Book picks similar to
Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth by Ed Howker
non-fiction
politics
britain
cultural-studies
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel
Tom Wainwright - 2016
From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work—and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the “war” against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes “Bin Laden,” the Bolivian coca guide; “Old Lin,” the Salvadoran gang leader; “Starboy,” the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility.More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.
Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
Richard Seymour - 2016
With a landslide in the first round, this unassuming antiwar socialist crushed the opposition, particularly the Blairite opposition.For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda--and for the first time in Labour's history, it controls the leadership. The party machine couldn't stop him. An almost unanimous media campaign couldn't stop him. It is as if their power, like that of the Wizard of Oz, was always mostly illusion. Now Corbyn has one chance to convince the public to support his reforming ambitions.Where did he come from, and what chance does he have? This book tells the story of how Corbyn's rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and a deep crisis of British democracy. It surveys the makeshift coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, and students, who rallied to Corbyn. It shows how a novel social media campaign turned the media's "Project Fear" on its head, making a virtue of every accusation they threw at him. And finally it asks, with all the artillery that is still ranged against Corbyn, and given the crisis-ridden Labour Party that he has inherited, what it would mean for him to succeed.
Black and British: A Forgotten History
David Olusoga - 2016
Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.It reveals that behind the South Sea Bubble was Britain's global slave-trading empire and that much of the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery. It shows that Black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of the First World War. Black British history can be read in stately homes, street names, statues and memorials across Britain and is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation.
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
Leslie T. Chang - 2008
But while these workers, who leave their rural towns to find jobs in China's cities, are the driving force behind China's growing economy, little is known about their day-to-day lives or the sociological significance of this massive movement. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women whom she follows over the course of three years. Chang vividly portrays a world where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a cell phone; where lying about your age, your education, and your work experience is often a requisite for getting ahead; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Throughout this affecting portrait of migrant life, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family's migrations, within China and to the West, providing a historical frame of reference for her investigation. At a time when the Olympics will have shifted the world's focus to China, Factory Girls offers a previously untold story about the immense population of unknown women who work countless hours, often in hazardous conditions, to provide us with the material goods we take for granted. A book of global significance, it demonstrates how the movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and the fates of families, transforming our world much as immigration to America's shores remade our own society a century ago.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Richard G. Wilkinson - 2009
Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show how almost everything—-from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy-—is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.
Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
Alissa Quart - 2018
Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving.Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
Barbara Ehrenreich - 1989
A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecurities of the middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the past two decades, "Fear of Falling" traces the myths about the middle class to their roots in the ambitions and anxieties that torment the group and that have led to its retreat from a responsible leadership role.
Tudor History: A Captivating Guide to the Tudors, the Wars of the Roses, the Six Wives of Henry VIII and the Life of Elizabeth I
Captivating History - 2019
Free History BONUS Inside! Four captivating manuscripts in one book:
The Tudors: A Captivating Guide to the History of England from Henry VII to Elizabeth I
The Wars of the Roses: A Captivating Guide to the English Civil Wars That Brought down the Plantagenet Dynasty and Put the Tudors on the Throne
The Six Wives of Henry VIII: A Captivating Guide to Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Katherine Parr
Elizabeth I: A Captivating Guide to the Queen of England Who Was the Last of the Five Monarchs of the House of Tudor
Five Tudor monarchs sat on the throne of England and Ireland from 1485 to 1603. The family earned their royal rights through strategic planning and battlefield prowess, and kept them because of intellect, strength and sheer determination. The Tudors, one of England’s most powerful and famous royal dynasties, knitted together a fragmented and small island nation that became one of the world’s financial, colonial and technological superpowers. There is so much more to the story of these kings and queens than beheadings, political marriages and the reformation of the church – but those events remain some of the family’s most enthralling moments. Some of the topics covered in part 1 of this book include:
The Tudors of Wales
The Wars of the Roses
Catherine of Valois, Mother of the Tudor Dynasty
Margaret Beaufort, Second Tudor Matriarch
King Henry VII
Arthur Tudor
King Henry VIII
Margaret Tudor, Sister of Henry VIII
Mary Tudor, Queen of France
The Birth of the Church of England
King Henry VIII: Wives Two and Three
King Henry VIII: The Last Three Wives
King Edward VI
The Nine Days’ Queen, Jane Grey
Elizabeth Tudor
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
And much more!
Some of the topics covered in part 2 of this book include:
A Short History of the House of Plantagenet
Civil War in France
England’s Loss and a King’s Illness
Treason by the Duke of York
The Battle of Northampton
Margaret’s Army
Mortimer’s Cross and the Battle of Towton
York Takes the Throne
The King in the Tower
The Kingmaker Repents
The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury
The Death of a King
The Final Plantagenet Kings
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower
The Battle of Bosworth
The Foundation of the Tudor Dynasty
Attempts on the Tudor Throne
The Sainthood and Cult of King Henry VI
The Legacy of the Wars of the Roses
And much, much more!
