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This second volume of Voegelin's magisterial Order and History, The World of the Polis, explores the ancient Greek symbolization of human reality. Taking us from the origins of Greek culture in the Pre-Homeric Cretan civilizations, through the Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod, and the rise of philosophy with the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus, this masterful work concludes with the historians of the classical period.

In The World of the Polis, Voegelin traces the emergence of the forms of the city-state and of philosophy from the ancient symbolism of myth. He maintains that the limits and ultimate goals of human nature are constant and that the central problem of every society is the same—"to create an order that will endow the fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human." Thus, Voegelin shows how "the meaning of existence" achieved concrete expression in the typical political, social, and religious institutions of Greece and in the productions of its poets and thinkers. He deals with more than fifty Greek writers in the course of his analysis of the rise of myth and its representation of the divine order of the cosmos as the first great symbolic form of order, one later supplanted by the leap in being reflected in the emergence of philosophy.

The book is a tour de force, a virtuoso performance by a scholar and philosopher of great power, learning, and imagination that places its subject matter in a new light. The editor's critical introduction places The World of the Polis in the broader context of Voegelin's philosophy of history. Scholars and students of political science, philosophy, and the history of ideas will find this work invaluable.

Order and History, Eric Voegelin's five-volume study of how human and divine order are intertwined and manifested in history, has been widely acclaimed as one of the great intellectual achievements of our age.

In the fourth volume, The Ecumenic Age, Voegelin breaks with the course he originally charted for the series, in which human existence in society and the corresponding symbolism of order were to be presented in historical succession. The analyses in the three previous volumes remain valid as far as they go, Voegelin explains, but the original conception proved "untenable because it had not taken proper account of the important lines of meaning in history that did not run along lines of time."

The Ecumenic Age treats history not as a stream of human beings and their actions in time, but as the process of man's participation in a flux of divine presence that has eschatological direction. "The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it," Voegelin writes, "is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation."

In the present volume, Voegelin applies his revised conception of historical analysis to the "Ecumenic Age," a pivotal period that extends roughly from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. The age is marked by the advent of a new type of political unit—the ecumenic empire—achieved at the cost of unprecedented destruction. Yet the pragmatic destructiveness of the age is paralleled by equally unprecedented spiritual creativity, born from the need to make sense of existence in the wake of imperial conquest. These spiritual outbursts gave rise to the great ecumenic religions and raised fundamental questions for human self- understanding that extend into our historical present.

Although Oscar W. Underwood was considered a titan of his age, few American political figures have suffered such neglect as he. Except for his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 1924, his political career is largely forgotten even in Alabama. The one place in which Underwood is well remembered is in the folklore of Congress, where he is widely regarded as a great party leader who had mastered the rules perhaps as thoroughly as any member of Congress. This mastery, together with steady work, personal magnetism, and a willingness to compromise, made him effective as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in formulating a majority program after the Democrats seized control of the House in 1910. Pat Harrison, Underwood's lieutenant as minority leader, referred to Underwood as the "greatest natural parliamentarian, the greatest leader of a law-making body that I ever saw."

--from the Preface to Oscar W. Underwood: A Political Biography

This special issue of Radical History Review takes as its inspiration Cuban writer and revolutionary José Martí’s famous 1891 essay “Our America.” Focusing on Martí’s appropriation of the term “America”—used to refer to a transnational, regional project of solidarity in Latin America and to suggest a new epistemology that challenged the ideologies underpinning U.S. imperialism—Our Americas: Political and Cultural Imaginings investigates the highly contested concept of “the Americas” as it has been defined and deployed in differing strategic and politically informed ways across history. The issue is dedicated to probing the transnational political and social possibilities that emerge when the discursive boundaries established by fields such as “Latin American studies” and “American studies”—as well as the geopolitical boundaries drawn during the colonial era—are expanded or transgressed.

Drawing on history, cultural anthropology, literary criticism, and memoirs, the works in this collection, gathered from contributors from an array of geographic locales, seek to integrate “Latin America,” “North America,” “the Caribbean,” and other regions. Striving to move beyond a simple joining of “Latin America” and the United States, the transnational concept of “the Americas” is explored and complicated through essays that examine the contrasting visions of Latin American independence embodied in the writings of revolutionaries from different nations; discuss the ramifications of a political treaty that institutionalized a separation between Mexico and the United States; deconstruct the exclusionary discourses of U.S. nationalism; and expose the ways in which institutionalized racism and homophobia are roadblocks to social and political solidarity in Latin America. In discussion forums, contributors plumb the history and current relevance of the concept of “Latin America” for intellectual, social, and political work and address the unique challenges facing those who seek to teach “the Americas.”

Contributors. Arturo Arias, John Beck, John D. Blanco, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Patricio Del Real, Ian Christopher Fletcher, Paul Giles, Salah D. Hassan, Martin Hopenhayn, Aisha Khan, R. J. Lambrose, Ian Lekus, Kate Masur, Enrique C. Ochoa, Diana Paton, Rossana Reguillo, Gemma Robinson, Aimee Carillo Rowe, Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo, Sandhya Shukla, Heidi Tinsman, Carlos E. Bojorquez Urzaiz