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What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way
 
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What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way (Paperback)

by Nick Cohen (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd (5 Feb 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007229690
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007229697
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 162,638 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #20 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Political Science & Ideology > Liberalism
    #58 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Political Science & Ideology > Socialism

Product Description

Review

'A roaring polemic of outrage against the moral and political crisis of the liberal tradition. It is already one of the most discussed current affairs books of the new year!At the very least it forces anyone on the left to think carefully about where their movement has ended up in the modern world.' The Guardian '!exceptional and necessary!Do not feel you have to be a leftist or liberal to read it, because it engages with an argument that it crucial for all of us, and for our time.' Christopher Hitchens, Sunday Times '(He writes with) a genuine passion and human sympathy about people who have experienced appalling suffering.' Michael Burleigh, The Evening Standard 'Undoubtedly controversial and provocative "What's Left?" is, as its title suggests, a bleakly witty but perhaps dimly hopeful examination of what it means to be liberal in an age where the lines that have been drawn in the sand are in danger of being washed away.' Waterstones Books Quarterly 'One of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way!Cohen's is a brave voice.' Michael Gove, The Spectator 'Nick Cohen explains how contemporary liberals have lost their way with his usual polemical brio.' The Observer 'An essay of wide reference and great brilliance.' John Lloyd, Financial Times 'Cohen skilfully shows how the left perversely set its moral compass by the United States!Cohen is at his best as a painstakingly forensic officer and he marshals his evidence with flair and rigour!He is at his very best when he exposes the dishonesty of the liberal press!Cohen's book has made me look with greater respect at the motives behind those who led the journey to war in Iraq in 2003, and view many of the anti-war campaigners with a new scepticism!This book is much more than a mere denunciation of old left-wing friends and colleagues. It is also a moving account of a long personal journey carried off with wit, verve, considerable literary skill and compassion.' The Observer 'It is an essay of wide reference and great brilliance, which flays every kind of foot-shuffling excuse for not facing up to the nature of the regime which that evil (and now, mercifully dead) tyrant, Saddam Hussein, inflicted on his country and planned for his region. Cohen surveys a gamut of liberal-left Western opinion that, in part under the pressure of the Iraqi war, has forgotten its best tradition and instead lapsed into its worst, that regards nothing as more important than the failures of its own societies, and that lacks the imagination or the will to comprehend the agonies of those living under tyranny.' Financial Times 'Nick Cohen smells out the cesspits of corruption and injustice with the keenest of noses. He tells it as it is, without fear or favour. He's one of the few independent voices left in an increasingly closed society.' Harold Pinter

Financial Times

'An essay of wide reference and great brilliance.'

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35 Reviews
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 (21)
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 (3)
3 star:
 (6)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (35 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars High Time, 2 May 2008
By Jonathan Posner (LONDON, England United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
  
At last, a writer who isn't afraid to challenge the posturing of a now ridiculous 'liberal left', a loose political grouping who really should have the collective intelligence to know better. Until recently I've counted myself as one of them but now I just feel ashamed. This fine writer will tell you why. But one of his chapter titles, 'Kill us, we deserve it', pretty well sums it all up.

Cohen's analysis is as sober as it is disturbing and I read this book well into the night, as gripped as by any thriller. He also writes lucidly, an especial advantage and in direct contrast to the disappointing traditions of inpenetrable prose by many leftist thinkers.

Nick Cohen, given his fine liberal background, is a brave man to have written this book. He has had the courage to stand up and be counted and should be applauded for it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A witty and personal polemic, 30 Dec 2008
By Dr. Sarah A. Brown "Sarah Brown" (Cambridge) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Many reviewers of this book - whether writing in newspapers or here on Amazon - seem to distort its arguments. I think (cross) leftists and (smug) rightists both want Cohen's conversion to be more dramatic than in fact it is. I'd skimmed through some of these reviews before reading "What's Left?" and was expecting his perspective to be close to that of, say, Melanie Phillips. But he hasn't abandoned the Left completely, only certain tendencies and views within the Left which he sees as sinister. He has been characterised by some reviewers as a fan of Bush and an unequivocal supporter of the second Iraq war. But this clearly isn't the position he sets out in "What's Left?"

The book is polemical and aimed at general readers, and clearly Cohen has had to shape and select his material in the most rhetorically effective way. Sometimes I felt the argument had been flattened, a middle position excluded. Yet on the whole I thought "What's Left?" was nuanced, thoughtful and consistently absorbing.
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56 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A brave examination at what has gone wrong with the left, 24 Feb 2007
By Mike J. Wheeler (Kingswinford, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Before I start, let's make it clear where I stand. I consider myself reasonably left-wing, I am and always will be a republican (small "r"!), I consider myself a socialist and always will be, but I also consider myself a democrat (small "d"!). It has irked me over the last few years to find myself reading comment from leftist writers whom I used to respect and finding myself vehemently disagreeing with what they say. Perhaps, I thought, like the old adage goes - "I'm just getting more right wing with age". Here, in this excellent book lies the explanation and my own salvation. The fault isn't mine or that of other decent socialists who seem to be increasingly alienated by voices from the left, its the left itself that seems to have changed.

Nowhere has this divergence of my own opinions and the liberal left seem to have grown than on the challenges facing the post 9-11 world. I just cannot understand how people who supposedly believe in the rights of man and enlightenment and reason can be supportive of movements that are completely fascistic. That's what we are fighting here, whether in its form of Baathist fascism or Islamofascism. I see little to choose between them. To all the commentators in the press and amongst the chattering classes who daily slag off Tony Blair and others with the guts to stand up to fascism this should be an essential read and if they are at all self-reflective maybe it might change their outlook, though I doubt it.

The book itself is a very well written critique of the drift of the left for whom the disappointment of the lack of a proletarian revolution has made them look elsewhere for succour and support. That they have chosen to align themselves with anti-Americanism in whatever form it comes is proof of their political idiocy. Cohen writes well on the parallels between the appeasers of the 30's and the modern day appeasers of Saddam and Bin Laden. The lessons are clear, appeasement failed in the 30s and it will fail again now. The enemy have parallels as well, in the 30s it was a Germany led by an obsessive anti-semitic death cult, today it is a terrorist organisation/idea that inspires madmen. Islamofascism is as patently anti-modern, misogynistic (whatever they say), homophobic and racist as the Nazis ever were. That those on the left who apologise for them cannot see this is to all of our detriment.

This is a brave book. Cohen will undoubtedly lost friends of long-standing in publishing this. Like David Aaronovitch he will no doubt be vilified in the liberal parts of the press. However, this is a necessary book and I thank Nick Cohen for writing it, at least i know I'm not alone!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Tripe
Cohen, along with fatty Aaronovitch, both failed utter mediocrities in the world of the Left, love to defend imperialist war-mongers in the context of their own Damascine... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Bond - Basildon Bond

5.0 out of 5 stars It all depends
On what you had to start with.

If you had, for example, an elephant, a panda, and three koalas, and the removed (by the least harmful method of your choice) the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Rampaging Hippogriff

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb account of the demise of the left
This was a fascinating read, revealing the extent to which the British left has betrayed its principles. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Analyzer

5.0 out of 5 stars Very relevant and timely
This is a polemical work and as such, the tone is a little shrill in places. Its central argument however is very sound and well made. Read more
Published 9 months ago by John Hopper

5.0 out of 5 stars Between Iraq and a hard place
It could fairly be argued that what has always united the myriad groups, factions and parties comprised under the term "left-wing" is not so much their ideology as their... Read more
Published 10 months ago by HuddsOn

1.0 out of 5 stars What's Left? Not Nick Cohen
I can't help but get annoyed at nearly every book, article or other piece of work this man does. What person to the left spends more time criticising the left than the right? Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mr. B. Singleton

3.0 out of 5 stars Serious political writing
An uncompromising take on the state of the left wing today. Cohen does not shirk from calling the left wing lily livered where he feels appropriate. Read more
Published 14 months ago by G. L. Haggett

4.0 out of 5 stars Late You Come But Still You Come
Like many who start out on the left, Nick Cohen was an idealist.
He'd like to have stayed that way; it's just that that pesky old human nature, and the immutable laws of... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Dalrymplist

2.0 out of 5 stars I was a bit disappointed by the writing, not the politics
I found this book a little disappointing, given the positive reviews and significant publicity it had. Perhaps that says more about me than the book; I don't know. Read more
Published on 2 Jan 2008 by U Budgerigar

1.0 out of 5 stars An apology for mediocrity...
Nick Cohen's book reads like a sad apologia for his own sorry political mediocrity. You only have to hear the man speak on Question time to realise he is a populist toady,... Read more
Published on 27 Nov 2007 by G. Henry-Stogdon

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