Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach


Martha C. Nussbaum - 2011
    For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model.

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot


Russell Kirk - 1953
    Buckley, Jr.Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind launched the modern American Conservative Movement when it was first published in 1953 and has become an enduring classic of political thought.The seventh revised edition features the complete text and an introduction by publisher Henry Regency.A must-read.

The Great Political Theories, Volume 1


Michael Curtis - 1961
    It also forms a basic textbook for students of government and political theory. Such fundamental concepts as Democracy, the Rule of Law, Justice, Natural Rights, Sovereignty, Citizenship, Power, the State, Revolution, Liberty, Reason, Materialism, Toleration, and the Place of Religion in Society are traced from their origins, through their development and changing patterns, to show how they guide political thinking and institutions today.And new in this edition, examinations of selected works by Sophocles, Francois Hotman, and Francisco Suarez. Also new are a detailed table of contents and an up-dated, comprehensive bibliography--each clear and concise for easy reference.The second volume of Professor Curtis' work, also available in a Discus edition, includes the writings of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century thinkers--from Burke, Rousseau, and Kant to modern times.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better


Richard G. Wilkinson - 2009
    Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show how almost everything—-from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy-—is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.

The Social Singularity: How decentralization will allow us to transcend politics, create global prosperity, and avoid the robot apocalypse


Max Borders - 2018
     In this decentralization manifesto, futurist Max Borders shows that humanity is already building systems that will “underthrow” great centers of power. Exploring the promise of a decentralized world, Borders says we will: - Reorganize to collaborate and compete with AI; - Operate within networks of superior collective intelligence; - Rediscover our humanity and embrace values for an age of connection. With lively prose, Borders takes us on a tour of modern pagan festivals, cities of the future, and radically new ways to organize society. In so doing, he examines trends likely to revolutionize the ways we live and work. Although the technological singularity fast approaches, Borders argues, a parallel process of human reorganization will allow us to reap enormous benefits. The paradox? Our billion little acts of subversion will help us lead richer, healthier lives—and avoid the robot apocalypse.

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man


Marshall McLuhan - 1962
    It gave us the concept of the global village; that phrase has now been translated, along with the rest of the book, into twelve languages, from Japanese to Serbo-Croat. It helped establish Marshall McLuhan as the original 'media guru.' More than 200,000 copies are in print. The reissue of this landmark book reflects the continuing importance of McLuhan's work for contemporary readers.

Political Thinking: The Perennial Questions (Longman Classics Series)


Glenn Tinder - 1970
    Political Thinking stirs critical thought in students by concentrating on the questions of the political world rather than the answers. In addition, the great philosophers' responses to these questions are traced, helping students understand the historical and contemporary importance of these questions in politics and political life. The book has been reissued with a new Foreword by Steven M. Delue of Miami University of Ohio.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority


Martin Gurri - 2014
    In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming.Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age government, political parties, the media.The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world.Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault


Stephen R.C. Hicks - 2004
    Why do skeptical and relativistic arguments have such power in the contemporary intellectual world? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why has a significant portion of the political Left - the same Left that traditionally promoted reason, science, equality for all, and optimism - now switched to themes of anti-reason, anti-science, double standards, and cynicism? Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.

The Poverty of Historicism


Karl Popper - 1957
    One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.

Sociology


Anthony Giddens - 1982
    The fifth edition preserves the lucid, lively and comprehensive qualities which marked the book in its earlier versions. Numerous student learning aids are provided.

Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word


Walter J. Ong - 1982
    Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other.This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without.

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice


Jeffrey Reiman - 1979
    Also, this text discusses how this bias is accompanied with a general refusal to remedy the causes of crime--poverty, lack of education, and discrimination.

Liberty in the Age of Terror: A Defence of Civil Liberties and Enlightenment Values


A.C. Grayling - 2009
    Starting a war 'to promote freedom and democracy' could in certain though rare circumstances be a justified act; but in the case of the Second Gulf War that began in 2003, which involved reacting to criminals hiding in one country (Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Pakistan) by invading another country (Iraq), one of the main fronts has, dismayingly, been the home front, where the War on Terror takes the form of a War on Civil Liberties in the spurious name of security. To defend 'freedom and democracy', Western governments attack and diminish freedom and democracy in their own country. By this logic, someone will eventually have to invade the US and UK to restore freedom and democracy to them.'In this lucid and timely book, Grayling sets out what's at risk, engages with the arguments for and against examining the cases made by Isaiah Berlin and Ronald Dworkin on the one hand, and Roger Scruton and John Gray on the other, and finally proposes a different way to respond that makes defending the civil liberties on which western society is founded the cornerstone for defeating terrorism.

Age of Anger: A History of the Present


Pankaj Mishra - 2017
    Today, however, botched experiments in nation-building, democracy, industrialization, and urbanization visibly scar much of the world.As once happened in Europe, the wider embrace of revolutionary politics, mass movements, technology, the pursuit of wealth, and individualism has cast billions adrift in a literally demoralized world.It was from among the ranks of the disaffected and the spiritually disorientated, that the militants of the nineteenth century arose—angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.Many more people today, unable to fulfill the promises—freedom, stability, and prosperity—of a globalized economy, are increasingly susceptible to demagogues and their simplifications. A common reaction among them is intense hatred of supposed villains, the invention of enemies, attempts to recapture a lost golden age, unfocused fury and self-empowerment through spectacular violence.In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra explores the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world—from American “shooters” and ISIS to Trump, Modi, and racism and misogyny on social media.