Past Impersonal: Group Process in Human History - Hardcover

Binion, Rudolph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875803458 ISBN 13: 9780875803456

Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this groundbreaking study, renowned historian Rudolph Binion develops a whole new of understanding human history. Exploring the collective dimension of human behavior in various historic contexts, he argues that people participate in purposeful group actions while pursuing only their own individual ends as far as they know. The basic moving force in history thus [illegible] neither individual motives, nor abstract tendencies such as modernization or globalization, but group process operating in concealment. Through several complementary historic case studies ranging over two millenniums, Binion demonstrates how individuals pursue group purposes, or hidden group agendas, unawares.

About this title

About the Author:

Rudolph Binion is the Leff Professor of History at Brandeis University. He lectures and publishes the world over in several fields and languages. His previous books include Frau Lou, Hitler among the Germans, After Christianity, Love Beyond Death, and Sounding the Classics.

Review:

"Binion's Hitler among the Germans towers above the mass of Hitler books. With breathtaking precision, it contributes not just new biographic information, but above all a compelling explanation of Hitler's personal development. It is by far the most brilliant psychohistorical contribution to Hitler research."—Eberhard Jäckel

"This book is a tour de force—both a highly original work of historical reconstruction and an exact and authoritative statement defining and elucidating the nature of psychohistorical scholarship. Among contemporary psychohistorians, Binion stands quite alone, and I think that whatever stature this particular historiographical orientation has attained (and will attain) is due in no small measure to him."—C.M. Kimmich

About this edition

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0875803458
• ISBN 13: 9780875803456
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208