Books by Michael Walzer

In Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Michael Walzer revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal. This new edition has a new preface and afterword, written by the author, describing how the reasoning of the book connects with arguments he made in Just and Unjust Wars about the morality of warfare.Walzer's highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of Justice and Just and Unjust Wars but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with getting the arguments right.

Michael Walzer is widely regarded as one of the world's leading political theorists. This book brings together some of Walzer's important work to provide a wide-ranging survey of his thinking and the vision that underlies his responses to contemporary political debates. It also includes a essay on human rights.

Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America's foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks why these secular democratic movements have failed to sustain their hegemony: Why have they been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic-thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.

In succinct and engaging fashion Michael Walzer demystifies the activity of the social critic, providing a philosophical framework for understanding social criticism as social practice.

"A magnificent book, an honor to its writer... a book that makes for a return of civilized discussion of the question of the morality of war."-New York Review of Books

Walzer defends the trial and execution of Louis XVI as necessary, since it not only tried to destroy mystique and divine right, but also required the deputies to fully explain their guiding philosophies and applied the rules of judicial process to establish equality before the law.

A noted political philosopher offers a moving meditation on the political meanings of the biblical story of Exodus - from oppression to deliverance and the promised land.