UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HISTORY · CHRISTIANITY
Joseph Cook
Sir Joseph Cook (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the sixth prime minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party, having previously been leader of the Anti-Socialist Party from 1908 to 1909. His victory at the 1913 election marked the first time that a centre-right party had won a majority at an Australian federal election. Cook was born in Silverdale, Staffordshire, England, and began working in the local coal mines at the age of nine. He emigrated to Australia in 1885, settling in Lithgow, New South Wales.
COME HITHER, CHILD,' said the old Earl of Courtland to his daughter, as, in obedience to his summons, she entered his study; 'come hither, I say; I wish to have some serious conversation with you: so dismiss your dogs, shut the door, and sit down here.'
— from Marriage, 1818
Most acclaimed
Marriage
1818
Publisher's description -- Nearly everywhere and at all times, marriage has enjoyed a privileged status as the primary social unit -- the essential bond that created alliances between families and a bridge between the sexes. In joining a man and woman, marriage attempted to hold men to collective social standards, including responsibility for the women they impregnated and the children they fathered, while also stringently hedging in women's sexuality. In short, marriage has always demanded that both men and women sacrifice a considerable measure of individual freedom. In marriage, "I" becomes "we," and "we" frequently extends beyond the couple to extended family, clan, and society. For these reasons, both political and religious authorities typically have taken great care to present marriage as an institution to which individual interests must be subordinated. At the time of her death in January 2007, the celebrated historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was worried that these attitudes were in the process of being reversed. In this book, which she was in the midst of preparing for publication at the time of her passing, she argues that marriage is disintegrating under the rising demands that it serve not the good of the whole but the desires of the individual. A union that at one point was used to limit individual "rights" is now claimed as one right among many. The sexual liberation movements of the last forty years have seriously undermined marriage, argues Fox-Genovese, so much so that the institution seems to face the threat of extinction. Even so, she writes, "Marriage for love -- the promise of an enduring and engulfing bond between a man and a woman -- is a dream that refuses to die. ... It still promises that we will finally be loved as we long to be loved." That dream is the ultimate theme of this book, a fitting coda to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's distinguished career.
Socialism
In this major new work, one of America's leading thinkers of the democratic Left argues convincingly that socialist renewal is the only hope for progress and freedom in the twenty-first century. A new civilization is already in the making, Harrington maintains, one of increasing automation and unprecedented international interdependence. Old frontiers are crumbling around the world as huge multinational companies, often in collaboration with their respective governments, already engage in global planning. The costs of this transformation are borne not only by the Third World but also by the new poor and precarious middle classes of the co-called advanced nations. Tracing two centuries of socialist history, Harrington shows that despite all its flaws and failures, the basic principles are sound. Because it places human values before doctrinaire political or blindly monetary considerations, it may also well be, Harrington says, our only hope for the future. - Jacket flap.