Mr. Sammler's Planet / Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a “registrar of madness,” a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul. “Sorry for all and sore at heart,” he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering. To Mr. Sammler—who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings—a good life is one in which a person does what is “required of him.” To know and to meet the “terms of the contract” was as true a life as one could possibly live. At its heart, this novel is quintessential Bellow: moral, urbane, sublimely humane.
This well-established textbook will be invaluable to all students studying British politics within degree courses. Greatly expanded for this third edition, Gillian Peele's book develops a framework for understanding the radical changes in the relationships between the polity, economy and society which have occurred across the last two decades. She brings to the fore the impact on British government and politics, of Europe, factors of social change, the decline of consensus, the shaping of a more marked ideological politics and the rising tide of technology. Against the backdrop of her analytical framework, Peele sets out the details of the British System of Government providing students with a clear understanding of the basic machinery of Government and the Constitution - Executive, Legislative and Judiciary - as well as of the forces shaping the dynamics of political change such as parties, voting behaviour and pressure groups.
The comprehensiveness of this text and its accessibility will ensure that lay readers, students and teachers of politics have to hand a work that provides a rich blend of fact, judgement and analysis from one of the most perceptive writers on contemporary British politics.
