Book picks similar to
Social Theories of the Middle Ages by Bede Jarrett
sociology
community
economics-and-christianity
education-and-education-policy
Social Mobility: And Its Enemies
Lee Elliot Major - 2018
The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society.This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.
US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man
Charlie LeDuff - 2007
Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie LeDuff scours the country, tossing back whiskey with the seedy, the dreamy, and the strange in search of the soul of the American male. No one knows life's underbelly better than "New York Times" reporter Charlie LeDuff. Christened the "bibulous scribe of the working class" by his peers, he's made a career chronicling, with dead-on feel for character and idiom, the gritty lives of the drifters, the forgotten, and the strange-people washed up and washed out on alcohol, broken dreams, lifetimes of hard living. Willing to follow his subjects where no respectable white-collared man would dare go, he is clearly-and admittedly-a writer "not for people who have doormen, but for doormen." And while his wholly original coverage of this beat has brought him acclaim as a journalist, it has also made him something of a working-class hero. Who better, then, to examine what it means to be a man in modern-day America? "US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man" is LeDuff's equally intoxicated and intoxicating journey across the country in search of the heart and soul of today's American male. With characteristic audacity, compassion, and humor, he takes part in a Bacchanalian Burning Man festival in Nevada, clad in a Mohawk and little else; trains with the sadhearted Russian clown of a traveling circus; leads a cavalry charge down the Little Bighorn River with war reenactors; joins a C-level professional football team; infiltrates a West Oakland bike gang that holds fight parties; travels with Appalachian snake handlers and tent revivalists; and covers a cowboy love story at a gay rodeo ("Not like the movie. Life is never like the movies. Life is messy and complicated and self-loathing and funny"). At each juncture LeDuff faithfully records their religion and sins and racism, their freaks and misfits, their search for the American dream, and the sweetness they find in living it out, if only for a moment.
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Rebecca Solnit - 2009
She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.
Classical Sociological Theory
Craig J. Calhoun - 2002
It explores the pioneering minds of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, who developed our modern idea of society; and looks at the powerful influence of the works of early the sociologists Mead, Simmel, Freud, and Du Bois.
War, Evil and the End of History
Bernard-Henri Lévy - 2001
In Sri Lanka, he conducts a clandestine interview with a terrified young woman escaped from a suicide-bomber training camp . . . he journeys, blindfolded, into the Colombian jungle to interview a psychotic drug lord who considers himself the successor to Che Guevara and fronts a bloodthirsty "guerilla" army . . . Lévy surreptitiously observes the nameless slaves working the diamond mines that fund an endless war in Angola . . . airdrops into a rebel stronghold in the blockaded Nuba mountains of the Sudan . . . and reports on the ongoing carnage in Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. But Lévy is more than just a journalist: as France's leading philosopher, he follows the reports with a series of intensely personal and probing "reflections" considering how, in an enlightened, cultured, and well-informed society, these wars have acquired such a perverse "non-meaning." He considers war literature from Stendhal, Hemingway, Proust and others, and issues an excoriating response to those who have glorified it. He reconsiders his own background as a student revolutionary in Paris in May 1968, and as a 22-year-old war reporter in Bangladesh. And, in one of the book's most moving passages, he recounts his travels with Ahmad Massoud, the anti-Taliban Afghan leader assassinated hours before the September 11 attacks. Already a huge bestseller in Europe, WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is the work of a scintillating intellect at the height of its powers. Bernard-Henri Lévy's previous book foresaw today's headlines about Pakistan's secret trading of nuclear technology and the nexus of terrorist groups behind the murder of Daniel Pearl. WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is his brilliant foray into the next danger zones.
The Communist Manifesto/Wages, Price and Profit
Karl Marx - 1848
Written over 150 years ago in 1848, a period of history with great upheaval, it continues to be an important work on political economy, especially as we enter the dawn of the global economy. Politicians, business leaders, acamdemics and students of very different persuasions find the manifesto a basic and essential treatise to be understood. It has had a tremendous effect throughout history and will continue to influence the future of mankind. A Collector's Edition.
50 Reasons to Vote for Donald Trump
B.D. Cooper - 2015
This work is both entertaining and thought-provoking. Great food for thought and (dare we say) conversation starters for your own debates with friends. Scroll up and click Buy Now and you can start reading immediately. If you don't have a Kindle, no problem! You can read this e-book on any device using Amazon's free Kindle app.
