Power History

Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths: Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global significance.

Empire of Rubber tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company transformed Liberia into America's rubber empire. Scouring remote archives, historian and filmmaker Gregg Mitman reveals a history of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America—on African soil. As Firestone reaped fortunes, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, fostering widespread inequalities that fed unrest, rebellions and, eventually, civil war.

In this powerful and prophetic audiobook, nationally syndicated columnist and trusted political commentator Cal Thomas offers a diagnosis of what exactly is wrong with the US by drawing parallels to once-great empires and nations that declined into oblivion. Citing the historically proven 250-year pattern of how superpowers rise and fall, he predicts America's expiration date is just around the corner and shows us how to escape their fate.

This audiobook includes information about the power structure in America. The chapters and topics covered in this audiobook include: The Balance of Power, Stormy Weather, Opposing Forces, Maladies Galore, Militias and the Sheople, The Revolution Will Be Dramatized, and Ask a Lithuanian.

This is an exploration of feminine spirituality from the beginning of time to the present day. These extraordinary women have expressed their experiences of the agony and ecstasy of pursuing spiritual enlightenment through their poetry and prose, which is beautiful, inspirational, and very moving.

Three and a half years ago, David Sanger’s book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power described how a new American president came to office with the world on fire. Now, just as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Sanger follows up with an eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with those challenges, relying on innovative weapons and reconfigured tools of American power to try to manage a series of new threats.

What is the purpose of art in a world on fire? In this exhilarating and deeply inspiring work, Amber Massie-Blomfield considers the work of artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers—such as Gran Fury, Billie Holiday, Alexis Wright, Claude Cahun, Rick Lowe, and Joseph Beuys—alongside collectives, communities, and organizations that have used protest sites as their canvas and spearheaded political movements.

Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other.

"Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.” (Stokely Carmichael). In the town of Greenwood, central Mississippi, on the evening of June 16, 1966, one of the most influential speeches in modern American history was delivered on the grounds of Stone Street Negro Elementary School. Earlier in the day, as a body of marchers tried to set up camp on the grounds of the school, they were approached by local officials and law enforcement with instructions to move on.

In The Currency of Empire, Jonathan Barth explores the intersection of money and power in the early years of North American history, and he shows how the control of money informed English imperial action overseas. The export-oriented mercantile economy promoted by the English Crown, Barth argues, directed the plan for colonization, the regulation of colonial commerce, and the politics of empire. The imperial project required an orderly flow of gold and silver, and thus England's colonial regime required stringent monetary regulation.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

This book is not just a project for me; it’s a labor of love. It all began during my time at Berklee College of Music, when I was tasked with choosing a research topic. I found myself drawn to the question, “Why there are no more Black R&B groups in existence?” This wasn’t just an academic curiosity; it was a topic that resonated deeply with me, as my research revealed that 99% of all R&B groups are majority African American.

Winston Churchill had a longer and closer relationship with the Royal Navy than any British statesman in modern times, but his record as a naval strategist and custodian of the nation's sea power has been mired in controversy since the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign in 1915. Today, Churchill is regarded by many as an inept strategist who interfered in naval operations and often overrode his professional advisers - with inevitably disastrous results.

The lives of the sons of Eleanor of Aquitaine are the stuff of legend. Her daughters, however, are less well known, and the fascinating personalities of her daughters-in-law have been almost entirely overlooked, as have those of the daughters she bore Louis VII of France. The Families of Eleanor of Aquitaine redresses this balance and showcases the lives, travels, and careers of these ten very different women, who formed a great international network of political alliances that linked their parents, siblings, husbands, and children all across Europe and the Holy Land.

Learn about Argentina's Week of the People’s Martyrs, Mexico's Night of Tlatelolco, and France's Mai 68.

Our smartphones have brought digital technology into the most intimate spheres of life. It's time to take control of them, repurposing them as pathways to a democratically designed and maintained digital commons that prioritizes people over profit. Smartphones have appeared everywhere seemingly overnight: since the first iPhone was released, in 2007, the number of smartphone users has skyrocketed to over two billion.

The remarkable response of the Amish Community to the horrific shooting of 10 schoolgirls at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in October 2006 stunned the larger world. Amish Grace tells the incredible story of this community's reaction to the senseless shooting and explores its profoundly countercultural practice of forgiveness.

Five months after being deployed to Iraq, Lima Company's 1st Platoon became one of the first American forces to enter Fallujah, where they encountered some of the most intense hand-to-hand combat since World War II. Civilians were used as human shields or as bait to lure soldiers into buildings rigged with explosives; suicide bombers approached from every corner hoping to die and take Americans with them; radical insurgents, high on adrenaline, fought to the death.

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Interfaith liaisons carried powerful resonances, as such unions could function as a tool of diplomacy, the catalyst for conversion, or potent psychological propaganda.

In this landmark work, acclaimed historian Joshua Freeman has created an epic portrait of a nation both galvanized by change and driven by conflict. Beginning in 1945, the economic juggernaut awakened by World War II transformed a country once defined by its regional character into a uniform and cohesive power and set the stage for the United States’ rise to global dominance. Meanwhile, Freeman locates the profound tragedy that has shaped the path of American civic life.