Showing titles in History & Theory

In The Subversive Seventies, Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies—often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful—are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today.

Il 9 ottobre 1963 duemila persone rimasero uccise sulle montagne del Bellunese, travolte dall'onda di acqua e fango sollevata da una gigantesca frana precipitata nel bacino ai piedi del monte Toc. Il Vajont è stato uno dei disastri piú tragici della storia italiana recente. Nel 2008 l'Unesco lo ha incluso tra i cinque piú gravi disastri ambientali di natura antropica, definendolo «un classico esempio di quello che succede quando gli ingegneri e i geologi si rivelano incapaci di cogliere la natura del problema che stanno cercando di affrontare».

“WER NICHT FÜR DEN FRIEDEN ARBEITET, DER ARBEITET GEGEN IHN". Der unbekannte Soldat ist eine Hommage an Bertha von Suttner, die erste Botschafterin des Pazifismus, lange bevor er eine greifbare Theorie einer Welt ohne Waffen war und lange bevor diese Welt in Trümmer fiel.

L’Impero romano non è mai caduto. Tutti gli imperi della storia si sono presentati come eredi degli antichi romani: l’Impero romano d’Oriente; il Sacro Romano Impero di Carlo Magno; Mosca, la terza Roma. E poi l’Impero napoleonico e quello britannico. I regimi fascista e nazista. L’impero americano e quello virtuale di Mark Zuckerberg, grande ammiratore di Augusto: il primo uomo a guidare una comunità multietnica di persone che non si conoscevano tra loro ma condividevano lingua, immagini, divinità, cultura.

Wherever you look, money is being replaced by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money—like things, from phone credit, to shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, and customer data. These tokens are used to turn invisible stuff into assets, to pay wages, to track purchases, and to program and specify the terms of financial and political access and inclusion. What does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps, or actions, politics, or identities?

Underserved is a tangible blueprint for today's conservative who understands the need for a new and viable political plan of action—one that addresses the needs of the underserved communities that make up these United States of America. Utilizing the concept of the "Party of Lincoln" and the conservative principles set forth over centuries by the movement's most recognized thought leaders, Underserved examines President Lincoln's intentions for Reconstruction, President Grant's aims to implement that vision, and Frederick Douglass's influence on both men in the process.

In democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can’t always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to winning. Black citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance.

A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations.

The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.

Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated to the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial Midwest in search of work. The "hillbilly highway" was one of the largest internal relocations of poor and working people in American history, yet it has largely escaped close study by historians. 

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that governments across the world could not adequately protect their citizens. Millions of people suffered and died in just two years, while administrations around the globe blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs from the collapse of trade; and elites escaped to isolated retreats. In this compelling economic, political and financial history, veteran journalists Bethany McClean and Joseph Nocera analyse the American response to the pandemic as a case study, to offer fresh and provocative answers.

African Americans have had every reason to doubt America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition, which is urgently needed today.

From the legendary antagonism between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War to the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars of the twentieth century, the past is littered with long-term strategic rivalries. History tells us that such enduring rivalries can end in one of three ways: a series of exhausting conflicts in which one side eventually prevails, a peaceful and hopefully orderly transition, or a one-sided collapse. However, in spite of a wealth of historical examples, the future of state rivalries remains a matter of conjecture.

Vivek Chibber provides a clear and accessible map of how capitalism works, how it limits the power of working and oppressed people, and how to overcome those limits. The capitalist economy generates incredible wealth but also injustice.

Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country's system of governance is being "tested" or is "under attack." But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a "civic bargain" with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity. 

We leven in de eeuw van de grondwet. Bijna alle landen ter wereld hebben er tegenwoordig wel een. Een betrekkelijk recent fenomeen trouwens, want driekwart van al die grondwetten is van na 1975. En dat terwijl de wortels ervan net na de landbouwrevolutie liggen, meer dan tienduizend jaar geleden, toen nieuwe sociale organisatie- en leiderschapsvormen opkwamen en ook het recht ontstond als manier om grootschalig samen te kunnen werken met vreemden.

Onder staatsvorming wordt gewoonlijk verstaan ​​het proces waarbij staten worden gecreëerd en vervolgens hun monopolie van legitiem geweld over een bepaald gebied vestigen en consolideren door een duurzaam administratief, financieel, gerechtelijk en militair apparaat op te bouwen. Hoewel er voorbeelden van staatsvorming zijn geweest in het oude Midden-Oosten en China, was het in Europa dat vanaf de Middeleeuwen de moderne staatsvorming ontstond, met een echte bureaucratische infrastructuur. Peer Vries legt in zijn hoorcollege uit hoe een staat vorm krijgt.

Robert L. Fleegler's narrative history of the 1988 election draws from untapped archival sources and revealing oral history interviews to uncover just how consequential this moment was for American politics. Identifying the seeds of political issues to come, Fleegler delivers an engaging review of an election that set a template for the political dynamics that define our lives to this day.

A thrilling and vivid work of history, Class War weaves together literature and politics to chart the making and unmaking of social class through revolutionary combat. In a narrative that spans the globe and more than two centuries of history, Mark Steven traces the history of class war from the Haitian Revolution to Black Lives Matter.

During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.