Contemporary political theory today has become alienated from politics. It often neither discusses concrete political events nor touches the world of political action. Stephen Eric Bronner, a professor of political science and comparative literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, wants to break free from those shackles, and "Ideas in Action" takes a bold step in that direction. Bronner surveys twentieth century political traditions and places theories and thinkers in their social, historical, and political contexts.

The author's "political intent" is "informed by a concern with the social implications of epistemological assumptions" and which "highlights the friction between theory and practice". Bronner says that his is the first attempt to come to terms with the last 100 years of political theory. "No book has sought to provide an overview of the major political traditions of the twentieth century,..., let alone interpret them with an eye upon their practical impact."

Bronner, whose thematic approach to the subject follows a more-or-less chronological thread, does not look at political theory as mere intellectual trivia, but pans over the fascinating range and diversity of political ideas of the last century by writing about individuals who were bothered as much about politics as they were about the theories. The book is about individuals who wanted to make a difference to the existing political scenario. He wants to find help "for developing a progressive politics in the present". The organising concept is tradition, but Bronner redefines the term and steers clear of traditionalists. He weighs the pros and cons as objectively as he can and categorises the themes under four sections.

In "Envisioning Democracy", he deals with liberal, communitarian, conservative, and anarchist political thought and concentrates on the the emancipatory power embedded in democratic theory. Jurgen Habermas, Karl Jaspers, John Rawls, and Isaiah Berlin are liberals. John Dewey and Hannah Arendt are communitarians. Michael Oakeshott, Eric Vogelin, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt are conservatives, while Peter Kropotkin, Georges Sorel and Emma Goldman are among the anarchists.

"Changing the World" is about socialism, fascism, and communism. Bronner says, "Socialism incarnated the hopes of the labor movements everywhere when the twentieth century began", and zooms in on Jean Jaures, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Richard Bernstein in this context. While communism is seen as having a separate and distinct identity from socialism, Bronner writes mainly about Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, and Georg Lukacs and surprisingly only browses over Mao Tse-tung. Fascism, which had had its roots in early vitalism, a tradition rarely talked about, is "ultimately a modern phenomenon; it assumes the existence of what it wishes to obliterate".

Existentialism, critical theory, postmodernism, poststructuralism and "radical imagination" form the core of "Reclaiming Subjectivity". Though the schism between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre is talked about in detail, Bronner focuses mainly on the former in the section on existentialism, and on the latter in that on "radical imagination". Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno feature in the critical theory which "lost its political edge" as it developed. Martin Heidegger too is not in the existentialism section, but in the one on postmodernism and poststructuralism which also features Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Judith Butler. Radical imagination is mainly about Herbert Marcuse, though Sartre, Cornelius Castoriadis, Louis Althusser, and Ernst Bloch also figure.

The subjects dealth with in "Empowering the Other" are black liberation thought, feminism, environmentalism, and, "the forgotten" (post-colonial thought). Since W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Martin Luther King are discussed in the chapter on race, and Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollonti, Lily Braun, Simone De Beauvoir, Kate Millet, and Shulamith Firestone in that about feminism. Murray Bookchin and a number of eco-feminist writers are written about in environmentalism, while Che Guevera, Mohandas Gandhi, and Franz Fanon are among "the forgotten".

It becomes difficult to grapple with feminist thought when one looks at the diverse nature of contributions made by feminist thinkers over the years. There are those of Black feminists, Third World feminists, lesbian feminists, not to speak of feminists with disabilities. It is this very diversity of feminist thought that is the key to the political energy that is derived from the various feminisms. It is also this diversity that Chris Corrin writes about in a book that transcends local, national and international barriers among feminists. Corrin's interest in politics stems from a concern for eradicating injustice. The book, hence, turns out to be the perfect background material for anyone interested in feminist political thought and activism.

Each of the thematically-organised ten chapter starts with an outline, followed by a short discussion, and includes a case study highlighting the chapter's main concepts, many of which are internationally-based. Comparative developments in both developed and developing countries are discussed in the chapters ranging from liberal, socialist, and liberationist feminism; to the feminist politics of black, lesbian and disabled women; to international and transnational feminisms. This, in itself, is a key feature of this apparently textbookish work which starts off with Corrin defining key concepts such as subordination, praxis, patriarchy and power relations, public and private spheres, political participation, and new political identities of feminism.

In the chapter on liberal feminism, the author links debates and activism to political theory, and dwells at lentgh on many central concerns of both liberalism and liberal feminism. She compares the feminist struggle in the United States and Great Britain, and provides a case study of the recognition of white women's relationships to and benefits from British imperialist policies. The socialism chapter, which hovers around socialism, Marxism, anarchism and Bolshevism, says activism in the 19th century was divided between the white, middle-class suffragists and the pro-working class element of the movement, the "radicals and reformers".

The liberationist chapter recognises both women's experiences with the political in male-dominated organisations and their desire to create theory and practice based specifically on women's lives. Corrin says liberationist feminism is the "creation of new analyses of women's lives based on the concept of patriarchy". In the chapters on Black, lesbian, and disability feminism, she says these schools of thought were the result of women's exclusion from mainstream women's organisations. While Black feminists' coalitions were against racist state policies, lesbian feminists fought against a patriarchal state, and disability feminism took on policies of "medicalising" disability and challenging the central roles accorded to medical professionals.

After focusing on women's participation in parties and electoral politics, Corrin moves on to transnational and international feminism. She first sets the "terms of the debate" with ideas in feminist politics about sisterhood, connectivity and universal visions, the assumption that women in different states face repression that looks exactly the same as our own, and the first world's exploitation of the Third World under past times of colonialism and currently in the new economic orders. She says differences that have divided feminism within state borders can be even more challenging to solidarity across borders. What is needed is "an understanding of a set of unequal relationships among and between peoples," and viewing "international" as a process as well as an adjective which is economic, political and ideological in nature "foregrounding the operations of race and capitalism".

Radical feminist mythical theories that little boys grow up to be different from little girls has nothing to do with their biological origins and is a fallout of their social conditioning are exploded in this tragic yet fascinating real-life tale that would have remained buried in the Sixties but for John Colapinto's efforts. The contention that a boy will feel like a girl if brought up like one, and a girl will feel like a boy if nurtured as one is blow to smithereens by Colapinto's book. Naturalists prevail over nurturists who believe that gender-specific behavioural patterns can be moulded.

These theorists were not even willing to concede that there were certain innate biological differences between the sexes, or rather, that these were of any consequence. Hormones meant little to them, and it seems boys played with guns because they were dressed up in trousers and girls played with dolls since they were made to wear frocks. The artificial differences were artificial enough, but the natural ones were not deemed to be of much significance either. These "radical" arguments were lent credence by sexologists like Dr John Money of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

So when a surgeon botched up a circumcision operation on one of a pair of identical twins virtually leaving him without a penis in 1965, Money convinced the Canadian parents of the boy, barely a year old, that they could nurture him as a girl and everything would be fine. He dismissed the suggestion of a phallic reconstruction surgery, now that he had found his guinea pig in an infant whose genitals had been mutilated. Money and his gender researchers had stumbled on the chance of their lifetime to prove that their bizarre theories were science. But what the little boy had to go through was far from anything bizarre -- it was grotesque, it was inhuman, it was loathsome.

The Thiessen's were led into believing that Bruce should have a sex-reassignment surgery and should receive female hormones at the age of puberty and become Brenda in the process. The genetically identical brother, who was to remain masculine, would be control in this repulsive experiment. Money went all out to the world to propagate his views. He wrote papers, described his novel idea in books and began gaining credibility even in the psychiatric-psychologist world. Here was a man (read, scientist-doctor) who would bring about an upheaval in the field of gender studies. Money got his fame; he had told the world that boys/girls are not born, they are made.

While Money remained in the limelight, Bruce led a lonely and wretched existence. He was never happy, never felt any attraction towards boys. He fought with them and preferred cars to dolls. Bruce was made to wear frilly dresses, asked to carry a purse. He would flush estrogen tablets meant to make him develop breasts down the toilet only. But he would be caught, and the tablet regimen would be monitored by his mother. Brenda's masculine appearance was ridiculed by classmates and was reproachfully dubbed a "cavewoman".

