With an updated preface by the author.Since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, rights have become the dominant language of the public good around the globe. Indeed, rights have become the trump card in every argument. Long-standing fights for aboriginal rights, the issue of preserving the linguistic heritage of minorities, and same-sex marriage have steered our society into a full-blown rights revolution. This revolution is not o...

Timely and profound philosophical meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music, and art searched for solace while facing tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize-finalist Michael Ignatieff.When someone we love dies, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes--war, famine, pandemic--we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolati...

Renowned author and former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff delivers a stirring meditation on contemporary politics and the lessons he learned in defeat. Candid and utterly unexpected, this book is not just for Canadians concerned about the future of the Liberal Party, but for all citizens concerned about the future of Canada and of political discourse in today's increasingly partisan world.In 2011, the "Natural Governing Party of Canada" suffered its greatest defea...

In the noted journalist's acclaimed thriller, a foreign correspondent is determined to avenge a friend's the brutal murder in the Balkans.A New York Times Notable BookCharlie Johnson is an American journalist working somewhere in the Balkans. As a seasoned correspondent, he's seen everything. But suddenly he finds himself caught up in the events he's meant to be witnessing—when the woman sheltering Charlie and his crew is set on fire by a r...

Winner of the Zócalo Book PrizeA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice“Combines powerful moral arguments with superb storytelling.”—New StatesmanWhat moral values do we hold in common? As globalization draws us together economically, are the things we value converging or diverging? These twin questions led Michael Ignatieff to embark on a three-year, eight-nation journey in search of an answer. What we share, he found, a...

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social IssuesUntil the end of the Cold War, the politics of national identity were confined to isolated incidents of ethnic strife and civil war in distant countries.With the collapse of Communist regimes across Europe and the loosening of the Cold War's clamp on East–West relations, a surge of nationalism swept the world stage. In Blood and Belonging, Ignatieff makes a thorou...

In the age of terrorism, the temptations of ruthlessness can be overwhelming. But there is also the anxiety that a violent response to violence makes us morally indistinguishable from our enemies.There is perhaps no greater political challenge today than trying to win the war against terrorism without losing our democratic souls. Michael Ignatieff confronts this challenge head-on with a combination of pragmatic idealism, historical sensitivity, and astute political judgment.

This dramatic and poignant chronicle of four generations of a Russian family begins in the dazzling court of Tsar Alexander III, traces the Ignatieff family's rise to power and influence in the imperial regime of Tsar Nicholas II, and sweeps us into an avalanche of revolution, civil war, and exile. Drawing on family diaries, photographs in an old family album, and stories passed down from father to son, Michael Ignatieff movingly comes to terms with the meaning of his family's memories and...

In 1872, the author's great-grandfather George Monro Grant set out with Sandford Fleming to map out the railway line that would link Canada ocean to ocean. Michael Ignatieff recreates his journey, seeing the country through his ancestor's optimistic vision and tracing how that vision filtered through his illustrious family tree. The Grants' engagement with the idea of Canada's place in the world includes his uncle George Grant's classic, Lament for a Nation, and his own more confident view...

With the collapse of political order around the world, a new international order is emerging, one that is crafted to suit American imperial objectives.In Empire Lite, Michael Ignatieff explores both sides of what he sees as a new global empire—the imperial and the humanitarian. Humanitarian agencies face the dilemma of how to keep their programs from being suborned to imperial interests. Yet they realize it was American air power that made an uneasy peace and humanitarian ...

Charlie Johnson is a veteran war correspondent who thinks he has seen it all until he makes one rash expedition into a Balkan war zone. He watches helplessly as a woman who sheltered him is set on fire. From then on, his life is consumed by the mission to find the man who did it, caught on film by his friend and cameraman, Jacek.Drawing on his own experience of war zones, Michael Ignatieff probes the damage that blights Charlie’s life and threatens to destroy his humanity, the resu...

With the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the most controversial question in world politics fast became whether the United States stands within the order of international law or outside it. Does America still play by the rules it helped create? American Exceptionalism and Human Rights addresses this question as it applies to U.S. behavior in relation to international human rights. With essays by eleven leading experts in such fields as international relations and i...