How To Be Poor


Milo Yiannopoulos - 2019
    It's disgusting, and it means God loves me less than He loves you. I know my tragic penury won't last forever, but in case you, too, have been fired for something you said, or deplatformed for something you believe, or were just abruptly cut off from your trust fund, this book will explain how to navigate life when you are unexpectedly yanked from privilege and told to, err, earn a living.Enjoy the hilarious tale of my cataclysmic fall from wealth, grace, and high-end hair salons, but be sure to pay close attention to the tips I've picked up along the way and you might just make it out alive--and with minimal split ends.

Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech


Keith E. Whittington - 2018
    Too often speakers are shouted down, professors are threatened, and classes are disrupted. In Speak Freely, Keith Whittington argues that universities must protect and encourage free speech because vigorous free speech is the lifeblood of the university. Without free speech, a university cannot fulfill its most basic, fundamental, and essential purposes, including fostering freedom of thought, ideological diversity, and tolerance.Examining such hot-button issues as trigger warnings, safe spaces, hate speech, disruptive protests, speaker disinvitations, the use of social media by faculty, and academic politics, Speak Freely describes the dangers of empowering campus censors to limit speech and enforce orthodoxy. It explains why free speech and civil discourse are at the heart of the university's mission of creating and nurturing an open and diverse community dedicated to learning. It shows why universities must make space for voices from both the left and right. And it points out how better understanding why the university lives or dies by free speech can help guide everyone--including students, faculty, administrators, and alumni--when faced with difficult challenges such as unpopular, hateful, or dangerous speech.Timely and vitally important, Speak Freely demonstrates why universities can succeed only by fostering more free speech, more free thought--and a greater tolerance for both.

Hollywood Hypocrites


Jason Mattera - 2012
    Are you sick of self-important celebrities preaching against “global warming,” yet flying private planes to their countless homes? Fed up with lectures about charity and philanthropy from miserly rockers who will do anything for a tax break? Disgusted by leftist stars decrying the evils of the Second Amendment as their personal bodyguards pack more heat than a Chuck Norris kick to the face? The same Hollywood loons who got Barack Hussein Obama elected in 2008 will do so again in 2012. That is, unless we muzzle them. Four years ago, Republicans sat back like wimps and let Obama’s celebrity-fueled cool machine steamroll them into electoral smithereens. This time, we must do the steamrolling. New York Times bestselling author of Obama Zombies and gonzo journalist Jason Mattera takes the first stand with Hollywood Hypocrites, as he slays the Left’s sacred celebrity cows and teaches Obama’s Tinseltown foot soldiers their most important lesson yet: No longer can they attempt to deny Americans the very liberties they use to catapult themselves to prosperity and stardom. In his trademark eye-opening, no-holds-barred, and hilarious style, Mattera puts scores of A-list celebrities, including Sting, Madonna, Bono, Al Gore, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, Bruce Springsteen, and many, many more under the microscope to analyze whether they live by the same environmental, health, anti-violence, civil rights, and other policy prescriptions they seek to inflict on Americans. What he uncovers will shock you. Hollywood’s megaphone is powerful, and the mainstream media’s love affair with the president will roar back with a vengeance when their guy is against the wall. Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s abysmal first term will be enough to demoralize the Liberal Left Coast from flexing its mediated political muscle is a fool. It’s time to recognize the marketing and fund-raising power the Hollywood Progressives wield. It’s time to dig into the data and set the record straight. It’s time to turn the media spotlight back on the image makers and prevent the Hollywood elite from hoodwinking American voters once again.

German Europe


Ulrich Beck - 2012
    But the heart of the matter is that, as the crisis unfolds, the basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin's strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating.How did this happen? The anticipation of the European catastrophe has already fundamentally changed the European landscape of power. It is giving birth to a political monster: a German Europe. Germany did not seek this leadership position - rather, it is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The invention and implementation of the euro was the price demanded by France in order to pin Germany down to a European Monetary Union in the context of German unification. It was a quid pro quo for binding a united Germany into a more integrated Europe in which France would continue to play the leading role. But the precise opposite has happened. Economically the euro turned out to be very good for Germany, and with the euro crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel became the informal Queen of Europe.The new grammar of power reflects the difference between creditor and debtor countries; it is not a military but an economic logic. Its ideological foundation is 'German euro nationalism' - that is, an extended European version of the Deutschmark nationalism that underpinned German identity after the Second World War. In this way the German model of stability is being surreptitiously elevated into the guiding idea for Europe. The Europe we have now will not be able to survive in the risk-laden storms of the globalized world. The EU has to be more than a grim marriage sustained by the fear of the chaos that would be caused by its breakdown. It has to be built on something more positive: a vision of rebuilding Europe bottom-up, creating a Europe of the citizen. There is no better way to reinvigorate Europe than through the coming together of ordinary Europeans acting on their own behalf.