It was only after she became aware of the truth at 14 that Bruce wanted to revert to his original sex. The Thiessens went through a harrowing time, but Brenda (Bruce) took up the name David and kept up his pugnaciousness, determined to break free from the big bully Money. He resisted the transsexual surgeon's pressure to go in for further surgery to be made into a woman. The remedial surgery, thankfully, was a success and she became a he once again and got happily married eventually. All this ordeal is brought forth in a heartbreaking, infuriating script by Colapinto.

Money, for his part, never tried to deny, leave alone refute, the fact that his theories had been disproved. He has been exposed by Colapinto as having been cruel, callous, despotic and manipulative. Money, the guru of the sexual liberation of the Sixties, was also one, perhaps, who took refuge in his theory of gender plasticity only to escape from his restrictive and puritanical religious background in rural New Zealand. You see, he was not without his own problems. Money's intentions may have been philanthropic in the first place -- to make a child happy as a grown-up -- was ill-conceived. Intentions may be fine, it is the results that matter. Money was wrong, and his arch rival, Dr Milton Diamond was right. You cannot mess around with nature.

The story ended happily for David and his family.

Peacekeeping does not help, perhaps it would be better for wars to meet their own catastrophic ends. That is the depressing message that emanates from the 400-odd pages of reportage and analysis by journalist William Shawcross. The Cold War ended, but what followed in the Nineties was a decade of regional and ethnic wars. Bloodbaths and massacres. All this is recounted in gory detail from the heart of the conflict zones by Shawcross. The conclusion is dismaying: "only the evil of war can resolve a political conflict and bring about peace".

Shawcross, who travelled the globe over with the United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, narrates macabre tales of evil from Cambodia to Rwanda, Somalia to Haiti, and Sierra Leone to the Balkans. The travails of watching evil at its nefarious most makes Shawcross look cynically at international efforts to maintain and broker peace. He is sympathetic to both Annan and his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali and blames squarely the West-led international community of rarely showing the will to act in time or with sufficient purpose. The armed humanitarianism' has been an impotent fallacy.

The do-gooder mentality of international communities is one of misplaced priorities, says Shawcross. Not only do peacekeeping missions often find that there's no peace to keep, the expectations of what they can achieve soar far too high. 'Humanitarianism' becomes a catchphrase that is steeped in self-delusion. He cites the example of the North and the South requiring ages to reconciliate the mistrust and hatred brought about by the American Civil War, and asserts that there is no reason why other torn nations will respond more quickly. "Not everything can be achieved, not every wrong can be righted simply because the international community desires it. We cannot suddenly rebuild failed states or failing territories in our own image..."

What emerges is the possibility that happy endings are not always desirable in the long run. Efforts to enforce peace lie in the danger of boomeranging on the intentions by only prolonging a conflict. That is the recurring problem everywhere: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Congo, East Timor, Guinea, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Libia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Uganda. Everywhere the international community (i.e. mainly the United States and Europe) sought to end the litany of horrors, but only stoked the fire in the bargain. The grassroots realities were all different, but the results were identical in their devastation.

Shawcross quotes an article by Edward Luttwak in Foreign Affairs as saying that governments and the international community should resist "the emotional impulse to intervene in other people's wars - not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it and want to facilitate the advent of peace". He, himself, however, does not try to offer solutions as to under what circumstances international intervention can be warranted/beneficial. But the solution had surfaced at the onset itself: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Though he claims to be an optimist, the only optimism in the book seems to be in the form of Kofi Annan. His proximity to the UN official may not cloud his judgement, but the portions where Annan is mentioned does read like an affirmation of why he should be re-elected the UN secretary-general. At one point he writes: "The French warned Annan not to underestimate Saddam. They said he was very reflective, poised and well-informed, and he listened well. They told him that his meeting would be long because Saddam spoke slowly and with pauses. 'Do not try to fill the gap, but engage him with eye contact.' On Friday morning Annan and his entourage flew to Baghdad in [French President Jacques] Chirac's presidential Falcon 900. When he landed he was surprised by the mob of reporters at the airport. He spoke with emotion of his "sacred duty" to come here to find a solution. He told me later that this striking phrase came to him spontaneously."