Newer Ideals of Peace.

ADDAMS, Jane.

Item Number: 70018

New York: Macmillan & Co, 1911.

First edition of Addams’ second book by the “mother” of social work and the first American woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Octavo, original cloth, gilt titles to the spine. Signed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Jane Addams Hull House.” In very good condition, contemporary bookplate. Rare and desirable signed.

In this her second book, Jane Addams moves beyond humanitarian appeals to sensibility and prudence, advancing a more aggressive, positive idea of peace as a dynamic social process emerging out of the poorer quarters of cosmopolitan cities. Her deep analysis of relations among diverse groups in U.S. society, exemplified by inter-ethnic and labor relations in Chicago, draws widely useful lessons for both domestic and global peace, in an early formulation of today’s "globalization from below." In an unprecedented, revolutionary critique of the pervasive militarization of society, Addams applies her scathing pen to traditional advocates and philosophers of “negative” peace, founders of the U.S. constitution, militarists, bigots, imperialists, and theories of “democratic peace” and liberal capitalism. Instead she sees a slow, powerful emergence of forces from below--the poor, the despised, workers, women, ethnic and racial communities, oppressed groups at home and abroad--that would invent moral substitutes for war and gradually shape a just, peaceful, and varied social order.