The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting

About this title: THE COMING OF POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY was first published in 1973, and was immediately recognized as an important book. It has since become a classic. In this collection of essays, sociologist Bell signals the change in America from a nation producing goods to one based on a service economy, and what that means; he discusses the impact of technology on society and describes what it means to live and work in a knowledge-based economy. For this edition, Bell has written an introduction in which he looks back on his book, discussing its genesis and critical reception.
 

Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism



About this title: Since its original publication in 1976, "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism" has been hailed as an intellectual tour de force that redefines how we think about the relationships among economics, culture and social change. Daniel Bell, the author of such other modern classics as "The End of Ideology" and "The Coming of Post Industrial Society," argues that the unbounded drive of modern capitalism undermines the moral foundations of the original Protestant ethic that ushered in capitalism itself. In a major new afterword, Bell offers a bracing perspective on contemporary Western society, from the end of the Cold War to the rise and fall of postmodernism, revealing the crucial cultural fault lines we face as the twenty first century approaches. Praise for the Twentieth Anniversary edition: "Daniel Bell is our lively, necessary sage. He sees our world clearly; he sees our world whole. The new edition of "The Cultural Contradictions of capitalism" enriches our culture and increases our store of wisdom, sanity, and humanity at a time when cheap opinion threatens them all." --Catherine R. Stimpson, University Professor, Rutgers University, and Director, Fellows Program, MacArthur Foundation "Daniel Bell has become our Jeremiah. But he doesn't rant. His blend of contemporary history and phrase-making sociology nails us squirming to the reckless culture we have spawned." --Roger Shattuck, President, the association of literary scholars and critics, and author of "Forbidden Knowledge" Praise for the original edition: "Bell's book is a work of synthesis and interpretation, ambitious, far-reaching and challenging at every turn....this book is a model of clarity and relentless intelligence." -- "The Atlantic Monthly" "Others are entering similar pleas, but Bell's seems the most brightly argued."

The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, with "The Resumption of History in the New Century"



About this title: Named by the "Times Literary Supplement" as one of the 100 most influential books since the end of World War II, "The End of Ideology has been a landmark in American social thought, regarded as a classic since its first publication in 1962. Daniel Bell postulated that the older humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exhausted, and that new parochial ideologies would arise. In a new introduction to the year 2000 edition, he argues that with the end of communism, we are seeing a resumption of history, a lifting of the heavy ideological blanket and the return of traditional ethnic and religious conflicts in the many regions of the former socialist states and elsewhere.
 

Marxian Socialism in the United States

Communitarianism and Its Critics



About this title: Many have criticized liberalism for being too individualistic, but few have offered an alternative that goes beyond a vague affirmation of the need for community. In this entertaining book, written in dialogue form, Daniel Bell fills this gap, presenting and defending a distinctively communitarian theory against the objections of a liberal critic. Drawing on the works of such thinkers as Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and Alasdair MacIntyre, Bell attacks liberalism's individualistic view of the person by pointing to our social embeddedness. He develops Michael Walzer's idea that political thinking involves the interpretation of shared meanings emerging from the political life of a community, and intelligently rebuts criticism that this approach damages his case by being conservative and relativistic. Communitarianism and Its Critics is a provocative defense of a distinctly communitarian theory which will stimulate interest and debate among scholars and students of political theory as well as those approaching the subject for the first time.
 

The Radical Right.
by Daniel Bell (Editor)



About this title: Two vivid sets of images epitomize the dramatic course of the American right in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The main image is of a triumphant President Ronald Reagan, reasonably viewed as the most effective president of recent decades. A second set of images comes from the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a man linked to shadowy parts of the contemporary ultraright. The roots of Reaganism are conservative intellectual and political movements of the 1950s and 1960s, including currents that in those years were considered marginal and extremist. The roots of the ultraright of the 1990s have intersecting though by no means identical sources. Serious evaluation of the American right should begin with The Radical Right. It describes the main positions and composition of distinctive forces on the right in the first half of the 1950s and the next decade. It recognizes the right's vehement opposition to domestic and international Communism, its sharp rejection of the New Deal, and its difficulty in distinguishing between the two. Bell's controversial point of departure is to regard the basic position of what he terms the radical right as excessive in its estimation of the Communist threat and unrealistic in its rejection of New Deal reforms. From this starting point, Bell and his authors evaluate the ways the right went beyond programs and the self-descriptions of its leaders and organizers. The Radical Right explains McCarthyism and its successors in terms of conflicts over social status and the shape of American culture. Daniel Bell focuses on the social dislocation of significant groups in the post-New Deal decades. Many members of these groups perceived themselves as dispossessed and victimized by recent changes, even if it was not possible to regard them as having undergone any great suffering. David Plotke's major new introduction discusses the book's argument, McCarthyism and American politics, the changing shape of the American right from 1965-2000, militias, and new issues in American politics. This edition also includes an afterword by Daniel Bell responding to Plotke's interpretation and revisiting his own perspectives.
 

Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress
by Daniel Bell (Editor), Stephen R. Graubard (Editor)



About this title: In 1965, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences initiated the Commission on the Year 2000, the forerunner of what became the field of futurism. The Commission did not believe that one could "predict" the future, but sought instead to identify structural changes in society that would have long-term social impacts. And since the Commission believed that choices were possible, it sought to chart "alternative futures" on critical issues that society would face. The results of the Commission's work appeared in 1967 in a special issue of "Dædalus," the journal of the Academy. The volume consisted of "working papers, " prepared by the Chairman of the Commission, Daniel Bell, twenty-three memoranda written by such scholars as Daniel P. Moynihan, Erik Erikson, Ernst Mayr, David Riesman, James Q. Wilson, and Samuel P. Huntington, and an edited transcript of the vigorous discussions provoked by the documents. Thirty years later, the volume remains extraordinarily timely. It is both a benchmark for the understanding of American society and a prospectus of the issues that are still relevant to the problems of today--and tomorrow. This edition contains a new preface by Daniel Bell and Stephen Graubaud that reviews the Commission's work and identifies the foresight--and one startling failure--of that work. Contributors: Daniel Bell, Robert Bowie, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Karl W. Deutsch, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Hedley Donovan, Leonard J. Duhl, Erik H. Erikson, Lawrence K. Frank, William Gorham, Stephen R. Graubard, Charles M. Haar, Samuel P. Huntington, Fred Charles Iklé , Herman Kahn, Harry Kalven, Jr., Wassily Leontief, Ernst Mayr, Margaret Mead,Matthew S. Meselson, George A. Miller, Wilbert E. Moore, Daniel P. Moynihan, Harold Orlans, Harvey S. Perloff, John R. Pierce, Alan Pifer, Emanuel R. Piore, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Michael Postan, Gardner C. Quarton, Roger Revelle, David Riesman, Eugene V. Rostow, Donald A. Schon, Martin Shubik, Krister Stendahl, Anthony J. Wiener, James Q. Wilson, Robert C. Wood, Christopher Wright, Paul N. Ylvisaker.
 

The Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological Journeys 1960-1980


 

The Social Sciences Since the Second World War