Global History

Should we stop caring about fading regional powers like China, Russia, Germany, and Iran? Will the collapse of international cooperation push France, Turkey, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to the top of international concerns? Most countries and companies are not prepared for the world Peter Zeihan...

Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer - democratic practices were present in many places at many other times. David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished - and when and why they declined - can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.

What We Eat explores world history through the lens of the global journeys of nearly ninety food products. Leading historians trace the origins and popularization of items commonly found in supermarkets, showing how each food illuminates wider histories.

Merchants of Doubt has been praised—and attacked—around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.

There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation-as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.

With a new "10 years later" epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years. Near the end of the Second World War, the United States made a bold strategic gambit that...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography and leading geopolitics expert comes an “insightful, hopeful, and endlessly fascinating” (Daily Express) book on today’s space race—including the increasingly tense power struggle between the US, China, and Russia and...

In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in...

The inevitable is coming fast. We know it in our bones—and it’s past time to face it. The highly anticipated follow-up to Hospicing Modernity: how we activate responsibility, nurture care, and grow up in the face of collapse—includes reflections, exercises, and prompts Climate collapse...

A history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age “Engaging [and] ambitious” (The Washington Post) The history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur...

In this new history of the conflict that defined the postwar era, Sergey Radchenko provides a deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution. This tension drove Soviet policies from Stalin's postwar scramble for territory to Khrushchev's reckless overseas adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, Brezhnev's jockeying for influence in the third world, and Gorbachev's failed attempts to reinvent Moscow.

“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes . . .” —Wall Street Journal “It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape . . . [I]t is impossible to think of a better...

This program is read by the authors In a compelling new set of interviews, Noam Chomsky's Global Discontents identifies the “dry kindling” of discontent around the world that could soon catch fire. In wide-ranging interviews with David Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks...

If you’ve ever streamed a show on HBO Max, seen a Formula One race, hummed a tune on SiriusXM, bought concert tickets via Ticketmaster, or watched an Atlanta Braves game, you’ve crossed paths with John Malone. You just didn’t know it. John Malone remains a stranger to most people, though...

Economic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it.

"[An] extraordinary tale"—Wall Street Journal "Compelling [and] engaging"—Financial Times "Magnificently detailed yet pacy...Think Trading Places meets Wall Street"—Sunday Times (UK) The riveting story of a trading prodigy who amassed $70 million from his childhood bedroom—until the...

From the bestselling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493—an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the...

A thrilling exposé recounting how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks. For over half a century, Banco Popular was one of...

The “gripping” (The Atlantic) story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations. “Excellent . . . This is the intimate side of the cold civil war America has been...

*WINNER OF THE 2023 NATIONAL BUSINESS BOOK AWARD* *FINALIST FOR THE 2023 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER PRIZE* NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, a far-seeing guide to the...