Bøger af Richard Bernstein

"Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from his shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Thanks to his immense talent and his knack for assimilating into new environments, by the time he reached his twenties he was the most famous and highly paid entertainer in America, making almost $5,000 a week at a time when the average American made $800 a year. Jolson's public adoration and widespread acceptance as a star marked the beginning of an enriching cultural transformation, a moment when the American mind opened up to ethnic and racial differences, widening the gap of acceptability. And yet Jolson himself, despite being ferociously ambitious and gigantically talented, was crippled by insecurity, often nervous to the point of collapse, prisoner to his many vices. Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content: The Jazz Singer is all about Jews, Orthodox and otherwise. Bernstein expounds on the making of The Jazz Singer, what the film meant then and now, introducing the many individuals involved in its production, including Samson Raphaelson, a young Jewish writer whose short story was the basis for the movie; the four Warner brothers who made a fortune off it; and George Jessel, Jolson's rival and the star of Raphaelson's stage adaptation of his short story. In the background emerges a picture of old Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties: cutthroat and greedy yet visionary and progressive. And while The Jazz Singer represented the future in many ways, it also dredged up the worst of the past, including Jolson's use of blackface, common at the time. At once a tale of the Judaizing of American culture and an acknowledgment of the challenges to come, Only in America is a glistening examination of a man at the center of a watershed moment in the arts"--

From two former Beijing bureau chiefs with long experience in Asian affairs comes a clear-eyed and uncompromising look at the potentially disastrous collision course now taking shape in U.S.-China relations. Aggressively anti-American, China has nuclear weapons deliberately targeted at the United States. Recent confrontations between Chinese and American military forces indicate that China may try to take Taiwan by force. While our trade deficit rises to unprecedented heights, the powerful new china lobby shapes U.S. policy with the support of American businesses eager for a share of its booming markets. The Coming Conflict with China is required reading for those who wish to understand the tense global rivalry that is already shaping the course of the 21st century."Plunges harpoons into the tenderest interstices of the Chinese-American relationship."--New York Times"Disturbing and provocative...There is plenty to worry about."--Wall Street Journal

»Arendt bør blive læst i dag, fordi hun var så klarsynet i sin forståelse af de farer, vi stadig står over for, og fordi hun advarede os imod at blive ligeglade eller kyniske. Hun opfordrede os til at tage ansvar for vores politiske skæbner. Hun lærte os, at vi har evnen til at handle i fællesskab, at tage initiativ, at begynde, at kæmpe for at gøre frihed til konkret virkelighed.« Sådan forklarer den amerikanske filosof Richard J. Berstein, hvorfor vi skal forholde os til filosoffen Hannah Arendt den dag i dag, selvom hun døde for mere end 40 år siden. Hun var først og fremmest kendt for sin bog om Adolf Eichmann-retssagen og for det kontroversielle udtryk ’ondskabens banalitet’. Men siden hendes død og især inden for det seneste årti er interessen for hendes politiske tænkning nærmest eksploderet. I Derfor skal vi læse Hannah Arendt indkredser den amerikanske filosof Richard J. Bernstein en række grundlæggende politiske problemer og vildfarelser i vor tid. Han spørger, hvordan vi kan forstå dem gennem Arendts tænkning: flygtninges ret til rettigheder, racisme og segregering, politiske løgne og virkelighedsforvrængning samt personligt og politisk ansvar. Det er alle emner, som Arendts tænkning indædt har beskæftiget sig med, og som stadig skaber store politiske problemer – og hvis vi ønsker at være med til at løse dem, tilbyder Arendt os et sted at begynde.

Richard Bernstein's Out of the Blue provides a gripping and authoritative account of the September 11, 2001 attack, its historical roots, and its aftermath. Few news stories in recent memory have commanded as much attention as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but no news organization rivaled the New York Times for its comprehensive, resourceful, in-depth, and thoughtful coverage. This effort may well emerge as the finest hour in the paper's distinguished 150-year history. In an unprecedented commitment, the Times assigned one of its most skilled reporters, Richard Bernstein, to turn the newspaper's brilliant and incisive reporting into a riveting narrative of September 11th. Following the lives of heroes, victims, and terrorists, Bernstein weaves a complex tale of a multitude of lives colliding in conflagration on that fateful morning. He takes us inside the Al Qaeda organization and the lives of the terrorists, from their indoctrination into radical Islam to the harrowing moments aboard the aircraft as they raced toward their terrible destiny. We meet cops and firefighters, and become intimate with some of the Trade Center workers who were lost on that day. We follow the lives of the rest of America--ordinary citizens and national leaders alike--in the hours and days after the attack. Finally, Bernstein chronicles the nation's astonishing response in the aftermath. No account of this singular moment in American history will be as sharp, readable, and authoritative as Out of the Blue.

In a fiercely provocative book that will generate debate for years to come, Bernstein shows how multicultural orthodoxy has created a highly lucrative bureaucracy, even as it shortchanged the very people it is meant to benefit. "Graceful and lucid. . . . reading the book is arguably a civic duty."--Boston Globe.

At the beginning of 1945, relations between America and the Chinese Communists couldn't have been closer. Chinese leaders talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year's end, Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust, a pattern which would continue for a quarter century, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences. In China 1945, Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of the sea change that took place during that year-brilliantly analyzing its far-reaching components and colorful characters, from diplomats John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service to Time journalist, Henry Luce; in addition to Mao and his intractable counterpart, Chiang Kai-shek, and the indispensable Zhou Enlai. A tour de force of narrative history, China 1945 examines American power coming face-to-face with a formidable Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations.

Headed by Bernstein, the quantitative equity and equity derivatives strategies group at Merrill Lynch is noted for their proprietary research on market segmentation and style investing. In this book, he highlights the macroeconomic, microeconomic and expectational factors that can affect equity market segment performance.