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 result is thorough lambasting of the people who put Trump in place and the even more reprehensible people who have come out of the shadows since Trump's election. McMurrey takes on the whole cadre of cretinous creatures who flocked to Trump, from the right-wing nutjobs left over from the Tea Party years to the slime who admired him from playing a mogul on TV to the bottom-dwelling Republicans who just saw him as a thug and a bully who would get them what they wanted. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Trump, King of Assholes 2. Asshole Nation: Trump’s Natural Constituency 3. Why Trumpist Assholes are Republicans 4. Why Assholes are Comfortable in the Republican Party 5. Why Asshole Nation Adores Trump 6. Don’t Feel Bad for Trumpists 7. Beating Back Trump’s Asshole Nation 8. Even “Never-Trump” Republicans are Responsible for the Rise of Asshole Nation 9. Trump, Roy Moore, and the Rise of Scum America 10. Crush Scum America and Stop the Careening Eighteen-Wheeler of Democracy If you are disgusted by Trump and by knuckle-dragging conservatism, this book will be a pick-me-up during these dispiriting times. McMurrey speaks the language of anti-Trumpers. He recognizes that Trump mania is just the latests (and let's hope the last!) manifestation of conservatism—a worthless, unnecessary, and fear-filled ideology that promotes selfishness and anti-social attitudes. Pick up Asshole Nation for yourself and give copies to all your Trump-hating friends!

    He could buy himself a new car or build himself a nice house or give it to his friends and family, but that was about it. If he kept stealing, the money would just pile up in his house until he had no rooms left to put it in, or it was eaten by mice.And then some bankers in London had a bright idea.Join the investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into Moneyland - the secret country of the lawless, stateless superrich.Learn how the institutions of Europe and the United States have become money-laundering operations, undermining the foundations of Western stability. Discover the true cost of being open for business no matter how corrupt and dangerous the customer. Meet the kleptocrats. Meet their awful children. And find out how heroic activists around the world are fighting back.This is the story of wealth and power in the 21st century. It isn't too late to change it.

    For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.

    Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge.  For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person.  He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript.  “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.

     So began the dramatic extraction of Margaret Thatcher’s key undercover agent in Sinn Féin – Willie Carlin, aka Agent 3007. For 11 years the former British soldier worked alongside former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in the republican movement’s political wing in Derry. He was MI5’s man at McGuinness’ side and gave the British State unprecedented insight into the IRA leader’s strategic thinking. Carlin worked with McGuinness to develop Sinn Féin’s election strategy after the 1981 hunger strike, and the MI5 and later FRU agent’s reports on McGuinness, Adams and other republicans were read by the British Cabinet, including Margaret Thatcher herself. When Carlin’s cover was blown in mid-1985 thanks to one of his old MI5 handlers being jailed as a Soviet spy, Thatcher authorised the use of her jet to whisk him to safety. Incredibly, it was another British ‘super spy’ inside the IRA’s secretive counter-intelligence unit, the ‘nuttin’ squad’, who saved Carlin’s life. The Derry man is perhaps the only person alive thanks to the information provided by the ‘jewel in the crown’ of British military intelligence – Freddie Scappaticci, aka Stakeknife. In Thatcher’s Spy, the Cold War meets Northern Ireland’s Dirty War in the remarkable real-life story of a deep under-cover British intelligence agent, a man now doomed forever to look over his shoulder. . .

    Many of these voters are turning to national populist movements, which have begun to change the face of Western liberal democracy, from the United States to France, Austria to the UK.This radical turn, we are told, is a last howl of rage from an aging electorate on the verge of extinction. Their leaders are fascistic and their politics anti-democratic; their existence a side-show to liberal democracy. But this version of events, as Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin show, could not be further from the truth.Written by two of the foremost experts on fascism and the rise of national populism, this lucid and deeply-researched book is a vital guide to our transformed political landscape. Challenging conventional wisdoms, Eatwell and Goodwin make a compelling case for serious, respectful engagement with the supporters and ideas of national populism - not least because it is a tide that won't be stemmed anytime soon.

    From Harold Wilson to Theresa May, it brilliantly brings to life all nine inhabitants of 10 Downing Street over the past fifty years, vividly outlining their successes and failures - and what made each of them special.Based on unprecedented access and in-depth interviews, and inspired by the author's BBC Radio 4 and television series, Steve Richards expertly examines the men and women who have defined the UK's role in the modern world and sheds new light on the demands of the highest public office in the land.

    It introduces an unusually wide range of theoretical approaches and highlights how useful they are in tackling key issues - from trade, production and finance to social divisions, development and the environment. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout with the addition of additional chapters on gender, on ideas, and on key current issues and debates.

    The third edition is systematically revised and updated throughout reflecting the major changes brought about by the 2004 enlargement round. It also includes a full assessment of the EU constitution, the impact of the Euro and much expanded coverage of EU policies and policy making.

    In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.

    

    China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the UnitedStates. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it?In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Takingreaders behind the Party's closed doors, he uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from its hegemonic position in both the East Asia regional and global orders through three sequential strategies of displacement. Beginning in the 1980s, China focused for two decades onhiding capabilities and biding time. After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it became more assertive regionally, following a policy of actively accomplishing something. Finally, in the aftermath populist elections of 2016, China shifted to an even more aggressive strategy for undermining UShegemony, adopting the phrase great changes unseen in century. After charting how China's long game has evolved, Doshi offers a comprehensive yet asymmetric plan for an effective US response. Ironically, his proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's own strategic playbook to undermine China'sambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

    . . . / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing," says the famous song—but archaeology, history, and biology show that war in fact has been good for something. Surprising as it sounds, war has made humanity safer and richer.In War! What Is It Good For?, the renowned historian and archaeologist Ian Morris tells the gruesome, gripping story of fifteen thousand years of war, going beyond the battles and brutality to reveal what war has really done to and for the world. Stone Age people lived in small, feuding societies and stood a one-in-ten or even one-in-five chance of dying violently. In the twentieth century, by contrast—despite two world wars, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust—fewer than one person in a hundred died violently. The explanation: War, and war alone, has created bigger, more complex societies, ruled by governments that have stamped out internal violence. Strangely enough, killing has made the world safer, and the safety it has produced has allowed people to make the world richer too.War has been history's greatest paradox, but this searching study of fifteen thousand years of violence suggests that the next half century is going to be the most dangerous of all time. If we can survive it, the age-old dream of ending war may yet come to pass. But, Morris argues, only if we understand what war has been good for can we know where it will take us next.

    A growing number of scholars and political activists have invoked the term to describe a variety of changing economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental processes that are alleged to have accelerated in the last few decades. Rather than forcing such a complex social phenomenon into a single conceptual framework, Manfred Steger presents globalization in plain, readable English as a multifaceted process encompassing global, regional, and local aspects of social life. In addition to explaining the various dimensions of globalization, the author explores whether globalization should be considered a good or bad thing--a question that has been hotly debated in classrooms, boardrooms, and on the streets.