Social Science Theory

In 1991 India faced its 'Greece moment': an unprecedented financial crisis against the backdrop of political uncertainty and crumbling investor confidence. On 21 June 1991, P. V. Narasimha Rao became prime minister and appointed Dr Manmohan Singh as finance minister. In less than 35 days, the Rao-Singh duo ushered in momentous changes in economic policy - those that transformed the country.

History has focused on Hitler's use of charisma and terror, asserting that the dictator made few concessions to maintain power. Nathan Stoltzfus, the award-winning author of Resistance of Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Germany, challenges this notion, assessing the surprisingly frequent tactical compromises Hitler made in order to preempt hostility and win the German people's complete fealty.

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region.

In 1991, the United States was the only global superpower. It seemed that the 21st century, like the 20th, would belong to America. Then came the stock market bubble, the costly foreign unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency, and the financial catastrophe of 2008. Meanwhile, China was rising and the Middle East was awakening politically. Today it is clear that America is vulnerable - to domestic and international decline and unregulated greed.

What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term's meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word's polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles.

Bringing together the most influential scholars in the field, the fifth edition of this best-selling book provides unrivaled coverage of international relations theories and arguments.

Most people believe the Federal Bureau of Investigation began under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1920s or 1930s. Many also naturally assume it was developed for the express purpose of fighting crime. However, the reality is very different. The reality is it began years earlier, in 1908, under President Theodore Roosevelt. In The Birth of the FBI, Willard Oliver details the political fight that led to the birth of America's premier law enforcement agency.

In this wide-ranging book, Martha C. Nussbaum, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that anger is conceptually confused and normatively pernicious. It assumes that the suffering of the wrongdoer restores the thing that was damaged, and it betrays an all-too-lively interest in relative status and humiliation. Studying anger in intimate relationships, casual daily interactions, the workplace, the criminal justice system, and movements for social transformation, Nussbaum shows that anger's core ideas are both infantile and harmful.

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.

Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.

In Everything Trump Touches Dies, political campaign strategist and commentator Rick Wilson brings his darkly funny humor and biting analysis to the absurdity of American politics in the age of Trump. Wilson mercilessly exposes the damage Trump has done to the country, to the Republican Party he served for decades, and to the conservative movement that has abandoned its principles for the worst president in American history. No left-winger, Wilson is a lifelong conservative who delivers his withering critique of Trump from the right.

The Communist Manifesto was first published in London in 1848, by two young men in their late 20s. Its impact reverberated across the globe and throughout the next century, and it has come to be recognised as one of the most important political texts ever written. Maintaining that the history of all societies is a history of class struggle, the manifesto proclaims that communism is the only route to equality, and is a call to action aimed at the proletariat. It is an essential listen for anyone seeking to understand our modern political landscape.

This book throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.

Without an understanding and appreciation of the culture we seek to preserve and protect, the defense of Western civilization is fundamentally futile; a culture that believes in nothing cannot defend itself, because it has nothing to defend. In this profound and wide-ranging historical survey, Michael Walsh illuminates the ways that the narrative and visual arts both reflect and affect the course of political history, outlining the way forward by arguing for the restoration of the heroic narrative that forms the basis of all Western cultural and religious traditions.

In Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich reveals the entrenched cycles of power and influence that have damaged American capitalism, perpetuating a new oligarchy in which the 1 percent get ever richer and the rest - middle and working class alike - lose ever more economic agency, making for the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity since World War II.

By the best-selling author of All Out War, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2017. The unmissable account of politics covering Theresa May's time as PM through to the end of the election campaign. Stuffed to the brim with revelation and explanation of political debates and arguments and a superb follow-up to All Out War.

It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Mormons have recently risen to astonishing business success. Cubans in Miami climbed from poverty to prosperity in a generation. Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates. Indian and Chinese Americans have much higher incomes than other Americans; Jews may have the highest of all. Why do some groups rise? Drawing on groundbreaking original research and startling statistics, The Triple Package uncovers the secret to their success.

Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.

Taking Charge brings you into the room with an American political legend, still hated and revered a quarter century after his death. We hear Lyndon Johnson as he schemes and blusters, rewards and punishes, and reveals a bedrock core of unshakable political beliefs.

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation.