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Arthur Herman

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Arthur Herman is the author of To Rule the Waves, The Scottish Enlightenment, The Idea of Decline in Western History and Joseph McCarthy. He has been a professor of history at Georgetown University, Catholic University, George Mason University and the University of the South. He served as the coordinator of the Western Heritage Program at the Smithsonian and has been the recipient of Fulbright, Mellon and Newcombe Foundation grants. He lives in Virginia.

Books by Arthur Herman

The Cave and the Light

Arthur Herman reveals how rather than a linear evolution of thought, the history of Western civilization has been a constant battle of ideas beginning with the rivalry between just two philosophers. Plato and Aristotle's competing philosophies became the twin fountainheads of Western culture, and their rivalry gave Western civilization its unique dynamism down to the present. From the Western way of religion and Christianity to science and technology to forms of government and to the belief in the dignity of the individual, the clash between Plato and Aristotle made them the most influential thinkers that ever lived.

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Freedom's Forge

Bestselling author Arthur Herman reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen--the Danish immigrant William Knudsen and shipbuilding industrialist Henry Kaiser--helped corral, cajole, manipulate, and inspire big business around the country to help mobilize the war effort and what later critics would call the American "military-industrial complex," without which the history of America, as well as of the Second World War, would be very different. Together these men changed the face not only of American business and industry but of American society. At the same time their efforts transformed the culture of America's armed services, giving the army, navy, and air force both the tools and the new strategies for securing a postwar global order.

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Gandhi and Churchill

The epic story of the rivalry that shaped the 20th century and poses questions for the 21st.

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