Showing titles in History & Theory

Brought to you by Penguin. The idea that people are basically driven by individualism and economic incentives, and that prosperity and good societies come from top-down leadership, has dominated politics for the last thirty years (from some perspectives, much longer). This book shows that the...

Gobernar un Continente lleva a los lectores al interior de la verdadera maquinaria del gobierno a gran escala, donde las instituciones sobreviven a los líderes, donde caminos y tribunales moldean las rutinas diarias, y donde la cultura, la ciencia y el comercio unen a pueblos diversos en un futuro común. A través de un análisis vívido y una narrativa centrada en lo humano, el libro revela cómo la gobernanza estable se construye no solo con grandes estrategias, sino con servicios confiables, leyes justas, presupuestos resilientes y rituales inclusivos.

Publicado em 1944, durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, Governo Onipotente, de Mises, foi o primeiro livro escrito e publicado após sua chegada aos Estados Unidos. Nesta obra, ….

Twenty-five years old and struggling to find his way in his journalism career, the young reporter who had been covering local political stories found himself smack in the middle of the world's biggest geopolitical crisis—fleeing air raids and being questioned by militants along the way. One year later when Hamas carried out its October 7th attack, Sherman flew right back into the thick of it—running from rockets and diving into Hamas tunnels in Gaza. While shrouded in the proverbial "Fog of War," it became clear to Sherman that the world isn't as simple as he thought it was.

The left and right will always have strong policy disagreements, but constructive debate and negotiation are not possible when each side demonizes the other. In this book, social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman provides a new framework for understanding why and how we disagree. Janoff-Bulman asks listeners to consider the challenging possibility that both liberalism and conservatism are morally based and reflect genuine concern for the country. Understanding that our political differences are rooted in two natural forms of morality can help us begin to detoxify our politics.

In 1848, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world–the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious.

After more than 2,300 years, the Greek philosopher Aristotle still remains one of the most influential thinkers who has ever lived. There was hardly any field of human knowledge in existence during his day in which he did not make a major contribution. Additionally, he probed areas which were never before examined. Indeed, one could make the claim that no individual person has ever known as much about this world as Aristotle. His analyses of zoology and logic paved the way for modern forensic techniques, and for which every scientist down to this day owes him a debt of gratitude.

Sent by the French government to examine the American prison system, Alexis de Tocqueville spent nine months touring the United States between 1831 and 1832. However, fascinated by the success of America's democratic system, de Tocqueville took advantage of his stay to examine the country's foundations and glean ideas that might rescue his homeland from the manacles of social inequality. He leaves no stone unturned, exploring each branch of government, the constitution, economics, religion, race, the judiciary, laws, principles, education, culture, and views on wealth and poverty.

While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies....

A "Manchurian Candidate" is an unwitting assassin brainwashed and programmed to kill. In this book, former State Department officer John Marks tells the explosive story of the CIA's highly secret program of experiments in mind control. His curiosity first aroused by information on a puzzling suicide, Marks worked from thousands of pages of newly released documents as well as interviews and behavioral science studies, producing a book that "accomplished what two Senate committees could not" (Senator Edward Kennedy).

To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity.

In the post-9/11 West, there is no shortage of strident voices telling us that Islam is a threat to the security, values, way of life, and even existence of the United States and Europe. In this fearless, original, and surprising book, Anne Norton demolishes the notion that there is a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues, is the West's commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

This edition of Three Shots Rang Out: The JFK Assassination 50 Years Later is an audio-only ABC News special created exclusively for Audible and hosted by ABC World News Anchor Diane Sawyer. Sawyer takes listeners back to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, for a “you are there” exploration of the day of U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand’s own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God’s will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflictmuch less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events.

The Great Game in Cuba uses the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution to examine the CIA's inner workings during the '50s and '60s. Detailing the agency's lies and deceits, Mellen paints a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of the CIA in Cuba after the Castro revolution: what it wanted and the lengths it was willing to go to in order to paralyze the opposition to Fidel Castro.

First he considers moments in history - Periclean Athens, the English Civil War, the American and French Revolutions, among them - in which the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions, however imperfect, were found. Then he lays bare the specific problems of democracy in the 21st century and maps out a set of urgently needed reforms. With the advent of authoritarian leaders and the simultaneous rise of populism, representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place, yet it is this space that it must occupy, says Grayling, if a civilised society that looks after all its people is to flourish.

The Widow Spy is the firsthand account of a true Cold War spy operation in Moscow told exclusively by the CIA case officer who lived this experience. Martha D. Peterson was one of the first women to be assigned to Moscow, a very difficult operational environment. Her story begins in Laos during the Vietnam War where she accompanied her husband, a CIA officer. She describes their life in a small city in Laos, ending with the tragic death of her husband. Then her own 30-year career begins in Moscow.

The Prince was the first great work of modern political and historical analysis, but it suffered from a tragic flaw: Machiavelli chose as his "hero" Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, who, unknown to the author, employed murder as one of his tools of statecraft. The Prince has been studied by Hitler, Stalin, Richelieu, Bismarck, and Frederick the Great, among others.

Our baffling new multipolar world grows ever more complex, desperately calling for new ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to political risk. To Dare More Boldly provides those ways, telling the story of the rise of political risk analysis, both as a discipline and a lucrative high-stakes industry that guides the strategic decisions of corporations and governments around the world. It assesses why recent predictions have gone so wrong and boldly puts forward 10 analytical commandments that can stand the test of time.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the 20th century. Historian S. A. Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the 19th century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s.