The World According to Xi: Everything You Need to Know About the New China


Kerry Brown - 2018
    Its manufacturing underpins the world's economy; its military is growing at the fastest rate of any nation and its leader - Xi Jinping - is to set the pace and tone of world affairs for decades.In 2017 Xi Jinping became part of the constitution - an honour not seen since Chairman Mao. Here, China expert Kerry Brown guides us through the world according to Xi: his plans to make China the most powerful country on earth and to eradicate poverty for its citizens. In this captivating book we discover Xi's beliefs, how he thinks about communism, and how far he is willing to go to defend it.

The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win


Geoff Dyer - 2014
    The structure of global politics is shifting rapidly. After decades of rising, China has entered a new and critical phase where it seeks to turn its economic heft into global power. In this deeply informed book, Geoff Dyer makes a lucid and convincing argument that China and the United States are now embarking on a great power–style competition that will dominate the century. This contest will take place in every arena: from control of the seas, where China’s new navy is trying to ease the United States out of Asia and reassert its traditional leadership, to rewriting the rules of the global economy, with attempts to turn the renminbi into the predominant international currency, toppling the dominance of the U.S. dollar. And by investing billions to send its media groups overseas, Beijing hopes to shift the global debate about democracy and individual rights. Eyeing the high ground of international politics, China is taking the first steps in an ambitious global agenda. Yet Dyer explains how China will struggle to unseat the United States. China’s new ambitions are provoking intense anxiety, especially in Asia, while America’s global influence has deep roots. If Washington can adjust to a world in which it is no longer dominant but still immensely powerful, it can withstand China’s challenge. With keen insight based on a deep local knowledge—offering the reader visions of coastal Chinese beauty pageants and secret submarine bases, lockstep Beijing military parades and the neon media screens of Xinhua exported to New York City’s Times Square—The Contest of the Century is essential reading at a time of great uncertainty about America’s future, a road map for retaining a central role in the world.

What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?


Dmitri Trenin - 2017
    Today, more than ever, this deeply-troubled region is the focus of power games between major global players vying for international influence. Absent from this scene for the past quarter century, Russia is now back with gusto. Yet its motivations, decision-making processes and strategic objectives remain hard to pin down. So just what is Russia up to in the Middle East? In this hard-hitting essay, leading analyst of Russian affairs Dmitri Trenin cuts through the hyperbole to offer a clear and nuanced analysis of Russia's involvement in the Middle East and its regional and global ramifications. Russia, he argues, cannot and will not supplant the U.S. as the leading external power in the region, but its actions are accelerating changes which will fundamentally remake the international system in the next two decades.

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World


Peter Frankopan - 2018
    Today, they lead to Beijing.'When The Silk Roads was published in 2015, it became an instant classic. A major reassessment of world history, it compelled us to look at the past from a different perspective. The New Silk Roads brings this story up to date, addressing the present and future of a world that is changing dramatically.Following the Silk Roads eastwards, from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the Western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads since 2015, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.With brilliant insight, Peter Frankopan takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today, assessing the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power - all too often absent from headlines in the West. This important - and ultimately hopeful - book asks us to reassess who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihood depend.

Why Socialism Works


Harrison Lievesley - 2017
    Please note this book only contains two words and is entirely satire.

The Signs Were There: The clues for investors that a company is heading for a fall


Tim Steer - 2018
    But often, a company's published accounts offer clues to impending disaster, providing you know where to look. Through the forensic examination of more than 20 recent stock market disasters, Tim Steer reveals how companies hide or disguise worrying facts about the robustness of their business. In his lively style, he looks at the themes that underlie the ways companies hide the truth and he stresses that in an assessment of a company's accounts, investors should always bear in mind that the only fact is cash; everything else - profit, assets, etc - is a matter of opinion. Full of invaluable lessons for investors, the book concludes with some trenchant observations on what is wrong in the worlds of investment, audit and financial regulation, and what changes should be introduced.

