Book picks similar to
Making the World Safe for Dictatorship by Alexander Dukalskis
political-science
politics
international-relations
authoritarianism
The Destruction of Guernica
Paul Preston - 2012
On Monday 26 April 1937, as the Spanish Civil War raged, the market square was busy with farmers and townspeople. Just before five o’clock in the afternoon the sky darkened as the Luftwaffe swarmed overhead and began an unrelentingly vicious assault, the first ever on an undefended civilian target in Europe.The savage attack on Guernica marked the birth of a horrific new kind of warfare. In this searing account of the tragedy, Paul Preston, the foremost historian of 20th century Spain, tells the whole story of the attack, from Franco’s tactics to how events unfolded on the day and how the world responded.Published to tie in with the 75th anniversary of the bombing this short ebook is a deeply moving account of what happened on that day in Guernica.
Caught Between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to Survive Public Service
Kenneth H. Ashworth - 2001
The book is written as a series of lively, entertaining letters of advice from a sympathetic uncle to a niece or nephew embarking on a government career. The book will interest students and teachers of public administration, public affairs, policy development, leadership, or higher education administration. Ashworth's advice will also appeal to anyone who has ever been caught in a tight spot will working in government service.
Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact
Leon P. Baradat - 1979
It prepares students to understand and relate the various political ideologies to the general political values of the left, the mainstream, and the right as they appear in contemporary political events and issues and to see clearly how political theory applies to their own lives.
People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era
Barry Buzan - 1983
The second edition of this book takes as its main theme the question of how states and societies pursue freedom from threat in an environment in which competitive relations are inescapable across the political, economic, military, societal and environmental landscapes.
Global Political Economy: Evolution and Dynamics
Robert O'Brien - 2003
It introduces an unusually wide range of theoretical approaches and highlights how useful they are in tackling key issues - from trade, production and finance to social divisions, development and the environment. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout with the addition of additional chapters on gender, on ideas, and on key current issues and debates.
Public Opinion
Walter Lippmann - 1922
As Michael Curtis indicates in his introduction to this edition. Public Opinion qualifies as a classic by virtue of its systematic brilliance and literary grace. The work is divided into eight parts, covering such varied issues as stereotypes, image making, and organized intelligence. The study begins with an analysis of "the world outside and the pictures in our heads, " a leitmotif that starts with issues of censorship and privacy, speed, words, and clarity, and ends with a careful survey of the modern newspaper. The work is a showcase for Lippmann's vast erudition. He easily integrated the historical, psychological, and philosophical literature of his day, and in every instance showed how relevant intellectual formations were to the ordinary operations of everyday life. Public Opinion is of enduring significance for communications scholars, historians, sociologists, and political scientists.
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Vladislav M. Zubok - 2021
By 1991, it had an army four-million strong, five-thousand nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
Western Political Thought: From Socrates to the Age of Ideology
Brian R. Nelson - 1995
It views the thinkers in an historical context and examines them in terms of changing relationships of ethics and politics in Western political philosophy.
Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict
John B. Judis - 2014
In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal power outside the region since the end of World War II and as such must account for its repeated failed diplomacy efforts to resolve this enduring strife.The fatal flaw in American policy, Judis shows, can be traced back to the Truman years. What happened between 1945 and 1949 sealed the fate of the Middle East for the remainder of the century. As a result, understanding that period holds the key to explaining almost everything that follows—right down to George W. Bush's unsuccessful and ill-conceived effort to win peace through holding elections among the Palestinians, and Barack Obama's failed attempt to bring both parties to the negotiating table. A provocative narrative history animated by a strong analytical and moral perspective, and peopled by colorful and outsized personalities and politics, Genesis offers a fresh look at these critical postwar years, arguing that if we can understand how this stalemate originated, we will be better positioned to help end it.
Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam
H.R. McMaster - 1997
It was lost in Washington, D.C." - H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion) Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning new analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on recently released transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. It also pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.Dereliction Of Duty covers the story in strong narrative fashion, focusing on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public.Sure to generate controversy, Dereliction Of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.
