Runciman, David – The Bell Bookshop

The History of Ideas

Emma — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

THE TIMES BEST IDEAS BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2024 ‘A splendid book: economical, invigorating and surprising’ The Times’He has that gift, both as a podcaster and as a writer, to illuminate abstruse and abstract ideas with human charm’ ObserverIn this bold new follow-up to Confronting Leviathan, David Runciman unmasks modern politics and reveals the great men and women of ideas behind it.What can Samuel Butler’s ideas teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies? How did Frederick Douglass not only expose the horrors of slavery, but champion a new approach to abolishing it? Why should we tolerate snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy, as Judith Shklar suggested? And what does Friedrich Nietzsche predict for our future?From Rousseau to Rawls, fascism to feminism and pleasure to anarchy, this is a mind-bending tour through the history of ideas which will forever change your view of politics today.

The handover

Emma — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘The Singularity’ is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before. A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago – and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

The history of ideas

Emma — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘A splendid book: economical, invigorating and surprising’ The Times’He has that gift, both as a podcaster and as a writer, to illuminate abstruse and abstract ideas with human charm’ ObserverIn this bold new follow-up to Confronting Leviathan, David Runciman unmasks modern politics and reveals the great men and women of ideas behind it.What can Samuel Butler’s ideas teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies? How did Frederick Douglass not only expose the horrors of slavery, but champion a new approach to abolishing it? Why should we tolerate snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy, as Judith Shklar suggested? And what does Friedrich Nietzsche predict for our future?From Rousseau to Rawls, fascism to feminism and pleasure to anarchy, this is a mind-bending tour through the history of ideas which will forever change your view of politics today.

The handover

Emma — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Confronting Leviathan

Emma — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘Bracingly intelligent … a wonderful read’ Guardian’Incredibly timely … presented [with] wonderful elegance and clarity’ Irish TimesBased on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, Confronting Leviathan explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down.While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.

Confronting Leviathan

Emma — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, A History of Ideas explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down. While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.