A timely call for recovering the true meanings of the nineteenth-century terms that are hobbling current political debates

Harold James looks at the nineteenth-century origins of ideas debated today--nationalism, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and capitalism?and how the terms have devolved into simplistic political epithets that mean different things to different people. He argues that a historical understanding of the vocabulary surrounding globalization, politics, and economics is an urgent necessity to restore productive debate.