Anarchy in Action


Colin Ward - 1973
    As Colin Ward writes in his introduction, "This book is not intended for people who had spent a lifetime pondering the problems of anarchism, but for those who either had no idea of what the word implied or knew exactly what it implied and rejected it, considering that it had no relevance for the modern world... It is not about strategies for revolution and it is not involved in speculation on the way an anarchist society would function. It is about the ways in which people organize themselves in any kind of human society, whether we care to categorize those societies as primitive, traditional, capitalist or communist."

Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)


Matt K. Lewis - 2016
    Today, Matt Lewis argues, America's inclination toward simplicity and stupidity is stronger than ever, and its greatest victim is the Republican Party. Lewis, a respected conservative columnist and frequent guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe, eviscerates the phenomenon of candidates with a "no experience required" mentality and tea party "patriots" who possess bluster but few core beliefs. Lewis traces the conservative movement's roots, from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley, and from Goldwater's loss to Reagan's landslide victory. He highlights visionary thinkers who understood nuance and deep ideology and changed the course of the nation. As we approach the 2016 presidential election, Lewis has an urgent message for fellow conservatives: embrace wisdom, humility, qualifications, and inclusion--or face extinction.

Return from the U.S.S.R


André Gide - 1936
    S. S. R. Also by Andre Gide THE COUNTERFEITERS THE IMMORALIST TRAVELS IN THE CONGO These are Borzoi Books published by ALFRED A. KNOPF I DEDICATE THESE PAGES TO THE MEMORY OF EUGENE DABIT, BESIDE WHOM, WITH WHOM, THEY WERE LIVED AND THOUGHT THE HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER relates how the great goddess, in the course of her wanderings in search of her daughter, came to the court of Keleos. No one recognized the goddess under the borrowed form of a humble wet-nurse and Queen Metaneira entrusted to her care her latest-born child, the infant Demophoon, afterwards known as Triptolemus, the founder of agriculture. Every evening, behind closed doors, while the household was asleep, Demeter took little Demo phoon out of his comfortable cradle and with appar ent cruelty., though moved in reality by a great love 1 and desirous of bringing him eventually to the state of godhoodj laid the naked child on a glowing bed of embers. I imagine the mighty Demeter bending ma ternally over the radiant nursling as over the future race of mankind. He endures the fiery charcoal he gathers strength from the ordeal. Something super human is fostered in Mm, something robust, some thing beyond all hope glorious. Ah, had Demeter only been able to carry through her bold attempt, to bring her daring venture to a successful issue But Metaneira becoming anxious, says the legend, burst suddenly into the room where the experiment was be ing carried on and guided by her mistaken fears, thrust aside the goddess at her work of forging the superman j pushed away the embers , and, in order to save the child, lost the god. CONTENTS FOREWORD XI RETURN FROM THE U. S. S. R. 3 APPENDICES r. Speech Delivered on the Occasion of Maxim Gorkis Funeral 65 n. Speech to the Students of Moscow 70 in. Speech to the Men of Letters of Leningrad 74 iv. The Struggle against Religion 78 v. Ostrovski 83 vi. A Kolkhoz 86 vu. Bolshevo 89 vni. The Besprizornis 91 FOREWORD THREE YEARS AGO I declared my admiration, my love, for the U. S. S. R. An unprecedented experi ment was being attempted there which filled our hearts with hope and from which we expected an immense advance, an impetus capable of carrying forward in its stride the whole human race. It is indeed worth while living, I thought, in order to be present at this rebirth, and worth while giving ones life in order to help it on. In our hearts and in our minds we resolutely linked the future of culture itself with the glorious destiny of the U. S. S. R. We have frequently said so. We should have liked to repeat it once again, Already, without as yet having seen things for ourselves, we could not but feel disturbed by cer tain recent decisions which seemed to denote a change of orientation. At that moment October 1935 I wrote as fol lows It is largely moreover the stupidity and unfair xi Xll FOREWORD ness of the attacks on the U. S. S. R. that make us defend it with some obstinacy. Those same yelpers will begin to approve the Soviet Union just as we shall cease to do so for what they will approve are those very compromises and concessions which will make some others say There You see but which will lead away from the goal it had at first set itself. Let us hope that in order to keep our eyes fixed on that goal we may not be obliged to avert them from the Soviet Union Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, March 1936 Resolving, however, to maintain at all costs my confidence until I had more to go upon, and pre ferring to doubt my own judgment, I declared once more, four days after my arrival in Moscow, in my speech in the Red Square on the occasion of Gorkis funeral The fate of culture is bound up in our minds with the destiny of the Soviet Union. We will defend it. 1 have always maintained that the wish to re main true to oneself too often carries with it a risk of insincerity and I consider that if ever sincerity is important, it is surely when the beliefs of great masses of people are involved together with ones own...

