Synopses & Reviews
Kwame Anthony Appiah's landmark new work, featured on the cover of the , challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's . Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism," a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raised in Ghana, educated in England, and now a distinguished professor in the United States, Appiah promises to create a new era in which warring factions will finally put aside their supposed ideological differences and will recognize that the fundamental values held by all human beings will usher in a new era of global understanding.
Review
Elegantly provocative. . . . Appiah is so sure-footed and gracious in his explorations that one feels engaged, hopeful, advocating his cosmopolitan ambitions. --Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia
Review
" " John Gray
Review
" " The Nation
Review
"Elegantly provocative." Thomas Nagel The New Republic
Review
" " Edward Rothstein New York Times
Review
" " Kofi A. Annan, former United Nations secretary-general
Review
" " Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature
Review
"A welcome attempt to resurrect an older tradition of moral and political reflection and to show its relevance to our current condition." John Gray
Review
"Cosmopolitanism is... of wide interest--invitingly written and enlivened by personal history.... Appiah is wonderfully perceptive and levelheaded about this tangle of issues." The Nation
Review
"[Appiah's] belief in having conversations across boundaries, and in recognizing our obligations to other human beings, offers a welcome prescription for a world still plagued by fanaticism and intolerance." Edward Rothstein New York Times
Review
"[Appiah's] exhilarating exposition of his philosophy knocks one right off complacent balance.... All is conveyed with flashes of iconoclastic humor." Kofi A. Annan, former United Nations secretary-general
Review
"An attempt to redefine our moral obligations to others based on a very humane and realistic outlook and love of art.... I felt like a better person after I read it, and I recommend the same experience to others." Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature
Synopsis
A political and philosophical manifesto considers the ramifications of a world in which western society is divided from all other creeds and cultures, challenging the separatist doctrines espoused by other writers to evaluate the limited capacity of differentiating societies as compared to the power of a united world. By the author of In My Father's House. Reprint.
Synopsis
"A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age."--Samantha Power, author of
Synopsis
Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, including history, literature, and philosophy--as well as the author's own experience of life on three continents--? is a moral manifesto for a planet we share with more than six billion strangers.
About the Author
Kwame Anthony Appiah, the president of the PEN American Center, is the author of The Ethics of Identity, Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, The Honor Code, and the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism. Raised in Ghana and educated in England, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is currently a professor at Princeton University.Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Ph.D. Cambridge) is Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University. He is the author of Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self; The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Criticism; Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars; Colored People: A Memoir; The Future of Race (with Cornel West); Wonders of the African World; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans. He is general editor (with the late Nellie Y. McKay) of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature; editor-in-chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center (online); editor of The African-American Century (with Cornel West); Encarta Africana (with Kwame Anthony Appiah); and The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Craft; African American National Biography (with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham) and The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin (with Hollis Robbins). For PBS, Professor Gates has written and produced several documentaries, among them African American Lives, series 1 and 2, and America Behind the Color Line.