Showing titles in Ideologies & Doctrines

The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy - individual rights and the popular will - are at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term - until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over” - but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives.

In Vulture Capitalism, acclaimed journalist Grace Blakeley takes on the world’s most powerful corporations by showing how the causes of our modern crisis are the intended result of our capitalist system. It’s not broken, it’s working exactly as planned. From JPMorgan to Boeing, Henry Ford to Richard Nixon, Blakeley shows us exactly where late-stage capitalism has gone wrong. Searing, explosive and timely, Vulture Capitalism is the book you need to understand what is happening in the world around you – and what you can do to change it.

For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.

Filled with keen economic insight and advice for citizens, executives, policymakers, and educators, When More Is Not Better is the must-listen guide for saving democratic capitalism.

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.

Prominent liberals support a whole litany of policies and principles: progressive taxes, affirmative action, greater regulation of corporations, raising the inheritance tax, strict environmental regulations, children’s rights, consumer rights, and more. But do they actually live by these beliefs?

Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal Gabler’s magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. It is at once a human drama, a history of American politics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism.

The crime statistics, the jobs, the inflated welfare state, the terror threats - The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration shines cold light on America's out-of-control immigration problem with real-life stories and incontrovertible evidence.

A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today's culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America's foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Richard Slotkin identifies five myths, born of different eras, that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (which he breaks into two opposing camps, Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War, embodied by the multiethnic platoon fighting for freedom.

This remarkable piece of history will change the way you look at American politics. It shows that the corruption of American "conservatism" began long before George W. Bush ballooned the budget and asserted dictatorial rights over the country and the world. The American Right long ago slid into the abyss. Betrayal of the American Right is the story, and the author none other than Murray N. Rothbard, who witnessed it all firsthand. He tells his own story and reveals the machinations behind the subversion of an anti-state movement into one that cheers statism of the worst sort.

How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World is a must-listen for every freedom-loving individual. The book reveals the ways in which the communist specter has burrowed into the minds of today’s people.

In 2019, Tim Kaine—Virginia Senator and former Democratic vice presidential candidate—commemorated both his sixtieth birthday and his twenty-fifth year in public office by undertaking a three-part journey across the Virginia landscape as he hiked, cycled, and canoed across the state. His chronicle of the journey became an organic reflection of the extraordinary events occurring across America during that time, including impeachment trials, a global pandemic, growing racial protests, the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and more.

Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, Zinn's A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of, and in the words of, its women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers. Here we learn that many of our country's greatest battles (labor laws, women's rights, racial equality) were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance.

The Islamic State has stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. What explains the rise of ISIS, and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? In this book, one of the world's leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions as he provides a unique history of the rise and growth of ISIS. Moving beyond journalistic accounts, Fawaz Gerges provides a clear and compelling account of the deeper conditions that fuel ISIS.

Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the 20th century, the Rosselli family, led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia, were vocal antifascists. As populist right-wing nationalism swept across Europe after World War I and Italy's prime minister, Benito Mussolini, began consolidating his power, Amelia's sons, Carlo and Nello, led the opposition, taking a public stand against Il Duce that few others in their elite class dared risk.

Brilliant. Colorful. Visionary. Tenacious. Witty. Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been described as all of these things, and for good reason.

From the moment he set foot on it, Karl Rove has rocked Americas political stage. He ran the national College Republicans at 22, and turned a Texas dominated by Democrats into a bastion for Republicans. He launched George W. Bush to national renown by unseating a popular Democratic governor, and then orchestrated a GOP White House win at a time when voters had little reason to throw out the incumbent party.