The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What To Make of It


Charles E. Lindblom - 2001
    "A balanced and novel treatment of a very important set of questions. This is a book of grand scope by an outstanding scholar."—Samuel Bowles, University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Anyone who wants to know more about the market system’s plusses and minuses, how government can help or hinder its workings, and the direction in which it is likely to move should read this clear, fair, and fascinating book."—Robert Heilbroner, professor emeritus, New School University"The Market System resplendently assesses the character, rules, advantages, and shortcomings of the central institution coordinating modern economic and social life. Lindblom marshals his incisive intellect, uncommon range, and pellucid prose to clarify, probe, and exhort. The result is an unsurpassed guide."—Ira I. Katznelson, Columbia University

Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror


Rohan Gunaratna - 2002
    Based on over five years of research, Inside Al Qaeda provides the definitive story behind the rise of this small, mysterious group to the notorious organization making headlines today.

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice


G.R. Berridge - 2000
    Including comprehensive coverage of the main issues, from the value of the resident mission to international negotiation and chapters on telecommunications and the ministry of foreign affairs. Diplomacy offers the most up-to-date information about the real-world practice of international relations. Essential reading for students and professionals alike.

Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West


Timothy Garton Ash - 2004
    Previous generations could only dream of a free world. Now we can begin to make it." In his welcome alternative to the rampant pessimism about Euro-American relations, award-winning historian Timothy Garton Ash shares an inspiring vision for how the United States and Europe can collaborate to promote a free world.At the start of the twenty-first century, the West has plunged into crisis. Europe tries to define itself in opposition to America, and America increasingly regards Europe as troublesome and irrelevant. What is to become of what we used to call “the free world”? Part history, part manifesto, Free World offers both a scintillating assessment of our current geopolitical quandary and a vitally important argument for the future of liberty and the shared values of the West.

The Globalization Reader


Frank J. Lechner - 1999
    This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with thirty new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements. The editors have replaced several abstract articles from the first edition with livelier, more accessible essays that reflect the current scholarship. With new case studies, and a more international focus, this second edition is an even better introduction to globalization studies.Fully revised and updated - includes 30 new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements.Wide-ranging - across economic, political, cultural, and experiential dimensions of social change.Inclusive - covering a wide variety of perspectives on globalization and capturing some of the fault lines in current debates.Stimulating - not only by including well-written, provocative, and contemporary works but also by structuring sections around arguments that serve as connecting themes.

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West


Benazir Bhutto - 2008
    Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West

Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped


Garry Kasparov - 2015
    Yet in the intervening years —as America and the world’s other leading powers have continued to appease him — Putin has grown not only into a dictator but an international threat. With his vast resources and nuclear arsenal, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty and the modern world order.For Garry Kasparov, none of this is news. He has been a vocal critic of Putin for over a decade, even leading the pro-democracy opposition to him in the farcical 2008 presidential election. Yet years of seeing his Cassandra-like prophecies about Putin’s intentions fulfilled have left Kasparov with a darker truth: Putin’s Russia, like ISIS or Al Qaeda, defines itself in opposition to the free countries of the world.As Putin has grown ever more powerful, the threat he poses has grown from local to regional and finally to global. In this urgent book, Kasparov shows that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not an endpoint — only a change of seasons, as the Cold War melted into a new spring. But now, after years of complacency and poor judgment, winter is once again upon us.Argued with the force of Kasparov’s world-class intelligence, conviction, and hopes for his home country, Winter Is Coming reveals Putin for what he is: an existential danger hiding in plain sight.

Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths: Civil Disobedience, Nonviolence, and Satyagraha in the Real World (Plus Why It's 'Gandhi,' Not 'Ghandi')


Mark Shepard - 1989
    In this Annual Gandhi Lecture for the International Association of Gandhian Studies, Mark Shepard tackles some persistently wrong-headed views of Gandhi, offering us a more accurate picture of the man and his nonviolence.///////////////////////////////////////////////// Mark Shepard is the author of "Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths," "The Community of the Ark," and "Gandhi Today," called by the American Library Association's Booklist "a masterpiece of committed reporting." His writings on social alternatives have appeared in over 30 publications in the United States, Canada, England, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, and India. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// SAMPLE I suspect that most of the myths and misconceptions surrounding Gandhi have to do with nonviolence. For instance, it's surprising how many people still have the idea that nonviolent action is passive. It's important for us to be clear about this: There is nothing passive about Gandhian nonviolent action. I'm afraid Gandhi himself helped create this confusion by referring to his method at first as "passive resistance," because it was in some ways like techniques bearing that label. But he soon changed his mind and rejected the term. Gandhi's nonviolent action was not an evasive strategy nor a defensive one. Gandhi was always on the offensive. He believed in confronting his opponents aggressively, in such a way that they could not avoid dealing with him. But wasn't Gandhi's nonviolent action designed to avoid violence? Yes and no. Gandhi steadfastly avoided violence toward his opponents. He did not avoid violence toward himself or his followers. Gandhi said that the nonviolent activist, like any soldier, had to be ready to die for the cause. And in fact, during India's struggle for independence, hundreds of Indians were killed by the British. The difference was that the nonviolent activist, while willing to die, was never willing to kill. Gandhi pointed out three possible responses to oppression and injustice. One he described as the coward's way: to accept the wrong or run away from it.

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety


Eric Schlosser - 2013
    A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

Indian Government and Politics


B.L. Fadia
    Based on Prescribed Syllabus & New Pattern of Examination.

Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain


John Darwin - 2012
    In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation.Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions.Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution


Francis Fukuyama - 2011
    Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.

Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO


Richard Peet - 2003
    These institutions share, with minor differences, a common ideology. They aggressively promote a very particular kind of 'corporate' capitalism, neoliberalism, giving free rein across the world to the interests of a small number of huge, undemocratic and largely unregulated transnational corporations.This book presents the history and fundamental ideas of this economic ideology. Describing each member of the 'unholy trinity', it shows how neoliberalism hijacked the IMF, World Bank and WTO in relation to their global financial, development and trade management roles. Instead of their original clearly defined, circumscribed and even benign responsibilities, they have now become the financial policemen of a global economy characterized by mounting extremes of rich and poor and recurrent instability.The story of the mounting opposition to these 'Bretton Woods' institutions is told. And the book concludes with a trenchant review of the various ideas now being canvassed not simply for their radical reform, but for alternative principles that might guide a very different form of globalization.

Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria's Unholy War


Mike Smith - 2015
    What began as small Islamist sect in the country’s remote northeast, led by a baby-faced but charismatic preacher, has transformed into a hydra-headed monster, deploying suicide bombers and abducting innocent schoolgirls.Reporting from the ground, Mike Smith traces the roots of this mysterious violent organization and speaks to Nigerians who find themselves caught between frightening insurgents, brutal abusive security forces and an inept government.Journeying through the sleaze and corruption, which is robbing Africa’s biggest oil producer of its potential and allowing it to become a fertile ground for extremism, the author questions how this unholy war (waged against the backdrop of an evolving extremist threat worldwide) begun and how it might eventually be stopped

The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans


Mickey Edwards - 2012
    While this is a widely held view, it is a problem that—so far—has proved intractable. After every election, voters discover yet again that political "leaders" are simply quarreling in a never-ending battle between the two warring tribes, the Republicans and Democrats. In this critically important book, a distinguished statesman and thinker identifies exactly how our political and governing systems reward intransigence, discourage compromise, and undermine our democracy. He then describes exactly what must be done to banish the negative effects of partisan warfare from our political system.As a former congressman, Mickey Edwards witnessed firsthand how important legislative battles can devolve into struggles not over principle but over party advantage. He offers graphic examples of how this problem has intensified and reveals how political battles have become nothing more than conflicts between party machines. Edwards's solutions—specific, practical, fair, and original—show the way to break the stranglehold of the political party system. The Parties Versus the People offers hope for a fundamental renewal of American democracy.