John Lukacs

On 13 May 1940, Winston Churchill stood before the House of Parliament to deliver his first speech as prime minister. German troops were advancing across Europe; Neville Chamberlain’s government had fallen three days earlier. Churchill needed to prove himself an able leader, and he also needed to convince an unwilling nation to support his stand against Hitler. In this taut meditation on a great leader under great pressure, Lukacs demonstrates that Churchill delivered his triumphant speech despite his own sense that England might soon fall to Hitler’s armies. A riveting portrait of leadership in its confrontation with radical evil, Lukacs’s book is essential reading for WWII buffs, Churchill aficionadi, and anyone interested in leadership.

A man of impressive mental powers, of extraordinary intellectual range, and—last but not least—of exceptional integrity, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) was an adviser to presidents and secretaries of state, with a decisive role in the history of this country (and of the entire world) for a few crucial years in the 1940s, after which he was made to retire; but then he became a scholar who wrote seventeen books, scores of essays and articles, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. He also wrote remarkable public lectures and many thousands of incisive letters, laying down his pen only in the hundredth year of his life. Having risen within the American Foreign Service and been posted to various European capitals, and twice to Moscow, Kennan was called back to Washington in 1946, where he helped to inspire the Truman Doctrine and draft the Marshall Plan. Among other things, he wrote the “X” or “Containment” article for which he became, and still is, world famous (an article which he regarded as not very important and liable to misreading). John Lukacs describes the development and the essence of Kennan’s thinking; the—perhaps unavoidable—misinterpretations of his advocacies; his self-imposed task as a leading realist critic during the Cold War; and the importance of his work as a historian during the second half of his long life.

This new portrait of two great leaders confronting each other in June 1941 describes Hitler and Stalin's strange, calculating, and miscalculating relationship before the German invasion of Soviet Russia, with its gigantic (and unintended) consequences. Lukas questions many long-held beliefs. He suggests, for example, that among other things Hitler's first purpose involved England: if Stalin's Communist Russia were to be defeated, Hitler's Third Reich would be well-nigh invincible, and the British and American peoples would be forced to rethink the war against Hitler. Lukas presents evidence that Hitler (rather than his generals) had moments of dark foreboding before the invasion. Stalin could not, because he wished not, believe that Hitler would choose the risk of a two-front war by attacking him; he was stunned and shocked and came close to a breakdown. But he recovered, grew into a statesman, and eventually became a prime victor of the Second World War.--From publisher description.

In A New Republic, one of America’s most respected historians offers a major statement on the nature of our political system and a critical look at the underpinnings of our society. American democracy, says John Lukacs, has been transformed from an exercise in individual freedom and opportunity to a bureaucratic system created by and for the dominance of special groups. His book, first published in 1984 as Outgrowing Democracy, is now reissued with a new introduction, in which Lukacs explains his methodology, and a new final chapter, which sums up Lukacs’s thoughts on American democracy today.

"John Lukacs, author of more than twenty books and hundreds of essays and reviews, is among the most accomplished historians of his generation." "Remembered Past: John Lukacs on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge - A Reader draws together Lukacs's diverse and wide-ranging writings on a variety of interrelated topics. The volume serves at once as an introduction to essential aspects of Lukacs's thought and as an indispensable compendium of his most enduring pieces, many of which have until now been uncollected or located in out-of-print volumes."--Jacket.

At the End of an Age is a deeply informed and rewarding reflection on the nature of historical and scientific knowledge. Of extraordinary philosophical, religious, and historical scope, it is the product of a great historian’s lifetime of thought on the subject of his discipline and the human condition. While running counter to most of the accepted ideas and doctrines of our time, it offers a compelling framework for understanding history, science, and man’s capacity for self-knowledge. In this work, John Lukacs describes how we in the Western world have now been living through the ending of an entire historical age that began in Western Europe about five hundred years ago. Unlike people during the ending of the Middle Ages or the Roman empire, we can know where we are. But how and what is it that we know? In John Lukacs’s view, there is no science apart from scientists, and all of “Science,” including our view of the universe, is a human creation, imagined and defined by fallible human beings in a historical continuum. This radical and reactionary assertion―in its way a summa of the author’s thinking, expressed here and there in many of his previous twenty-odd books―leads to his fundamental assertion that, contrary to all existing cosmological doctrines and theories, it is this earth which is the very center of the universe―the only universe we know and can know.

Chronicles the events which occurred in the first phase of World War II, from September 1939 to December 1941, providing information on key battles and figures.

The days from May 24 to May 28, 1940 altered the course of the history of this century, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue the war. The decisive importance of these five days is the focus of John Lukacs's magisterial new book. Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical unfolding of events at 10 Downing Street, where Churchill and the members of his cabinet were painfully considering their war responsibilities. We see how the military disasters taking place on the Continent—particularly the plight of the nearly 400,000 British soldiers bottled up in Dunkirk—affected Churchill's fragile political situation, for he had been prime minister only a fortnight and was regarded as impetuous and hotheaded even by many of his own party. Lukacs also investigates the mood of the British people, drawing on newspaper and Mass-Observation reports that show how the citizenry, though only partly informed about the dangers that faced them, nevertheless began to support Churchill's determination to stand fast.

