Pedagogy of the Oppressed


Paulo Freire - 1968
    The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex


Incite! Women of Color Against ViolencePaula X. Rojas - 2007
    From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements? Activists--or careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “nonprofit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast


Alex Tabarrok - 2011
    The recession, however, is just the tip of iceberg. We have deeper problems. Most importantly, the rate of innovation is down. Patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College,once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. We have more students in college than ever before, for example, but fewer science majors. Regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone's detriment. "Launching the Innovation Renaissance" is a fast-paced look at how we can accelerate innovation and build a solid 21st-century economy.*****"This is a great book. It’s fast-paced, fun to read, informative as hell, and it gets everything right. It’s the kind of book that made me wish I’d written it — until I realized that I could never have written it half so well. I wish everyone in the world would read this book. It only takes a couple of hours, and it is by far the best introduction I know of to the topic that towers above all others in its importance for the happiness of human beings everywhere, now and in the future, namely how to foster and accelerate the kinds of innovation that lead to economic growth. It will, I hope and expect, make you an enlightened advocate for enlightened policies. And it will arm you with a bundle of fun facts and anecdotes to share with your friends. This book might turn you into a proselytizer, but it will surely not turn you into a bore."Steven Landsburg, author of 'The Armchair Economist,' 'More Sex is Safe Sex,' 'The Big Questions' and regular contributor to Slate, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal. If you're interested in innovation like I am, you need to read 'Launching the Innovation Renaissance.' Alex poses thought experiments from patents to prizes, from health to education to immigration. He skewers Soviet-style employment bargains and offers insightful alternatives to improve our educational system. Alex is occasionally snarky, often witty, always incisive. Read this on your next flight. "- Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions. Previously he served as president of the X PRIZE Foundation and was the Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Progress comes from improvements in both our technologies and our rules. Alex Tabarrok makes a compelling case that in the United States, our rules on patents, education, and immigration are holding us back. If you want to think clearly about policies that matter for growth, turn off the TV, stop surfing the web, and read this book!" - Paul Romer, New York University Stern School of Business."Alex Tabarrok reveals the hidden roadblocks to innovation in the American economy, and shows us persuasively -- and concisely -- how to fix them. Launching the Innovation Renaissance should be read by everyone interested in innovation and America's future."- Michael Heller, professor at Columbia Law School and author of 'The Gridlock Economy.'

Wayne Bennett: Don't Die With The Music In You


Wayne Bennett
    

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance


Edgar Villanueva - 2018
    Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides.Though it seems counterintuitive, the philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, ultimately doing more harm than good. After 14 years in philanthropy, Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field's glamorous, altruistic facade, and into its shadows: the old boy networks, the savior complexes, and the internalized oppression among the "house slaves," and those select few people of color who gain access.All these funders reflect and perpetuate the same underlying dynamics that divide Us from Them and the haves from have-nots. In equal measure, he denounces the reproduction of systems of oppression while also advocating for an orientation towards justice to open the floodgates for a rising tide that lifts all boats. In the third and final section, Villanueva offers radical provocations to funders and outlines his Seven Steps for Healing.With great compassion--because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing--Villanueva is able to both diagnose the fatal flaws in philanthropy and provide thoughtful solutions to these systemic imbalances. Decolonizing Wealth is a timely and critical book that preaches for mutually assured liberation in which we are all inter-connected.

The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America


Burton W. Folsom Jr. - 1991
    The entrepreneurs studied are Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, Andrew Mellon, Charles Schwab, and the Scranton family. Most historians argue that these men, and others like them, were Robber Barons. The story, however, is more complicated. The author, Burton Folsom, divides the entrepreneurs into two groups market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs. The market entrepreneurs, such as Hill, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller, succeeded by producing a quality product at a competitive price. The political entrepreneurs such as Edward Collins in steamships and in railroads the leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad were men who used the power of government to succeed. They tried to gain subsidies, or in some way use government to stop competitors. The market entrepreneurs helped lead to the rise of the U. S. as a major economic power. By 1910, the U. S. dominated the world in oil, steel, and railroads led by Rockefeller, Schwab (and Carnegie), and Hill. The political entrepreneurs, by contrast, were a drain on the taxpayers and a thorn in the side of the market entrepreneurs. Interestingly, the political entrepreneurs often failed without help from government they could not produce competitive products. The author describes this clash of the market entrepreneurs and the political entrepreneurs. In the Mellon chapter, the author describes how Andrew Mellon an entrepreneur in oil and aluminum became Secretary of Treasury under Coolidge. In office, Mellon was the first American to practice supply-side economics. He supported cuts on income tax rates for all groups. The rate cut on the wealthiest Americans, from 73 percent to 25 percent, freed up investment capital and led to American economic growth during the 1920s. Also, the amount of revenue into the federal treasury increased sharply after tax rates were cut. The Myth of the Robber Barons has separate chapters on Vanderbilt, Hill, Schwab, Mellon, and the Scrantons. The author also has a conclusion, in which he looks at the textbook bias on the subject of Robber Barons and the rise of the U. S. in the late 1800s. This chapter explores three leading college texts in U. S. history and shows how they misread American history and disparage market entrepreneurs instead of the political entrepreneurs. This book is in its fifth edition, and is widely adopted in college and high school classrooms across the U. S.

