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    RowlingTwo and a half years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the political debate over Brexit seems as intense and as complicated as ever. Who and what can we trust? And how on earth do we make sense of it all?Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU, is uniquely placed to tell some home truths about the failure of the British political class and the flaws, dishonesty and confusion inherent in the UK’s approach to Brexit so far.In this short, elegant essay, Rogers draws up nine lessons that we, as a soon-to-be ‘third country’, need to learn from the last few years, if the next few years – indeed the next decade – are not to be even more painful.

    The party is not interested in democracy. It sees only a bitter ideological struggle with the West, dividing the world into those who can be won over, and enemies. Many political and business elites have already been lured to their corner; others are weighing up a devil’s bargain. Through its enormous economic power and covert influence operations, China is now weakening global institutions, aggressively targeting individual corporations, and threatening freedom of expression from the arts to academia. At the same time, Western security services are increasingly worried about incursions into our communications infrastructure. In a landmark study combining meticulous research with unique insights, Hidden Hand exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s global program of subversion, and the threat it poses to democracy. We have already missed too many warning signs – now it is time to wake up.

    In a gripping narrative bursting with big names--from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine--Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. Powers and Thrones takes readers on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West, and culminates in the first contact between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century.The medieval world was forged by the big forces that still occupy us today: climate change, pandemic disease, mass migration, and technological revolutions. This was the time when the great European nationalities were formed; when our basic Western systems of law and governance were codified; when the Christian Churches matured as both powerful institutions and the regulators of Western public morality; and when art, architecture, philosophical inquiry and scientific invention went through periods of massive, revolutionary change. At each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting--or stealing--the most valuable resources, ideas, and people from the rest of the world.The West was rebuilt on the ruins of an empire and emerged from a state of crisis and collapse to dominate the region and the world. Every sphere of human life and activity was transformed in the thousand years of Powers and Thrones. As we face a critical turning point in our own millennium, the legacy and lessons of how we got here matter more than ever.

    Yet when the EU Referendum and American Elections both delivered the ‘wrong’ result, elites challenged the merit of the people’s will, and some even tried to block it. Preferring unelected institutions, from technocrats to the courts, self-appointed higher minds questioned whether voters are fit to be trusted with their own futures. Ours is the age of “I support democracy, but…”And yet the answer will never be to impose limitations. Popular democracy must offer better choices, rather than removing choice altogether. It’s time to defend democracy and fight for more it, with no ifs, buts or backtracks.

    Professor Ralph Raico shows them to be wolves in sheep's clothing and their wars as attacks on human liberty and human rights.In the backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful and scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state. But do they deserve adulation? Raico says no: these great leaders were main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them anti-liberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power.Robert Higgs writes the introduction and cheers this powerful expose as a necessary corrective."For Ralph Raico," writes Robert Higgs in the foreword, "it would be not only unseemly but foolish to quiver obsequiously in the historical presence of a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a Truman. He knows when he has encountered a politician who lusted after power and public adulation, and he describes the man accordingly. He does not sweep under the rug the crimes committed by the most publicly revered Western political leaders. If they ordered or acceded to the commission of mass murder, he tells us, without mincing words, that they did so. The idea that the United States has invariably played the role of savior or 'good guy' in its international relations Raico recognizes as state propaganda, rather than honest history."Thus, in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal U.S. belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear little resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered U.S. leaders and tricked the American people prior to the U.S. declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans – men, women, and children alike – not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known better. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom."Raico’s historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the U.S. or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation attests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does. The historians’ principal defect for the most part has not been a failure or refusal to dig out the relevant facts, but rather a tendency to go along to get along in academia and 'respectable' society, a sphere in which individual honesty and courage generally count against a writer or teacher, whereas capitulation to trendy nonsense often brings great rewards and professional acclaim."

    Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society's economic losers, and complacency about our system's durability--attitudes that have been emerging since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We cannot move forward without a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Unless the West can rekindle an economy that produces gains for the majority of its people, its political liberties may be doomed. The West's faith in history teaches us to take democracy for granted. Reality tells us something troublingly different.Combining on-the-ground reporting with intelligent synthesis of the literature and economic analysis, Luce offers a detailed projection of the consequences of the Trump administration, the rise of European populism, and a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to defend them from the multiple onslaughts they face in the coming years.

    Slavoj Žižek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Žižek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal. After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Žižek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Žižek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.

    Revealing the wild incompetence of the Northern Ireland civil service and the ineptitude and serious abuses of power by some of those at the head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), now propping up Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and a major factor in the Brexit negotiations, this scandal exposed not only some of Northern Ireland’s most powerful figures but revealed problems that go to the very heart of how NI is governed. A riveting political thriller from the journalist who covered the controversy for over two years, Burned is the inside story of the shocking scandal that brought down a government.

    Here is Siegmund Warburg, who dropped a client in the heat of a takeover deal because the man wore monogrammed shirt cuffs, as well as the imperious J. P. Morgan, who, when faced with a federal antitrust suit, admonished Theodore Roosevelt to "send your man to my man and they can fix it up." And here are the men who usurped their power, from the go-getters of the 1920s to the masters of the universe of the 1980s. Glittering with perception and anecdote, The Death of the Banker is at once a panorama of twentieth-century finance and a guide to the new era of giant mutual funds on Wall Street."Chernow . . . delivers a sound, accessible account of the forces shaping capital, credit, currency, and securities markets on the eve of a new millennium. " --Kirkus Reviews

    In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.In a bold new concluding chapter entitled “The End of the Worldly Philosophy?” Heilbroner reminds us that the word “end” refers to both the purpose and limits of economics. This chapter conveys a concern that today’s increasingly “scientific” economics may overlook fundamental social and political issues that are central to economics. Thus, unlike its predecessors, this new edition provides not just an indispensable illumination of our past but a call to action for our future. (amazon.com)

    In Reefer Madness the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation turns his exacting eye on the underbelly of the American marketplace and its far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays — pot, porn, and illegal immigrants — Eric Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He also draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, and how big business learns — and profits — from the underground. Reefer Madness is a powerful investigation that illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.(back cover)

    This new edition has been updated and revised to incorporate the treatments of fundamentalism, terrorism, the AIDS crisis, and the commercialization of services via the World Trade Organization.Development and Social Change is the first book to present students with a coherent explanation of how "globalization" took root in the public discourse and how "globalization" represents a shift away from development as a way to think about non-western societies. This is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate students studying globalization, social development, and social change in Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, and International Studies.

    After trying – and failing – to land a job as a journalist, he secured a trainee position at Morgan Stanley and got his first feel for the pecking order that exists in the trading pits.  Those on the “buy side,” the traders who make large bets on whether a stock will rise or fall, are the “alphas” and those on the “sell side,” the brokers who handle their business, are eager to please. How eager to please was brought home stunningly to Turney in 1999 when he arrived at the Galleon Group, a colossal hedge-fund management firm run by secretive founder Raj Rajaratnam.  Finally in a position to trade on his own, Turney was encouraged to socialize with the sell side and siphon from his new broker friends as much information as possible.  Soon he was not just vacuuming up valuable tips but also being lured into a variety of hedonistic pursuits.  Naïve enough to believe he could keep up the lifestyle without paying a price, he managed to keep an eye on his buy-and-sell charts and, meanwhile, pondered the strange goings on at Galleon, where tens of millions were being made each week in sometimes mysterious ways.  At his next positions, at Argus Partners and J.L. Berkowitz, Turney climbed to even higher heights – and, as it turned out, plummeted to even lower depths – as, by day, he solidified his reputation one of the Street’s most powerful healthcare traders, and by night, he blazed a path through the city’s nightclubs, showing off his social genius and voraciously inhaling any drug that would fill the void he felt inside. A mesmerizingly immersive journey through Wall Street’s first millennial decade, and a poignant self portrait by a young man who surely would have destroyed himself were it not for his decision to walk away from a seven-figure annual income, The Buy Side is one of the best coming-of-age-on-the-Street books ever written.

    Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.