New faculty book offers info 'every American needs to know'

The Great Lie, a new book edited by Flagg Taylor, has just been released by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The book has been designated "Book of the Month" by the publisher.

Taylor, an assistant professor of government, calls the book "a collection of essays by some of the greatest minds of the past century on the themes of ideology and totalitarianism." He was inspired bya course he first taught (and continues to teach) at Skidmore called "Dissident Political Thought" which focused on three great anti-Communist dissidents: Czeslaw Milosz, Vaclav Havel, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Said Taylor, "Initially I wanted a volume that brought together the best dissident writing in one volume, but then I thought an even better book would offer the best writing (not limited to just dissidents) on the phenomenon that dominated the 20th century: totalitarianism.

He continued, "I would argue the most penetrating accounts of totalitarianism come from the thinkers collected here. The authors in this volume most certainly speak to the political dilemmas of their own time and place, but they also address themselves to enduring questions of politics.

Peter Robinson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, calls Taylor's book "scholarship of the highest order." Said Robinson, "Flagg has given us the benefit of his own wide reading, putting in a single volume what every American needs to know. Nazism and Communism really were something new and distinctive in human history, yet at the same time they represent horrors that could recur--anywhere. As Solzhenitsyn says in a quotation that Flagg prints on the frontispiece: 'There is always this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.' Alas, all the evil of the 20th century is possible everywhere on earth.' I get lots of books at my office--over the years, I've ended up on a lot of mailing lists at a lot of publishing houses. This book counts."

A Skidmore faculty member for five years, Taylor has specialized in political philosophy. His research interests also include totalitarianism and dissident literature, 18 ^th- and 19 ^th-century political thought, and the origns and development of executive power in the American constitution.

Read more about The Great Lie  here.