Conversations About The History Of Ideas

This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring intellectual historians Quentin Skinner, Stefan Collini, Darrin McMahon, Martin Jay and Pankaj Mishra providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn’t otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:
I. The Two Cultures, Revisited - A conversation with Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. The "Two Cultures" debate of the 1960s between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis is one of the most misunderstood intellectual disputes of the 20th century. Most people think that the debate only revolved around the notion that our society is characterized by a divide between two cultures – the arts or humanities on the one hand, and the sciences on the other. This detailed conversation provides a careful examination and illuminating insights of what the issues really were in this debate.
II. Deconstructing Genius - A conversation with Darrin McMahon, the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. The word “genius” evokes great figures like Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Mozart but what quintessential quality unites these individuals? Can we measure it? Can we create it? This conversation provides a detailed exploration of McMahon’s research on the evolution of genius from Plato to Einstein in an effort to illuminate what our evolving genius mythology reveals about the rest of us.
III. Turning the Mirror: A View From The East - A conversation with Pankaj Mishra, award-winning author and independent scholar. This conversation provides behind-the-scenes insights into several of Mishra's books, including “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia” and “An End To Suffering: The Buddha In The World”, while highlighting his personal development and scholarly experiences which motivated him to write those books.
IV. Pants On Fire: On Lying In Politics - A conversation with Martin Jay, the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History Emeritus at UC Berkeley. A detailed conversation examining Jay’s extensive research on lying in politics from Plato and St. Augustine to Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss.
V. Quest For Freedom - A conversation with Quentin Skinner, Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities, QMUL. Quentin Skinner is considered to be one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. This comprehensive conversation examines how Skinner came to appreciate the importance of the distinction between the modern view of freedom and the so-called neo-Roman view, together with what it implies for our current and future political understanding.
Howard Burton is the host and editor of all Ideas Roadshow conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy. Ideas Roadshow offers a series of 20 Collections, including Conversations About History, Volumes 1-3, and Conversations About Politics.