Book picks similar to
The Geography of the World Economy by Paul Knox
top-of-the-stack
ubermensch
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economics
A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
Stephen Kinzer - 2008
Learn about President Kagame, who strives to make Rwanda the first middle-income country in Africa, in a single generation. In this adventurous tale, learn about Kagame's early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelligence agent, his training in Cuba and the United States, the way he built his secret rebel army, his bloody rebellion, and his outsized ambitions for Rwanda.
China in World History
Paul S. Ropp - 2010
Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questionsof Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influencedmuch of the political, military, and even cultural history of China. Ropp also examines Sino-Indian relations, highlighting the impact of the thriving trade between India and China as well as the profound effect of Indian Buddhism on Chinese life. Finally, the author discusses the humiliation ofChina at the hands of Western powers and Japan, explaining how these recent events have shaped China's quest for wealth, power and respect today, and have colored China's perception of its own place in world history.
The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
Michael Mann - 2004
After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future. Michael Mann is the author of Fascists (Cambridge, 2004) and The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge 1986).
Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide
Grant Hardy - 2003
Yet it is unquestionably one of the most influential books ever written. With over 140 million copies in print, it is a central text of one of the largest and fastest-growing faiths in the world. And, Grant Hardy shows, it's far from the coma-inducing doorstop caricatured by Twain.In Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy offers the first comprehensive analysis of the work's narrative structure in its 180 year history. Unlike virtually all other recent world scriptures, the Book of Mormon presents itself as an integrated narrative rather than a series of doctrinal expositions, moral injunctions, or devotional hymns. Hardy takes readers through its characters, events, and ideas, as he explores the story and its messages. He identifies the book's literary techniques, such as characterization, embedded documents, allusions, and parallel narratives. Whether Joseph Smith is regarded as author or translator, it's noteworthy that he never speaks in his own voice; rather, he mediates nearly everything through the narrators Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. Hardy shows how each has a distinctive voice, and all are woven into an integral whole.As with any scripture, the contending views of the Book of Mormon can seem irreconcilable. For believers, it is an actual historical document, transmitted from ancient America. For nonbelievers, it is the work of a nineteenth-century farmer from upstate New York. Hardy transcends this intractable conflict by offering a literary approach, one appropriate to both history and fiction. Regardless of whether readers are interested in American history, literature, comparative religion, or even salvation, he writes, the book can best be read if we examine the text on its own terms.
Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day
John Keay - 2012
At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants (the offspring of those affected by ‘the midnight hour’ Partition) already outnumber Europeans and Chinese; and they are growing faster than either. They comprise all the peoples of what is now called ‘South Asia’ (the preferred term for the partitioned subcontinent of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, plus Nepal and Sri Lanka).‘Midnight’s Descendants’ is the first history of the region as a whole. Correlating and contrasting the fortunes of all the constituent nations over the last six decades affords unique insights into what is hailed as one of the world’s most dynamic regions.John Keay is an expert on the region and the book will be the first account to incorporate the rich story of South Asia’s transnational, or ‘diasporic’, peoples – from the overlooked narratives of the subcontinent to the rise of India as a global force, ‘Midnight’s Descendants’ will be expansive and tumultuous in the great tradition of India’s narrative epics.
Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919
Nell Irvin Painter - 1987
Winner of the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize.
The Rise and Fall of the Elites
Vilfredo Pareto - 1901
Vilfredo Pareto's long essay from the turn of the century on The Rise and Fall of the Elites marks his giant step from econometrics into sociology. Here in brief outline is the major sociological ideas for which he later became famous. This essay is more readable and disciplined than most of his later elaborations and serves exceedingly well as a first introduction to his political sociology. Translation of Un applicazione di teorie sociologiche, published in Revista Italiana di sociologia, 1901. Bibliography and notes: p. [103]-120. Introd. by Hans L. Zetterberg.
Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts
Daniel K. Richter - 2011
We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation's pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent--that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present. Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoples--Indians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, English--as they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico. By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richter's epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history.
Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900
Leonard J. Arrington - 1958
Great Basin Kingdom is perhaps his greatest work. A classic in Mormon studies and western history, Great Basin Kingdom offers insights into the 'underdeveloped' American economy, a comprehensive treatment of one of the few native American religious movements, and detailed, exciting stories from little-known phases of Mormon and American history. This edition includes thirty new pictures and an introduction by Ronald W. Walker that provides a brief biography of Arrington, as well as the history of the work, its place in Mormon and western historiography, and its lasting impact.
How We Got Here: The 70's: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse)
David Frum - 2000
In this first, thematic popular history of the decade, David Frum argues that it was the 1970s, not the 1960s, that created modern America and altered the American personality forever. A society that had valued faith, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and family loyalty evolved in little more than a decade into one characterized by superstition, self-interest, narcissism, and guilt. Frum examines this metamorphosis through the rise to cultural dominance of faddish psychology, astrology, drugs, religious cults, and consumer debt, and profiles such prominent players of the decade as Werner Erhard, Alex Comfort, and Jerry Brown. How We Got Here is lively and provocative reading.
Memoirs of Napoleon - Complete
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - 1832
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth
David Bentley Hart - 2003
Hart pays special attention to Nietzsche's famous narrative of the "will to power" -- a narrative largely adopted by the world today -- and he offers an engaging revision (though not rejection) of the genealogy of nihilism, thereby highlighting the significant "interruption" that Christian thought introduced into the history of metaphysics.This discussion sets the stage for a retrieval of the classic Christian account of beauty and sublimity, and of the relation of both to the question of being. Written in the form of a dogmatica minora, this main section of the book offers a pointed reading of the Christian story in four moments, or parts: Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton. Through a combination of narrative and argument throughout, Hart ends up demonstrating the power of Christian metaphysics not only to withstand the critiques of modern and postmodern thought but also to move well beyond them.Strikingly original and deeply rewarding, The Beauty of the Infinite is both a constructively critical account of the history of metaphysics and a compelling contribution to it.
The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War
James Oakes - 2014
The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom. They planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish freedom: the western territories, the District of Columbia, the high seas. By constricting slavery they would induce a crisis: slaves would escape in ever-greater numbers, the southern economy would falter, and finally the southern states would abolish the institution themselves. For their part the southern states fully understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's election. The scorpion's sting is the centerpiece of this fresh, incisive exploration of slavery and the Civil War: Was there a peaceful route to abolition? Was Lincoln late to emancipation? What role did race play in the politics of slavery? With stunning insight James Oakes moves us ever closer to a new understanding of the most momentous events in our history.
Personality Theories
Barbara Engler - 1979
Each chapter focuses on one theory or group of theories, providing brief biographies that shed light on how the theories were formed.