Politics

A curious collection of essays, seeking answers to BURNING QUESTIONS such as: Why do people everywhere tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at our world, and reports back to us.

International in scope, this volume brings together leading and emerging voices working at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, activism, and climate change.

'Always forgive your enemies - but never forget their names.' JFK'What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.' David Lloyd George'Unchallenged master of the self-inflicted wound.' Nicholas Soames on Boris Johnson, apropos his switch to campaigning for Brexit Structured to follow the arc of a life in politics - from childhood aspirations and first attempts at getting elected, to navigating the back benches, ascending the greasy pole, dealing with detractors, facing crises, and finally escaping - this unique collection weaves together the wittiest, wisest and most acerbic political quotations from the last 2,000 years. Punctuated throughout by candid insights from Sir Vince Cable, How to Be a Politician is a timeless and entertaining education in the dark arts of politics.

Reflections on Violence was an explosive and controversial book in 1906, and it remains so today. In it, Georges Sorel rejects the decadence of bourgeois democracy and calls for a heroic vitalism of the working class, to be brought about by any means necessary, including violence.Sorel chastises the republicanism and parliamentary socialism of his day, but his insights apply to any vanguardist movement, making him of interest beyond the left, and a precursor to fascism. Drawing on Bergson, Renan, Vico, and others, Sorel underlines myth as the driving force behind political action, and offers the myth of the general strike as the way forward for the syndicalist movement.Sorel's insistence on the myth of the general strike can easily be transposed on to any group's quest for self-determination, and so his critiques of politicians, of utopians, and of moderates are as relevant today as they were a century ago.In the Imperium Press edition, the original translator's preface, which defends Sorel's purging of democracy from socialism, has been restored, along with two of Sorel's essays not included in the original Hulme translation. This edition also includes a foreword by Thomas777 and an essay on the historical context in which Sorel was writing

The rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can "e;vote with their feet"e; and find another platform because in most cases there isn't one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create-or resist-the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto-as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are-institutions as powerful as the state-can we begin the work of democratizing them.

A biography of Albert Speer, an important figure of the Nazi High Command. An architect and an intellectual, he was seen to be a humane man, but, as Minister for Armaments, how could he not have known about the concentration camps? This book examines such moral issues about Speer and the Nazis.

A brilliant new biography of Boris Johnson from his best biographer, Andrew Gimson

In his riveting new book, Future Tense, Tony Leon captures and analyses recent South African history, with a focus on the squandered and corrupted years of the past decade. With unique access and penetrating insight, Leon presents a portrait of today''s South Africa and prospects for its future, based on his political involvement over thirty years with the key power players: Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. His close-up and personal view of these presidents and their history-making, and many encounters in the wider world, adds vivid colour of a country and planet in upheaval. Written during the first coronavirus lockdown, Future Tense examines the surge of the disease and the response, both of which have crashed the economy and its future prospects. As the founding leader of the Democratic Alliance, Leon also provides an insider view for the first time of the power struggles within that party, which saw the exit of its first black leader in 2019. There is every reason to fear for the future of South Africa but, as Leon argues, ''the hope for a better country remains an improbable, but not an impossible, dream''.

Is the West prepared for a world where power is shared with China? A world in which China asserts the same level of global leadership that the USA currently assumes? And can we learn to embrace Chinese political culture, as China learned to embrace ours?Here, one of the world's leading voices on China, Kerry Brown, takes us past the tired cliches and inside the Chinese leadership - as they lay out a roadmap for working in a world in which China shares dominance with the West.From how, and why, China as a dominant superpower has been inevitable for many years, to how the attempts to fight the old battles are over, Brown digs deeper into the problematic nature of China's current situation - its treatment of dissent, of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the severe limitations on its management of relations with other cultures and values. These issues impact the way the West sees China, China sees the West, and how both see themselves.There are obstacles to the West accepting a more prominent place for China in the world - but just because this will be a difficult process does not mean that it should not happen. As Kerry Brown writes: history is indeed ending, but not how the West thought it would.

"This book examines the one state reality in the territories controlled by the state of Israel. The two state solution remains the dominant frame for discussing the present and future relationship between Israel and the Palestinians. In this book we start not with hopes but the reality of an Israel that controls Palestine and the Palestinians and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Starting with the one state reality reshapes how we see the conflict, consider acceptable and unacceptable solutions, and discuss difficult normative questions"--

"Firm footing for a life of holy trouble." - Shane ClaiborneThe Christian faith has a rich tradition of civil disobedience. Old Testament stories of noncooperation with evil, or prophets standing up to Kings at great cost. Jesus, the nonviolent revolutionary, peacemaker, risk-taker. The early Christian communities, repeatedly imprisoned for speaking truth to power-like Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King Jr., centuries later.Nonviolent civil disobedience, when rooted in faith, is not only a way to protest unjust laws; it can be an experience of the sacred. It can be both a symbol and the reality of Christ's love, overcoming the violence that surrounds us. Within this book you'll find a civil resister's field guide to that tradition, and best practices for discernment, court appearances, even jail time. And if there comes a time to cross the line, you'll find yourself in good company.

Patrick Radden Keefe's work has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US to the Orwell Prize in the UK for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from the New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface: 'They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.'Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black-market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death-penalty attorney who represents the 'worst of the worst', among other bravura works of literary journalism.The appearance of his byline in the New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.

Security Studies: An Introduction, 4th edition, is the most comprehensive textbook available on the subject, providing students with in-depth coverage of traditional and critical approaches and an essential grounding in the debates, frameworks, and issues of the contemporary security agenda.

From Hannah Arendt, the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, her influential essay examining the relationship between violence, power, war and politics'Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it'Why has violence played such a significant role in human history? Written in 1970, with the Holocaust and Hiroshima still fresh in recent memory, war in Vietnam raging and the streets of Europe and America exploding into student protest, Hannah Arendt's seminal work dissects violence in the twentieth century: its nature and causes, its relationship with politics and war, its role in the modern age. Arendt warns against the glamorization of violence by revolutionary causes, and argues that true, lasting power can never grow 'out of the barrel of a gun'.'Incisive, deeply probing, written with clarity and grace, it provides an ideal framework for understanding the turbulence of our times' The NationWith an introduction by Arendt expert, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham.