Book picks similar to
On Zizek's Dialectics: Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation by Fabio Vighi
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Marx and Marxism
Gregory Claeys - 2018
The movements associated with his name have lent hope to many victims of tyranny and aggression but have also proven disastrous in practice and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of millions. If after the collapse of the Soviet Union his reputation seemed utterly eclipsed, a new generation is reading and discovering Marx in the wake of the recurrent financial crises, growing social inequality and an increasing sense of the injustice and destructiveness of capitalism. Both his critique of capitalism and his vision of the future speak across the centuries to our times, even if the questions he poses are more difficult to answer than ever.In this wide-ranging account, Gregory Claeys, one of Britain's leading historians of socialism, considers Marx's ideas and their development through the Russian Revolution to the present, showing why Marx and Marxism still matter today.
Travels in Hyperreality
Umberto Eco - 1973
His range is wide, and his insights are acute, frequently ironic, and often downright funny. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data
Austin Ruse - 2017
But the truth is far more sinister, says Austin Ruse. We're actually living in the age of the low information voter, easily mislead by all-too-convincing false statistics and studies. In Fact-Shaming, Ruse debunks so-called "facts" used to advance political causes one after the other, revealing how poorly they stand up to actual science.
Ay, Cuba! A Socio-Erotic Journey
Andrei Codrescu - 1999
Carousing with Cuban prostitutes, intellectuals, hustlers, and laborers, Codrescu and Graham combine edgy narratives with stunning color photography to create a daring and compelling travelogue. Exploring the architecture, the bizarre two-tier economy of peso and dollar, revivals of both Catholicism and the Afro-Cuban religion of santeria, and the sexual and social mores of a post-cold war communist society, Ay,Cuba! uncovers the maddening and seductive complexities of this fiercely proud yet deeply divided society. This is a provocative look behind the headlines at a world both familiar and exotic.
Love, Hate and Reparation
Melanie Klein - 1964
It attempts to convey, in everyday language understandable to the layman, some of the unconscious mental processes which underlie the feelings and action of normal, adult men and women.The characteristic feature of human psychology is the intense and continual interplay of the impulses of love on the one hand and hatred and agression on the other. Joan Riviere opens this joint study with an analysis of hate, greed, and aggression, and in the second section Melanie Klein talks about the forces of love, guilt, and reparation. Tracing the impulses in question back to their origins in infancy, the authors point out many features of adult mental life which evidence the persistence of earlier modes of thinking. Then they discuss some of the "infinitely various, subtle and complicated adaptations" by means of which each individual tries, all his life, to keep a balance between the life-brining and the destructive elements of his nature in order to achieve the maximum of security and gratification.
Tea Party Fairy Tales
James Finn Garner - 2012
His plan may have worked all too well. Now, to save us from creeping socialism, death panels and everything progressive, he has written the antidote, Tea Party Fairy Tales. In Tea Party Fairy Tales, Red Riding Hood stands up for her Second Amendment rights, the Little Match Girl defends the magic of the free market to her grave, and Jack of “Beanstalk” fame shows the moral decay of a life on the dole. For those who find these too long-winded, more than a dozen Aesop’s Fables have been reworked to illustrate the eternal truths of American conservatism in handy, shouting-points form. Tea Party Fairy Tales deserves a place on every young American’s nightstand, right next to the Rush Limbaugh plush doll and a Smith & Wesson automatic, to help prevent the destruction of everything good and true in American culture. “Wake up, Storybookland! Before it’s too late!”
Foundations of Economic Prosperity
Daniel W. Drezner - 2013
Professor Drezner takes you behind the headlines and into the debates to dispel common myths about prosperity and get at deeper truths. By taking a broad view of economics that includes psychology, sociology, political science, and history, his lectures lead you to fundamental insights about how the modern world works and a deeper understanding of the functioning of the U.S., European, Chinese, and other major economies, as well as an appreciation for the special problems faced by underdeveloped nations. You'll examine dozens of case histories that illustrate what works and doesn't work in the drive to increase economic growth. You'll also learn about intriguing examples of prosperity won or lost, including the Dutch tulip mania in 1637, the era of globalization that started in the 1850s and lasting through World War I, and Ukraine's economic missteps after the breakup of the Soviet Union. As a start on your own road to greater prosperity, take this step to invest in an unparalleled explanation of the prerequisites to achieve it.
