Global History

The Next World War takes listeners behind the scenes of the most dangerous era of international tensions since the end of the Cold War, as countries and military forces prepare for potential large-scale combat on a scale unseen since 1945. From the corridors of power in Washington, Whitehall...

The Illicit Global Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® answers the key questions about how illicit global markets are structured and operate, how they intersect with state institutions and practices, how they interact with the legal economy, and how they shape and are shaped by domestic and international politics.

In a world increasingly governed by unseen algorithms, David Grand's groundbreaking book, "From Code to Consciousness: Algorithmic Life and Global Governance in the Fourth Industrial Revolution," offers an unparalleled and urgent analysis that demands attention from every global citizen.

Fear is ubiquitous but slippery. It has been defined as a purely biological reality, derided as an excuse for cowardice, attacked as a force for social control, and even denigrated as an unnatural condition that has no place in the disenchanted world of enlightened modernity. In these times of institutionalized insecurity and global terror, Facing Fear sheds light on the meaning, diversity, and dynamism of fear in multiple world-historical contexts, and demonstrates how fear universally binds us to particular presents.

Transforming Leadership focuses on the ways that leaders emerge from being ordinary "transactional" deal-makers to become dynamic agents of major social change who empower their followers.

John Perkins has seen the signs of today's economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease. In his former life...

One neighborhood in Istanbul: a window on a city, country, region, and world in a state of upheaval. Karagumruk, an Istanbul neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for its cheap apartment blocks and petty thieves—and a massive influx of Syrian refugees. It's here that...

Nattukotai Chettiars were the most prominent business community from Tamil region and this book captures their spirit of enterprise that led many of them to seek their fortunes overseas. It’s a story that connects South India, Burma, and South-East Asia across the Bay of Bengal and equally one...

Before and after World War II, a serendipitous confluence of events created a healthy balance between the market and the polity - between the engine of capitalism and the egalitarian ideals of democracy. A global financial system was devised explicitly to allow nations to manage capitalism. Yet this golden era turned out to be lightning in a bottle. From the 1970s on, a power shift occurred, in which financial regulations were rolled back, taxes were cut, inequality worsened, and disheartened voters turned to far-right faux populism. Can democracy find a way to survive?

Jamie Sayen approaches the story of northern New England's undeveloped forests from the viewpoints of the previously unheard: the forest and the nonhuman species it sustains, the First Peoples, and, in more recent times, the disenfranchised human voices of the forest, including those of loggers, mill workers, and citizens who, like Henry David Thoreau, wish to speak a kind word for nature.

What would Albert Einstein say about the possibility that nuclear power can be a clean source of energy? How does Saint Francis answer questions about healing the planet and living in spiritual communion with it? Now, exclusively in this one-of-a-kind audiobook, you get to hear their voices channeled through a gifted psychic medium, sharing with you the wisdom and knowledge they gained while living their extraordinary lives, and after crossing over.

"Shadows of Empire – Understanding Britain’s Global Legacy and Its Modern Implications" takes listeners on a thought-provoking journey through the intricate and enduring consequences of the British Empire. This comprehensive exploration, rooted in conversations with individuals from Britain and former British colonies, offers fresh perspectives on the empire's impact on our world. The book's author, with a unique background that spans both the UK and former colonies, provides a balanced and objective analysis of historical events.

Welcome to the electrifying world of K-pop! From its origins in a once-overlooked corner of Asia to today's global superstars like BTS and BLACKPINK, discover how South Korea built an entertainment empire that's revolutionizing modern culture. This comprehensive guide reveals the fascinating story behind K-pop's meteoric rise and lasting impact.

The history of the United States is to a large extent a history of armed conflict. The nation was first forged in war, a tough fight for independence against one of the world’s largest empires, and that fight would resume less than a generation later with the War of 1812. Then there were constant low-level conflicts with Native Americans as the nation expanded westwards, and occasionally the country engaged in full-scale war against the Sioux, Comanche, and Apache. The country also fought the Mexican-American War, starting in 1846, and the bloody Civil War starting in 1861.

Resting on a convincing body of evidence that violence is not a necessary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors, World Beyond War asserts that war itself can be ended. We humans have lived without war for most of our existence and most people live without war most of the time. Warfare arose about 10,000 years ago (only five percent of our existence as Homo Sapiens) and spawned a vicious cycle as peoples, fearing attack by militarized states, found it necessary to imitate them.

Most global citizens are well aware of the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. Indeed, China has famously become the "workshop of the world." Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country's internal dynamics - China's politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development - few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world.

Fear swept Zhenjiang as British soldiers gathered outside the city walls in the summer of 1842. Already suspicious of foreigners, locals had also heard of the suffering the British inflicted two months earlier, in Zhapu. A wave of suicides and mercy killings ensued: rather than leave their families to the invaders, hundreds of women killed themselves and their children or died at the hands of male family members. British observers decried an "Asian culture" of ritual suicide. In reality, the event was sui generis—a tragic result of colliding local and global forces in nineteenth-century China.

In this book, veteran constitutional lawyer Jonathan W. Emord explains the intellectual origins of freedom of speech from the Age of Enlightenment to the founding of the American republic. Today, government censorship of health information worldwide relies on the same mechanisms of prior restraint that were used in Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

Primordial American Terrorists is an interpretation of the events leading to the end of legal slavery in the United States. Along the way, it reveals the duality of the terrorist persona, a profile the author pioneered in his earlier book, Sofia Perovskaya, Terrorist Princess. Primordial American Terrorists tells a story, not only of terrorists who struck suddenly and savagely out of intense passion for a cause, but also, of their direct comparison with equally passionate men and women who dedicated themselves to bringing about social justice through advocacy and other non-violent means.

This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counternarrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its Western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention.