Social Power

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.

Learn to navigate the harshness of life with soft power. In her debut book, Lotte Jeffs, weaves powerful life experience with practical advice and a psychological deep-dive into what truly constitutes an emotionally rich and meaningful existence. She speaks to everyone, from agony aunts and archaeologists to pop stars and novelists, to explore a diverse picture of what it is to truly live life well.

The United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power. While this competition ranges across the entire world, it is centered in Asia. In this book, David Shambaugh focuses on the critical sub-region of Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence across this enormously significant area - and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine whether Asia leaves the American orbit after seven decades and falls into a new Chinese sphere of influence.

In 1980, US capitalist politics wore a "nice-guy mask", a troubling disguise to cover up a creeping despotism in which the ultra-rich and corporate overseers were merging with a centralized state power in order to manage the populace. This immanent corporate authoritarianism threatened to subvert constitutional democracy.

As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from top-performing education systems. She resolved to find out what was really going on in the classrooms of countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths, and science. Cleverlands documents Crehan's journey around the world, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology, and culture to offer extensive new insights into what we can learn from these countries.

To have power over another one must first have power over one’s self. The Power Bible teaches how power operates on both an interpersonal, individual level, and a societal level. Arming the listener with tactics and skills on how to triumph in the contest of life. The Power Bible is an instrument to teach you how to win; to bend, disregard, and strategically break the rules that bind you. Cultivating an awareness for which battles to fight, which ones to pass on, and how to win the moments that matter.

No es una pandilla, no es una célula de un grupo mayor ni tampoco una banda doméstica, sino un auténtico cártel que logró apoderarse del centro del país, justo en las narices de las más altas autoridades. ¿Cómo lo hizo? Ejerciendo una violencia como nunca se había visto, con el liderazgo de un hombre del que poco o nada se sabía, con una red de lavado poderosísima y la apatía de dos administraciones capitalinas.

This audiobook will help you learn how to modulate your voice, use pauses for a dramatic effect, and make your speech sound powerful. This is a practical training manual for public-speaking skills. This audiobook is based on a tried-and-trusted method used in London drama schools for decades.

From her office in the University of Minnesota's Health and Eating Lab, professor Traci Mann researches self-control and dieting. And what she has discovered is groundbreaking. Not only do diets not work, they often result in weight gain. Americans are losing the battle of the bulge because our bodies and brains are not hardwired to resist food - the very idea of it works against our biological imperative to survive.

In the last decades, America has gone to war as supposed defenders of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the West from the dangers of Islamists. US soldiers are stationed in more than 800 locations across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law. In this book, Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the intentions behind Washington's martial appetites.

In a crucial passage from the Old Testament, God grants mankind power over animals. But with this privilege comes the grave responsibility to respect life, to treat animals with simple dignity and compassion. Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong. In Dominion, we witness the annual convention of Safari Club International, an organization whose wealthier members will pay up to $20,000 to hunt an elephant, a lion, or another animal, either abroad or in American "safari ranches", where the animals are fenced in pens.

In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie’s on the sale of Mike Winkelmann’s Everydays series—a compilation of 5,000 digital artworks—it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market—the largest unregulated market in the world—put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide?

In this fully revised and updated third edition, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce listeners to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization.

From its beginnings in the 1890s, Miami Beach has been a place made by visionaries and hustlers. During Prohibition, Al Capone had to muscle into its bootlegging and gambling businesses. After December 1941, when the Beach was the training ground for half a million army recruits, even the war couldn't stop the party. After a short postwar boom, the city's luck gave out. But in 1981, 125,000 Cubans arrived by the boatload.

Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

Award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.

There is no higher praise we can give people than to say they have good character. But what does this mean, really? What makes this quality so essential to achieving personal success and fulfillment? More importantly, how can we build our own character and live more satisfying lives? Reflecting society's diversity, the contributors to this unique collection of essays speak from various cultural and professional backgrounds to share their observations on living with integrity, honesty, and compassion.

Dark Manipulation for Women reveals the hidden secrets of influence and emotional mastery, empowering you to confidently navigate your personal and professional relationships. Whether you want to reclaim your power in love, assert control in the workplace, or transform how others perceive you, this guide is your key to unlocking the dark feminine energy that lies within.

We all get dressed. But how often do we pause to think about the place of clothes in our world? What unconscious thoughts do we express when we dress every day? Can a philosophy of living be wrapped up in a winter coat? Can we see a handbag not just as an object, but as an idea? Dressed is the thinking person’s book about clothes. Ranging freely from suits to shoes, from Marx’s coat to Madame X’s gown, philosopher Shahidha Bari unveils the hidden power of what we wear, addressing the deepest questions of who we are and how we choose to face the world.

In the Closet of the Vatican is a fascinating description and evaluation of financial, sexual and political misconduct throughout the Catholic Church at a time when new revelations are being uncovered each and every week. This audiobook explores the underlying causes and includes interviews with numerous Cardinals and other individuals, some of whom cannot be named. Martel reveals financial scandals in the Vatican bank; political collusion with unsavoury regimes, including Castro’s Cuba and Pinochet’s Chile; sexual abuse and hypocrisy over homosexuality.