Venkataramanaiah, V. Introduction.--Narla, V. R. Russell and his rejection of religion.--Mehta, G. L. The sceptical crusader.--Dalvi, G. R. Russell, the man.--Venkatarao, V. The nuclear war and the future of man.--Innaiah, N. Bertrand Russell's philosophy.--Subbarayudu, P. Rationality vis-a-vis faith.--Nageswar Rao, B. Russell and nuclear warfare.--Rajagopala Rao, M. Rebel in Russell.--Shankar, G. N. J. The man who revolutionised modern thought.--Maharajasri. Russell, the social scientist in the four-dimensional universe.--The life of Bertrand Russell.--Acknowledgements.--A list of principal works of Bertrand Russell.--Russell's conception of good society (...) in a democratic socialist order.--Objects. (shrink)

Were Russell alive and still with us, one could apologize to him for the degree of travesty and oversimplification which the present task has involved. But his inspiration is no longer a living one and it is still a live question in the philosophy of logic whether or not it makes sense to apologize to the shades of the departed. Perhaps the author in such a predicament can take some comfort from the possibility that what he has written may interest (...) some reader in that sort of question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\INITIATI.252 : 2006-02-27 11:49
rticles HOW TO PROMOTE INITIATIVE B R [The first series of Reith Lectures, delivered weekly on the  by Bertrand Russell in the winter of –, were a resounding success. They were soon published in book form as Authority and the Individual. However, Russell started late in the year to write them, and manuscripts for the lectures show that he encountered (...) difficulty. Surviving in his archives is a false start on the concluding lecture, “How to Promote Initiative” (filed at  .). Lecture  had been called “Control and Initiative: Their Respective Spheres”. Lecture  was finally titled “Individual and Social Ethics”, but an early outline had it as “Principles of Reform”. In the false start Russell described how devolution of authority and individual initiative could be embodied in practice. He provided recipes on how to accomplish this in specific spheres of society: local government, industry, newspapers, books, and education. In replacing the nine leaves of manuscript, he had not come to disagree with them. Instead, as readers of what follows and the final lecture of the book will allow, he now engaged the topic at a higher level. Russell at this time was a friendly critic of the British Labour Party, and his devolutionary reformism is to be seen in that light. Yet his final text transcended politics and engaged his audience at an ethical level, treating of the freedom and duty of conscience, the justifiability of revolution, and life lived as an end. He decided to paint the ideals and let the recipes suggest themselves.—K.B.] f the general principles advocated in my last lecture are accepted, Iwhat can we do practically to give effect to them? Our aim must be to give as much scope to initiative as possible within a large governmental framework. This requires decentralization wherever central conrussell : the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\INITIATI.252 : 2006-02-27 11:49    trol is not essential, and it requires democracy in small units, not only in very large ones. The centralized framework is necessary, but has now, in the main, been created except as regards a world government. The danger now is lest this framework should be thought to be all that is needed. State Socialism exists in Russia, and the prestige of Russia has led many to think that State Socialism is synonymous with Utopia. I believe this to be a profound mistake. Before the Russian Revolution there were syndicalists and guild socialists, whose aims, in my opinion, should be revived. It is true that many of those who formerly, though socialists, feared the omnipotence of the State, forgot their fears in admiration of what seemed to them the successful efficiency of the Soviet régime. But for my part I think it important to remember aims that were prominent before , if nominal reforms are not to produce even worse evils than those that they are intended to cure. The first and most obvious region in which decentralization is desirable is local government. For reasons of which I do not dispute the validity, an increasing part of the finance of local government has come to be paid out of taxes, with the result that the central government, and especially the Treasury, is able more and more to control local authorities, and to forbid any bold scheme which may possibly involve expenditure for which there is not adequate precedent. Owing 〈to〉 the method of assessment, rates are more unpopular than taxes. County Councillors and Town Councillors are still unpaid, as Members of Parliament were formerly. These are among the reasons for the very general apathy on questions of local government. There are of course other reasons, quite as important. Whenever there is war or the fear of war, it is natural that political interest should be concentrated on the central government, which has to decide this supremely important issue. Readers of newspapers, for the most part, no longer read truly local newspapers, but journals addressed equally to all parts of the country, and therefore concerned almost wholly with national... (shrink)

Books of extracts are often written to celebrate a reputation, or to move the reader to greater exertions by the words of the great. Neither of these reasons account for the assembling of this selection. For the traditional book of extracts reflects a traditional conception of their role, and below this conception is rejected. Rather, these extracts are thought of as working documents, selected to provide an occasion for critical and reflective thought, and presented in an order designed to ease (...) the strain we always feel when we think warily, acutely, and yet receptively. This book then deals with that contribution to discussion made by four past educationists. It is interesting to note how long their writing has formed part of the subject-matter of courses, without any precise ideas as to where they fit in the scheme of things. The layout of this introduction and the ordering of the following extracts is intended to try and help meet present needs. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was a meta-ethical pioneer, the original inventor of both emotivism and the error theory. Why, having abandoned emotivism for the error theory, did he switch back to emotivism in the 1920s? Perhaps he did not relish the thought that as a moralist he was a professional hypocrite. In addition, Russell's version of the error theory suffers from severe defects. He commits the naturalistic fallacy and runs afoul of his own and Moore's arguments against subjectivism. These defects could be (...) repaired, but only by abandoning Russell's semantics.Russell preferred to revert to emotivism. (shrink)

Belirli betimlemeler, bir belirli tanımlıkla (Türkçede seslendirilmeyen ancak İngilizcede karşılığı "the" olan) başlayan "İngiltere'nin kralı", "Çin'in başkenti" gibi deyimlerdir. Russell bu yazıda belirli betimlemelerin mantıksal olarak nasıl çözümlenmesi gerektiği ile ilgili kendi betimlemeler kuramını ortaya atar. Russell'ın savı, belirli betimlemeler doğru bir biçimde çözümlenirse bir karşılığı olmayan "Fransa'nın şimdiki kralı" gibi deyimlerin yol açtığı türden birçok felsefi bilmecenin ortadan kalkacağıdır.

This essay examines Russell's historical writing, views on historical knowledge, and what history meant to him. In addition to frequent historical references in writing on ethics, religion, social issues, education and politics, and some half- dozen works mostly historical in character, he wrote four reflective essays on history and its uses. They are "On History" (1904), "The Materialistic Theory of History" (1920), "How to Read and Understand History" (1943) and "History as an Art" (1954). There are additional scattered, brief examples (...) of historical exposition and interpretation in works for the popular press, but these 80 pages or so stand out from an enormous body of work from about 1895 to 1970. (shrink)

A sampler of Russell's writings from 1963 to 1959 which provides representative selections from his multifarious writings. The book is designed more for the general reader than for the scholar interested in piecing together the complex mosaic of the man and his work. There is a preface by Bertrand Russell. Handsomely printed, the total effect shows once again how unique and many-sided is this twentieth-century intellectual explorer.--R. J. B.

This skit of Bertrand Russell’s philosophy was originally published in 1918 by Russell’s correspondent friend Jourdain. The introduction explains that the contents purport to be lost papers written by Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll, a contemporary of Bertrand Russell. This politically humorous volume from the early 20 th Century parodies the writing style of Russell as well as his theories.

