Adolf Hitler is the greatest mystery of the 20th century, and the mystery surrounding him consists of two unanswered questions that have baffled biographers and historians. First, how did he ever rise to power? Second, who was he really? Hitler had the power to mesmerize crowds as the most dynamic orator of the modern age. Yet, his power was not in his ideas, which he collected from the gutter sheets of Vienna, nor was it in his personality; his biographers describe him as an "unperson" and his character as a "void" and a "black hole." What, then, was the source of his power? Was he a medium or a magician with paranormal powers, as many contemporaries thought? Or did he have a secret or method that has not yet been revealed? Ben Novak spent fourteen years searching for the secret of Hitler's political success and his power as a speaker. Hitler's most astute contemporary observer, Konrad Heiden, who wrote the first objective books on Hitler warning that this man was "the greatest massdisturber in world history," suggested that Hitler's secret lay in his use of "eine eigentiimliche art von Logik,"or a "peculiar form of logic." Beginning with this clue, Novak finds that there is a new form of logic in accordance with Heiden's description and examples that can explain Hitler's phenomenal political success. This new form of logic, called "abduction," was discovered by an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who is rapidly becoming America's most well-known philosopher and logician. Abduction is a third form of logic, in addition to deduction and induction. Unlike the other forms of logic, abduction is based on instinct and has a power over emotions. Novak argues that Hitler was the first politician to apply the logic of abduction to politics. This book provides the first coherent account of Hitler's youth that ties together all the known facts, clearly showing the genesis of the strangest and most terrible man of the twentieth century while identifying the power he discovered that allowed him to break out into the world in such a terrifying way.

Was Hitler rational? This question has spawned vociferous debates among historians, and has fascinated every layman who has ever dipped into a biography of Hitler. In Hitler and Abductive Logic, Ben Novak argues that Hitler was rational one of the most logical political leaders of modern times but not according to ordinary inductive or deductive logic. Instead, Hitler used a new form of logic called abductive logic, which he used as a "trick" to seduce crowds and rise to power. Now, for the first time, the method that Hitler employed is revealed so that it can be recognized and combated."

When Winston Churchill was a boy of sixteen, he already had a vision for his purpose in life. “This country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion . . . I shall be in command of the defences of London . . . it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire.” It was a most unlikely prediction. Perceived as a failure for much of his life, Churchill was the last person anyone would have expected to rise to national prominence as prime minister and influence the fate of the world during World War II. But Churchill persevered, on a mission to achieve his purpose. God and Churchill tells the remarkable story of how one man, armed with belief in his divine destiny, embarked on a course to save Christian civilization when Adolf Hitler and the forces of evil stood opposed. It traces the personal, political, and spiritual path of one of history’s greatest leaders and offers hope for our own violent and troubled times. More than a spiritual biography, God and Churchill is also a deeply personal quest. Written by Jonathan Sandys (Churchill’s great-grandson) and former White House staffer Wallace Henley, God and Churchill explores Sandys’ intense search to discover his great-grandfather—and how it changed his own destiny forever.

Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History is a brief but comprehensive survey of the Third Reich based on current research findings that provides a balanced approach to the study of Hitler’s role in the history of the Third Reich. The book considers the economic, social, and political forces that made possible the rise and development of Nazism; the institutional, cultural, and social life of the Third Reich; World War II; and the Holocaust. World War II and the Holocaust are presented as logical outcomes of the ideology of Hitler and the Nazi movement. This new edition contains more information on the Kaiserreich (Imperial Germany), as well as Nazi complicity in the Reichstag Fire and increased discussion of consent and dissent during the Nazi attempt to create the ideal Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). It takes a greater focus on the experiences of ordinary bystanders, perpetrators, and victims throughout the text, includes more discussion of race and space, and the final chapter has been completely revised. Fully updated, the book ensures that students gain a complete and thorough picture of the period and issues. Supported by maps, images, and thoroughly updated bibliographies that offer further reading suggestions for students to take their study further, the book offers the perfect overview of Hitler and the Third Reich.

In Relevance in Argumentation, author Douglas Walton presents a new method for critically evaluating arguments for relevance. This method enables a critic to judge whether a move can be said to be relevant or irrelevant, and is based on case studies of argumentation in which an argument, or part of an argument, has been criticized as irrelevant. Walton's method is based on a new theory of relevance that incorporates techniques of argumentation theory, logic, and artificial intelligence. The work uses a case-study approach with numerous examples of controversial arguments, strategies of attack in argumentation, and fallacies. Walton reviews ordinary cases of irrelevance in argumentation, and uses them as a basis to advance and develop his new theory of irrelevance and relevance. The volume also presents a clear account of the technical problems in the previous attempts to define relevance, including an analysis of formal systems of relevance logic and an explanation of the Grecian notion of conversational relevance. This volume is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in those fields using argumentation theory--especially philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and communication studies, in addition to argumentation. The work also has practical use, as it applies theory directly to familiar examples of argumentation in daily and professional life. With a clear and comprehensive method for determining relevance and irrelevance, it can be convincingly applied to highly significant practical problems about relevance, including those in legal and political argumentation.

In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.