interrelation. It then turns to the close interaction between Soviet and foreign policy before situating the event into the broader timeline of Soviet history.

Now in paperback, the landmark biography of the preeminent liberal thinker of our time, from celebrated social critic Michael Ignatieff. of photos.