History Politics Social Science

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the best-selling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful '60s and '70s.

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time.

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.

It was with Human, All Too Human, first published in 1878, that Nietzsche developed the aphoristic style that so suited his challenging views and uncompromising style. The text is divided into three main sections: 'Of the First and Last Things', 'History of the Moral Feelings' and 'The Religious Life'.

Whether as wine, beer, or spirits, alcohol has had a constant and often controversial role in social life. In his innovative book on the attitudes toward and consumption of alcohol, Rod Phillips surveys a 9,000-year cultural and economic history, uncovering the tensions between alcoholic drinks as healthy staples of daily diets and as objects of social, political, and religious anxiety.

Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of “mass formation”—a type of collective hypnosis—he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes.

In New York City, in April of 1874, a most unusual event took place. A severely abused nine-year-old girl named Mary Ellen Wilson became the first child in America to be rescued from an abusive home. She had been beaten, burned, slashed with scissors, locked in a closet, and had never been outside of her tenement home in over 7 years. Thanks to the concern and dedication of a missionary named Etta Wheeler, the child was finally saved from her cruel captors.

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.

An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People's Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

Based on the rare and until now overlooked journal of a Renaissance-era executioner, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington's The Faithful Executioner takes us deep inside the alien world and thinking of Meister Frantz Schmidt of Nuremberg, who, during 45 years as a professional executioner, personally put to death 394 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured many hundreds more. But the picture that emerges of Schmidt from his personal papers is not that of a monster. Could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful?

Les mémoires d'Albert Speer sont un document exceptionnel à plus d'un titre : témoignage d'un des plus hauts dignitaires nazis, il relate en détail le fonctionnement de l'appareil d'État vu de l'intérieur, avec le mélange de rationalité bureaucratique et de soumission à l'arbitraire du chef qui le caractérise. Mais c'est aussi l'itinéraire d'un homme brillant, architecte de talent, qui est rapidement séduit par Hitler et qui va progressivement mettre son intelligence et ses compétences au service de la machine de guerre nazie et d'une idéologie totalitaire.

The more we elevate and seek out privacy, the more it seems to diminish. Such is the paradox we have inherited. It is no coincidence that the word privacy was popularized in the 1890s as the West began its flirtation with centralization and top-down planning. The progressive pursuit of heaven on earth—of Utopia—arose from a desire to help the individual. But the individual would have to expose himself, to give up everything, in order to receive it.

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives - to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives.

Tantra Illuminated takes the listener on a fascinating journey to the very heart of original Tantra: its key teachings, foundational lineages, and transformative practices. Since the West's discovery of Tantra 100 years ago, there has been considerable fascination, speculation, and more than a little misinformation about this spiritual movement. Now, for the first time in the English language, Tantra Illuminated presents an accessible introduction to this sacred tradition that began 1,500 years ago in the far north of India.

Delve into the mystical worlds of Celtic enchantment, the heroic sagas of Bulfinch's lore, the enigmatic tales of Slavic spirits, the celestial dances of Japanese deities, the profound fables of Turkish origins, the creation epics of Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilizations, the rich tapestry of Native American heritage, and the captivating chronicles from the Filipino archipelago.

Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.

In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault shows once and for all why he is one of the most distinguished European philosophers since the end of World War II. Madness and Civilization, Foucault's first book and his finest accomplishment, will change the way in which you think about society. Evoking shock, pity, and fascination, it might also make you question the way you think about yourself.

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years.

Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it.