My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating memoirs!!
Review: Amitai Etzioni is the founder of the communitarian movement in the US today. He has lead one really interesting life. In his memoirs he reveals himself to be a reflective and honest man who is able to put his own life into perspective and put the interests of others before his own. At the same time he is painfully self-critical. From the days when he was growing up in Israel before it became a state in 1947, to his years at Columbia University during the student protests of the 1960's, to his role as an advisor to the President, he tells it as it happened. Included are some never told stories of his conflicts with the FBI. "My Brother's Keeper" does far more however: it is also about how an academic finds his way from the culture of books to a life of activism and civic responsibility. It offers the history of his intellectual evolution along with his personal development. I found it absolutely fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating memoirs!!
Review: Amitai Etzioni is the founder of the communitarian movement in the US today. He has lead one really interesting life. In his memoirs he reveals himself to be a reflective and honest man who is able to put his own life into perspective and put the interests of others before his own. At the same time he is painfully self-critical. From the days when he was growing up in Israel before it became a state in 1947, to his years at Columbia University during the student protests of the 1960's, to his role as an advisor to the President, he tells it as it happened. Included are some never told stories of his conflicts with the FBI. "My Brother's Keeper" does far more however: it is also about how an academic finds his way from the culture of books to a life of activism and civic responsibility. It offers the history of his intellectual evolution along with his personal development. I found it absolutely fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: The Mind of an Active Intellectual
Review: My Brother's Keeper. A Memoir and a Message by Amitai Etzioni is an exciting intellectual biography. It may also be entitled: "An Active Intellectual as a Young and as a Mature Man". But this book is much more than an interesting personal memoir. In addition to a fascinating life story and an intellectual biography, it leads us along the pitfalls and dilemmas of modern society during the second half of the 20th century and points out the directions of a moral life in a "good society". Etzioni's ideas as expressed in this book, and in his previous ones, are not unrealizable utopian longings. They are firmly based on contemporary reality. He piercingly analyzes present dangerous trends and forces in social, political and economic developments on one hand and the values and morality of the communitarian movement, which he founded, on the other.
Born in Germany, fleeing from the Nazi regime, raised in Israel and taking part in its War of Independence, educated and maturing in the United States, Prof. Etzioni was influence by the richness of his three cultural backgrounds. Yet, the dominant features of his personality were present from an early age, opposing his disciplinary mother, posing difficult questions to his teachers, daring to express new ideas and criticize accepted norms, despite the high price he sometime had to pay. His inclination towared activism, to shape social policies, and the strong inner feeling of a mission, a calling, as he labeled it, are present in his life from the very beginning. Etzioni applies the same rules towards himself too and does not shy from criticizing himself and expressing his frustrations and mistakes. He feels strongly committed and ready to pay the price for voicing his mind and being an active intellectual in order to bring about a moral regeneration.
I strongly recommend this book.
Rachel Elboim-Dror (author of CLEAN DEATH IN TEL AVIV, 2003)
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Rating:
Summary: A great intellectual leader of our time
Review: This is the story of a professor intensely taken with the personal calling to serve. It is a window into his life that combines academics (sociology, organizational theory, political science, public policy) and public affairs (Israel - as a young man, and as a professor - Vietnam, nuclear weapons, socio-economics, community, and most important, the profound question of how to balance personal rights and societal responsibilities). A deeply humble man, he has risen to the status of advisor to several national leaders, advocating a vision of public policy that is guided by intense intellectual focus and personal responsibility. His "third way" answer may be the the right solution to the most pressing question facing democracies this century.

Rating:
Summary: A great intellectual leader of our time
Review: This is the story of a professor intensely taken with the personal calling to serve. It is a window into his life that combines academics (sociology, organizational theory, political science, public policy) and public affairs (Israel - as a young man, and as a professor - Vietnam, nuclear weapons, socio-economics, community, and most important, the profound question of how to balance personal rights and societal responsibilities). A deeply humble man, he has risen to the status of advisor to several national leaders, advocating a vision of public policy that is guided by intense intellectual focus and personal responsibility. His "third way" answer may be the the right solution to the most pressing question facing democracies this century.