Showing titles in Political Science

When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's account.

A Lie Too Big to Fail asserts the idea that a government can never investigate itself in a crime of this magnitude. Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? It has fallen to independent researchers like Pease to lay out the evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing listeners to form their theories about this event. Pease places the history of this event in the context of the era and provides shocking overlaps between other high-profile murders and attempted murders of the time.

In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller, and offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon's extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today's most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.

Perilous Question features an eventful, violent often overlooked period of British history. On 7th June 1832, William IV reluctantly assented to pass the Great Reform Bill, under the double threat of the creation of 60 new peers in the House of Lords and of revolution throughout the country. This led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings dramatically to life.

There’s a fundamental tension buried within the heart of the CIA’s mission to protect the American people: between democratic accountability and the inherent need for secrecy. Ultimately, it’s US citizens who bear the responsibility of staying informed about what the CIA has done and continues to do. In these 24 engrossing lectures, explore the roles the CIA has played in recent American history, from the eve of the Cold War against communism to the 21st-century War on Terror.

Socialism is strangely impervious to refutation by real-world experience. Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure. But, according to socialism’s adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were “real socialism”.

Global networks have formed "anti-gender ideology movements" dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization -- and even "man" himself. But what, exactly, is so scary about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose influential work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, carefully examines how "gender" has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists.

This 8 part series tells the story from the very beginning up until the current day, with several individual stories of the young victims as they set off for the Valentine’s night disco in the Stardust nightclub in Artane in 1981. The podcast continues with a thorough investigation into the fatal fire, testimonies from survivors, firefighters and first responders on the scene, and the devastating aftermath that followed as families fought for over four decades for justice for their loved ones. The series concludes with Episode 8: Unlawful Killing, which provides expert insight into the final...

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.

An acclaimed nonfiction international political thriller exposing the real reason for Watergate, the hidden death of Howard Hughes, and the illicit activities of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the CIA’s worldwide pursuit of John Meier trying to expose it all, including revealing information on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination and critical comments by New York Times best-selling author Jim Hougan.

John Sweeney is trouble. He's taken on Vladimir Putin, challenged Donald Trump, and after months of uncovering hard truths in Ukraine, this old-school reporter is back. John is never silent about what he’s experienced. Sweeney talks, and in this podcast, so do his guests. John speaks to people like him, who are not prepared to be part of the silent majority. They have put their livelihoods and personal reputations on the line to challenge those who run our governments, lead our industries, control our finances and dictate the way we live. They refused to toe the line, and have found ...

Based on firsthand reporting from Syria and throughout the Middle East, Inside Syria unravels the complex dynamics underlying the Syrian Civil War. Through vivid, on-the-ground accounts and interviews with rebel leaders, regime supporters, and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad himself, veteran journalist Reese Erlich gives the listener a better understanding of this momentous power struggle and why it matters.

UnHerd political editor Tom McTague and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson team up to investigate the history of today’s politics — and what it means for our future. Each week they will explore the great forces, ideas and events that led us to where we are, whether in Britain, the United States, Europe or beyond. It’s a politics podcast for those who want a deeper, historical understanding of the news, to understand what has really shaped our world and why. We hope you enjoy! Don’t forget to rate, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — and, of course, to get in touch ...

Nigel Hamilton's Mantle of Command, long-listed for the National Book Award, drew on years of archival research and interviews to portray FDR in a tight close-up as he determined Allied strategy in the crucial initial phases of World War II. Commander in Chief reveals the astonishing sequel - suppressed by Winston Churchill in his memoirs - of Roosevelt's battles with Churchill to maintain that strategy.

A recent poll showed 43 percent of Americans think more socialism would be a good thing. What do these people not know? In The Case Against Socialism, Rand Paul outlines the history of socialism, from Stalin’s gulags to the current famine in Venezuela. He tackles common misconceptions about the “utopia” of socialist Europe. As it turns out, Scandinavian countries love capitalism as much as Americans, and have, for decades, been cutting back on the things Bernie loves the most.

The Oxford Union is a student society like no other. It is a prestigious platform with a tradition of hosting debates and speakers stretching back to 1823. It is, in the words of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, "the last bastion of free speech in the Western World."

With a narrative that grips the reader like a detective story, Antonia Fraser brings the characters and events of the Gunpowder Plot to life. Dramatically recreating the conditions and motives that surrounded the fateful night of November 5, 1605, she unravels the tangled web of religion and politics that spawned the plot.

The Islamic State has stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. What explains the rise of ISIS, and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? In this book, one of the world's leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions as he provides a unique history of the rise and growth of ISIS. Moving beyond journalistic accounts, Fawaz Gerges provides a clear and compelling account of the deeper conditions that fuel ISIS.

Winner of the Costa Biography Award, 2007
Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic Messianic mission in life.

DANNY WALLACE IS A MAN.And a man is a very tricky thing to be these days. A toe-curling moment, an embarrassing faux-pas or a bewildering social situation is always just round the corner. As well as annoying his wife in a dream, getting stuck in a Vapour Room and being invited to a government task force meeting with TV's Jon Tickle, Danny's life is turned upside down by a huge surprise.

Six years after Brexit, it can feel like we're still having the same conversations. This is the explainer we need to move on. And we do need to move on, because in the meantime so much has changed. The economic realities that are making the UK less competitive, less productive and less well-off are ever more obvious - and more and more people are finding out the Brexit they were sold was based on falsehoods and fantasy. So what exactly went wrong with Brexit?

The Republic, Plato's masterwork, was first enjoyed 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely read books in the world. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to philosophy, inviting its listeners to reflect on the choices to be made if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex, dynamic work creates a picture of an ideal society governed not by the desire for money, power or fame, but by philosophy, wisdom and justice.

This 100-year-old book still explains our endless wars. As the extraordinary death and suffering of World War I unfolded, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin tried to explain why so many nations agreed to sacrifice so many people in such a brutal way. Expanding on the works of other political and economic theorists, including Karl Marx, Lenin provided an answer: Capitalism. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin extends his scorn to the international socialist movement.

Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the World. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities. In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the World of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work.

Dereliction of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations, and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.

Using his famed on-the-nose commentary, Twitter legend James Felton has dissected 99 of the most outlandish stories The Sun (for a long time the biggest-selling British newspaper) has run since it became a tabloid in 1969, hoping to answer once and for all whether the press has reflected - or manipulated - the British people over the last 50 years.

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly 80 to 100 years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about 25 years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization.

In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen - Winston Churchill first among them - the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins.

Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world. A Dying Colonialism is Fanon’s incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as “primitive,” in order to destroy those oppressors.

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.