A Passion for Freedom

Leonard R. Sussman

ISBN 10: 1591021421 / ISBN 13: 9781591021421

Verlag: Prometheus Books, US, 2004

This book is about people whose own striving, sometimes successful, sometimes tragic, reinforces my early attachment to the golden or philosophical mean, the Centre. To advance human progress, however defined, the democratic Centre must hold. That is often derided as compromise or shilly-shally. Yet, in the long run (if there is to be one) human interaction, whether in a medical trade-off for a patient, in democratic policymaking or election, in labour negotiation, or in the murderous confrontation of enemy states - in every human interaction, the moment of truth comes when the extremes give way to the centre, however defined.This is not a book of historic record, but an account of one man's travel through diverse politics and cultures, observing the harm done to the human spirit by intent or, worse, in attention.One person cannot change the world, as even presidents and dictators discover. But anyone can help diminish outrages and inhumanities. One does that by talking and walking in the right places. New York is my springboard to those places. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers LU-9781591021421

Inhaltsangabe:

As the executive director of Freedom House for twenty-one years and now its Senior Scholar in International Communications, Leonard R. Sussman has had the extraordinary opportunity of both leading and serving an organization that has been at the center of the struggle for freedom for more than sixty years. Founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and other visionary Americans, both Democratic and Republican, Freedom House has championed worthy causes from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, to the new democracies that have emerged around the world since the 1990s. In this engrossing memoir of his adventures with courageous men and women in fifty-nine countries, Sussman pays tribute to those mostly unsung heroes who contributed to freedom and humanistic ideals and in some cases paid the heavy price of imprisonment, torture, or death.
Among the many interesting individuals profiled are: Helen Suzman, a white parliamentarian who fought apartheid for three decades; Milovan Djilas, a leading Yugoslav anticommunist who suffered years of imprisonment; philosopher-activist Sidney Hook; Luis Muñoz Marin, Puerto Rica’s first elected native governor; Lucia Thorne, a courageous journalist who risked her life in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion; and many other journalists, politicians, activists, and intellectuals.
Also included is a never-before-published 1987 interview with civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, in which Rustin compares the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins with Martin Luther King.
This one-of-a-kind memoir, full of intriguing insights and vignettes, is a fascinating record of people, ideas, and history in the making.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor: Leonard R. Sussman (New York, NY) is Senior Scholar in International Communications of Freedom House and formerly its executive director (1967-1988). He is the author of ten books and numerous articles on issues of freedom and democracy.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: A Passion for Freedom
Verlag: Prometheus Books, US
Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
Einband: Hardback
Zustand: New