About the Book
In an age in which the lack of independent public intellectuals has often been sorely lamented, the historian Tony Judt played a rare and valuable role, bringing together history and current events, Europe and America, what was and what is with what should be. In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last fifteen years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11; and issues of social inclusion and social justice in an age of increasing inequality. Judt was at once most at home and in a state of what he called internal exile from his native England, from Europe, and from America, and he finally settled in New York--between them all. He was a historian of the twentieth century acutely aware of the dangers of ethnic exceptionalism, and if he was shaped by anything, it was the Jewish past and his own secularism. His essays on Israel ignited a firestorm debate for their forthright criticisms of Israeli government polices relating to the Palestinians and the occupied territories. Those crucial pieces are published here in book form for the first time, including an essay, never previously published, called "What Is to Be Done?" These pieces are suffused with a deep compassion for the Israeli dilemma, a compassion that instilled in Judt a sense of responsibility to speak out and try to find a better path, away from what he saw as a road to ruin.
About the Author :
Tony Judt was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University, as well as the founder and director of the Remarque Institute, dedicated to creating an ongoing conversation between Europe and the United States. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and the École Normale Superieure, Paris, and also taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. Professor Judt was a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Republic, the New York Times, and many journals across Europe and the United States. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, Ill Fares the Land, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, and Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2005, the winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in August 2010 at the age of sixty-two. Jennifer Homans is the author of Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. She is the founder and director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University and the dance critic for The New Republic. She holds a PhD in modern European history from New York University. Before becoming a writer and scholar, Homans was a professional dancer. She is currently working on a biography of George Balanchine.
Jennifer Homans is the author of Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. She is the founder and director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University and the dance critic for The New Republic. She holds a PhD in modern European history from New York University. Before becoming a writer and scholar, Homans was a professional dancer. She is currently working on a biography of George Balanchine.
Lloyd James (a.k.a. Sean Pratt) has been a working professional actor in theater, film, television, and voice-overs for more than thirty years. He has narrated over one thousand audiobooks and won numerous Earphones Awards and nominations for the Audie Award and the Voice Arts Award. He holds a BFA degree in acting from Santa Fe University, New Mexico.
Marguerite Gavin is a seasoned theater veteran, a five-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones and Publishers Weekly awards. She has been an actor, director, and audiobook narrator for her entire professional career. With over four hundred titles to her credit, her narration spans nearly every genre, from nonfiction to mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and children's fiction. AudioFile magazine says, "Marguerite Gavin...has a sonorous voice, rich and full of emotion."
Review :
"Judt was a major intellectual force whose books and essays shaped how we look at the world...the historian Jennifer Homans brings us more essays by framing this second collection as a showcase of how Judt's thought evolved."
-- "Library Journal"
"Scintillating journalism...This collection is a reminder of Judt's clear mind and prose and, as Homans says in her lovely introduction, his fidelity to hard facts and to honest appraisal of the modern scene.... No wonder this book, and Judt's assumption of the role of political critic after the Cold War, remain so relevant."
-- "New York Times Book Review"
"Tony Judt was a historian whose journalism includes some of the finest things he wrote...In an era of growing anti-intellectualism, his essays remind us of what we gain when we stick fast to high ethical and intellectual standards, and what is lost when we let them slip."
-- "Financial Times"