W artykule podejmuję zagadnienie relacji między charakterem filozofii Alfreda Northa Whiteheada i Bertranda Russella a intensywnymi transformującymi przeżyciami tych myślicieli, spowodowanymi przez pewne jednostkowe zdarzenia. Według Russella, taki właśnie charakter miało w jego życiu doświadczenie wywołane mocnym napadem bólu Evelyn Whitehead, żony Alfreda, w lutym 1901 r. W zdarzeniu tym uczestniczył też dwuipółletni syn Whiteheada, Eryk. Russell twierdzi, że doznał wówczas czegoś w rodzaju mistycznej iluminacji, która w przeciągu około pięciu minut całkowicie zmieniła jego dotychczasowy sposób myślenia: m.in. wyposażyła jego (...) ateizm w imperatyw przeciwstawiania się wszystkiemu, co powoduje ludzkie cierpienia, zwłaszcza cierpienia dzieci, i skłoniła go do bezkompromisowego pacyfizmu. Dla powściągliwego w ujawnianiu swoich przeżyć Whiteheada, podobnym doświadczeniem była śmierć osiemnastoletniego Eryka pod koniec pierwszej wojny światowej. Według Russella przyczyniła się ona do rezygnacji przez Whiteheada z uprawiania matematyki na rzecz filozofii i do ponownej akceptacji porzuconego wcześniej teizmu. Argumentuję, że hipoteza Russella nie jest bezpodstawna i staram się ją uszczegółowić przez wskazanie, że Whitehead znalazł pocieszenie, którego poszukiwał, w koncepcji Boga zachowującego w pamięci całą przeszłość oraz w idei współkonstytuowania boskiego życia przez byty aktualne. Oczywiście, zarówno zmiany w filozofii Russella, jak i genezę filozofii Whiteheada można tłumaczyć inaczej niż przez odwołanie się do ich jednostkowych intensywnych doświadczeń, na przykład jako wynik argumentacji uwzględniającej aktualny stan wiedzy filozoficznej, naukowej, moralnej i religijnej. Intuicja podpowiada nam jednak, że bez uwzględnienia wpływu owych jednostkowych intensywnych doznań, ich idee filozoficzne miałaby zapewne inny charakter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 1 Just what exactly “separated by degree” means is a bone of contention among those playing the game. But it seems to me that if you have actually met a person Xz, then you have knowledge by acquaintance of X, whereas if you meet someone who met Xz you are separated from Xz by one (...) degree. Thus, I never met the jazz great Sun Ra, but my friend Warren Allen Smith (former head of a recording studio) worked with him on several of his albums, so I am one degree of separation from Sun Ra. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 30 (summer 2010): 63–7 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631 eu d’sprit “SIX DEGREES OF BERTRAND RUSSELL” Timothy J. Madigan Philosophy / St. John Fisher College Rochester, ny 14618, usa [email protected] One of the most quoted phrases in current popular culture is “six degrees of separation”. It expresses the idea that any human being is connected with any other human being by a chain of at most six acquaintances.1 While there is much debate as to whether this is literally true, it is an interesting thoughtexperiment, as well as the basis for many fun parlour games. One of these is entitled “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, in which Wlm fans try to connect the aforementioned actor with any other movie star in as few links as possible. I have been thinking of launching a similar parlour game called “Six Degrees of Bertrand Russell”, in which any Wgure from the past 200 years or so could be connected with Bertie in as few steps as possible. Why Bertie rather than, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein (who after all had a stated interest in games)? For two reasons: Wrst, Russell lived to the ripe old age of 97, and thus had the time to interact with a wide variety of people; and secondly he was for most of that long life a celebrity, who rubbed elbows with all manner of individuals, many of whom were either celebrities themselves at the time or came to be celebrated later. As is often pointed out, Russell’s list of acquaintances stretched from Lenin (V.yI.) to Lennon (zJohn), from the Bloomsbury Group to the Doomsday Prophets, from William Gladstone to Harold Wilson. Russell’s grandfather, LordJohn Russell, had as a young man visited Napoleon on the island of Elba and shaken his hand. When I shake the hand of Honorary Russell Archivist Ken Blackwell, September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 64 timothy j. madigan 2 Other historical writings by Russell are discussed in Kenneth R. Stunkel, “Bertrand Russell’s Writings and ReXections on History”, Russellz 21 (2001): 129–53. who met Bertie, I often think that I am only three degrees of separation from shaking Napoleon’s hand as well. And as for Napoleonz—zwell, who knows where that hand had been? Given this strong connection to history, it is not surprising that Russell himself would write an essay entitled “How to Read and Understand History”.2 In his Autobiographyz and other works such as Portraits from Memory, Russell made it quite clear that his aristocratic and privileged background gave him access to many of the most important movers and shakers in twentieth-century politics, literature, and academia, areas in which he himself excelled. He was aware that, unlike many of his fellow philosophers, who were known only to a small coterie of fellow deep thinkers, he was an historic Wgure, one who could interact on a personal level with cabinet ministers, Nobel prize-winners in all Welds, press lords, movie stars, presidents and premiers. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, many concerned individuals tried to reach Kennedy and Khrushchev to give them advice, but Russell was one of the few outsiders whose letters actually got through, as he no doubt knew they would. For all of his concern with... (shrink)

