Social Science Theory

Without an understanding and appreciation of the culture we seek to preserve and protect, the defense of Western civilization is fundamentally futile; a culture that believes in nothing cannot defend itself, because it has nothing to defend. In this profound and wide-ranging historical survey, Michael Walsh illuminates the ways that the narrative and visual arts both reflect and affect the course of political history, outlining the way forward by arguing for the restoration of the heroic narrative that forms the basis of all Western cultural and religious traditions.

The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles in history. In this accessible and stimulating Very Short Introduction, Martin Bunton clearly explains the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence - a modern territorial contest between two nations and one geographical territory.Providing a clear and fair exploration of the main issues, Bunton explores not only the historical basis of the conflict, but also looks at how and why partition has been so difficult and how efforts to restore peace continue today.

In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters, Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.

Donald Trump v. The United States tells the dramatic story of those who felt compelled to confront and try to contain the most powerful man in the world as he shredded norms and sought to expand his power. Michael S. Schmidt takes listeners inside the defining events of the presidency, chronicles them up close, and records the clash between an increasingly emboldened president and those around him, who find themselves trying to thwart the president they had pledged to serve, unsure whether he is acting in the interest of the country, his ego, his family business, or Russia.

It is June 1936. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) has finally been granted a visa for asylum in Norway, having been banned first from living in Paris, and then the whole of France. With him comes the draft of The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, which is completed and sent to the publishers on the 4th of August. The book, published by Faber in 1937, is considered to be Trotsky’s major work on Stalinism.

A fresh look at the endlessly fascinating Tudors - the dramatic and overlooked story of Henry VII and his founding of the Tudor Dynasty - filled with spies, plots, counter-plots, and an uneasy royal succession to Henry VIII. Near the turn of the sixteenth century, England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy and civil war. Henry Tudor clambered to the top of the heap, a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s crown who managed to win the throne and stay on it for 24 years.

The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.

On the Social Contract's appeal and influence has been wide-ranging and continuous. It has been called an encomium to democracy and, at the same time, a blueprint for totalitarianism. Individualists, collectivists, anarchists, and socialists have all taken courage from Rousseau's controversial masterpiece.

Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."

These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references from contemporary culture and politics, Zizek's firecracker commentary reaches unsettling conclusions about the place of Mao's thought in the revolutionary canon.

This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.

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.

Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements, and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish 'homeland'.

Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

Economists regularly promote Capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the "experts." Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory.

John Hay, Lincoln's private secretary and later secretary of state under presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, famous as "Mark Twain", grew up 50 miles apart on the banks of the Mississippi River in the same rural antebellum stew of race, class, and want. This shared history drew them together in the late 1860s, and their mutual admiration never waned in spite of sharp differences.

The series weaves together more than 50 first-person interviews with an unprecedented collection of archival sound: a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela's life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his family secretly taped by a prison guard; marching songs of guerilla soldiers; government propaganda films; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress (ANC).

We live in the age of disinformation - of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm, even before the 2016 election. But this is not new. The story of modern disinformation begins with the clash between communism and capitalism after the Russian Revolution.

Following Marx’s death in 1883, Engels was able to step into the breach and, drawing on Marx’s extensive notes and writings, complete volume 2 of Capital, leading to its publication in 1885. Here, Marx turns his attention to the money owner, the money lender, the wholesale merchant, the trader and the entrepreneur or 'functioning capitalist.'

i>Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: What makes people live and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their names?