Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials


Matthew Hennessey - 2018
    Soon Gen Xers will be the only cohort of Americans who remember life as it was lived before the arrival of the Internet. They are, as Hennessey dubs them, “the last adult generation,” the sole remaining link to a time when childhood was still a bit dangerous but produced adults who were naturally resilient. More than a decade into the social media revolution, the American public is waking up to the idea that the tech sector’s intentions might not be as pure as advertised. The mountains of money being made off our browsing habits and purchase histories are used to fund ever-more extravagant and utopian projects that, by their very natures, will corrode the foundations of free society, leaving us all helpless and digitally enslaved to an elite crew of ultra-sophisticated tech geniuses. But it’s not too late to turn the tide. There’s still time for Gen X to write its own future. A spirited defense of free speech, eye contact, and the virtues of patience, Zero Hour for Gen X is a cultural history of the last 35 years, an analysis of the current social and historical moment, and a generational call to arms.

Knight Brothers Romance Series


Heather May - 2021
    

Causes of War


Jack S. Levy - 2009
    Written by leading scholars in the field, "Causes of War" provides the first comprehensive analysis of the leading theories relating to the origins of both interstate and civil wars.Utilizes historical examples to illustrate individual theories throughoutIncludes an analysis of theories of civil wars as well as interstate wars -- one of the only texts to do bothWritten by two former International Studies Association Presidents

The Illuminati in Hollywood: Celebrities, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies in Pop Culture and the Entertainment Industry


Mark Dice - 2016
    You will see how the CIA and the Pentagon work hand in hand with Hollywood to produce blockbuster movies and popular television shows crafted to paint positive portraits of war, Orwellian government surveillance, unconstitutional agendas, and more. You’ll also learn the strange and secret spiritual beliefs of the stars that fuel their egos and appetites for fame and wealth, making them perfect puppets for the corporate controllers behind the scenes. And you will also discover the rare instances of anti-Illuminati celebrities who have dared to bite the hand that feeds them. Character Howard Beale once warned in the 1976 classic film Network, “This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people,” and unfortunately that is exactly what has happened.

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World


Gregory Clark - 2007
    He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs, and Steel," that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.

The Decline of the West, Vol 1: Form and Actuality


Oswald Spengler - 1918
    He studied mathematics, philosophy, and history at Munich and Berlin. Except for his doctor's thesis on Heraclitus, he published nothing before the first volume of The Decline of the West, which appeared when he was thirty-eight. The Agadir crisis of 1911 provided the immediate incentive for his exhaustive investigations of the background and origins of our civilization. He chose his main title in 1912, finished the first draft of "Form and Actuality" ("Gestalt und Wirklichkeit") two years later, and published the volume in 1918. The second, extensively revised edition, from which the present translation was made, appeared in 1923. The concluding volume, "Perspectives of World-History" ("Welthistorische Perspektiven"), was published in 1922. The Decline of the West was first published in this country in 1906 (Vol. I) and 1928 (Vol. II).For many years Spengler lived quietly in his home in Munich. thinking, writing, and pursuing his hobbies - the collecting of pictures and primitive weapons, listening to Beethoven quartets, reading the comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere, and taking occasional trips to the Harz Mountains and to Italy. He died suddenly of a heart attack in Munich three weeks before his fifty-sixth birthday.

The Pursuit of Power


William H. McNeill - 1982
    McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action." "No summary can do justice to McNeill's intricate, encyclopedic treatment. . . . McNeill's erudition is stunning, as he moves easily from European to Chinese and Islamic cultures and from military and technological to socio-economic and political developments. The result is a grand synthesis of sweeping proportions and interdisciplinary character that tells us almost as much about the history of butter as the history of guns. . . . McNeill's larger accomplishment is to remind us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future."—Stuart Rochester, Washington Post Book World "Mr. McNeill's comprehensiveness and sensitivity do for the reader what Henry James said that Turgenev's conversation did for him: they suggest 'all sorts of valuable things.' This narrative of rationality applied to irrational purposes and of ingenuity cannibalizing itself is a work of clarity, which delineates mysteries. The greatest of them, to my mind, is why human beings have never learned to cherish their own species."—Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia


James C. Scott - 2009
    This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

Man at Arms: The Battle of Poitiers (Sir John Hawkwood Book 2)


Griff Hosker - 2020
    

Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq


William R. Polk - 2007
    But guerrilla war-fare is not just the tool of modern-day terrorists. Its roots stretch back to our very own revolution.In Violent Politics, William Polk takes us on a concise, brilliant tour of insurgencies throughout history, starting with the American struggle for independence, when fighters had to battle against both the British and the loyalists, those colonists who sided with the monarchy. Instinctively, in a way they probably wouldn't have described as a coherent strategy, the rebel groups employed the tactics of insurgency.From there, Polk explores the role of insurgency in several other notable conflicts, including the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon, the Irish struggle for independence, the Algerian War of National Independence, and Vietnam. He eventually lands at the present day, where the lessons of this history are needed more than ever as Americans engage in ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq—and beyond.

Born In The Outback


Suzanne Brandyn - 2020
    Staying in the one place for too long could be dangerous but how can she give up the chance of a lifetime?Detective Ryan Taylor, North Star’s manager, will not change his attitude towards Sarah even though he is asked to look out for her and show her the ropes of the property. With the sudden suspicious death of her father, Ryan oversees the investigation.As they learn more about each other, Sarah cannot deny her attraction, but how can she form a relationship when her past is stomping about demanding attention?When she discovers the reason why her mother left, the memory of that traumatic night returns, along with the relationship she had with Ryan.Will this new information settle her heart and bring them closer together, or will she keep running, never to return?

Coming Apocalypse


Vernon Coleman - 2020
    In Coming Apocalypse he explains how and why the 'crisis' developed and explains the sort of future we can expect now that lockdowns have destroyed the global economy and changed our way of life. Our world will never be as it was in January 2020. Dr Coleman explains what he believes we can expect.

Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1992


Charles Tilly - 1990
    Specifically, Tilly charges that most available explanations fail because they do not account for the great variety of kinds of states which were viable at different stages of European history, and because they assume a unilinear path of state development resolving in today's national state.

Monrovia Mon Amour: Travels in Liberia


Theodore Dalrymple - 2012
    In the film, Johnson – now a Liberian senator – calmly sips a Budweiser as the naked Doe’s ears are hacked off. Unsurprisingly, Dalrymple forms the professional opinion that Johnson is a psychopath.Monrovia was once a peaceful and reasonably ordered city; now, it has been almost completely sacked. Burnt-out cars are everywhere; doors have been chopped up for firewood; rubble lines the streets, with the vandalism forming a systematic attempt to destroy every vestige of the old regime (and, the author speculates, of civilisation itself). The destruction of the university and library, for instance, seems to be little more that the revenge of the ignorant upon the educated. In a local hospital (once the pride of West Africa, now long ruined and abandoned), the professor of surgery’s office has been ransacked, and medical books and papers have been ripped up; in another, infant welfare records have been smeared with faeces. In the wrecked Centennial Hall, the body of a beautiful Steinway grand piano lies on the floor, its legs senselessly sawn off. In a Lutheran church, Dalrymple finds the floor covered in the blood silhouettes of 600 Liberians massacred by Doe’s soldiers.Dalrymple – who achieves the near-impossible by making a book about such barbarism at times amusing – lays much of the blame for what happened at the feet of Western intellectuals and their African counterparts.Monrovia Mon Amour is a profoundly moving and interesting book about a country which is little-understood and less visited.

Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence


G.A. Cohen - 1978
    Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defense of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration. In the ensuing twenty years, the book has served as a flagship of a powerful intellectual movement--analytical Marxism. In this expanded edition, Cohen offers his own account of the history, and the further promise, of analytical Marxism. He also expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical materialism of the demise of the Soviet Union.