The distinguished historian John Lukacs has been described as "one of the most powerful as well as one of the most learned minds [of the] century" by Conor Cruise O'Brien and as "one of the most original and profound of contemporary thinkers" by Paul Fussell. Here Lukacs presents a series of fictionalized vignettes of daily life as experienced by ordinary individuals in the United States (although Lukacs takes us to some European countries as well), each in a year from 1901 to 1969, and each followed by a short dialogue in which the author argues with an interlocutor (who may or may not be himself) over why he has chosen to develop a given scenario in that particular year and what its significance might be. The period represents the life of a single man, K., which Lukacs weaves in and out of the text and through which can be traced the leitmotif of the book: the decline of Anglo-American civilization and of the ideal of the gentleman. The book is primarily a work in the history of manners and mores, a delightful—and poignant—succession of sketches that brings the reader into the inner and often undeclared life of individuals and places them in the larger dramas of historical process in this century.

A unique study of Hitler through his many biographers. Historians grapple with Hitler (as with any other historical topic) through the prism of their own experiences, culture, and prejudices, making the goal of objectivity elusive, if not impossible. Lukacs (The End of the Twentieth Century, 1993, etc.) has the command of languages and scholarship necessary for the ambitious undertaking of studying the expression of such biases in the myriad biographies of Hitler that have proliferated over the last 50 years. Most valuable for the nonspecialist is the first chapter, where he discusses general historiographical problems, attempts to explain the extraordinary popular interest in the Führer, and reviews how German historians, most of them unknown to an American audience, have treated the dictator (their views range from guarded apologies to rigid ideological or deterministic dissections). The following six chapters deal with such specific topics as whether Hitler was a reactionary or a revolutionary, the problem of racism and nationalism, and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Perhaps the most surprising point that emerges here is that many German historians treat Hitler in a highly nuanced manner, stressing his frequent reversals of policy, his uncertainty, the way in which other individuals could influence or manipulate him. Lukacs draws a rather pessimistic conclusion from this, suggesting that a downturn in Europe's fortunes might cause Hitler to be revived as an example of order and nationalism. Finally, Lukacs struggles with the problem of Hitler's place in history. Although scant attention is paid to the controversial 'historian's debate' that erupted in the mid-1980s, when some German historians began to downplay the unique nature of the Holocaust, Lukacs is successful in offering a balanced portrayal—not of Hitler—but of his biographers. A valuable contribution that will continue to remind us how central Hitler was to the history of the 20th century. (History Book Club selection) [Kirkus Reviews]

In Destination Past you will embark on a remarkable voyage in time as John Lukacs shares forty years of travels, ranging from his adoptive city of Philadelphia to his native Hungary to darkest Transylvania. With an unerring eye for detail and a keen ability to recreate the mood of a moment or the essence of an era, Lukacs blends travel and history in a sequence of unforgettable essays that will charm and enlighten. History comes alive out of the rubble in East Germany as an evening at the Dresden Opera revives the beauty of an earlier time. Steeped in boyhood memories and infused with the sights and scents of the annual Fete du Porc, "A Winter Feast in Hungary" evokes a powerful sense of tradition and family from an irrecoverable era. Historical figures provide the occasion for several essays. Lukacs's evocative description of Churchill's funeral defines the passing of an era. The commemoration of Franz Jagerstatter - the solitary opponent to National Socialism in the village of St. Radegund - is a perfect counterpoint to Hitler's one-hundredth birthday, an event that passes nearly unobserved in his nearby native city just forty miles away. You will share Lukacs's delight at the inspirations furnished by Cook's Continental Timetable, and you will be entranced by a touching view of Poland under Solidarity. Collected from such publications as the New Yorker, the New Republic, National Review, and the New York Times Magazine, these artful essays meld history and place in remarkable ways. "I am seventy now," writes Lukacs in his preface, "but I hope that God may still allow me a little more traveling, and perhaps even a brush with history, now and then." Readers of Destination Past are sure to hope for just the same thing.

Historian John Lukacs's brilliant new book offers a provocative summing-up of the twentieth century, that age of iron which began with the guns of August in 1914 and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Distinguished by its author's masterly style and command of detail, The End of the Twentieth Century is a startling examination of where we are today, how we got here, and where we are headed. Centering on Europe, America, and the relations between the two, Lukacs argues that the major battle of our time has been waged between forms of nationalism rather than between communism and democracy; that the great watershed events have been the two world wars, not the Russian Revolution; and that the century's radical revolutionary was neither Lenin nor Chairman Mao but Adolf Hitler. The book puts into sharp perspective such events as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the civil war raging in what was Yugoslavia, and the resurgence of right-wing politics in a reunited Germany. Rather than the end of history, we are now witnessing the end of the modern era, and what awaits us is not the triumphal reign of liberal democracy but a troubled time that may echo much that is most questionable in our age. Informed by the precision and insight that have made Lukacs a leading historian, The End of the Twentieth Century is a reckoning both personal and professional—at once a brilliant rebuttal to Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and an outstanding, if sobering, work of historical mediation.

In this eloquent and thought-provoking autohistory, John Lukacs, distinguished historian and writer, describes the history of his own convictions and beliefs. The journey takes us from the Hungary of the 1930s and the ravaged Budapest of World War II to Lukacs's discovery of the New World, his forays into the intellectual life of New York City, and finally his settling in Philadelphia. Along the way, Lukacs examines many of the major currents of our period, including fascism, communism, democracy, anti-Semitism, and the Christian realism from which springs the book's title. What emerges is a mind that brings to bear on the conflicts of the twentieth century the erudition of the European heritage and the independence of the American. In prose as elegant as it is supple, Confessions of an Original Sinner is at once the vivid account of one man's voyage and an important contribution to that small library that brings into sharp focus the major intellectual developments of our time.

xiv, 255 p., p. of plates : 24 cm