Political History

This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.

Since the election of Scott Walker, Wisconsin has been seen as ground zero for debates about the appropriate role of government in the wake of the Great Recession. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall that brought thousands of protesters to Capitol Square, he was subsequently reelected. How could this happen? How is it that the very people who stand to benefit from strong government services not only vote against the candidates who support those services but are vehemently against the very idea of big government?

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, "Two tigers cannot share the same mountain." However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought-provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, the enmity is between these three "tiger" nations and what prevents them from making peace.

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! A growing number of Americans want to tear down what it’s taken us 250 years to build—and they’ll start by canceling our shared history, ideals, and culture. Traditional areas of civic agreement are vanishing. We can’t agree on what makes America special. We...

National bestselling author of APOCALYPSE NEVER skewers progressives for the mishandling of America’s faltering cities. Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse. Michael Shellenberger...

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in three parts from 1794, was a best seller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Promoting a creator-God while advocating reason in the place of revelation, Paine’s controversial pamphlet caused his native British audience, fearing the results of the French Revolution, to receive it with more hostility than their American counterparts.

In The Reactionary Mind, Robin traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution. He argues that the right was inspired, and is still united, by its hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market; others oppose it. Some criticize the state; others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality - while simultaneously making populist appeals to the masses.

This book consists of two parts: the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" and "The Law of Peoples", a major reworking of a much shorter article by the same name. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than 50 years of reflection on liberalism and on some of the most pressing problems of our times.

This book explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy to the respective national cultures; illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military, and cultural realities and power are no longer what American "elites" think they are by addressing Russia's new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare, as well as cyberwarfare and space; and studies several ways in-depth in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.

An incisive, culturally observant analysis of the evolving mores, manners and taboos of social justice (“anti-racist”) orthodoxy, which has profoundly influenced how we think about diversity and freedom of expression, often with complex or paradoxical consequences. In this provocative book...

For generations, British thinkers told the history of an empire whose story was still very much in the making. While they wrote of conquest, imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean was consolidated. While they described the development of imperial governance, rebellions were brutally crushed. As they reimagined empire during the two world wars, decolonization was compromised. Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed.

Everything is a computer. Ovens are computers that make things hot; refrigerators are computers that keep things cold. These computers - from home thermostats to chemical plants - are all online. All computers can be hacked. And Internet-connected computers are the most vulnerable. Forget data theft: Cutting-edge digital attackers can now crash your car, your pacemaker, and the nation’s power grid. In Click Here to Kill Everybody, renowned expert and best-selling author Bruce Schneier examines the hidden risks of this new reality.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has written a revolutionary road map to saving our children from leftist indoctrination. Behind a smokescreen of “preparing students for the new industrial economy,” early progressives had political...

The United States has two main political parties. But through the years, there have been many others, and the Democratic and Republican Parties have changed tremendously since their beginnings. In this book, historian Keith Pruitt will describe the history of political parties over our near 250 years of history. Along the way, there will be quotes from politicians and specific information about how the parties delivered various leaders on the national stage. Complete with recommended reading and indexed, this treatise is intended to be an introduction to political activism in America.

A NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER ONE OF AUDIBLE’S BEST AUDIOBOOKS OF 2019 A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2019 ONE OF TIME’S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2019 AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF...

How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign.

As the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, the Pentagon burned, and a small group of passengers fought desperately to stop a third plane from completing its deadly flight plan, America went on war footing. Killing the Killers narrates America's intense global war against extremists who planned and executed not only the 9/11 attacks but hundreds of others in America and around the world, and who eventually destroyed entire nations in their relentless quest for power.

From a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist specializing in the Middle East, this groundbreaking account of the Syrian Civil War reveals the never-before-published true story of a 21st-century humanitarian disaster. In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army...

The New York Times bestseller “A clear and concise account of the history, diplomacy, economics, and societal forces that have molded the modern global system.” —Foreign Affairs An invaluable primer from Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, that will help anyone...