International Relations Theory
Cynthia Weber - 2000
It also deconstructs each theory allowing students not only to understand them, but also to critically engage with the assumptions and myths that underpin them. It does this by using five familiar films as tools for first understanding each theory and then for understanding the myths that make them so persuasive for some people.Key features of this textbook include: * coverage of the main theories and traditions including: Realism & Neo-realism; Idealism and Neo-idealism; Liberalism; Constructivism; Postmodernism; Gender; Globalisation and the 'End of History'* innovative use of narratives from five famous films that students will be familiar with: Lord of the Flies; Independence Day; Wag the Dog; Fatal Attraction; and The Truman Show* clearly written, providing students with boxed key concepts, guides to further reading and thinking.This breakthrough textbook has been designed to unravel the complexities of International Relations theory in a way that allows students a clearer idea of how the theories work and some of the myths that are associated with them.
If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
Jill Lepore - 2020
Jill Lepore, best-selling author of These Truths, came across the company’s papers in MIT’s archives and set out to tell this forgotten history, the long-lost backstory to the methods, and the arrogance, of Silicon Valley.Founded in 1959 by some of the nation’s leading social scientists—“the best and the brightest, fatally brilliant, Icaruses with wings of feathers and wax, flying to the sun”—Simulmatics proposed to predict and manipulate the future by way of the computer simulation of human behavior. In summers, with their wives and children in tow, the company’s scientists met on the beach in Long Island under a geodesic, honeycombed dome, where they built a “People Machine” that aimed to model everything from buying a dishwasher to counterinsurgency to casting a vote. Deploying their “People Machine” from New York, Washington, Cambridge, and even Saigon, Simulmatics’ clients included the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign, the New York Times, the Department of Defense, and dozens of major manufacturers: Simulmatics had a hand in everything from political races to the Vietnam War to the Johnson administration’s ill-fated attempt to predict race riots. The company’s collapse was almost as rapid as its ascent, a collapse that involved failed marriages, a suspicious death, and bankruptcy. Exposed for false claims, and even accused of war crimes, it closed its doors in 1970 and all but vanished. Until Lepore came across the records of its remains.The scientists of Simulmatics believed they had invented “the A-bomb of the social sciences.” They did not predict that it would take decades to detonate, like a long-buried grenade. But, in the early years of the twenty-first century, that bomb did detonate, creating a world in which corporations collect data and model behavior and target messages about the most ordinary of decisions, leaving people all over the world, long before the global pandemic, crushed by feelings of helplessness. This history has a past; If Then is its cautionary tale.
Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice
Theodore H. Cohn - 2000
His major themes are globalization, relations among developed countries, and North-South relations (or relations between the developed countries of the North and developin
Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones
David Moscrop - 2019
Trump. Ford Nation. In this timely book, David Moscrop asks why we make irrational political decisions and whether our stone-age brains can process democracy in the information age.In an era overshadowed by income inequality, environmental catastrophes, terrorism at home and abroad, and the decline of democracy, Moscrop argues that the political decision-making process has never been more important. In fact, our survival may depend on it.Drawing on both political science and psychology, Moscrop examines how our brains, our environment, the media, and institutions influence decision-making. Making good decisions is not impossible, Moscrop argues, but the psychological and political odds are sometimes stacked against us. In this readable and provocative investigation of our often-flawed decisions, Moscrop explains what's going wrong in today's political landscape and how individuals, societies, and institutions can work together to set things right.
Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State
Husain Haqqani - 2018
Indeed, Pakistan has meant different things to different people since its birth seventy years ago. Armed with nuclear weapons and dominated by the military and militants, it is variously described around the world as ‘dangerous’, ‘unstable’, ‘a terrorist incubator’ and ‘the land of the intolerant’.Much of Pakistan’s dysfunction is attributable to an ideology tied to religion and to hostility with the country out of which it was carved out – India. But 95 per cent of Pakistan’s 210 million people were born after Partition, as Pakistanis, and cannot easily give up on their home.In his new book, Husain Haqqani, one of the most important commentators on Pakistan in the world today, calls for a bold re-conceptualization of the country. Reimagining Pakistan offers a candid discussion of Pakistan’s origins and its current failings, with suggestions for reconsidering its ideology, and identifies a national purpose greater than the rivalry with India.