Politics

Since the demise of the USSR, the mantle of the largest planned economies in the world has been taken up by the likes of Walmart, Amazon and other multinational corporations.

The incredible untold story of Virginia Hall, an American woman with a wooden leg who infiltrated Occupied France for the SOE and became the Gestapo's most wanted Allied spy, written by acclaimed biographer Sonia Purnell.

The extraordinary life story of the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose absolute integrity provides the inspiration we need as our constitutional system and political tradition are being tested to the breaking point.

I have tried to dissuade them and sometimes succeeded... The challenge is to distinguishes sharply between the people who told lies and the people whose only offence was to believe them.'- James O'Brien

Harlem 69 brings Stuart Cosgrove's epic sixties trilogy to a dramatic conclusion and looks forward to brilliant music yet to come - jazz funk to disco and hip hop.

Are the systems of intelligent persuasion developed by today's tech giants a threat to human freedom? Drawing on insights from Ancient Greece through to Silicon Valley, Williams argues that liberating human attention may be the defining moral and political task of the Information Age. This title is also available as Open Access.

"First published 2012 by Reclam Verlag as Geschichte der Niederlande, and by Boom as Geschiedenis van Nederland: van de Opstand tot heden"--Title page verso.

An epic tale of the path to power of Vladimir Putin, emerging from obscurity to become one of the world's most conflicted and important leaders.

A passionate manifesto decrying misogyny in the Arab world by award-winning journalist Mona Eltahawy.

Renowned philosopher Roger Scruton draws on his own experience as a counter-culture presence in public life to explain conservatism in a skeptical age.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History comes a 'magisterial work of history' TLS

This lively and accessible textbook on methodology in social and political science focuses centrally on the debate between positivist and constructivist approaches. Introducing a range of key topics and issues which show how methodological pluralism can be combined with intellectual rigour, it guides students through how they can exploit the manifold ways of knowing as they begin to embark on their own research. The textbook is ideal for undergraduate and master degree students who are taking icourses on philosophy of social science, social and political analysis and research methods.

Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson.The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC), they anticipate Machiavelli's The Prince by nearly 2000 years.The Art of War is the best known of a considerable body of Chinese works on the subject. It analyses the nature of war, and reveals how victory may be ensured.The Book of Lord Shang is a political treatise for the instruction of rulers. These texts are anything but armchair strategy or ivory-tower speculation. They are serious, urgent and practical responses to the desperate situations in which they were written. They have been immensely influential both inside and outside China.

In Frames of War, Judith Butler explores the media’s portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of ‘the living.’ This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life.This book discerns the resistance to the frames of war in the context of the images from Abu Ghraib, the poetry from Guantanamo, recent European policy on immigration and Islam, and debates on normativity and non-violence. In this urgent response to ever more dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a re-conceptualization of the Left, one that brokers cultural difference and cultivates resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team, husband and wife Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, take us on a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of exceptional women struggling against terrible circumstances. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth, it was totalitarianism. In the twenty-first, Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate, it will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world. Fierce, moral, pragmatic, full of amazing stories of courage and inspiration, HALF THE SKY is essential reading for every global citizen.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

The epic, disturbing story of how the FBI is America's real secret service'Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The hand of our power should close over them at once' President Woodrow Wilson, 1919The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most powerful of these forces. Following his award-winning history of the C.I.A., Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner has now written the first full history of the F.B.I. as a secret intellligence service. Drawn entirely from firsthand materials in the F.B.I.'s own files, Enemies brilliantly brings to life the entire story, from the cracking of anarchist cells to the prosecution of the 'war on terror'. It is the story of America's war against spies, subversives and saboteurs - and the self-inflicted wounds American democracy suffered in battle.Throughout the book lies the long shadow of J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the F.B.I. with an iron fist for forty-eight years. He was not a monster, but a brilliant confidence man who ruled by fear, force, and fraud. His power shaped America; his legacy haunts it.Reviews:'Truly impressive ... [Enemies] could have been put together only by a journalist of Weiner's stature' Keith Lowe, Sunday Telegraph'A history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner's truth is wilder even than Ellroy's fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI's first 100 years using only the Bureau's documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen' David Blackburn, Spectator'An outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely ... This is certainly the most complete book we are likely to see about the F.B.I.'s intelligence-gathering operations, from Emma Goldman to Osama bin Laden' Bryan Burrough, New York Times'Extensively researched, admirably understated, yet terrifically entertaining' Boston Globe'Important and disturbing ... Weiner lays bare a record of embarrassing, even stunning failure, in which the bureau's lawlessness was matched only by its incompetence ... [he] has done prodigious research, yet tells this depressing story with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller' New York Times Book ReviewAbout the author:Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the C.I.A. and the Military - the latter topic being the subject of his Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget. He is the author of the bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED EDITIONMaking Sense of the Troubles is David McKittrick and David McVea's classic history of the Troubles, now completely revised and updated.First published ten years ago, Making Sense of the Troubles is widely regarded as the most 'comprehensive, considered and compassionate' (Irish Times) history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Written by a distinguished journalist and a teacher of history in Northern Ireland, it surveys the roots of the problems from 1921 onwards, the descent into violence in the late 60s, and the three terrible decades that followed. McKittrick and McVea have now fully updated the book to take into account the momentous events of the last ten years, including the disbanding of the IRA, Ian Paisley's deal with the Republicans and the historic power-sharing government in Belfast.'An updated reissue of a collaborative study published 12 years ago to rave reviews as a frank, accurate and authoritative narrative of events which should be required reading for anyone hoping to understand what had been going on in the North' Irish Independent'I would strongly advocate that it be made compulsory reading for everyone in Northern Ireland because for the first time it is our history, all of it warts and all, presented in a clear and understandable way' Irish News'Extraordinarily well-balanced, sane, comprehensive and rich in sober understatement' Glasgow Herald'Compellingly written and very even-handed. By far the clearest account of what happened in the Northern Ireland conflict and more importantly why it happened' Irish NewsDavid McKittrick has reported on the Northern Ireland troubles since the 1970s. After working for the Irish Times and BBC he has been Ireland correspondent of the London Independent since 1985. Awards include the Orwell Prize, correspondent of the year and Belfast journalist of the year. David McVea graduated in politics and modern history from Queen's University, Belfast, and has an MA from Sussex University. He was head of the politics department of a Belfast grammar school where he taught both history and political studies.

Gandhi's non-violent struggles against racism, violence, and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. He feared the enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding of his quest for truth rooted in devotion to God. His attempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek purity through simple living, dietary practices, celibacy, and a life without violence. This is not a straightforward narrative biography, in The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi offers his life story as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps.

A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.Includes illustrations, explanatory footnotes, and an introduction by Richard Hoggart.