International Education

Note: This is a summary and analysis of Mao's Great Famine and not the original book. Historian Frank Dikötter used a brief window of political openness before the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China to get inside official archives and gather evidence of the terrible toll the Great Chinese Famine took on ordinary people. He also discovered how Communist leaders caused, and then covered up, the catastrophe. Dikötter shows the disaster was much worse than previously thought, with a death toll of at least 45 million.

In his 1986 book War Without Mercy, American historian John Dower examines Japanese-American relations during World War II and investigates links between popular culture, stereotypes, and extreme violence. He argues that it was the concept of racism - used equally by both sides - that underpinned the military conflict and led to a particularly brutal war in the Pacific and East Asia.

Nineteenth-century American politician John C. Calhoun was unashamedly pro-slavery. So it may seem odd that A Disquisition on Government (1850), written in part to protect that practice, is so respected today. But South Carolina-born Calhoun was undoubtedly a great political thinker. Calhoun - who served his country as senator, vice president, secretary of war, and secretary of state - believed that "majority rule" inevitably led to abuse of power.

Advertisements for soap. The image of a film star. The sight of a car as beautiful as a goddess. We accept all these common objects and experiences as normal parts of our lives and as timeless and universal as myth. But they are also carrying hidden messages that none of us even suspect, as Barthes demonstrates with a unique analysis of the signs that generate meanings and assumptions we all take for granted. These things have been "taken out of history" so that their hidden cultural meanings can be accepted without question.

In his 2007 book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb says the Black Swans of his title can appear at any time, in the form of financial crises, wars, and other unexpected events that have profound, irreversible consequences. Taleb draws on philosophy, mathematics, economics, and other disciplines to explain in plain English why we seldom prepare for these events adequately. The way our brains process knowledge lull us into believing the future will resemble the past.

Since it was first published in 1973, A Random Walk Down Wall Street has been a highly influential best seller. Burton G. Malkiel demolishes the idea that investment "experts" can predict stock price changes and thereby "beat the market." With all available information that could affect the value of a company's shares known almost instantly to all investors, Malkiel says, shares quickly find the price that reflects that information. This is known as the efficient market hypothesis.

American sociologist Jack A. Goldstone examines the causes of revolutions and uprisings in the period between 1500 and 1800. Investigating cases in both Europe and Asia, the conclusions he reaches are surprising. Many thinkers had previously believed that Europe's distinctive history - and particularly the rise of capitalism - had created the specific revolutions and political changes that launched the continent on a path to global supremacy. Goldstone says this is wrong, and that European and Asian states were, in fact, all experiencing similar developments.

British-born American political activist Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man in 1791 in response to Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution. Burke was wary of tearing down old institutions of government. But Paine argued that revolution is acceptable - in fact, necessary - when government ignores the rights of its people. Not surprisingly, Rights of Man proved very popular in the newly liberated United States, selling over 100,000 copies.

Plato imagines a dinner party - a symposium - held in the Athens of the late fifth century BC. He invites seven important historical figures including the philosopher Socrates, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and the notorious military general Alcibiades. As entertainment, each guest gives a speech praising eros (human love or erotic desire). Plato then "collects" these seven speeches into Symposium.

The title of Norwegian-born historian Odd Arne Westad's 2005 work - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - offers a window into his thesis. Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, both the Soviet Union and the United States "intervened" (or "offered aid and support to") developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Westad's view, these interventions were more important than events in Europe, where most studies of the Cold War focus.

Written more than 2,000 years ago, this earliest surviving work on how to wage war successfully - and above all, rationally - argues that winning requires careful advance planning, better sources of information than your opponent, and a strategy that's flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. Sun Tzu concludes that in the end, a decision not to take military action can be every bit as sensible and effective as being able to triumph on the battlefield.

Even as recently as the 1920s the historical lack of great female writers was often considered as evidence of women's inferiority. Virginia Woolf disagreed. In her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, she argues that creativity is impossible without privacy and freedom from financial worries - and that throughout history women have had neither. As a result, no tradition of great female writing existed to inspire women. Woolf's focus on the everyday suppression of women was a turning point.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction - and the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature - novelist, orator, and outspoken public intellectual Toni Morrison is best known for her novels. In Playing in the Dark, however, she enters the realm of literary criticism. Morrison, an African American, draws attention to the often-overlooked significance of race in literature, demonstrating "the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it". Reading the racial language between the lines of classic American fiction, Morrison shows that literature is never raceless.

In his 1997 work Guns, Germs, and Steel, American geography professor and environmental historian Jared Diamond looks to answer the question of why human history unfolded differently on different continents, and why power and wealth became distributed as they are.

Though written around 1513, more than 500 years ago, Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is still both widely listened to and very influential. Listeners turn to it for its direct advice on the question of how to attain - and retain - power. Machiavelli's answer, in brief: Use any means necessary to make sure the state survives.

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Auf der Suche nach dem Sinn des Lebens stoßen wir irgendwann an unsere Grenzen. Wir bemerken, dass die Suche allein nicht ausreicht...

More than 200 years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, governments around the world continue to address many of the issues discussed in the book. The most powerful states in the world are still committed to international trade, but questions are repeatedly asked about the role of governments in the economy and the effectiveness of the free market.

Competitors have always existed in business, but what if it were possible to render your competition irrelevant? This is the critical question posed in W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne's book Blue Ocean Strategy. According to Kim and Mauborgne, the path to success of any company does not lie in taking on potential competitors but in the creation of "blue oceans" in uncontested market space. The authors offer analytical frameworks and tools to help businesses identify and capitalize on these new opportunities.

Published in 1974, Roll Jordan, Roll is American historian Eugene Genovese's epic study of slavery in the United States in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between master and slave. Slave owners saw it as their duty to limit slaves' freedoms for their own good, as a father might deal with his children. But Genovese looked beyond this notion of paternalism to suggest the relationship was more complex.