Book picks similar to
Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War by Jean Bricmont
politics
non-fiction
imperialism
history
The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition
Ernesto Che Guevara - 1968
It became an instant bestseller.Newly revised by Che’s widow (Aleida March), and including a thoughtful preface by his eldest son Camilo, this is the definitive account of the attempt to spark a continent-wide revolution in Latin America. Features of this new edition include:Preface by Camilo GuevaraIntroduction by Fidel CastroRevised translationBiographical noteChronologyGlossaryMaps 32 pp black and white photos
Red Emma Speaks
Emma Goldman - 1972
In addition to nine essays from Goldman’s own 1910 collection, Anarchism and Other Essays; three dramatic sections from her 1931 autobiography, Living My Life; and the afterword to her My Disillusionment in Russia (which the collapse of the Soviet Union later revealed as prescient); this book contains sixteen more pieces covering a great range of subjects, assembled here for the first time to offer a rich composite or Goldman’s life and thought. Red Emma speaks on: anarchism, sex, prostitution, marriage, jealousy, prisons, religion, schools, violence, war, communism, and much more. This new third edition, containing a new foreword by Alix Kates Shulman and more accessible source listings, has been revised to situate the works more precisely in light of burgeoning Goldman scholarship.
The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece
Paul Anthony Cartledge - 2002
This book, written by one of the world’s leading experts on Sparta, traces the rise and fall of Spartan society and explores the tremendous influence the Spartans had on their world and even on ours. Paul Cartledge brings to life figures like legendary founding father Lycurgus and King Leonidas, who embodied the heroism so closely identified with this unique culture, and he shows how Spartan women enjoyed an unusually dominant and powerful role in this hyper-masculine society. Based firmly on original sources, The Spartans is the definitive book about one of the most fascinating cultures of ancient Greece.
The Leveller Revolution
John Rees - 2016
In this thrilling narrative, John Rees brings to life the men—including John Lilburne, Rich-ard Overton, Thomas Rainsborough—and women who ensured victory at war, and brought England to the edge of radical repub-licanism.From the raucous streets of London and the clattering printers’ workshops that stoked the uprising, to the rank and file of the New Model Army and the furious Putney debates where the levellers argued with Oliver Cromwell for the future of English democracy, this story reasserts the revolutionary nature of the 1642–48 wars, and the role of ordinary people in this pivotal moment in history.The legacy of the Levellers can be seen in the modern struggles for freedom and democracy across the world.
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
Rachel Maddow - 2012
Neither Jefferson nor the other Founders could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power--and who gets to make those decisions.From the Hardcover edition.
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
Carroll Quigley - 1966
With clarity, perspective, and cumulative impact, Professor Quigley examines the nature of that transition through two world wars and a worldwide economic depression. As an interpretative historian, he tries to show each event in the full complexity of its historical context. The result is a unique work, notable in several ways. It gives a picture of the world in terms of the influence of different cultures and outlooks upon each other; it shows, more completely than in any similar work, the influence of science and technology on human life; and it explains, with unprecedented clarity, how the intricate financial and commercial patterns of the West prior to 1914 influenced the development of today's world.
The Origins of Alliances
Stephen M. Walt - 1987
Walt makes a significant contribution to this topic, surveying theories of the origins of international alliances and identifying the most important causes of security cooperation between states. In addition, he proposes a fundamental change in the present conceptions of alliance systems. Contrary to traditional balance-of-power theories, Walt shows that states form alliances not simply to balance power but in order to balance threats.Walt begins by outlining five general hypotheses about the causes of alliances. Drawing upon diplomatic history and a detailed study of alliance formation in the Middle East between 1955 and 1979, he demonstrates that states are more likely to join together against threats than they are to ally themselves with threatening powers. Walt also examines the impact of ideology on alliance preferences and the role of foreign aid and transnational penetration. His analysis show, however, that these motives for alignment are relatively less important. In his conclusion, he examines the implications of balance of threat for U.S. foreign policy.
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Benedict Anderson - 1983
In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality.Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher R. Browning - 1992
Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Mark Fisher - 2009
What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?
The Conquest of Bread
Pyotr Kropotkin - 1892
A combination of detailed historical analysis and far-reaching Utopian vision, this is a step-by-step guide to social revolution: the concrete means of achieving it, and the world that humanity’s “constructive genius” is capable of creating. Includes a new introduction that historically situates and discusses the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin’s ideas.