First Published in 1979. Paperback 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company. This is an overview of Russell's philosophy, focussing in particular on his earlier work. Carter headings: Meaning; Names; Descriptions; The Perfect Language; Knowledge; Ontology; Mathematics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand RussellPeter H. DentonNicholas Griffin, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 550. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $26.00.It is a daunting task to conceive of a single companion to Bertrand Russell, who in life as in thought was never content with a single anything. Nicholas Griffin has brought his customary expertise to the project, and in (...) snaring fourteen other contributors to this volume, has produced a welcome addition to an academic's library of Russell materials.The shape of the volume, its contents and its presentation, however, unfortunately reflect the lopsided nature of current Russell studies. One hopes for a companion volume that has the breadth of the earlier volume edited fifty years ago by Paul Schilpp, but in vain. This book is overwhelmingly about Russell before 1918, almost entirely about philosophy of mathematics, epistemology and logic, and several of the pieces easily could have been included in a festschrift for Frege instead.What is included is well done, but to call it "the most convenient and accessible guide to Russell available" is to speak in comparative terms. To be fair, it sets out to focus on a narrow definition of Russell's contributions to modern philosophy, and the contributors accomplish this task. Ian Grattan-Guinness writes on "Mathematics in and behind Russell's Logicism, and its Reception," a subject that continues into "Bertrand Russell's Logicism" by Martin Godwyn and Andrew D. Irvine. The roots of analytic philosophy are of primary concern in this volume, so Richard L. Cartwright explores "Russell and Moore, 1898-1905" and Michael Beaney relates "Russell and Frege." "The Theory of Descriptions" by Peter Hylton sets up two pieces on "Russell's Substitutional Theory" (Gregory Landini) and "The Theory of Types" (Alasdair Urquhart), while Paul Hager's "Russell's Method of Analysis" leads into "Russell's Neutral Monism" (R.E.Tully) and "The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism" (Bernard Linsky).The next portion of the book expands the intellectual focus somewhat, with "Russell's Structuralism and the Absolute Description of the World" by William Demopoulos—perhaps [End Page 349] the best in a series of good papers—and "From Knowledge by Acquaintance to Knowledge by Causation" by Thomas Baldwin. Approaching the end of the book, Anthony Grayling's essay on "Russell, Experience, and the Roots of Science" remains firmly planted in the pre-1918 milieu, though his tentative commentary on Human Knowledge at least glimmers the extension of Russell's intellectual life into the post-Great War period.Effectively the entire second half of Russell's life is left to the final contributor, Charles Pidgen, for commentary. Author of Russell on Ethics, much of Pigden's short essay here ("Bertrand Russell: Moral Philosopher or Unphilosophical Moralist?") somewhat plaintively directs the reader to his book for an elaboration of why Russell is worth reading after 1918, at least on the subject of ethics. Of the other authors, only Hager (317) observes the extent to which Russell's post-War work mistakenly has been ignored.The book concludes with a selective bibliography. The audience, for the most part, is a specialist one, with only some essays accessible to the general reader. On that score, Griffin's introduction and his own essay, "Russell's Philosophical Background," are easily the most readable. At the risk of quibbling, I was disturbed by the uneven production of the book, as each author set his own standard for footnotes, endnotes and bibliography (creating a jumble of styles). Even within individual contributions, there are a number of inconsistencies in notation as well as typographical errors.By the end, I was left hoping there might be a second companion volume for Bertrand Russell, one that reflects what he spent the last fifty years of his life thinking, writing, and doing. In the absence of such material (which is of far greater popular interest today just as it was in Russell's lifetime), this book by itself is more of a companion to current Russell studies than to Bertrand Russell himself.Peter H. DentonThe University of WinnipegCopyright © 2004 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2601\REVIEWS.261 : 2006-06-05 11:55
eviews AN EPISTOLARY BIOGRAPHY S A Theology and Religious Studies / U. of Lund   Lund, Sweden @. Nicholas Griffin, ed., assisted by Alison Roberts Miculan. The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell. Vol. : The Public Years, –. London and New York: Routledge, . Pp. xix, . Prices in : £. (pb £.); . (pb .). ith the publication of (...) the second volume of The Selected Letters of WBertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin has completed a work of impressive scholarship. The first volume came out in  and contains  letters, the second  letters. The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University hold between thirty and forty thousand of Russell’s letters. Griffin does not claim to have looked through all of them, but apart from our editor he has probably read more of them than any other person. This provided him a unique perspective on Russell of which he has made the best. The letters have been intertwined with extensive commentaries and supplied with informative footnotes amounting to approximately  pages in the first volume and  pages in the second. Together with the prefaces and the introductions, they supply us with an epistolary biography of Russell that covers most aspects of his life. There are some differences between the first and the second volume due to the availability of letters. In the first volume there are many letters to Russell’s first wife, Alys, and his lover, Lady Ottoline Morrell. Griffin writes in the preface to the second volume that these touched on almost everything that was important to Russell, which made it unnecessary to look for letters elsewhere. The letters to Ottoline continued their pace until , but he kept on writing to her until she died in . Griffin relies heavily on these letters up to her premature death. When Colette O’Niel came into the picture in , she took over Ottoline’s role, but Russell’s letters to her are not quite as revealing as those to Ottoline. The Russell Archives have close to , letters to Ottoline and   Reviewed by Katharine Tait in Russell, n.s.  (): –. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2601\REVIEWS.261 : 2006-06-05 11:55  Reviews to Colette, and they contain much information for anyone interested in Russell. For the second volume Griffin has therefore been forced to search further afield for letters. At the same time there are many more letters to choose from. Another complicating factor has been the variety of Russell’s interests after . Before the First World War Russell had mainly devoted his energy to logic and the foundations of mathematics. When the war broke out, he channelled his energy into anti-war work. After the war his interests grew in many directions, as did the number of correspondents. Towards the end of his life he returned to political activism; still, his correspondence in the s covers a wider range of topics than at any other time. Given the variety of Russell’s interests, Griffin had to decide which interests should be included. This must have been a difficult task, but Griffin argues convincingly for why he has excluded letters directly related to Russell’s involvement in world government organizations, letters concerning the Indo-Pakistani border dispute and technical letters about philosophy. He has also excluded— although not totally—letters concerning religion, people he had known earlier, events he had been involved in and opinions he had held. Some topics had to be excluded due to the lack of suitable letters. In spite of all these restrictions, Griffin has been able to produce a most interesting, if not complete, epistolary biography. The book is divided into six chapters: () War (–),  letters; () Children, Companionship, and Joint Work (–),  letters; () Starting a School and Ending a Marriage (–),  letters; () Marriage, Poverty, and Exile (–),  letters; () Respectability at Last (–),  letters; () Peace (–),  letters. The titles and the periods are aptly chosen and give a good hint about the major projects in which Russell was involved. As can be deduced from the number of letters given for each chapter, Griffin devotes most attention to... (shrink)

The general editorial plan behind The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell calls for two parallel series, one concerned with Russell's work on philosophy, logic and mathematics, the other with his less technical contributions in areas such as politics, practical ethics, history and education. Volume 1, sub-titled Cambridge Essays, 1888–99, is in a sense the ancestral volume of both series, for it comprises both technical and non-technical subjects. Russell appears here as diarist, public speaker, political commentator, as well as apprentice philosopher (...) and expert on non-Euclidian geometries. The Collected Papers as a whole will span the more than 80 years of Russell's writings devoted to a formidable range of topics from the personal to the highly abstract but, large as it is, this publishing project will make no attempt to bring together the totality of his writings, since many of these remain in print and are readily available. Instead, the project's distinct emphasis will be on Russell's shorter writings, such as essays, articles, reviews and speeches, which are not so easily located, even when previously published. Grouped together in convenient subdivisions, these papers will chronicle for us Russell's intellectual and social growth to an extent even greater than that attempted by Russell himself in his three-volume Autobiography or in My Philosophical Development, and they will also serve to acquaint us with the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of the venerable figure behind the well-known major books. The project's essential aim, then, is to mine and refine the vast Russell Archives in a way that will yield a permanent foundation of study for anyone, whether mere admirer or life-long scholar, who has any interest in Russell's life and work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Frege on Function, Concept and Object Sinn (Sense) and Bedeutung (Reference) Identity Statements and Bearerless Names: Russell's View of Names as Associated with Descriptions Names and Communication Russell's Theory of Descriptions Indirect Discourse Conclusion.

In "On the Notion of Cause," Bertrand Russell expressed an eliminativist view about causation driven by an examination of the contents of mathematical physics. Russell's primary reason for thinking that the notion of causation is absent in physics was that laws of nature are mere "functional dependencies" and not "causal laws." In this paper, I show that several ordinary notions of causation can be found within the functional dependencies of physics. Not only does this show that Russell's eliminitivism was misguided, (...) but it shows that Russell's opponents, such as Nancy Cartwright, who think that mere functional dependenciescannot capture causal claims, also underestimate the causal content of such equations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews  YOURS FAITHFULLY P L. T Religious Studies / McGill U. Montreal, , Canada   @-.. Ray Perkins, Jr., ed. Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: a Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor. Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, . Pp. xii, . .; pb .. lthough Bertrand Russell was obviously a prolific writer on numerous Atopics (technical philosophy, education, religion, political (...) critique, women ’s rights, and nuclear disarmament), and published his views through various venues such as technical volumes, popular books, essays, scholarly articles, reviews, and pamphlets, there has been a neglect of Russell’s utilization of the newspaper’s “Letters to the Editor” section. In this accessible volume, Ray Perkins has collected and organized the letters to the editor published by Russell. Russell, from the first known letter in  to the final public statement on the Middle East crisis published posthumously in , published approximately  letters to the editor. Of these  are published in Yours Faithfully. Perkins begins with a helpful introduction (pp. –), placing the letters into the broader framework of Russell’s life. We are introduced, in a very basic sketch, to the development of Russell’s thought, encountering such major threads in Russell’s life as his early political interests (indicated in  with German Social Democracy, though pushed to the foreground with the First World War) and the developments in his philosophical theories from Principia Mathematica through Our Knowledge of the External World to Human Knowledge. We also meet various significant individuals in Russell’s life, such as his various wives and his colleagues both in philosophy and in activist work. Although Russell scholars will find this introduction somewhat simplistic, those non-specialists encountering Russell through this book will find the introduction helpful and clearly necessary in order to contextualize the letters.  Reviews The letters themselves are organized into chronological chapters. The first eight letters, “Early Letters”, are dated from  to . These are the earliest known published letters by Russell. Perkins then gives us those letters published during the First World War (–). The remaining letters fall into: “Between the Wars” (–); “World War Two and the Early Cold War” (–); “The Cold War and the Nuclear Peril” (–); and “The Cold War and American Militarism” (–). The final document is Russell’s posthumous  statement to the Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo. Each chapter has a brief overview of the period in Russell’s life, further situating the letters. Perkins is also careful to offer introductions to each letter, and the occasional footnote to explain various references in the letters (names of individuals that may not be familiar to readers, major events referred to, etc.). Each letter is numbered sequentially, accompanied by the B&R number of the letter. Given Russell’s diverse interests, clearly reflected in these letters, Perkins has subdivided the last four chapters into thematic subsections. Those readers who are interested in Russell’s views on, e.g., religion, education, or Vietnam can find the relevant letters with ease. A comprehensive index also makes the collection accessible. The exact division of the chapters tends to reflect major shifts in Russell’s thinking as much as historical developments (the latter obviously affecting the former in any case). For example, the – break reflects both Russell’s move from England to the  and his departure from the pacifist stance of Which Way to Peace? The – break reflects Russia’s development of nuclear weapons and Russell’s shift towards mutual disarmament by both superpowers. And the – break reflects Russell’s intervention in the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as his reactions to the  involvement in Vietnam. Perkins has supplied us with an excellent collection of letters. Although some may ask how useful such a collection may be, I would contend that the letters are vital sources of information for Russell studies. First, from an historian’s perspective, the preservation and accessibility of primary material is a noble and worthwhile achievement. Perkins is to be commended for his efforts in drawing our attention to this material by blowing the dust off material that most would ignore. Second, the letters themselves are fascinating indications of shifts in Russell’s thinking, pointing out the nuances of such shifts as he engages in debate with various other voices over... (shrink)