Books by John Dunn

Jas 'n' Ni-ni trip to the museum, follows the exploits of 2 modern characters - sisters Jas and Ni-ni on a trip to the museum.

Why does democracy-as a word and as an idea-loom so large in the political imagination, though it has so often been misused and misunderstood? Setting the People Free starts by tracing the roots of democracy from an improvised remedy for a local Greek difficulty 2,500 years ago, through its near extinction, to its rebirth amid the struggles of the French Revolution. Celebrated political theorist John Dunn then charts the slow but insistent metamorphosis of democracy over the next 150 years and its apparently overwhelming triumph since 1945. He examines the differences and the extraordinary continuities that modern democratic states share with their Greek antecedents and explains why democracy evokes intellectual and moral scorn for some, and vital allegiance from others. Now with a new preface and conclusion that ground this landmark work firmly in the present, Setting the People Free is a unique and brilliant account of an extraordinary idea.

This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian.

In this timely and important work, eminent political theorist John Dunn argues that democracy is not synonymous with good government. The author explores the labyrinthine reality behind the basic concept of democracy, demonstrating how the political system that people in the West generally view as straightforward and obvious is, in fact, deeply unclear and, in many cases, dysfunctional. Consisting of four thought-provoking lectures, Dunn's book sketches the path by which democracy became the only form of government with moral legitimacy, analyzes the contradictions and pitfalls of modern American democracy, and challenges the academic world to take responsibility for giving the world a more coherent understanding of this widely misrepresented political institution. Suggesting that the supposedly ideal marriage of liberal economics with liberal democracy can neither ensure its continuance nor even address the problems of contemporary life, this courageous analysis attempts to show how we came to be so gripped by democracy's spell and why we must now learn to break it.

John Lunn's theme tune to ITV's critically acclaimed costume drama Downton Abbey arranged for piano solo.

Why is modern political theory philosophically so feeble and politically so unconvincing? This volume of essays discusses the historical sources of these weaknesses and suggests how they might begin to be remedied.

Financial reporting provides an overview of a business' profitability and financial condition in both short and long term. A hot topic in the current market climate. Financial Reporting and Regulation explains the meaning behind the rules of financial reporting, as opposed to just the implementation of these rules.

First published in 1973, this is a study of the historical relationship between the system of colonial control and local social and political structures in the Ahafo region of Ghana since the arrival of the British. The authors have conveyed enough context for someone who knows nothing about Africa to begin to understand what politics there means.

This second edition underlines the drastic changes in the challenges which face the world, in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War, stressing the ever tighter linking of the global economy with the ecology in which we live, and the problems which this poses for the survival of civilization.

Many political regimes today draw their legitimacy from a revolution: the destruction of an existing political elite and its replacement by a different group or groups drawn from inside the same society. This book examines eight major revolutions of the twentieth century.

The central questions of political philosophy have not lessened in practical urgency or in theoretical difficulty in recent decades. Mr Dunn's collection of essays records an attempt to recapture the sense and character of these questions by approaching them from an unusually broad variety of perspectives.

Why do any human beings choose to be socialists? Why has socialist politics proved in practice so frequently disappointing? This book is an attempt to confront problems which have arisen largely from the practice of socialist politics itself and to locate their sources within the confusions and equivocations of existing understandings of socialism.