Nationalism and Liberty: The Swiss Example
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956. First American edition, published the same year as the London edition (George Allen & Unwin) and likewise printed in Great Britain. In the original unclipped dust jacket priced $3.25. 8.75" x 5.5". Publisher’s grey-blue cloth, front board and spine lettered in black. Very good in a good jacket. Cloth clean and square; binding tight; text paper uniformly toned. Jacket spine panel darkened, with scattered soiling and a short closed tear and crease at the top edge of the front panel. From the library of L. John Wood (1930–2026), Indianapolis attorney, chairman of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission (1970–76), longtime Indiana ACLU board member and national ACLU board member (1968–73), and counsel to the Indianapolis Public Schools board during the remedy phase of the city’s federal desegregation case. It carries his characteristic reading note on the rear free endpaper: “1 December 1956,” the date he finished the book. Kohn (1891–1971) was a Prague-born historian who pioneered the academic study of nationalism. In this book he asks whether nationalism can coexist with individual liberty and diversity, and he answers with Switzerland, a nation of German, French, and Italian speakers held together by civic rather than ethnic ties. The book traces Swiss nationhood from its medieval roots through the 1847 civil war and the federal settlement of 1848. Kohn presents Switzerland as a model for a uniting postwar Europe, comparing the old Confederation to NATO. Written a decade after the defeat of fascism and in the shadow of Soviet power, Kohn’s study asks a question that has returned with new urgency: whether a nation can sustain a shared identity without surrendering liberty to ethnic or authoritarian nationalism. (Wikipedia)
First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good / Good+. Item #UB-51681
Price: $250.00