Myth of the Welfare Queen


David Zucchino - 1997
    Odessa, supporting an extended family, exhibits almost superhuman strength and resolve. Cheri, a single mother, is a tireless advocate for the homeless. Zucchino beautifully portrays them as figures of profound courage and quiet perseverance, systematically shattering all misconceptions and stereotypes about these women and so many others like them.

The Globalization Reader


Frank J. Lechner - 1999
    This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with thirty new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements. The editors have replaced several abstract articles from the first edition with livelier, more accessible essays that reflect the current scholarship. With new case studies, and a more international focus, this second edition is an even better introduction to globalization studies.Fully revised and updated - includes 30 new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements.Wide-ranging - across economic, political, cultural, and experiential dimensions of social change.Inclusive - covering a wide variety of perspectives on globalization and capturing some of the fault lines in current debates.Stimulating - not only by including well-written, provocative, and contemporary works but also by structuring sections around arguments that serve as connecting themes.

A Fistful of Rice: My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability


Vikram Akula - 2010
    While microfinance - small loans to impoverished individuals - initially attracted attention in the press, it didn't achieve the scale, scope, and profitability necessary to substantially combat poverty. All that changed with Vikram Akula's creation of SKS Microfinance.In this highly personal narrative, A Fistful of Rice, Akula reveals how he pieced together the best of both philanthropy and (to his surprise) capitalism to help millions of India's poor transition from paupers to customers to business owners.As thoughtful as Barack Obama's personal journey in Dreams from My Father, as harrowing as Paul Farmer's battle against infectious disease in Mountains Beyond Mountains, and as gripping as Greg Mortensen's fight for education in Three Cups of Tea, Akula's story shows how traditional business principles can be brought to bear on global problems in new ways.A Fistful of Rice offers not only inspiration but also lessons for anyone seeking to transform tenacity, creativity, and innovation into potent tools for fighting even the most seemingly intractable human burdens.

The Light that Failed: A Reckoning


Ivan Krastev - 2019
    And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.In this work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World


Vijay Prashad - 2007
    The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now–forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

The Condition of the Working Class in England


Friedrich Engels - 1845
    It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make this account of the life of the victims of early industrial change into a classic - a historical study that parallels and complements the fictional works of the time by such writers as Gaskell and Dickens. What Cobbett had done for agricultural poverty in his Rural Rides, Engels did - and more - in this work on the plight of the industrial workers in the England of the early 1840s. This edition includes the prefaces to the English and American editions, and a map of Manchester c.1845.

Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO


Richard Peet - 2003
    These institutions share, with minor differences, a common ideology. They aggressively promote a very particular kind of 'corporate' capitalism, neoliberalism, giving free rein across the world to the interests of a small number of huge, undemocratic and largely unregulated transnational corporations.This book presents the history and fundamental ideas of this economic ideology. Describing each member of the 'unholy trinity', it shows how neoliberalism hijacked the IMF, World Bank and WTO in relation to their global financial, development and trade management roles. Instead of their original clearly defined, circumscribed and even benign responsibilities, they have now become the financial policemen of a global economy characterized by mounting extremes of rich and poor and recurrent instability.The story of the mounting opposition to these 'Bretton Woods' institutions is told. And the book concludes with a trenchant review of the various ideas now being canvassed not simply for their radical reform, but for alternative principles that might guide a very different form of globalization.

The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan's Principles Can Restore America's Greatness


Michael Reagan - 2011
    In his famous 1976 speech at the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan helped define a way forward and strengthened the Republican Party. As we stand at a crossroad once again, we are fortunate to have a blueprint for restoring America's greatness. Reagan has given us the principles to succeed. This book is not merely a diagnosis of our nation's ills but a prescription to heal our nation, rooted in the words and principles of Ronald Reagan. In these pages, Michael Reagan shares the plan his father developed over years of study, observation, and reflection. It is the plan he announced to the nation, straight from his heart, one summer evening during America's two hundredth year. It is the plan he put into action during his eight years in office as one of the most effective presidents of the twentieth century, and it is the plan we can use today to help return America to its former greatness, soundness, and prosperity.

Humanity: How Jimmy Carter Lost an Election and Transformed the Post-Presidency (Kindle Single)


Jordan Michael Smith - 2016
    Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed. Republicans cheered his demise and trotted out his name to scare voters for years to come. Carter and his wife Rosalynn returned to their farm in the small town of Plains, Georgia. They were humiliated, widely unpopular, and even in financial debt. 35 years later, Carter has become the most celebrated post-president in American history. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize, written bestselling books, and become lauded across the world for his efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. Ex-presidents now adopt the Carter model of leveraging their eminent status to benefit humanity. By pursuing diplomatic missions, leading missions to end poverty and working to eradicate disease around the world, Carter has transformed the idea of what a president can accomplish after leaving the White House.This is the story of how Jimmy Carter lost the biggest political prize on earth--but managed to win back something much greater. Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer at Salon and the Christian Science Monitor. His writing has appeared in print or online for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, BBC, and many other publications. Born in Toronto, he holds a Master's of Arts in Political Science from Carleton University. He lives in New York City. www.jordanmichaelsmith.typepad.com.Cover design by Adil Dara.