International Studies

As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food - and Mexican food more broadly - become so ubiquitous? In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world.

The continuing crisis in Syria has raised a question mark over the common perception of Middle Eastern affairs as an offshoot of global power politics. To Western intellectuals, foreign-policy experts, and politicians, "empire" and "imperialism" are categories that apply exclusively to the European powers and more recently to the United States of America. Lacking an internal dynamic of its own, the view of such people is that Middle Eastern history is the product of its unhappy interaction with the West.

Clifford Geertz's first collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), made him a leading voice of anthropology's "symbolic" movement, which believed scholars should read the signs and symbols of a culture from the perspective of its natives. Geertz's approach helped anthropology reinvent itself as a scientific discipline that is still relevant today, making him - in the words of one critic - "a true giant of social and cultural theory."

First published in 1973, Albert Bandura's Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis is a groundbreaking work that helped lay the foundations of the discipline of social psychology. Much of what we now know about the influences of the early childhood environment on delinquency and anti-social behavior can be traced back to Bandura's work. In the book, he uses the subject of aggression to demonstrate and explore the usefulness of what is called social learning theory.

International Global Student is designed to empower mobility students to become more effective in college and universities. Students will be taught how to set goals; master time management, memorization, and note-taking; strengthen test-taking skills; master strategies and techniques; hone critical thinking skills, global communication for professions, importance of the library, and other student services; adapt to various preferred instructional styles, and more.

The crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers marked the fourth systemic transformation of capitalism since the late 18th century. Capitalism was not destroyed by the crisis, but it was irrevocably changed. This provocative audiobook shows how the forces that precipitated the financial meltdown of 2007-2009 are now creating a new and stronger version of the global capitalist system. This system will continue to be led and shaped by the U.S. if its businesses and politicians play their cards well.

Democracy and Its Critics is a modern classic that integrates Robert A. Dahl's democratic thinking as it developed over the course of his academic career. It makes an important contribution to theories about democracy and remains widely cited and debated. Dahl offers an interpretation of democratic theory and practice that is relevant to the modern world and that pays special attention to the problems highlighted by people who criticize democracy.

Au moment où la montée vertigineuse du prix des hydrocarbures et le renchérissement des matières premières suscite déjà au Sud des émeutes de la faim, menaçant au Nord des professions entières, remettant en cause des modes de vie, voici qu'un péril plus angoissant commence à faire parler de lui : le problème de l'eau. Dans dix ans, dans vingt ans, aurons-nous assez d'eau ? Assez d'eau pour éviter qu'à toutes les raisons de faire la guerre s'ajoute celle du manque d'eau ?

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.

If Europe is to return to an innovative and dynamic economy - and if there is to be shared prosperity, social solidarity, and justice - then EU countries need to break with their current, destructive trajectory. This volume offers concrete strategies for renewal that would also reinvigorate the project of European integration, with fresh ideas in the areas of both macroeconomics and microeconomics, including central banking, public investment, corporate governance and competition policy, social policy, and international trade.

The industrial age made possible by fossil fuels will surely decline as these fuels run out. In The Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer alerts the listener to possible changes future generations may face as these dwindling fuel supplies lead first to a deindustrial age, then to a society which salvages the remnants of our current plenty, and eventually to a time in which people may learn to live in balance with the environment: an ecotechnic society.

Our world is in a mess. The challenges of climate change, inequality, hunger and a global pandemic mean our way of life seems more imperilled and society more divided than ever; but economics can help! From parenting to organ donation, housing to anti-social behaviour, economics provides the tools we need to fix the biggest issues of today. Far from being a means to predict the stock market or enrich the elite, economics provides a lens through which we can better understand how things work.

In Colonizing Paradise, historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, Dillman’s work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era.

Born in 1858, Franz Boas permanently changed the standards and practices of anthropology. A German-born secular Jew, he became known for his distinctive approach to the discipline - non-hierarchical, open to diverse inputs, and unbiased. Throughout his career, Boas used his scholarship to effect social change. His work convinced his colleagues to abandon the theories that had decided one race (Caucasian) and one culture (Western European) were more fully developed and worthier than others.

Past and present civilizations failed and fail for many reasons, but the number-one predictor of a civilization’s survival is its sense of religion—or lack thereof. So argues David Goldman in How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying Too). The strength of a civilization’s religion affects its purpose, its fertility rate, and ultimately, its fate, says Goldman—who then argues that, contrary to popular belief, Islamic countries are in the last throes of death while Christian America is in a position to flourish.

All Americans know we are in a state of cultural crisis, but how did we get to this point? It has been said, if we seek an actual legal date for the fall of Judeo-Christian culture in America, it would be June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was a constitutionally protected right. But according to William D. Howard, the destruction of our country started well before that when states began changing laws and incorporating changes that had lasting repercussions on the culture as a whole.

In Unholy Alliance, Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) tackle radical Islam head on. They expose the attempts by fundamentalist Muslims - both in the US and abroad - to destroy our legal system in favor of a system that would destroy our essential liberties. They bring attention to terrorism in today's world and reflect on the recent Paris and San Bernadino attacks as well as Russia, Syria, Iran, and continuous threats to our nation.

Greider explains the dynamics of the global economy in terms of human struggle. As he makes clear, the actions of multinational corporations and finance capitalists are no longer guided by the national interests of their home countries, but by the imperatives of the free market. As the global economy's contradictions multiply and its instabilities deepen, are we doomed to relive the world depression and the rise of violent fascism experienced in the early 20th century?

The West, says author Tony Blankley in this shocking book, is down to its last chance. Within our lifetimes, Europe could become Eurabia, a continent overwhelmed by militant Islam that poses a greater threat to the United States than even Nazi Germany did. In The West's Last Chance, Blankley shows how that could happen and how we can prevent it.

"Time is that in which we live - it is horizontal. It is from A to B to C to D; it is in a line. Eternity is vertical. It is not from A to B and from B to C. It is from A to more A to still more A. It goes on upwards. The moment is rare because it happens only when meditation has reached ripening, maturity, when you have touched your innermost core." The vertical line opens a door to eternity.