The End of Russia’s War in Ukraine (The Russian Agents Book 4)
Ted Halstead - 2020
Coup d'etat: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Jerry Kroth - 2013
Jerry Kroth's 50th anniversary edition presents the single, most plausible theory of the assassination. It is based on the admissions of grassy knoll gunman, James Files, the deathbed confession of CIA spymaster, E. Howard Hunt, and the most recent scholarship to appear in the last decade. Based also in part on his earlier work, Conspiracy in Camelot, Dr. Kroth proposes that Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and Mafia, acting in concert, carried one of the greatest crimes in American history. Published by Genotype, Coup d'etat (2013) is a concise, well-documented expose of a brazen overthrow of the United States government by force of arms on November 22, 1963. Reviews (from the publisher)Coup d’etat is the definitive book on the Kennedy assassination! It should be required reading in every American high school.—Marvin Forrest, Ph.D.,Psychotherapist, Santa BarbaraDr. Kroth cuts to the heart of the matter laying out a hard to dispute argument for what actually happened that distant half century ago when everything changed for all of us. At a time when apologists have seemed to dominate the trend in regarding Kennedy assassination publishing, it is important to swing the pendulum back toward the rational conclusion that something was deliberately taken from us, the course of our future was compromised, and it was those we most trusted, not a crazed outlier, who engineered it all. This is a very important book and a must read for those of us who care.—Steve Stelle, author of On shaky ground. Coup d'etat, is a must-read for those of us who were of voting age during those turbulent times at the end of Camelot and who recall the strange goings on of the Warren Commission Hearings. There were so many loose ends that have never been woven into a concise and believable explanation until now.—David Hall, author of The Rose
Lal Bahadur Shastri - When Freedom is Menaced
Publications Division
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Jeff Speck - 2012
And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.
In America: Tales from Trump Country
Caitriona Perry - 2017
In her first book, she goes beyond the news reports and delves into the American heartland where she witnessed the rise of Trump at first hand.
Ayodhya: The Dark Night
Krishna Jha - 2012
Before the adversaries could discover his presence, he dashed straight towards Abhiram Das, the vairagi who was holding the idol in his hands and leading the group of intruders. […] The sadhu quickly freed himself and, together with his friends, retaliated fiercely. Heavy blows began raining from all directions. Soon, the muezzin realized that he was no match for the men and that he alone would not be able to stop them.22 December 1949: A conspiracy that began with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi culminated in the execution of the Ayodhya strategy. Late that night, a little-known sadhu, Abhiram Das, and his followers entered the Babri Masjid and planted an idol of Rama inside it. While it is known that the Hindu Mahasabha had a role in placing the idol in the mosque, the larger plot and the chain of events that led to that act have never been subject to rigorous scrutiny. Through intrepid research and investigation, Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K. Jha bring together the disparate threads of the buried narrative for the first time.Through a series of first-hand interviews with eyewitnesses and the unearthing of archival material, the authors take us behind the scenes to examine the motivations and workings of the Mahasabha members who pulled the strings. They also examine the liaison between Mahasabhaites and Hindu traditionalists in the Congress – an association that Jawaharlal Nehru sought to break in his cautious battle with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the right-wing forces. Ayodhya: The Dark Night uncovers, in vivid detail, what really transpired on the fateful night that was to leave a permanent scar on the Indian polity.
Patronising Bastards: How the Elites Betrayed Britain
Quentin Letts - 2017
Western capitalism's elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates 'a basket of deplorables', Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. Wigged judges stared down their legalistic noses at a surging, pongy populous.These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the 'Patronising Bastards'. Their downfall is largely of their own making - their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. You'll find these self-indulgent show-ponys not just in politics and the cloistered old institutions but also in high fashion, football, among the clean-eating foodies and at the Baftas and Oscars, where celebritydom hires PR smoothies to massage reputations and mislead, distort, twist. Political columnist and bestselling author Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals. Letts kebabs them like mutton. It's baaaahd. It's juicy.Richard Branson, Emma Thompson, Shami Chakrabarti, Jean-Claude Juncker and any head waiter who calls you 'young man' - this one's for you!