Each of the major candidates vying to be the next President of the United States—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain—has cited Reinhold Niebuhr’s political philosophies as among their most profound influences. Written during the cold war era when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is now back in print and more relevant than ever. Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers across the political spectrum to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace.
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