Global History

“Thrilling . . . an important tale of how American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit is creating a new type of space age.”—Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk Musk vs. Bezos. China vs. the United States. The government vs. the private sector. Welcome to the...

This program is read by the author. Taiwan expert Kerry Brown sums up the history of Taiwan and the danger of a Chinese takeover in this succinct and authoritative book. When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland...

1816 was a remarkable year - mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern US and Europe in the summer of 1816.

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...

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography, a fascinating, “refreshing, and very useful” (The Washington Post) follow-up that uses ten maps to explain the challenges to today’s world powers and how they presage a volatile future. Tim Marshall’s global...

Humans versus Nature tells a history of the global environment from the Stone Age to the present, emphasizing the adversarial relationship between the human and natural worlds. Nature is cast as an active protagonist rather than a mere backdrop or victim of human malfeasance. Daniel R. Headrick shows how environmental changes - epidemics, climate shocks, and volcanic eruptions - have molded human societies and cultures, sometimes overwhelming them.

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...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon With a new afterword It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about...

A globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade. Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage...

The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: The United States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus' 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire.

*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...

One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad: “A compelling rendering of Putin’s frightening extensions of power into Europe and the United States” (Associated Press). They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England...

As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food - and Mexican food more broadly - become so ubiquitous? In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world.

The “fascinating” (Wall Street Journal) story of how military technology has transformed the world The history of warfare cannot be fully understood without considering the technology of killing. In Firepower, acclaimed historian Paul Lockhart tells the story of the evolution of weaponry...

A propulsive work of narrative nonfiction about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world—and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all. On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views.”—USA Today “If any one person can be given credit for transforming the medical establishment’s thinking about health care for the destitute...

The coronavirus pandemic, the deepening economic crash, dangerously divisive political responses, and exploding social tensions have thrown an already declining American capitalist system into a tailspin. The consequences of these mounting and intertwined crises will shape our future. In this unique collection of over 50 essays, The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, Richard D. Wolff argues clearly that "returning to normal" no longer responds adequately to the accumulated problems of US capitalism.

In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, author Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.