Future Politics

Kant's Prolegomena, although a small book, is without doubt the most important of his writings, writes the translator, Paul Carus. Prolegomena means, literally, prefatory or introductory remarks, and it furnishes us with a key to his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason; in fact, it is an extract containing all the salient ideas of Kant's system. It approaches the subject in the simplest and most direct way and is therefore best adapted as an introduction into his philosophy.

It's 1996, and less than half of all American high school students have ever used the Internet. Emma just got her first computer and an America Online CD-ROM. Josh is her best friend. They power up and log on--and discover themselves on Facebook, fifteen years in the future. Everybody wonders...

In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of US espionage, gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight.

Katie Nicholl, best-selling author and royal correspondent for The Mail on Sunday, gives us an inside look into the life of the future Queen of England, Kate Middleton. Since becoming Duchess Catherine of Cambridge in 2011, Middleton has captivated fans of the royals around the world. Now Nicholl delivers the story of her early life, first romances, and love with Prince William. Nicholl will reveal new details on Middleton's initiation into royal life and, of course, her first pregnancy.

Shantanu Gupta travels back into the history of the Right-wing movements in India, from their ideological origins to the evolution of their nationalist idea, bringing together a comprehensive study of not just BJP as a political party but of an ideological entity which defines the nationalist movement in the country like never before.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class Classical liberalism promised to overthrow the old aristocracy, creating an...

A call to save ourselves and our planet by targeting the root of our inaction: extreme shortsightedness.

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

Technocracy wants to rule the earth in a panopticon of scientific dictatorship. Transhumanists want to live forever and become omniscient. Both are mechanistic systems that see nature as something to be studied, manipulated, and conquered. Both see themselves as the new intelligent designers of the world, including humans. Both seek to craft a future for planet earth that nobody asked for, voted for, or wanted.

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together". To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it". To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias.

A lo largo del último siglo, la humanidad ha logrado lo imposible frenando la hambruna, la peste y la guerra. Por primera vez en la historia, más personas mueren por obesidad que por pasar hambre y hay más probabilidades de quitarse la vida que de morir en un conflicto bélico o un atentado terrorista.

The near-meltdown of Fukushima, the upheavals in the Middle East, the BP oil rig explosion, and the looming reality of global warming have reminded the president and all U.S. citizens that nothing has more impact on our lives than the supply of and demand for energy. Its procurement dominates our economy and foreign policy more than any other factor. But the "energy question" is more confusing, contentious, and complicated than ever before.

Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern.

Riane Eisler believes that war and the "war of the sexes" are concepts neither divinely nor biologically ordained. Join the author as she reconstructs a prehistoric culture based on partnership rather than domination and traces the roots of the global shift to patriarchy. Eisler, an acclaimed scholar, futurist, and activist, also presents new scripts for living based on a more socially, economically, ecologically, personally, and spiritually balanced society. This script is in direct opposition to the tension and violence typical of what she calls the dominator model. Her vision is the partnership model, which today is struggling to reemerge. This program is an important contribution to that struggle.

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and humanity. Two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.

The most vocal leaders in the United States Catholic hierarchy today embrace a culture-war Catholicism that pits them against the pastoral priorities of Pope Francis and many Catholics in the pews. Reclaiming American Catholicism makes the argument that recalibrating the Church's engagement with politics and public life is vital for both the Church and the country.

It’s everywhere, from commercials to New York Times best-sellers to college (and even younger) classrooms. In fact, pornography has become such a part of normal life in 21st century America that many teens and twenty-somethings have had no more important influence. They are the porn generation, where life’s expectations come from Mouseketeer pop tarts, Victoria’s Secret, internet titillation, and condom-flogging sex education.