Social Science Power

No es una pandilla, no es una célula de un grupo mayor ni tampoco una banda doméstica, sino un auténtico cártel que logró apoderarse del centro del país, justo en las narices de las más altas autoridades. ¿Cómo lo hizo? Ejerciendo una violencia como nunca se había visto, con el liderazgo de un hombre del que poco o nada se sabía, con una red de lavado poderosísima y la apatía de dos administraciones capitalinas.

In this essential and timely book, behavioral scientists Sanders and Hume demonstrate the astonishing reach of our social networks, and why we need to reclaim their power to effect positive change in our professional and private lives. The rise of social media has sent our social instincts into overdrive, and the impact of our networks has never been greater. But what if we could reclaim the positive power that influences our decisions, to behave better and be happier?

Cuteness has taken the planet by storm. Global sensations Hello Kitty and Pokémon, the works of artists Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons, Heidi the cross-eyed opossum and E.T. - all reflect its gathering power. But what does “cute” mean, as a sensibility and style? Why is it so pervasive? Is it all infantile fluff, or is there something more uncanny and even menacing going on - in a lighthearted way? In The Power of Cute, Simon May provides nuanced and surprising answers.

In Bloody Foreigners and The Last Wolf, Robert Winder explored the way Britain was shaped first by migration and then by hidden geographical factors. Now, in Soft Power he explores the way modern states are asserting themselves not through traditional realpolitik but through alternative means: business, language, culture, ideas, sport, education, music, even food...the texture and values of history and daily life.

Amazon Bestseller in Democracy, Political Freedom, Radical Thought, and Fascism. It is a sad fact that the world is awash in political tyrants. Ira Chaleff, an expert in political followership and one of the 100 “Best Minds in Leadership,” reveals how political followers can make or “brake” toxic leaders, and what we can do—no matter our level of political influence or where we sit on the political spectrum—to support beneficial leaders and stop the rise of would-be tyrants.

At the close of World War I, Hitler was an impoverished young artist who scrapped by through selling souvenir paintings, but within a few years, his powerful oratory brought him to the forefront of the Nazi party in Munich and helped make the party much more popular. A smattering of followers in the hundreds quickly became a party of thousands. At the head of it all was a man whose fiery orations denounced Jews, communists, and other "traitors" for bringing upon the German nation the Treaty of Versailles, which had led to hyperinflation and a wrecked economy.

Prizewinning historian Michael David-Fox traces the experiences of Smolensk residents between the interwar years and the end of World War II, a period during which the city and region passed from Stalinist rule to Nazi occupation and back. The result is a revelatory examination of choice and power under dueling forms of murderous totalitarianism. Exploring the life-and-death decisions of a fascinating cast of characters, David-Fox shows how deeply the Stalinist and Nazi regimes relied on the co-optation of average citizens motivated by greed and need, but always within the orbit of ideology.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

John A. Thompson takes a long view of America's dramatic rise as a world power, from the late 19th century into the post-World War II era. He shows how American leaders from Wilson to Truman developed an ever more capacious understanding of the national interest, and why by the 1940s most Americans came to support the price tag, in blood and treasure, attached to strenuous efforts to shape the world. The beliefs and emotions that led them to do so reflected distinctive aspects of U.S. culture, not least the strength of ties to Europe.

Is America fated to decline as a great power? Can it recover? With absorbing insight and fresh perspective, foreign policy expert Andrew Imbrie provides a road map for bolstering American leadership in an era of turbulence abroad and deepening polarization at home. This is a book about choices: the tough policy trade-offs that political leaders need to make to reinvigorate American money, might, and clout. In the conventional telling, the United States is either destined for continued dominance or doomed to irreversible decline.

Over the last 40 years our choices have narrowed, our opportunities have shrunk, and our lives have become governed by a handful of very large and very powerful corporations. Today, practically everything we buy, everywhere we shop, and every service we secure comes from a heavily concentrated market. This is a world where four major banks control most of our money, four airlines shuttle most of us around the country, and four major cell phone providers connect most of our communications.

Where did they come from, these furiously self-righteous "social justice warriors"? The incoherence of their mixed creed dooms social justice warriors to perpetual frustration. Their identity politics generates ever more radical demands that can never be satisfied, further fracturing a society in desperate need of a unifying myth. We seem to be left with only two options, Mitchell concludes - Nietzsche or Christ, the will to power or the will to truth. The choice is bracingly simple.

Este increíble y fascinante relato real es un viaje al imperio empresarial y delictivo de la Camorra, que comienza y termina bajo el signo de las mercancías. Las mercancías «frescas», bajo las formas más variadas (videojuegos, relojes, ropa de marca) llegan al puerto de Nápoles, y para ser almacenadas y escondidas se sacan de los gigantescos contenedores e invaden antiguos palacetes, previamente vaciados por completo.

Witchcraft has made a comeback in popular culture, especially among feminists. A growing subculture of BIPOC witches, led by Afro-Caribbean immigrants, Indigenous Americans, and other witches of color, is reclaiming their ancestral traditions and contributing their voices to the feminist witchcraft of today.

In The Invisible Toolbox, Kim shares with parents the single most important thing they can do to foster their child's future-learning potential and nurture the parent-child bond that is the foundation for a child's motivation to learn. She is convinced that the simple act of reading aloud has a far-reaching impact that few of us fully understand and that the importance of that act has recently been further occluded by our nearly universal saturation in technology.

Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.

Labour has shifted from the New Left, to New Labour, to Corbynista Labour. Now, it may see power again with a most unlikely group of activists from the 1970s becoming the fourth generation to win power since 1945. Only Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair have won power from a sitting Conservative government. Of the 10 general elections since 1979, Labour has won three, all under Blair. This record of failure, if applied to any other walk of life, would raise the fundamental question of why continue to fight a losing battle?

Guaranteed to give the listener a deeper understanding of America’s most powerful judicial body, John Yoo, professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, detail in sprightly, slightly irreverent manner how the black-robed judges who make up the U.S. Supreme Court have swung like a pendulum from saviors of the Republic to super-legislators who usurp the roll of Congress and dictate law from the bench, back to defenders of the Constitution again—or at least for the moment.

With a historian's eye and a theorist's ingenuity, Michael Doyle, whose writings on liberal peace have revolutionized modern statesmanship, cogently assesses the tectonic shifts threatening a global order that has held for more than seventy years. As tensions among China, Russia, and the US escalate perilously toward a new Cold War, Doyle introduces a radical paradigm that will facilitate the international cooperation necessary to avert the global threats of our time.

The United States is an exceptionally violent country, increasingly unable or unwilling to stem violence in its many forms. A growing corporate crime wave has gone unprosecuted and unpunished. Meanwhile, the country has doubled down on pursuing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses. Corporate impunity, the financialization of the economy, militarized policing, the burgeoning carceral state, and the forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere all have fostered corporate, economic, and state violence in America.