John Lukacs

Distinguished historian John Lukacs presents an hour-by-hour account of the five days from 24th to 28th May 1940, as the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue the war.

Five Days in London, May 1940

John Lukacs, distinguished historian and native of Budapest, here offers a rich and eloquent depiction of one of Europe's great cities at its height. He provides a cultural and historical portrait of Budapest - its sights, sounds, and inhabitants; the artistic community; its class dynamics and politics; the essential role played by its Jewish population - and a historical perspective that describes the ascendance of the city and its decline into the maelstrom of the twentieth century. -- Publisher's description.

A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture

Budapest 1900

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.

Confessions of an Original Sinner

One of the most important developments of Western civilization has been the growth of historical consciousness. Consciously or not, history has become a form of thought applied to every facet of human experience; every field of human action can be studied, described, or understood through its history. In this extraordinary analysis of the meaning of the remembered past, John Lukacs discusses the evolution of historical consciousness since its first emergence about three centuries ago.

The Remembered Past

Historical Consciousness

Examines biographies of Adolf Hitler and their authors to reassess the reality of Hitler's life and his place in the history of the twentieth century

The Hitler of History

This is a day-by-day account of the eighty-day struggle in 1940 between Hitler--poised on the edge of absolute victory--and Churchill--threatened by imminent invasion and defeat--on the eve of the second World War. "A masterful book--masterful in its portrayal of its protagonists, masterful in its overall understanding of the death-struggle in which they engaged, masterful, above all, in its vivid, suspenseful chronicling of the most momentous eighty days in the history of this century." --Geoffrey Ward"This is a marvelous book. John Lukacs has lucid, unsentimental insight into the mind and character of both Churchill and Hitler." --Conor Cruise O'Brien"A wonderful story wonderfully told." --George F. Will"It is salutary to be reminded in this powerful study how close Hitler came to winning in 1940. . . . An impressive study . . . [written] with elegance and panache." --Peter Stansky, New York Times"A master of narrative history on a par with Barbara Tuchman and Garrett Mattingly." --Kirkus Reviews

The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler

The Duel

the dire warning

Blood, toil, tears and sweat

This book describes the history of an entire continent during the twoe years from September 1939 to December 1941. John Lukacs looks at many of the myths, military and political, that still obscure the history of the Second World War. He shows how the war was experienced by the many varieties of Europeans involved in it, and presents avivid picture of a civilization at the moment of its greatest agitation.

The Last European War, September 1939/December 1941

John Lukacs On History Historians & Historical Knowledg

Remembered Past

Fear and Hatred

Democracy and Populism

George F. Kennan

The Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence

George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944-1946

The Passing of the Modern Age

At the End of an Age isa 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 ofthe 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.

At the End of an Age

Reflects upon the discipline of history, claiming that the writing and teaching of history in higher education is in decline, and explores ways in which the future of the discipline can thrive.

The Future of History

A masterful account culminating in the fateful days before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, "June 1941" offers penetrating insights and a new portrait of Hitler and Stalin.

Hitler and Stalin

Jun-41

In a career spanning more than sixty-five years, John Lukacs has established himself as one of our most accomplished historians. Now, in the stimulating book History and the Human Condition, Lukacs offers his profound reflections on the very nature of history, the role of the historian, the limits of knowledge, and more. Guiding us on a quest for knowledge, Lukacs ranges far and wide over the past two centuries. The pursuit takes us from Alexis de Tocqueville to the atomic bomb, from American “exceptionalism” to Nazi expansionism, from the closing of the American frontier to the passing of the modern age. Lukacs’s insights about the past have important implications for the present and future. In chronicling the twentieth-century decline of liberalism and rise of conservatism, for example, he forces us to rethink the terms of the liberal-versus-conservative debate. In particular, he shows that what passes for “conservative” in the twenty-first century often bears little connection to true conservatism. Lukacs concludes by shifting his gaze from the broad currents of history to the world immediately around him. His reflections on his home, his town, his career, and his experiences as an immigrant to the United States illuminate deeper truths about America, the unique challenges of modernity, the sense of displacement and atomization that increasingly characterizes twenty-first-century life, and much more. Moving and insightful, this closing section focuses on the human in history, masterfully displaying how right Lukacs is in his contention that history, at its best, is personal and participatory. History and the Human Condition is a fascinating work by one of the finest historians of our time. More than that, it is perhaps John Lukacs’s final word on the great themes that have defined him as a historian and a writer.

A Historian's Pursuit of Knowledge

History and the Human Condition

A writer and historian describes his journey from 1930s Hungary to the United States, intellectual life in New York City, and his settling in Philadelphia, examining, along the way, fascism, communism, democracy, anti-Semitism, and Christian realism

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.

A Study of Character

George Kennan

This day-by-day account of the maneuvering between Britain and Germany in 1940 is “a wonderful story wonderfully told” (George F. Will, New York Times-bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner). During the late spring and early summer of 1940, Hitler was poised on the edge of absolute victory, having advanced rapidly through a large part of Europe—and Britain was threatened by imminent invasion and defeat. From the acclaimed author of Five Days in London, May 1940, this book tells the story of two leaders facing off against each other, and the decisions they made that shaped the eventual outcome of the Second World War. “Powerful…An impressive study [written] with elegance and panache.”—The New York Times “A master of narrative history on a par with Barbara Tuchman and Garrett Mattingly.”—Kirkus Reviews “An often witty and always fascinating—even entertaining—writer.”—TheWashington Post

The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill & Hitler

"Remembered Past draws together Lukac's diverse and wide-ranging writings on a variety of interrelated topics. The volume serves at once as an introduction to essential aspects of Lukac'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." -- Back cover

John Lukacs

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