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.

    Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else wasinvolved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. In this closely argued and clearly written book, David Harvey, one of the leading social theorists of his generation, builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a new imperialism are here, forthe first time, laid bare for all to see.

    A profound piece of political thinking' Ben Judah, author of This Is London In this original and timely book, Bruno Maçães argues that the best word for the emerging global order is 'Eurasian', and shows why we need to begin thinking on a super-continental scale. While China and Russia have been quicker to recognise the increasing strategic significance of Eurasia, even Europeans are realizing that their political project is intimately linked to the rest of the supercontinent - and as Maçães shows, they will be stronger for it.Weaving together history, diplomacy and vivid reports from his six-month overland journey across Eurasia from Baku to Samarkand, Vladivostock to Beijing, Maçães provides a fascinating portrait of this shifting geopolitical landscape. As he demonstrates, we can already see the coming Eurasianism in China's bold infrastructure project reopening the historic Silk Road, in the success of cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, in Turkey's increasing global role and in the fact that, revealingly, the United States is redefining its place as between Europe and Asia.An insightful and clarifying book for our turbulent times, The Dawn of Eurasia argues that the artificial separation of the world's largest island cannot hold, and the sooner we realise it, the better.

    He explores works both by classic political philosophers, such as St. Augustine, Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, and by modern psychologists and anthropologists to discover ideas intended to explain war among states and related prescriptions for peace.

    The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.

    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.

    The first book to examine the unprecedented growth of China's economic investment in the developing world, its impact at the local level, and a rare hands-on picture of the role of ordinary Chinese in the juggernaut that is China, Inc. Beijing-based journalists Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo crisscrossed the globe from 2009-2011 to investigate how the Chinese are literally making the developing world in their own image.  What they discovered is a human story, an economic story, and a political story, one that is changing the course of history and that has never been explored, or reported, in depth and on the ground.  The “silent army” to which the authors refer is made up of the many ordinary Chinese citizens working around the world - in the oil industry in Kazakhstan, mining minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, building dams in Ecuador, selling hijabs in Cairo - who are contributing to China's global dominance while also leaving their mark in less salutary ways.  With original and fresh reporting as well as top-notch writing, China's Silent Army takes full advantage of the Spanish-speaking authors' outsider experience to reveal China's influence abroad in all its most vital implications - for foreign policy, trade, private business, and the environment.

    Written in clear and incisive prose, The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society; and Robert Reich's Introduction both clarifies Smith's analyses and illuminates his overall relevance to the world in which we live. As Reich writes, "Smith's mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century--jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics."Introduction by Robert Reich - Commentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner - Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

    Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart.Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count.In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains We the people.

    It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of Bin Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

    But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline.Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in.They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as ageing populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before.Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.

    health care system is in a state of disrepair, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than even the staunchest critics may realize. In Primal Prescription, authors Doug McGuff and Robert Murphy combine their expertise in economics and medicine to offer a shocking, disturbing, and ultimately enlightening view into America’s health care system. You’ll discover the real history of what went wrong with U.S. health care and insurance, and why current efforts to clean up the mess are only making things worse.But far from leaving you feeling helpless at the dismal—and sometimes deadly—state of affairs, Primal Prescription equips you with both the knowledge to understand the health care conundrum and the tools for navigating your way out of it. McGuff and Murphy offer an evidence-based “game plan” for taking control of your own medical care, protecting yourself and your loved ones regardless of what the future holds for the rest of the nation.Whether you’re currently tangled in America’s broken health care system or simply trying to avoid its clutches, Primal Prescription is a must-have resource for taking your health into your own hands.

    American military doctrine is typically led by technology; a new class of weapon or vehicle is developed, which allows or encourages an adjustment in strategy. Military strategists Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui argue that this dynamic is a crucial weakness in the American military, and that this blind spot with regard to alternative forms warfare could be effectively exploited by enemies. "Unrestricted Warfare" concerns the many ways in which this might occur, and, in turn, suggests what the United States might do to defend itself.The traditional mentality that offensive action is limited to military action is no longer adequate given the range of contemporary threats and the rising costs-both in dollars and lives lost-of traditional warfare. Instead, Liang and Xiangsui suggest the significance of alternatives to direct military confrontation, including international policy, economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism. Even a relatively insignificant state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems. Exploring each of these considerations with remarkable insight and clarity, "Unrestricted Warfare" is an engaging evaluation of our geopolitical future.

    In this provocative and stimulating book critically acclaimed author Will Hutton warns instead that China is running up against a set of daunting challenges from within its own political and economic system that could well derail its rise, leading to a massive shock to the global economy. The United States, he argues, must recognize that it has a vital stake in working to assure this doesn't happen, for if China's political liberalization and economic growth collapse, the United States will suffer crippling consequences.In today's highly globalized world economy, so much of the economic health of the United States -- our low inflation, high profits, and cheap credit -- rests upon China's economic growth and its massive investment in the United States. A great deal has been said about the economic and military threat China poses. But rather than provoking China with the military hawkishness of recent years and resisting Chinese economic supremacy with the saber rattling of protectionist antitrade policies -- twenty such bills have been introduced in Congress in just the last year -- the United States must build a strong relationship that will foster China's transition from an antiquated Communist state beset with profound problems to a fully modern, enlightened, and open society. Doing so will require understanding and engagement, not enmity and suspicion.China's current economic model, Hutton explains, is unsustainable, premised as it is on the myriad contradictions and dysfunctions of an authoritarian state attempting to control an economy in its transition to capitalism. If the twenty-first century is to be the China century, the Chinese will have to embrace the features of modern Western nations that have spurred the political stability and economic power of the United States and Europe: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and authentic representative government that is accountable to the people. Whether or not China does so rests in large part on how well the United States manages the relationship and persuades the Chinese of the virtues of an open, enlightened democratic system. The danger is that fearmongering will intensify animosities, leading both countries down a path of peril.Turning conventional wisdom on its head, this brilliantly argued book is vital reading at a crucial juncture in world affairs.

    Instead of a stable series of policies producing steady growth, China's financial sector has boomed and gone bust with regularity in each decade. The latest decade is little different. Chinese banks have become objects of political struggle while they totter under balance sheets bloated by the excessive state-directed lending and bond issuance of 2009. Looking forward, the government's response to the global financial crisis has created a banking system the stability of which can be maintained only behind the walls of a non-convertible currency, a myriad of off-balance sheet arrangements with non-public state entities and the strong support of its best borrowers--the politically potent National Champions--who are the greatest beneficiaries of the financial status quo.China's financial system is not a model for the west and, indeed, is not a sustainable arrangement for China itself as it seeks increasingly to assert its influence internationally. This is not a story of impending collapse, but of frustrated reforms that suggests that any full opening and meaningful reform of the financial sector is not, indeed cannot be, on the government's agenda anytime soon.