Political Ideologies

From revolutionary to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world's most controversial leaders and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba's president for nearly 50 years, Castro's influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose - good or bad - Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled.

Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist.

Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again.

From the heterodox right wing of the 1940s to the Buchanan/Rothbard alliance of 1992 and all the way through to what he witnessed personally in Charlottesville, The New Right is a thorough firsthand accounting of the concepts, characters and chronology of this widely misunderstood sociopolitical phenomenon. Today’s fringe is tomorrow’s orthodoxy. As entertaining as it is informative, The New Right is required listening for every American across the spectrum who would like to learn more about the past, present and future of our divided political culture.

A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

Conrad Black, bestselling author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, turns his attention to his "friend" President Donald J. Trump and provides the most intriguing and significant analysis yet of Trump's political rise. Ambitious in intellectual scope, contrarian in many of its opinions, and admirably concise, this is surely set to be one of the most provocative political books you are likely to listen to this year.

As a Hillary voter, a New York Times reporter, and frequent attendee at her local gay bars, Nellie Bowles fit right in with her San Francisco neighbors and friends—until she started questioning whether the progressive movement she knew and loved was actually helping people. When her colleagues suggested that asking such questions meant she was “on the wrong side of history,” Bowles did what any reporter worth her salt would do: she started investigating for herself. The answers she found were stranger—and funnier—than she expected.

Completely revised and updated to tackle today’s issues, the 10th Anniversary Edition not only explains what framing is and how it works but also reveals why, after a brief stint of winning the framing wars in the 2008 elections, the Democrats have gone back to losing them, and what can be done about it. In this powerful new volume, George Lakoff delves into the issues that will dominate the midterm elections in 2014, the coming presidential elections, and beyond.

From its establishment to the present day, Israel has enjoyed a special position in the American roster of international friends. In Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky explores the character and historical development of this special relationship.

In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.

The story of Donald Trump’s rise to power is the story of a buried American history - buried because people in power liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt. Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight pulls back the veil on a history spanning decades, a history of an American autocrat in the making. In doing so, she reveals how our continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States have been hiding in plain sight for decades.

In Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side - what he calls its "nocturnal body" - which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism.

America has a God-shaped hole in its heart, argues New York Times best-selling author Ben Shapiro, and we shouldn't fill it with politics and hate.

Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history and beyond the traditional left-right divides as he champions ideas whose time has come.

One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government's sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea's information underground.

Acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein chronicles the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. At the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed federal government, despised liberals, and mocked "peaceful coexistence" with the USSR. Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers. Vividly written, Before the Storm is an essential book about the 1960s.

Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve.

This audiobook contains all 3 volumes of Capital, a compendium that Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels described as 'the Bible of the working class'. One of the most notorious and influential works of modern times, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates.

Roger Scruton offers a fresh approach to tackling the most important political problem of our time. He contends that the environmental movement is philosophically confused and has unrealistic agendas. Its sights are directed at large-scale events and the confrontation between international politics and multinational business. But Scruton argues that no large-scale environmental project, however well intentioned, will succeed if it is not rooted in small-scale practical reasoning.

In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden. The result is a series of essays and dialogues in which Roy and Cusack reflect on their conversations with Snowden. In these provocative and penetrating discussions, Roy and Cusack discuss the nature of the state, empire, and surveillance in an era of perpetual war, the meaning of flags and patriotism, the role of foundations and NGOs in limiting dissent, and the ways in which capital but not people can freely cross borders.