Showing titles in Ideologies & Doctrines

Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics, and the potential of human beings to be something more than bomb-dropping, planet-destroying, racist fools.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turned conventional wisdom on its head. They started from a single assertion: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they must. Newly updated to reflect the global rise of authoritarianism, this clever and accessible book illustrates how leaders amass and retain power. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction.

In the 1960s, Mao launched China’s Cultural Revolution. Cities grew overcrowded. Technocrats demanded progress from above. Anyone opposed was sent to be “re-educated.” China’s revolution was bloody, fast, and a failure, but what if America started a revolution at the same time, based on the same bad ideas, and it’s just been slower, calmer, and more effective?

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only the first volume saw publication in Marx’s lifetime, it would become one of the most consequential books in history. This magnificent new edition of Capital is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century.

The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew - the roots of the Second World War - and upends our assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period.

Comment en sommes-nous arrivés à une nouvelle confrontation entre l’Occident et les autres puissances mondiales ? Avec brio, Amin Maalouf éclaire l’état actuel des conflits qui ravagent le continent européen en analysant finement l’histoire mondiale de ces puissances.

Marx and Engels were right when they observed in the Communist Manifesto that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined. A century and a half later, all the evidence shows that capitalism has lifted millions and millions from hunger and poverty. Today's story about global capitalism, shared by right-wing and left-wing populists, but also by large sections of the political and economic establishment, does not deny that prosperity has been created, but it says it ended up in far too few hands.

The basis for the film The Post, The Pentagon Papers are a series of articles, documents, and studies examining the Johnson Administration's lies to the public about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing to light shocking conclusions about America's true role in the conflict. With a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception.

Anarchism has been both a vision of a peaceful, cooperative society — and an ideology of revolutionary terror. Since the term itself — anarchism — is a negation, there is a great deal of disagreement on what the positive alternative would look like. The black flag comes in many colors.

Thirty years ago, award-winning journalist Jon Ronson stumbled on the mystery of Carol Howe—a charismatic, wealthy former debutante turned white supremacist spokeswoman turned undercover informant. In 1995, Carol was spying on Oklahoma’s neo-Nazis for the government just when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the Black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues that this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned. She contends that the Democrat Party has a long history of racism and exposes the ideals that hinder the Black community’s ability to rise above poverty, live independent and successful lives, and be an active part of the American dream.

It can be said of very few books that the world was changed as a result of its publication - but this is certainly the case of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx (1818-1883). Volume 1 appeared (in German) in 1867, and the two subsequent volumes appeared at later dates after the author's death - completed from extensive notes left by Marx himself.

What if there are identifiable shortcuts your brain utilizes to create settled beliefs in small local communities, and what if those shortcuts could be “hacked” in a technological society to influence you in ways you can’t easily perceive? While many are prone to think of propaganda as lies or distortions, there are techniques crafted and refined since the early 1900s that make that simplistic notion laughable.

For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required listening for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking 10 of the most common objections to Marxism - that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on - he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not by Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare — and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

Am 18. Februar 1882 besteigt Karl Marx in Marseille den Dampfer "Said" und verlässt zum ersten Mal Europa. Den Tod seiner Frau Jenny drei Monate zuvor hat er nicht verwunden. Er ist krank und hofft auf Genesung in Algier. Anhand von teils unpublizierten Quellen erzählt Uwe Wittstock höchst lebendig von der letzten großen Reise des großen Denkers und blickt mit ihm zurück auf sein außergewöhnliches Leben: die wilden Studienjahre in Bonn und Berlin, Marx’ frühe poetische Ambitionen, seine seltsam bremsende Rolle im Revolutionsjahr 1848, dann das ewige Exil, die Zumutungen der Armut.

In On Liberalism, former advisor to Presidents Obama and Biden and New York Times–bestselling author Cass Sunstein offers a timely and clear understanding of liberalism—of its core commitments, of its breadth, of its internal debates, of its evolving character, of its promise, and why we need it more than ever. He also shows how and why liberalism has been, and should be, appealing to both left and right.