A Heart for Europe is one of those rare books that helps you see Europe in a new way. It is compelling, authoritative and highly perceptive.
Molly Scott Cato, MEP
This essay offers a welcome relief in times of nationalist and populist Euroscepticism. A must-read.
Dirk Verhofstadt, think tank Liberales
European civilization is the never-ending quest for a more gentle, more relaxed, less dangerous society: a society in which people are no longer afraid of each other and themselves. But Europe currently faces a ‘perfect storm’ of populist nationalism, Russian revanchism, neoliberal financial havoc, religious terrorism and refugee chaos. Facing these violent challenges, we urgently need to rethink our ideals of peace, freedom, democracy, sustainability and the good life. In this book, Dick Pels makes a valiant attempt to regain the original passion behind the European project, and to rescue the idea of a civilized European patriotism from the politics of fear which is conducted by both rightwing and leftwing nationalists.
Contents:
1 Europe’s Embattled Soul
2 The Conquest of Social Fear
3 The Nationalist International
4 European Freedom
5 European Democracy
6 The European Good Life
7 The Language of Europe
8 Europatriotism
Bibliography
Index
The Author
Dick Pels is a Dutch sociologist and freelance political writer. In previous lives, he was Professor of Sociology and Communications at Brunel University, London, chairman of the left-liberal think tank Waterland and director of Bureau de Helling, the research foundation of the Dutch Green Party. Among his English books are Property and Power, A Study in Intellectual Rivalry (1998), The Intellectual as Stranger (2000) and Unhastening Science(2003). Since then, he wrote a number of books (in Dutch) about Pim Fortuyn, national identity, the economy of honour, politics and religion, and the challenge of populism in Europe. He also writes and performs songs in the folkblues genre and lives on the historic yacht Nymphaea. See further www.dickpels.nl