Alexander Hamilton: First Architect Of The American Government
Michael W. Simmons - 2016
Orphaned as a teenager, he came to America in search of an education, a home, and the war that would at last bring him fame and honor. As George Washington’s most trusted aide, Hamilton helped to win the American Revolution—but after the war, his enemies lost no time accusing him of trying to sell his country back to the British. He was the most powerful member of Washington’s presidential cabinet—so why did Adams and Jefferson hate him so much?In this book, you will learn how the author of the Federalist Papers and the first Secretary of the Treasury nearly ruined his career by fighting duels, seducing women, and getting involved in America’s first sex scandal. The duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is the most famous duel in American history, but you’ll have to come up with your own answer to its greatest mystery: who shot first, Hamilton or Burr?
The Liberal Media Industrial Complex
Mark Dice - 2019
The convergence of old technology and new has centralized unimaginable power into the hands of a few gigantic corporations that now dictate how we communicate with each other and perceive the outside world. Media analyst Mark Dice details how the rise of social media that tipped the balance of power regarding the production and distribution of information has also resulted in a massive backslash from those conspiring to regain the influence they once held. Now conservatives are experiencing widespread censorship as the tech giants scramble to put the genie back in the bottle. The liberal media has launched an information war against President Trump and his supporters, and are using their monopolies to manipulate public opinion in order to further their aims of a socialist revolution.
The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election
Malcolm W. Nance - 2016
Clinton 2016 presidential election, this book exposed the Russian hacking while the CIA was drafting their own report. In April 2016, computer technicians at the Democratic National Committee discovered that someone had accessed the organization’s computer servers and conducted a theft that is best described as Watergate 2.0. In the weeks that followed, the nation’s top computer security experts discovered that the cyber thieves had helped themselves to everything: sensitive documents, emails, donor information, even voice mails.Soon after, the remainder of the Democratic Party machine, the congressional campaign, the Clinton campaign, and their friends and allies in the media were also hacked. Credit cards numbers, phone numbers, and contacts were stolen. In short order, the FBI found that more than twenty-five state election offices had their voter registration systems probed or attacked by the same hackers.Western intelligence agencies tracked the hack to Russian spy agencies and dubbed them the “Cyber Bears.” The media was soon flooded with the stolen information channeled through Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. It was a massive attack on America but the Russian hacks appeared to have a singular goal—elect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.Malcolm Nance’s fast paced real-life spy thriller takes you from Vladimir Putin’s rise through the KGB from junior officer to spymaster-in-chief and spells out the story of how he performed the ultimate political manipulation—convincing Donald Trump to abandon seventy years of American foreign policy including the destruction of NATO, cheering the end of the European Union, allowing Russian domination of Eastern Europe, and destroying the existing global order with America at its lead.The Plot to Hack America is the thrilling true story of how Putin’s spy agency, run by the Russian billionaire class, used the promise of power and influence to cultivate Trump as well as his closest aides, the Kremlin Crew, to become unwitting assets of the Russian government. The goal? To put an end to 240 years of free and fair American democratic elections.
The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty
Peter Schweizer - 2004
President George W. Bush leads our nation in a time of unprecedented peril. But how well do we really know him or his remarkable family, whose history often mirrors the history of America? Now, in the first full-scale biography of the Bushes, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer trace the extraordinary trajectory of their rise to power. Through a series of exclusive, surprisingly candid interviews with members of the family and close friends, the inner workings of this very private family are revealed: their marriages and friendships; the intense sibling rivalry between George W. and Jeb Bush; divisions between father and son over the Iraq war; even Jeb Bush's plans to run for president in 2008. Never-before-seen private photos add even greater detail and depth to this fascinating family portrait. And above all, we see George W. Bush the way his family does, as an intensely driven person who has a much more complex relationship with his father than has often been portrayed in the media. Family members talk about how he deals with the stresses of the war on terrorism, why he sees it as a "religious war," and how his personal faith influences what he says and does. The Schweizers also delve into the Bushes' sensitive and secret business dealings, including their long history of involvement in the oil business. Their shrewd alliances with other American dynasties--including the Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Tafts--have all helped to quietly consolidate their power within the Republican Party.Indeed, what makes the Bushes so successful is that they function less like the great political families before them andmore like a high-tech startup: free-flowing, pragmatic, and opportunistic. It is this distinction that assures them an enduring presence on the nation's political stage, making "The Bushes" essential reading for anyone who cares about America's future.