The Selfish Society: How We All Forgot to Love One Another and Made Money Instead


Sue Gerhardt - 2010
    Open any newspaper, and what do you find? Violence and crime, child abuse and neglect, expenses scandals, addiction, fraud and corruption, environmental melt-down Is Britain indeed broken? How did modern society get to this point? Who is to blame? How can we change? We have come to inhabit a culture of selfish individualism which has confused material well-being with happiness. As society became bigger and more competitive, working life was cut off from child-rearing and the new economics ignored people's emotional needs. We have lived with this culture so long that it is hard to imagine it being any different. Yet we are now at a turning point where the need for change is becoming urgent. If we are to build a more reflective and collaborative society, Gerhardt argues, we need to support the caring qualities that are learnt in early life and integrate them into our political and economic thinking. Inspiring and thought-provoking, The Selfish Society sets out a roadmap to a more positive and compassionate future.

Rigging the Game: How Inequality Is Reproduced in Everyday Life


Michael Schwalbe - 2007
    Guided by the questions How did the situation get this way? and How does it stay this way?, Schwalbe tracks inequality from its roots to its regulation. In the final chapter, "Escaping the Inequality Trap," he also shows how inequality can be overcome. Throughout, Schwalbe's engaging writing style draws students into the material, providing instructors with a solid foundation for discussing this challenging and provocative subject.With its lively combination of incisive analysis and compelling fictional narratives, Rigging the Game is an innovative teaching tool--not only for courses on stratification, but also for social problems courses, introductory sociology courses, and any course that takes a close look at how the inequalities of race, class, and gender are perpetuated.

The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India


Vijay Gokhale - 2021
    A disconcerting read, but indispensable.'-ASHLEY J. TELLISIndia's relations with the People's Republic of China have captured the popular imagination ever since the 1950s but have rarely merited a detailed understanding of the issues. Individual episodes tend to arouse lively debate, which often dissipates without a deeper exploration of the factors that shaped the outcomes. This book explores the dynamics of negotiation between the two countries, from the early years after Independence until the current times, through the prism of six historical and recent events in the India-China relationship. The purpose is to identify the strategy, tactics and tools that China employs in its diplomatic negotiations with India, and the learnings for India from its past dealings with China that may prove helpful in future negotiations with the country.

Fables of Fortune: What Rich People Have That You Don't Want


Richard C. Watts - 2011
    . . luxury yachts circling the globe awaiting their owner’s arrival . . . fully staffed but rarely visited vacation homes throughout the world. The rich live trouble free lives of graceful ease.  Or do they?In Fables of Fortune, author Richard Watts pulls back the brocade curtain to reveal the precarious path of wanting more.  As the advisor to the super rich, Watts reflects on the reality of wealth and a difficult and heartbreaking lesson:   “The wealthiest person is not who has the most, but who needs the least.” Fables of Fortune convincingly persuades readers that wealth may be overrated.  Through vignettes based on true stories, Watts reveals the challenges the super-wealthy face, including marriages based on net worth, interfamily inheritance battles, faux friends, entitled children, alienation, and spiritual depletion.  The successes and failures of life inspire the heartbeat of passion and self-actualization. Watts will challenge readers to reconsider key life questions of personal value and discover surprising new answers. Fables of Fortune reveals an honest, comparative, eye-opening analysis for any reader who believes wealth is a rose without thorns.  Read on and gain perspective and appreciation for your own real fortune in life.

Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes


Diane Reay - 2017
    The book addresses the urgent question of why the working classes are still faring so much worse than the upper and middle classes in education, and vitally - what we can do to achieve a fairer system.

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century


Erik Olin Wright - 2019
    Our shared values - equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity - can both provide the basis for a critique of capitalism, and help to guide us towards a socialist and democratic society.In this elegant book, Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into a concise and tightly argued manifesto - analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and a unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible.

Dictionary of the Undoing


John Freeman - 2019
    But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like


George Friedman - 2011
     The next ten years will be a time of massive transition. The wars in the Islamic world will be subsiding, and terrorism will become something we learn to live with. China will be encountering its crisis. We will be moving from a time when financial crises dominate the world to a time when labor shortages will begin to dominate. The new century will be taking shape in the next decade. In The Next Decade, George Friedman offers readers a pro­vocative and endlessly fascinating prognosis for the immedi­ate future. Using Machiavelli’s The Prince as a model, Friedman focuses on the world’s leaders—particularly the American president—and with his trusted geopolitical insight analyzes the complex chess game they will all have to play. The book also asks how to be a good president in a decade of extraordinary challenge, and puts the world’s leaders under a microscope to explain how they will arrive at the decisions they will make—and the consequences these actions will have for us all.From the Hardcover edition.