The Shadow Market: How Sovereign Wealth Funds and Rogue Nations Threaten America's Financial Future


Eric J. Weiner - 2010
    Weiner reveals how foreign countries and private investors are increasingly controlling the global economy and secretly wresting power from the United States in ways that our government cannot reverse and about which the average American knows nothing. The most potent force in global commerce today is not the Federal Reserve, not the international banks, not the governments of the G7 countries, and certainly not the European Union. Rather, it is the multi-trillion-dollar network of super-rich, secretive, and largely unregulated investment vehicles—foreign sovereign wealth funds, government-run corporations, private equity funds, and hedge funds—that are quietly buying up the world, piece by valuable piece. As Weiner’s groundbreaking account shows, the shadow market doesn’t have a physical headquarters such as Wall Street. It doesn’t have a formal leadership or an index to track or a single zone of exchange. Rather, it comprises an invisible and ever-shifting global nexus where money mixes with geopolitical power, often with great speed and secrecy.   Led by cash-flush nations such as China, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and even Norway, the shadow market is hiring the brightest international financial talent money can buy and is now assembling the gigantic investment portfolios that will form the power structure of tomorrow’s economy.   Taking advantage of the Great Recession and subsequent liquidity problems in the United States and Europe, the major players of the shadow market are deploying staggering amounts of cash, controlling the capital markets, and securing not only major stakes in multinational companies but huge tracts of farmland and natural resources across the world. Yet that’s not all; they’re also pursuing political agendas made possible by their massive wealth and are becoming increasingly aggressive with the United States and other governments.   Highly informative and genuinely startling, Eric J. Weiner’s up-to-date account gets out in front of daily events, with proof of his argument destined to appear in the news for years to come. The Shadow Market moves the conversation from “international competition” to “global financial warfare,” and stands as an urgent must-read for anyone interested in the future of the global economy, America’s position in the world, or how and where to invest money today. DID YOU KNOW? ***The Pentagon has run elaborate simulations of global financial war. Result: America lost, and the shadow market won. ***The U.S. dollar is under siege as a global currency; oil-producing nations have already begun secret discussions about replacing it in oil trading. ***While Greece was burning in the spring of 2010, the shadow market nations were spending hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world rather than helping to fix the European crisis. Why? Because it wasn’t their problem. ***With its wealth of natural resources, Brazil may be more powerful than Germany, France, and Great Britain put together, and may soon rival the United States for economic supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. ***In April 2009, China told the International Monetary Fund to sell 3,217 tons of gold. How much did China buy? That’s a secret. What else is China buying? As many of the oil reserves in non–Middle Eastern countries as it can, including in Canada. It has bought so many Australian natural resource companies that Australia is getting nervous. And some would say that China has, in effect, already purchased Taiwan. ***Many of the shadow market countries are racing to improve their food-security risks by buying large swaths of farmland in other countries, potentially at the risk of starving the local citizens. Saudi Arabia has a farm the size of Connecticut in Indonesia, and Korean industrial giant Daewoo controls half the arable land of Madagascar. ***Iran is China’s third largest oil supplier and in return receives significant protection from Chinese diplomats, who are increasingly important players on the geopolitical stage. ***The shadow market countries will soon control nearly $20 trillion in assets, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of the United States.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia


Peter Pomerantsev - 2014
    It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933


Anne Applebaum - 2017
    It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events.The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering.The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.

Black Money and Tax Havens


R. Vaidyanathan - 2017
    Conservatively, Rs. 15 lakh crore (10 per cent of Rs. 150 lakh crore, our GDP in 2016-17). As for Indian money in tax havens around the world? Around Rs. 65 lakh crores. Truly astounding figures. Black money or kala dhan is a topic that has elicited much debate in recent times. The debate has been mostly marked by mud-slinging and name-calling and the discussions that have ensued often have no basis in fact. While most people have a hazy notion of black money, only a few understand it in its entirety. The issue of tax havens is perhaps even more misunderstood. Most people fail to see the connection between tax havens and black money. Black Money and Tax Havens is the first work that discusses both of these issues in depth and offers a 360-degree view to the reader. In this work, Prof. R. Vaidyanathan provides the reader with a brief overview of black money—its generation, its estimates and how and why it is spirited away to tax havens. He also lays bare the danger that is posed to world financial well-being on account of the lack of political will to tackle them. A unique and timely work that packs in much information in an accessible manner.

Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism's Wildest Frontier


Matthew Brzezinski - 2001
    Into this free-market maelstrom stepped rookie Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Brzezinski, who was immediately pulled into the mad world of Russian capitalism -- where corrupt bankers and fast-talking American carpetbaggers presided over the biggest boom and bust in financial history. Brzezinski's adventures take him from the solid-gold bathroom fixtures of Moscow's elite, to the last stop on the Trans-Siberian railway, where poverty-stricken citizens must buy water by the pail from the local crime lord, and back to civilization, to stumble into a drunken birthday bash for an ultra-nationalist politico. It's an irreverent, lurid, and hilarious account of one man's tumultuous trek through a capitalist market gone haywire -- and a nation whose uncertain future is marked by boundless hope and foreboding despair.

Why We Fight: Defeating America's Enemies - With No Apologies


Sebastian Gorka - 2018
    Dr. Gorka knows Donald Trump and the threats we face. Buy and read Why We Fight to find how we win and what it means to be an American hero." — RUSH LIMBAUGH WAR. It will happen again. We must be ready. Sober words from Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a man who has made the unvarnished truth his specialty. And there’s one eternal truth that Americans are in danger of forgetting: the most important weapon in any geopolitical conflict is the will to win. And we must win.  In this powerful manifesto, Dr. Gorka explains the basic principles that have guided strategists since Sun Tzu penned The Art of War in the sixth century B.C. To defeat your enemy, you must know him. But that’s the last thing liberal elites are interested in. Willful ignorance about our adversary—whether it’s Russia, China, or the global jihadi movement—has been crippling. Tearing off America’s politically correct blindfold, Dr. Gorka clarifies who our foes are and what makes them tick. An eight-year vacation from geopolitical reality under Obama left our country dangerously weakened. Dr. Gorka addresses the pressing questions we face as we rebuild under President Trump’s leadership: - What are the most serious threats to American security? - How are they different from the threats of the past? - What can we do to counter these threats? - How can we achieve the “perfect victory” of vanquishing our enemies without mortal combat? All the money and weapons in the world cannot substitute for the will to fight for our precious country and what she represents. To remind us of what the will to win looks like, Dr. Gorka intersperses the stories of four American heroes—Stephen Decatur, Chesty Puller, “Red” McDaniel, and a warrior who never took up arms, Whittaker Chambers—men who believed in their country and put everything on the line for her.

The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War


Arkady Ostrovsky - 2015
    So how did we go from the promise of those heady days to the autocratic police state of Putin’s new Russia? The Invention of Russia is a breathtakingly ambitious book that reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation. With the deep insight only possible of a native son, Ostrovsky introduces us to the propagandists, oligarchs, and fixers who have set Russia’s course since the collapse of the Soviet Union, inventing a new and more ominous identity for a country where ideas are all too often wielded like a cudgel.  The Soviet Union yoked together dreamers and strongmen—those who believed in an egalitarian ideal and those who pushed for an even more powerful state. The new Russia is a cynical operation, where perpetual fear and war are fueled by a web of lies, as television presenters peddle the invasion of Ukraine and goad Putin to go nuclear. Twenty-five years after the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin, Russia and America are again heading toward a confrontation—but this course was far from inevitable. With this riveting account of how we got here—of the many mistakes and false promises—Ostrovsky emerges as Russia’s most gifted chronicler.

Gore Vidal: History of The National Security State


Paul Jay - 2014
    In 'Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State' & 'Vidal on America', TRNN Senior Editor Paul Jay and the acclaimed essayist, screenwriter and novelist Gore Vidal discuss the historical events that led to the establishment of the massive military-industrial-security complex and the political culture that gave us the “Imperial Presidency.”

On Grand Strategy


John Lewis Gaddis - 2018
    Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.