The most famous scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein
was also one of the century's most outspoken political activists.
Deeply engaged with the events of his tumultuous times, from the two
world wars and the Holocaust, to the atomic bomb and the Cold War, to
the effort to establish a Jewish homeland, Einstein was a remarkably
prolific political writer, someone who took courageous and often
unpopular stands against nationalism, militarism, anti-Semitism,
racism, and McCarthyism. In Einstein on Politics, leading Einstein
scholars David Rowe and Robert Schulmann gather Einstein's most
important public and private political writings and put them into
historical context. The book reveals a little-known Einstein--not the
ineffectual and naïve idealist of popular imagination, but a
principled, shrewd pragmatist whose stands on political issues
reflected the depth of his humanity. Nothing encapsulates Einstein's
profound involvement in twentieth-century politics like the atomic
bomb. Here we read the former militant pacifist's 1939 letter to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany might try to
develop an atomic bomb. But the book also documents how Einstein tried
to explain this action to Japanese pacifists after the United States
used atomic weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that
spurred Einstein to call for international control of nuclear
technology. A vivid firsthand view of how one of the twentieth
century's greatest minds responded to the greatest political
challenges of his day, Einstein on Politics will forever change our
picture of Einstein's public activism and private motivations.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400848287
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter