My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message [Hardcover]

Amitai Etztoni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 2003

In My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message, one of America's most admired public figures tells the story of his life. Born in Germany in 1929, Amitai Etzioni escaped the Nazi regime and as a teenager dropped out of high school to fight as a commando in the Israeli War of Independence. He went on to earn his doctorate at Berkeley, teach at Columbia University and Harvard Business School, and serve as senior advisor to the Carter White House. Although he has authored or edited over 20 books, Dr. Etzioni's influence extends beyond academic circles as the founder of the communitarian social movement. In his own words, Dr. Etzioni reflects on his vision of a society whose members care profoundly about one another, assume responsibilities and do not just demand rights, and attend not merely to themselves, but also to the common good. He traces how this message spread and is playing a significant role in the public life of the United States, United Kingdom, and many other free and liberated societies. Clearly and engagingly written, Dr. Etzioni's vision and story are at once compelling and inspiring.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1990s, Western politics began to be influenced by a "Third Way" that sought a middle path between libertarianism and big-government liberalism. No thinker was more integral to this "communitarian" movement than sociologist Etzioni (The Monochrome Society). This book is as much a memoir of the movement as of the author's life-the style is strictly social policyese, and Etzioni's personal life gets relatively cursory mention. A refugee as a child from Nazi Germany, Etzioni was raised in Israel and came to the U.S. in 1957 to do graduate work at Berkeley. His early career was marked by tension between his academic and activist sides-while Etzioni's activism was often cogent, it sometimes went against prevailing trends, as with his early opposition to the Vietnam war, nuclear arms and the space race. The book drifts until Etzioni begins to craft a genuine social movement whose rise coincided with (and helped effect) the elections of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schr"der, all sympathetic to the program. While Bush's "compassionate conservatism" initially appeared to be in line with communitarian thinking, says Etzioni, his administration has abandoned it in favor of a more divisive approach, even as American society post-September 11 rushes to embrace the essence of communitarian values.Wavering between false modesty and barely restrained boastfulness throughout, Etzioni scatters (mostly) approving quotations about his books and ideas. Still, this serious volume provides both a useful portrait of a public intellectual and the essence of a movement that may define public discourse in the coming years.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A prolific author now in his mid seventies (Etzioni) looks back at his career as a social thinker, opinion-writer, and activist. (Edmund Fawcett Book Review Digest )

...a cautionary tale for all would-be public intellectuals. (Robert S. Boynton Book Review Digest )

In this revealing memoir, Amitai Etzioni tells the story of his personal odyssey--as a young Israeli soldier, a determined student, a devoted family man, a distinguished academic, and an activist intellectual. He has drawn from modern sociology a latent yet vibrant public philosophy. In this book he opens his life and his heart; and he describes the inner workings of a social movement struggling to be born. This story will interest all who have been intrigued by the communitarian message. (Selznick, Philip )

Amitai Etzioni has been a communitarian pioneer because he has adapted communitarian ideas to the purposes of concrete and non-reactionary public policy, even as he has labored to harmonize a communitarian interest in civic responsibility with a liberal concern for individual rights. He has fostered a relatively progressive communitarian agenda and managed to wrest from the Right its sense of proprietorship over communitarian ideas. (Barber, Benjamin )

Few people are privileged to launch their own 'ism.' Communitarianism in its contemporary academic form is arguably just warmed-over Hegelianism. But Amitai Etzioni's New Communitarianism is something genuinely new, or certainly something that comes as news to contemporary social theorists. (Robert Goodin )

No American is more responsible for the recent renewed interest in community than Amitai Etzioni. The prolific Etzioni has written a number of books on the subject as well as inspiring the formation of several journals of opinion, creating numerous discussion forums, convincing people coast to coast to sign a communitarian platform, and leading what he calls a communitarian movement. (John Brandl )

Unlike the civic republicans, Etzioni is concerned with constructing a community whose common good is developed by all individuals in the society, not just the elites. . . . Perhaps his best insight, though, is that in a diverse society where individuals have many attachments, the risk of oppressive community structures is much less than was the case in past human history. The multiplicity of communities becomes a protection against communitarian excesses. (Timothy L. Fort )

Amitai Etzioni is a creative thinker, one of those rare 'public intellectuals' who has consistently rolled up his sleeves to make a difference in shaping the public policy of this nation. With zeal and gusto, Etzioni has devoted considerable thought and action to issues that matter to the public at large--democracy, civic responsibility, and the moral character of our children. Etzioni gives an honest accounting of the steep learning curve that is encountered by public intellectuals who seek to work with public policymakers. A leader in the communitarian movement, Etzioni has persisted in his belief that America is a better country when individual rights are balanced with community needs. Etzioni is not shy about his personal efforts, which makes for rich and interesting stories. (Richard W. Riley )

This book is as much a memoir of the movement as of the author's life--the style is strictly policyese. This serious volume provides both a useful portrait of a public intellectual and the essence of a movement that may define public discourse in the coming years. (Publishers Weekly )

Fascinating autobiography. Amitai Etzioni has led a fascinating life, and his progress from Germany to Israel to the United States makes his intellectual autobiography an interesting study. (The Weekly Standard )

This serious volume provides both a useful portrait of a public intellectual and the essence of a movement that may define public discourse in the coming years. (Publishers Weekly )

This book is an excellent contribution to the literature on an important social movement. (Contemporary Sociology )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (April 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742521583
• ISBN-13: 978-0742521582
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,747,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, Dr. Amitai Etzioni served as a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University for 20 years; part of that time as the Chairman of the department. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978 before serving as a Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979-1980. In 1980, Dr. Etzioni was named the first University Professor at The George Washington University, where he is the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. From 1987-1989, he served as the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School.

Dr. Etzioni served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1994-95, and in 1989-90 was the founding president of the international Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In 1990, he founded the Communitarian Network, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to shoring up the moral, social and political foundations of society. He was the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, the organization's quarterly journal, from 1991-2004. In 1991, the press began referring to Dr. Etzioni as the 'guru' of the communitarian movement.

Dr. Etzioni is the author of numerous books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), The New Golden Rule (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 1997 Tolerance Book Award, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Books, 1993), and The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, (New York: Free Press, 1988). His most recent books are My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Outside of academia, Dr. Etzioni's voice is frequently heard in the media.

In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals as measured by academic citations in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.

Also in 2001, Dr. Etzioni was awarded the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences as well as the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was also the recipient of the Seventh James Wilbur Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the Appreciation and Advancement of Human Values by the Conference on Value Inquiry, as well as the Sociological Practice Association's Outstanding Contribution Award.

Dr. Etzioni is married and has five sons.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating memoirs!!, May 13, 2003

By 

M. Mccullar "M. McCullar" (Shaker Heights, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Hardcover)

Amitai Etzioni is the founder of the communitarian movement in the US today. He has lead one really interesting life. In his memoirs he reveals himself to be a reflective and honest man who is able to put his own life into perspective and put the interests of others before his own. At the same time he is painfully self-critical. From the days when he was growing up in Israel before it became a state in 1947, to his years at Columbia University during the student protests of the 1960's, to his role as an advisor to the President, he tells it as it happened. Included are some never told stories of his conflicts with the FBI. "My Brother's Keeper" does far more however: it is also about how an academic finds his way from the culture of books to a life of activism and civic responsibility. It offers the history of his intellectual evolution along with his personal development. I found it absolutely fascinating.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mind of an Active Intellectual, September 24, 2003

By 

Yehezkel Dror (Jerusalem Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Hardcover)

My Brother's Keeper. A Memoir and a Message by Amitai Etzioni is an exciting intellectual biography. It may also be entitled: "An Active Intellectual as a Young and as a Mature Man". But this book is much more than an interesting personal memoir. In addition to a fascinating life story and an intellectual biography, it leads us along the pitfalls and dilemmas of modern society during the second half of the 20th century and points out the directions of a moral life in a "good society". Etzioni's ideas as expressed in this book, and in his previous ones, are not unrealizable utopian longings. They are firmly based on contemporary reality. He piercingly analyzes present dangerous trends and forces in social, political and economic developments on one hand and the values and morality of the communitarian movement, which he founded, on the other.
Born in Germany, fleeing from the Nazi regime, raised in Israel and taking part in its War of Independence, educated and maturing in the United States, Prof. Etzioni was influence by the richness of his three cultural backgrounds. Yet, the dominant features of his personality were present from an early age, opposing his disciplinary mother, posing difficult questions to his teachers, daring to express new ideas and criticize accepted norms, despite the high price he sometime had to pay. His inclination towared activism, to shape social policies, and the strong inner feeling of a mission, a calling, as he labeled it, are present in his life from the very beginning. Etzioni applies the same rules towards himself too and does not shy from criticizing himself and expressing his frustrations and mistakes. He feels strongly committed and ready to pay the price for voicing his mind and being an active intellectual in order to bring about a moral regeneration.
I strongly recommend this book.
Rachel Elboim-Dror (author of CLEAN DEATH IN TEL AVIV, 2003)
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great intellectual leader of our time, October 12, 2003

By 

Washington, DC "univerzal" (Washington, dc United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Hardcover)

This is the story of a professor and his passionate sense of calling to serve others. It is a window into a life that combines academics, public affairs and service to society. A still humble man, he has risen to the status of advisor to several national leaders, advocating a vision of public policy that is guided by intense intellectual energy, personal responsibility and compassion. His "third way" perspective may be the the right solution to many pressing question facing democracies in our time.