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Karl Popper - 1956
This legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems. It remains highly readable, erudite and lucid and as essential reading today as on publication in 1945. It is available here in a special centenary single-volume edition.
Runs in the Family
Kevin Ikenberry - 2014
With little hope of leaving the outer rim of the Milky Way, Mairin agrees to participate in a classified experiment offering her genetic perfection and a chance to see the galaxy. Now, armed with her great-grandfather's military knowledge and combat-refined instincts, Mairin is tasked with leading inexperienced troops in a war against a shadowy enemy using hauntingly familiar tactics. But the first rule of the military is "hurry up and wait," and Mairin learns this firsthand. Without transport to the fight, Mairin spends the downtime on a lush paradise world, getting to know her new body, her imprint, and her heart. Mairin meets Tallenaara, a beautiful Styrahi architect whose mission and past will come to challenge them both. Faced with the most difficult choice of her young life, Mairin Shields can only watch as her world spins out of control.
The Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Mary & John
Anonymous - 1986
These books that were left out of the New Testament shed light on the life and relationships of Jesus Christ and his friends and family, especially his mother Mary.
Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do
Loretta Napoleoni - 2010
In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West’s ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn’t focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx’s writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.
On Anxiety
Renata Salecl - 2004
While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties.On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac, drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today.
New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office
Todd G. Buchholz - 2007
Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when many burger joints failed? And how, decades later, did Krispy Kreme fail to heed Kroc's hard-won lessons? How did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his career? When Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries. Why did she spot an opportunity in selling high-priced cosmetics, and why did she pound on Saks's doors? How did Thomas Watson Jr. decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing idea? We learn about these CEOs' greatest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change.New Ideas from Dead CEOs not only gives us fascinating insights into these CEOs' lives, but also shows how we can apply their ideas to the present-day triumphs and struggles of Sony, Dell, Costco, Carnival Cruises, Time Warner, and numerous other companies trying to figure out how to stay on top or climb back up.The featured CEOs in this book were not candidates for sainthood. Many of them knew "god" only as a prefix to "dammit." But they were devoted to their businesses, not just to their egos and their personal bank accounts and yachts. Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, Todd G. Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead CEOs is a truly enjoyable and fun—yet serious and realistic—look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these decomposing CEOs.
Always Right
Niall Ferguson - 2013
Denounced by her enemies as divisive and dictatorial, Thatcher was the greatest leader Britain has produced since Winston Churchill. The standard bearer for a decisive economic regime-change, she was also a social revolutionary who shook up the stagnant English class system. Yet she was a foreign policy realist, who restored her country’s standing in the world. And far from being an over-bearing prime minister, she ultimately fell victim to the machinations of Cabinet government. ALWAYS RIGHT is a fittingly frank assessment of a great woman who made history.Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He has published fourteen books, including The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Civilization: The West and the Rest and, most recently, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. An accomplished broadcaster, in 2009 he won the International Emmy for Best Documentary. In 2010 he won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service and in 2012 the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
American Marxism
Mark R. Levin - 2021
Levin explains how the dangers he warned against in the “timely yet timeless” (David Limbaugh, author of Jesus Is Risen) bestseller Liberty and Tyranny have come to pass. In 2009, Mark R. Levin galvanized conservatives with his unforgettable manifesto Liberty and Tyranny, by providing a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for halting the liberal assault on Constitution-based values. That book was about standing at the precipice of progressivism’s threat to our freedom and now, over a decade later, we’re fully over that precipice and paying the price. In American Marxism, Levin explains how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture—from our schools, the press, and corporations, to Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the Biden presidency—and how it is often cloaked in deceptive labels like “progressivism,” “democratic socialism,” “social activism,” and more. With his characteristic trenchant analysis, Levin digs into the psychology and tactics of these movements, the widespread brainwashing of students, the anti-American purposes of Critical Race Theory and the Green New Deal, and the escalation of repression and censorship to silence opposing voices and enforce conformity. Levin exposes many of the institutions, intellectuals, scholars, and activists who are leading this revolution, and provides us with some answers and ideas on how to confront them. As Levin writes: “The counter-revolution to the American Revolution is in full force. And it can no longer be dismissed or ignored for it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment.” And, like before, Levin seeks to rally the American people to defend their liberty.