Books about Postmodernity from Amazon.com

A great deal has been written on what has variously been described as the post-modern condition and on post-modern culture, architecture, art and society In this new book, David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience. But the book is much more than this: in the course of his investigation the author provides a social and semantic history - from the Enlightenment to the present - of modernism and its expression in political and social ideas and movements, as well as in art, literature and architecture. He considers in particular how the meaning and perception of time and space themselves vary over time and space, and shows that this variance affects individual values and social processes of the most fundamental kind. This book will be widely welcomed, not only for its clear and critical account of the arguments surrounding the propositions of modernity and post-modernity, but as an incisive contribution to the history of ideas and their relation to social and political change. .
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For History of Architecture courses in departments of Art, Design, Art History and Architecture Moving back and forth between the long view of historical trends and close-ups on major works and crucial architectural themes, this insightful, lively and original modern survey reinvigorates conventional period and thematic structures of architectural history and revitalizes the canon of great buildings. Designed to help students understand and appreciate great architecture and its history, the lavishly illustrated text explains specific qualities of periods in depth and the complex illuminating differences between them in social, intellectual, and aesthetic terms. Exceptionally detailed coverage of the modern age (18th century to the present)..
Price: $80.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this concluding volume of his magisterial trilogy, Gary Dorrien sustains his previous definition of liberal theology and his mixture of theological, philosophical, and historical analysis, while emphasizing the unprecedented diversity of liberal theology in the postmodern age. Dorrien argues that liberal theology has been in crisis for the past half-century, yet despite the crisis, and also because of it, it has also experienced a “hidden renaissance” of intellectual creativity. Liberal theology in the early twenty-first century is more diverse, complex, and marginalized than ever before in its history, he concludes, but its essential idea—creating a progressive, credible, integrative third way between orthodox over-belief and secular unbelief—remains as necessary as ever..
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What in the world is postmodernity? Is it the dominant reality today? If it is, what does it mean to be a church in a postmodern world? It seems that the church had a difficult time coming to terms with a modern world, an era ruled by the claims of scientific certainty. Having done so, more or less, it is now confronted by the claims of postmodernity, which seem to reverse the whole equation, to say that certainty and objectivity are chimeras. "What is truth?" Pilate asked, and postmodernity--at least as caricatured by its opponents--responds: "There's no such thing."

Gerard Mannion, in Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, addresses the situation of the church in a postmodern world. The fundamental changes in human society and culture wrought by the twentieth century require the church to consider its response in the twenty-first century. What is the church's moral vision, how does its practice look, what is the nature of its aspiration toward holiness in our times? Mannion believes that since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has been in a kind of limbo, awaiting a vision of its own life for the future. Rather than focusing on specific controversies, Mannion offers concrete suggestions about how the church can create a better harmony between its own self-understanding, its ecclesiological vision, and its day-to-day life, its ecclesial practice..
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Can evangelical Christianity be postmodern? In The Next Reformation, Carl Raschke describes the impact of postmodernism on evangelical thought and argues that the two ideologies are not mutually exclusive. Instead, Christians must learn to worship and minister within the framework of postmodernism or risk becoming irrelevant. In this significant and timely discussion, Raschke demonstrates how to reconcile postmodernism with Christian faith. This book will appeal to readers interested in the relationship between postmodernism and Christian faith as well as church leaders and pastors wrestling with the practical implications of cultural changes for worship and ministry..
Price: $3.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

By his own admission never one to duck a good fight, Stanley Hauerwas has in the past three decades established himself as one of our most important and most disputatious theologians. With A Better Hope, he concentrates on the constructive case for the truth and power of the church and its faith, "since Christians cannot afford to let ourselves be defined by what we are against. Whatever or whomever we are against, we are so only because God has given us so much to be fore."

So Hauerwas here crystallizes and extends profound criticisms of America, liberalism, capitalism and postmodernism, but also identifies unlikely allies (such as Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George) and locates surprising resources for Christian survival (such as mystery novels). Interlocutors along the way include Reinhold Niebuhr, John Courtney Murray and, in a significant and previously unpublished essay, social gospeller Walter Rauschenbusch.

Never boring and often telling, A Better Hope demonstrates how a thinker so often accused of being "tribal" and "sectarian" is at the same time one of few contemporary theologians read by not just other theologians, but by political scientists, philosophers, medical ethicists, law professors, and literary theorists..
Price: $10.64 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Trenchant and panoramic, The Origins of Postmodernity traces the genesis, consolidation and consequences of the notion of the postmodern Beginning its exhilarating intellectual tour in the Hispanic world of the 1930s, it follows the changes in the meanings and usage of the concept through to the late 1970s, when its adoption by Jean-Franois Lyotard and Jrgen Habermas first gave the idea of postmodernism wider currency. Central attention then falls on Fredric Jameson, whose work today represents the most outstanding general theory of the postmodern. Reconstructing the intellectual and political background of Jameson's interpretation of the present, The Origins of Postmodernity looks at its aftereffects in the debates of the 1990s. Anderson enriches his much-cited analysis of modernism by placing postmodernism in the force field of a dclass bourgeoisie, the growth of mediatised technology and the historic global defeat of the left symbolised by the end of the Cold War. Rigorously pursuing his interpretation of postmodernism as the cultural logic of a multinational capitalism 'complacent beyond precedent', Anderson ends with a set of historical reflections on the fading of modernism, shifts in the system of the arts, the rise of the spectacular, debates on the 'end of art', and on the fate of politics in the postmodern world..
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"Written in exceptionally clear yet imaginative prose by two distinguished architectural historians." —Paul Goldberger, The New York Times Book Review

This highly regarded, exceptionally well-written book brings to life the entire sweep of architectural history, and its greatest buildings, from the prehistoric era to the present. For over 15 years readers have relied on this incomparable work for its lucidity, originality, splendid illustrations, and nuanced interpretation of architecture. Now in its Second Edition, the top-selling history of architecture is better than ever with an updated introduction, new insights based on recent research, improved illustrations including eight additional pages in color, and above all a new chapter—on the most significant and controversial works of contemporary architecture from 1980 to 2000 —that proposes challenges for the future..
Price: $98.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This challenging book on jurisprudence begins by posing questions in the post-modern context, and then seeks to bridge the gap between our traditions and contemporary situation. It offers a narrative encompassing the birth of western philosophy in the Greeks and moves through medieval Christendom, Hobbes, the defence of the common law with David Hume, the beginnings of utilitarianism in Adam Smith, Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the hope for enlightenment with Kant, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, onto the more pessimistic warnings of Weber and Nietzsche. It defends the work of Austin against the reductionism of HLA Hart, analyses the period of high modernity in the writings of Kelsen, Hart and Fuller, and compares the different approaches to justice of Rawls and Nozick. The liberal defence of legality in Ronald Dworkin is contrasted with the more disillusioned accounts of the critical legal studies movement and the personalised accounts of prominent feminist writers..
Price: $33.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]