Nationalism (Oxford Readers)

Rating:
Summary: comprehensive reader of theories of nationalism
Review: Professors John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, both at the London School of Economics, have put together here a great collection of texts from the major writers on nationalism over the last 100 years. Starting with Ernest Renan, Joseph Stalin and Max Weber, the book also includes extracts from Benedict Anderson, Walker Connor, Partha Chatterjee, Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, Liah Greenfeld, EJ Hobsbawm, Donald Horowitz, Elie Kedourie, Hans Kohn, James Mayall, Tom Nairn, and Anthony Smith himself, in addition to many others. As in Smith's _Nationalism and Modernism_, all perspectives of the field are represented here. There are 49 essays organized into seven chapters, complete with an introduction to each plus notes, a bibliography, information about each author and an index.

This book is a definite must for anyone interested in nationalism.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable resource
Review: This is a reader that covers the various theories of nationalism as well as varieties of nationalism itself. This makes it a largely indispensable supplement, handbook and reference work for anyone interested in nationalism. This is particularly true today as the scholarship on this social phenomenon continues to grow unabated, and since it is patently obvious that nationalism hardly seems about to disappear. The reader contains important extracts from the major works on nationalism by some of the most important early theorists such as Renan, Max Weber and Stalin (although the views of Marx and Engels themselves or Lord Acton and Friedrich Meinecke would have been welcome additions) and almost all of the most important contemporary scholars (Gellner, Anderson, Connor, A. Smith, etc.). The texts are well-selected and organized, and it really contributes to making a very complex subject and a daunting field of scholarship seem a little easier to grasp.