Some of the topics covered in part 3 of this book include:
Henry Tudor
Catherine of Aragon
Mistress Elizabeth Blount
Mistress Mary Boleyn
Anne Boleyn
Anne of Cleves
Mistress Mary Shelton
Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with the World's Most Powerful Man
Nick Davies - 2014
A royal correspondent for the News of the World was caught listening to the voice-mail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator went to prison for three months. But Nick Davies, a journalist at The Guardian, knew it didn’t add up. A source at the News of the World told him that not only was hacking routine, but live phone calls were being listened to; “Trojan” e-mails were being sent; bribes were paid to the police; houses were broken into. Davies spent the next four years uncovering the truth, and in July 2009, he broke the first big story: Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. company had secretly paid $1 million to silence three people whose lawyer proved that the News of the World had hacked into their voice-mail. Davies’s story quoted police sources admitting that there had in fact been thousands of victims. No other newspaper picked up the story, and News International retaliated with all of their resources. Hack Attack is Davies’s mesmerizing account of his battle to prove the truth, describing how politicians who dared to stand up to Murdoch were punished by his journalists; how the lawyers who sued Murdoch were spied on; how public figures who went to court found their careers threatened. Hack Attack is a blow-by-blow account of the fall of an international media empire, by the lone journalist who dared to fight it.
Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
David McKittrick - 2000
After a chapter of background on the period from 1921 to 1963, it covers the ensuing period-the descent into violence, the hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish accord, the bombers in England-to the present shaky peace process. Behind the deluge of information and opinion about the conflict, there is a straightforward and gripping story. Mr. McKittrick and Mr. McVea tell that story clearly, concisely, and, above all, fairly, avoiding intricate detail in favor of narrative pace and accessible prose. They describe and explain a lethal but fascinating time in Northern Ireland's history, which brought not only death, injury, and destruction but enormous political and social change. They close on an optimistic note, convinced that while peace-if it comes-will always be imperfect, a corner has now been decisively turned. The book includes a detailed chronology, statistical tables, and a glossary of terms.
A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy
Helen Rappaport - 2011
For Britain had not just lost a prince: during his twenty year marriage to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert had increasingly performed the function of King in all but name. The outpouring of grief after Albert's death was so extreme, that its like would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana 136 years later.Drawing on many letters, diaries and memoirs from the Royal Archives and other neglected sources, as well as the newspapers of the day, Rappaport offers a new perspective on this compelling historical psychodrama--the crucial final months of the prince's life and the first long, dark ten years of the Queen's retreat from public view. She draws a portrait of a queen obsessed with her living husband and - after his death - with his enduring place in history. Magnificent Obsession will also throw new light on the true nature of the prince's chronic physical condition, overturning for good the 150-year old myth that he died of typhoid fever.
Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
Spencer Ackerman - 2021
In addition to multiple ground wars, it has pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, as well as detaining people indefinitely and torturing them. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized, paranoid feature of American politics and security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today's nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era.Reign of Terror will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism and, though it is not a book about Donald Trump, it will provide a critical explanation of his rise to power and the sources of his political strength. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. That mistake turns out to have been portentous. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it.A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life.
The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And Why They Should Give It Back
David Willetts - 2010
The baby boom of 1945-65 produced the biggest, richest generation that Britain has ever known. Today, at the peak of their power and wealth, baby boomers now run our country; by virtue of their sheer demographic power, they have fashioned the world around them in a way that meets all of their housing, healthcare and financial needs. In this original and provocative book, David Willetts shows how the baby boomer generation has attained this position at the expense of their children. Social, cultural and economic provision has been made for the reigning section of society, whilst the needs of the next generation have taken a back seat. Willetts argues that if our political, economic and cultural leaders do not begin to discharge their obligations to the future, the young people of today will be taxed more, work longer hours for less money, have lower social mobility and live in a degraded environment in order to pay for their parents' quality of life. Baby boomers, worried about the kind of world they are passing on to their children, are beginning to take note. However, whilst the imbalance in the quality of life between the generations is becoming more obvious, what is less certain is whether the older generation will be willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a more equal distribution. "The Pinch" is a landmark account of intergenerational relations in Britain. It is essential reading for parents and policymakers alike.
Why We're Polarized
Ezra Klein - 2020
Most Americans could agree that no candidate like Donald Trump had ever been elected President before. But political journalist Ezra Klein makes the case that the 2016 election wasn't surprising at all. In fact, Trump's electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates.Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis.Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.
Acts of Union and Disunion
Linda Colley - 2014
In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past.She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and their limitations, while scrutinizing England's own fractures. And she demonstrates how the UK has been shaped by movement: of British people to other countries and continents, and of people, ideas and influences arriving from elsewhere.As acts of union and disunion again become increasingly relevant to our daily lives and politics, Colley considers how - if at all - the pieces might be put together anew, and what this might mean.Based on a 15-part BBC Radio 4 series.