Exodus And Revolution

From a pre-eminent political philosopher, a moving meditation on the biblical story of Exodus and its powerful lessons for those seeking political change. 

“A rewarding book—elegantly written, subtly argued, full of stimulating suggestions.”—New York Times

The biblical book of Exodus is the West’s oldest and most enduring story of liberation and, as Michael Walzer argues, its first and most influential work of radical politics. Against messianic visions of sudden deliverance, Walzer recovers Exodus as a realist’s guide to political change, one that takes seriously how slow and painful the process of emancipation can be. Moving across the centuries, he shows how everyone from Puritan revolutionaries to civil-rights preachers to Latin American theologians have all found in this ancient text a template for their own struggle. The result is both a strikingly original reading of a familiar text and a profound meditation on the necessarily gradual and fraught road from oppression to deliverance.

• “A rewarding book—elegantly written, subtly argued, full of stimulating suggestions.”
  New York Times
• “Mr. Walzer weaves a brilliant tapestry composed of strands of the biblical story, commentaries on it and reports of subsequent revolutionary activity that employ the same strands but weave them into new patterns.”
  New York Times Book Review
• “Walzer knows his Bible. He stands in the growing ranks of contemporary academicians who are discovering in biblical and rabbinic sources a literature rich with significance for modern man.”
  Philadelphia Inquirer
• “An important book…. Walzer shows the real power of the Exodus story as a political document and convincingly demonstrates how it has shaped later thinking about revolutionary alternatives.”
  Robert Alter, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley