Political History

Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) now lives under the shadow cast by his more famous brother Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859, naturalist, explorer, geographer and much else), but Wilhelm was an important figure in Prussian-German history in his own right. He contributed considerably through his work as a diplomat, educationalist (he was one of the principal founders of the Humboldt University of Berlin), philologist and linguist. Yet The Sphere and Duties of Government (originally titled The Limits of State Action) has proved to be one of his most enduring legacies.

Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice.

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.

Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism, but a prime actor in mass organization, catalyzing rebellious ferment, and theorizing an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation. This volume demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today.The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill.

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.

David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx's stated ambition for this text is to reveal "the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society."

A Wall Street cartel has quietly seized control of the American economy, and they are forcing governments and businesses to bow down to their political agenda—using your money to do it. Three Wall Street firms have quietly amassed more money than Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Andrew Carnegie, and...

The year is 1923. While the United States tightens its grip on the world through covert wars, sabotage, and subversion, the Republic of Texas stands firm—sovereign, advanced, and defiant. Forged in the fires of revolution and rebuilt through relentless innovation, Texas is no longer just a state that walked away from a union—it is a nation poised to lead. When President Jefferson Davis Walker uncovers undeniable proof of U.S. assassination plots and imperialist schemes, he faces a decision that will alter history.

“The most important book in the lead up to this election.” —Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC “As Dias and Lerer write, the fight against legal abortion is tied inextricably to the fight for America’s soul.” —New York magazine “A tour de force. However you read books, hardcover, ebook...

This is a manifesto for the 99 percent. Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, inadequate healthcare, border policing, climate change - these are not what you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But aren't they the biggest issues for the vast majority of women around the globe? This manifesto makes a simple but powerful case: feminism shouldn't start, or stop, with the drive to have women represented at the top of their professions. It must focus on those at the bottom and fight for the world they deserve. Feminism must be anti-capitalist, eco-socialist, and anti-racist.

A remarkable analysis linking the assassination of JFK and 9/11, and how both events were used to influence war policy. Peter Dale Scott examines the many ways in which war policy has been driven by “accidents” and other events in the field, in some cases despite moves toward peace that were directed by presidents. This book explores the “deep politics” that exerts a profound but too-little-understood effect on national policy outside the control of traditional democratic processes.

March 1917 tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it.

The New York Post columnist, Fox News contributor, and national bestselling author of Laptop from Hell returns with the explosive, definitive account of the Biden family scandals. It’s rare that a campaign season has anything like an IRS whistleblower and a California US attorney saying they...

From the author of the #1 bestselling and Governor General’s Literary Award-winning The Ingenuity Gap – an essential addition to the bookshelf of every thinking person with a stake in our world and our civilization. This is a groundbreaking, essential book for our times. Thomas Homer-Dixon...

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...

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.

Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China, and Northeastern Brazil.

A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 "An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued...