Politics

For 22 years, Dr Zhisui Li was Mao Tse-tung's personal physician, confidant and companion. In this biography Li provides insights into social and political events in China, and details of Mao's private life - from his sexual appetite to the political effects of his aims, fears and idiosyncrasies.

Murakami tells the true story behind an act of terrorism that turned an average Monday morning into a national disaster. In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects.

In his 1932 classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicted a future society in thrall to science and regulated by sophisticated methods of social control.

What must the United States do to remain the global superpower--and stop alienating the rest of the world? The author of The Paradox of American Power has one clear answer: soft power.

Classic, Renaissance-era guide to acquiring and maintaining political power. Today, nearly 500 years after it was written, this calculating prescription for autocratic rule continues to be much read and studied.

In Democracy Awakening, American historian Heather Cox Richardson examines how, over the decades, an elite minority have made war on American ideals. By weaponising language and promoting false history, they are leading Americans into authoritarianism and creating a disaffected population.Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. In Democracy Awakening, Richardson wrangles America's meandering and confusing news feed into a coherent story to explain how America got to this perilous point, what we should pay attention to, and what the future of democracy holds.

From New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, Facing the Beast is a devastating, detailed account of wrongthink, deplatforming, and an unexpected political, personal, and spiritual transformation that followed during one of the most divisive times in American history. In this uncompromising investigation into todayâEUR(TM)s most urgent issues, Naomi Wolf uses her own wildly politicized pilgrimageâEUR"from New York Times bestselling author and high-level Democratic consultant to a journalist cast out from the elite political and social circles she once moved throughâEUR"as a stunning narrative framework that is both chilling and incisive. WolfâEUR(TM)s sin? Doing the job that good journalists once prided themselves on: asking questions, challenging authority, and, during one of the most politically divisive moments in modern history, exposing the many failures of the public health response during the COVID-19 pandemic by chronicling the dangerous descent of our democracy into tyranny, censorship, and totalitarianism. Unable to remain silent in the shadows and unwilling to collude with the mainstream, Wolf bravely covers topics that few other writers dare to address critically for fear of being deplatformed. Facing the Beast explores reproductive rights, medical freedom, the uncurious thought-policing of the âEURœprogressiveâEUR? left, the Second Amendment, the criminal relationship between the FDA and PfizerâEUR"WolfâEUR(TM)s clear writing repeatedly shines light in the dark corners of our fractured society. A decades-long champion of free speech, freedom of the press, and the Constitution, Wolf found herself not only in the midst of a political rebirth but a spiritual transformation as wellâEUR"one in which the events of the day could only be described in terms of good, evil, and a metaphysical quest on the nature of reality. For readers of Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Bari Weiss, Facing the Beast is a fearless indictment of legacy media and the political class, as well as a brutal reminder that searching for and defending the truth can be dangerous. âEURœNaomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right.âEUR?âEUR"Tucker Carlson

Global war on the human brain.

From the Author of WOMEN, RACE AND CLASS, this is a timely provocation that examines the concept of attaining freedom in light of our current world conflictsIn these newly collected essays, interviews and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyses today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that 'Freedom is a constant struggle.'

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake.The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise.One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again.

In 2008 Clive Hamilton was at Parliament House in Canberra when the Beijing Olympic torch relay passed through. He watched in bewilderment as a small pro-Tibet protest was overrun by thousands of angry Chinese students. Where did they come from? Why were they so aggressive? And what gave them the right to shut down others exercising their democratic right to protest? The authorities did nothing about it, and what he saw stayed with him. In 2016 it was revealed that wealthy Chinese businessmen linked to the Chinese Communist Party had become the largest donors to both major political parties. Hamilton realised something big was happening, and decided to investigate the Chinese government's influence in Australia. What he found shocked him. From politics to culture, real estate to agriculture, universities to unions, and even in our primary schools, he uncovered compelling evidence of the Chinese Communist Party's infiltration of Australia. Sophisticated influence operations target Australia's elites, and parts of the large Chinese-Australian diaspora have been mobilised to buy access to politicians, limit academic freedom, intimidate critics, collect information for Chinese intelligence agencies, and protest in the streets against Australian government policy. It's no exaggeration to say the Chinese Communist Party and Australian democracy are on a collision course. The CCP is determined to win, while Australia looks the other way. Thoroughly researched and powerfully argued, Silent Invasionis a sobering examination of the mounting threats to democratic freedoms Australians have for too long taken for granted. Yes, China is important to our economic prosperity; but, Hamilton asks, how much is our sovereignty as a nation worth? ';Anyone keen to understand how China draws other countries into its sphere of influence should start with Silent Invasion. This is an important book for the future of Australia. But tug on the threads of China's influence networks in Australia and its global network of influence operations starts to unravel.' Professor John Fitzgerald, author of Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia

In this characteristically turbocharged book, now in a new post-election edition, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider's guide to the variety of ways today's mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, it reveals that what most people think of as "e;the news"e; is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business.In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism's dirty tricks.After a 2020 election season that proved to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. is an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world.

A forensic and gripping examination of China's intelligence work globally.

Parenti explores the big issues of our time -- fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology.He shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He maps out the internal and external forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the "free market" victory on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism.A bold, entertaining, iconoclastic exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.

Without a moment's pause, we share our most intimate thoughts with trillion-dollar tech companies. Their algorithms categorize us and jump to conclusions about who we are. They even shape our everyday thoughts and actions - from who we date to how we vote. But this is just the latest front in an age-old struggle.Part history and part manifesto, Freedom to Think charts the history and importance of our most basic human right: freedom of thought. From Galileo to Nudge Theory to Alexa, human rights lawyer Susie Alegre explores how the powerful have always sought to get inside our heads, influence how we think and shape what we buy. Providing a bold new framework to understand how our agency is being gradually undermined, Freedom to Think is a ground-breaking and vital charter for taking back our humanity and safeguarding our reason.

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town, the eye-witness account of how Washington's "swamp", far from being drained, was turned into a gold-plated hot tub by Trump, with the connivance of the GOP political class, out of opportunism and cowardice - because how bad could it get?In the early months of Trump's candidacy, the GOP's most important figures, people such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, were united - and loud - in their scorn and contempt. Even more, their outrage: Trump was a menace and an affront to our democracy. Then, awkwardly, Trump won. Trump Town is Mark Leibovich's unflinching account of the utter moral rout of one of America's two major political parties, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham and their ilk into the administration's enablers and alpha lapdogs, and the swamp's lesser lights into chasers of the grift. What will these politicos do to preserve their place in the sun, or at least the orbit of the spray tan? What will they do to preserve their "relevance"? Almost anything, it turns out. Trump is the most unconstrained bully ever to hold the office, and his savage bullying of everyone in his circle, and his singular control of his political base, created a cult of submission, of toeing the Trump line, however obviously untrue. Many of the most alpha of the lapdogs happily conceded to Mark Leibovich that they were in on the joke, so secure were they in the impermeability of the filter bubble. As Lindsey Graham told the author, his people in South Carolina don't read the New York Times, and they won't read this book. Where all that cynicism, even nihilism, led was to a country truly deranged from reality, and to January 6th. It's a vista that makes the Washington of This Town seem like Utopia in comparison. Trump Town isn't another tick-tock view from the Oval Office; it's the view from the Trump Hotel. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave.

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracyHitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orban control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such "e;spin dictators,"e; describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today's authoritarians are spin dictators-and how they differ from the remaining "e;fear dictators"e; such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.Offering incisive portraits of today's authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time-from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.