"Now featuring a new chapter on the rise of illiberalism worldwide. As featured in the viral video "Rules for Rulers," which has been viewed over fifteen million times. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's canonical book on political science turned conventional wisdom on its head. They started from a single assertion: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the "national interest"-or even their subjects-unless they must. Newly updated to reflect the global rise of authoritarianism, this clever and accessible book illustrates how leaders amass and retain power. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind, but only in the number of essential supporters or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. And it is also the key to returning power to the people"--Publisher's description.

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable. It is home to a new form of authoritarianism, far subtler than 20th century strains, and which is rapidly expanding to challenge the global order. An extraordinary book - one which is as powerful and entertaining as it is troubling - Nothing is True and Everything is Possible offers a wild ride into this political and ethical vacuum

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick What Happens to Democracy When a Demagogue Comes to Power? "It is hard to imagine understanding the Trump presidency and its significance without reading this book.” —Bob Bauer, Former Chief Counsel to President Barack Obama What—and who—is a demagogue? How did America’s Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like—and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken? Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump’s election—by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike—goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good. President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation? In The Demagogue’s Playbook , acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive—and restore national greatness, for one and all. “Cuts through the hyperbole and hysteria that often distorts assessments of our republic, particularly at this time.” — Alan Taylor, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History

In The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define--and divide--our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Ronald Reagan's and Donald Trump's conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government. Rosen also shows how Hamilton and Jefferson's disagreement over how to read the Constitution has shaped landmark debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power, from John Marshall's early battles with Andrew Jackson to the current divisions among the justices on issues from presidential immunity to control over the administrative state. More than ever, the clash between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals resonates today in our most urgent national debates over the question of whether modern presidents are consolidating power and subverting the Constitution -- the very threat to American democracy that both Hamilton and Jefferson were determined to avoid. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and the ongoing struggle to define the balance between liberty and power. -- Provided by publisher.

Americans like to believe that they live in a classless society. Most Americans defiantly identify themselves as middle class, although economic inequality is greater in the United States than in most advanced Western nations. Offering an important revision of conventional wisdom, Stanley Aronowitz demonstrates that class remains a potent force in the United States. Aronowitz shows that class need not be understood simply in terms of socioeconomic stratification, but rather as the power of social groups to make a difference. Aronowitz explains that social groups from different economic and political positions become ruling classes when they make demands that change the course of history. For instance, labor movements, environmental activists, and feminists have engaged in class struggles as their demands for power reconfigured the social order. The emerging global justice movements--comprised of activists from heterogeneous social and political backgrounds--also show potential for class formation. Written by a prominent scholar and social activist, this book offers a stunning reconceptualization of the meaning and significance of class in modern America.

Named one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022 “An authoritative and intelligent portrait of the global spread of authoritarianism and its dangers...what sets [this] work apart from books like Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny and Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth is its unusually comprehensive armada of facts about the international drift over the past two decades toward authoritarian leaders, whether old-style dictators like Kim Jong Un or nominally elected presidents like Vladimir Putin.” —Kirkus An urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy that illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world. In his bestselling book The End of Power , Moisés Naím examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naím turns to the trends, conditions, technologies and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three “P”s—populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today’s autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed. The Revenge of Power is packed with alluring characters, riveting stories about power grabs and losses, and vivid examples of the tricks and tactics used by autocrats to counter the forces that are weakening their power. It connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naím reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. Naím addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?

"As a form of power, subjection is paradoxical. To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what "one" is, one's very formation as a subject, is dependent upon that very power is quite another. If, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, it provides the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire. Power is not simply what we depend on for our existence but that which forms reflexivity as well. Drawing upon Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Althusser, this challenging and lucid work offers a theory of subject formation that illuminates as ambivalent the psychic effects of social power.If we take Hegel and Nietzsche seriously, then the "inner life" of consciousness and, indeed, of conscience, not only is fabricated by power, but becomes one of the ways in which power is anchored in subjectivity. The author considers the way in which psychic life is generated by the social operation of power, and how that social operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it produces. Power is no longer understood to be "internalized" by an existing subject, but the subject is spawned as an ambivalent effect of power, one that is staged through the operation of conscience.To claim that power fabricates the psyche is also to claim that there is a fictional and fabricated quality to the psyche. The figure of a psyche that "turns against itself" is crucial to this study, and offers an alternative to describing power as "internalized." Although most readers of Foucault eschew psychoanalytic theory, and most thinkers of the psyche eschew Foucault, the author seeks to theorize this ambivalent relation between the social and the psychic as one of the most dynamic and difficult effects of power.This work combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, offering a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in such other works of the author as Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity." --

In his first major book on the subject of income inequality, Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts an eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument. Chomsky and his editors, the filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of tape and transcript and created a document that included three times as much text as was used in the film.

Argues that the leaders of today actually have less power than ever before, discussing the changing nature of leadership and the modern dynamics of power.

'Captivating, emphatic and deeply inspiring, Sexual Revolution lifted me greatly by envisioning the possibilities of our moment' V (formerly Eve Ensler) 'Brilliant; vital; revolutionary' Kate Manne _________________ This is a story about how modern masculinity is killing the world, and how feminism can save it. It's a story about sex and power and trauma and resistance and persistence. Sex and gender are changing, and the world is changing with them. In this time of crisis, we are also witnessing a productive transformation: a revolutionary change in how we define gender, sex, consent and whose bodies matter.This sexual revolution is a threat to the social and economic order. It undermines the existing power structures and weakens the authority of institutions from the waged workplace to the nuclear family. No wonder the far right is fighting back so hard.Told with Laurie Penny's trademark urgency and candour, Sexual Revolution is a hand-grenade of a book: both a manifesto for social change and a story of how feminism can save us.

A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy "Spare, elegant and poignant. . . . If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it."--John Gray, New Statesman "It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan's luminous The Tragic Mind is so urgently needed."--George F. Will Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind , he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil--a clear and easy choice--but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time.

From one of America's foremost economic and political thinkers comes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive and turbo-charged global economy and the effect it is having on American democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich shows how widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical results of a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influence of business lobbyists than to the voters who elected them. Powerful and thought-provoking, Supercapitalism argues that a clear separation of politics and capitalism will foster an enviroment in which both business and government thrive, by putting capitalism in the service of democracy, and not the other way around.

The Superclass - politicians, military leaders, finance gurus, energy barons, media moguls and thought leaders - is the small group that currently plays the greatest role in shaping the progress of globalization and perhaps the group most changed by that phenomenon, so much so that they have more in common with one another than they do with their own countrymen. And because this group frequently operates outside all national and international regulation, they are often in conflict with the elite in their own countries. Rothkopf offers a provocative and trenchant examination of the overlapping international power clusters. He reveals who is a member of this global Superclass and who is likely to be joining it and transforming it in the years ahead. And he will explore how the aggressive pursuit of self-interest by some in this class helped to create a world in which inequity is greater than ever - something that may well threaten international stability in our lifetimes.

Inspired by Machiavelli's classic The Prince , Leslie H. Gelb offers illuminating guidelines on how American power actually works and should be wielded in today's tumultuous world. Writing with the perspective of four decades of extraordinary access and influence in government, think tanks, and journalism, Gelb provides an incisive look at the major U.S. foreign-policy triumphs and tragedies of the past half century, and offers practical rules on how to effectively exercise power today. Power Rules is an impassioned challenge to both liberals and conservatives and a plea to reclaim the true meaning of power and the essential role of common sense in solving global problems.

The outspoken political advisor and commentator offers a survey of history's most memorable coups and failures. Dick Morris is one of the frankest and most incisive political observers in America today. A fiercely intelligent advisor to candidates at the highest levels of government, Morris is a popular columnist and a political analyst for the Fox News Channel, bringing his brilliant strategic mind and insider's political savvy to a weekly audience of millions. Now, in Power Plays, Morris reaches into history to create this fresh and fascinating survey of the most dramatic political moves ever made, from the wildly effective to the disastrous. The result is a strategy playbook that holds lessons equally valuable to the planning of a political campaign, a business venture -- or even the War on Terror. Drawing on American and international examples, Morris identifies five different types of power play, and focuses on politicians whose careers have skyrocketed after implementing them successfully -- or foundered in the wake of misjudgment. Morris explores ideologues like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, who stood on principle and waited for their moment to shine, and "triangulators" like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and François Mitterrand, who seized the opportunity to defang their opponents by stealing their pet issues and solving them. He looks at figures as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon -- who rose to power by dividing and conquering their enemies -- and at reformers like Britain's Tony Blair and Japan's Junichiro Koizumi, who ascended by purging their parties of corruption. And he shines a light on how Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used technology and new media to electrify their political careers. In a chapter inspired by the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Morris also reviews the efforts of FDR and Churchill to mobilize their nations in the face of Nazi Germany -- and compares their performance to that of George W. Bush in mounting America's ongoing campaign against terrorism. Morris also devotes attention to unsuccessful power plays, from Woodrow Wilson's failed attempt to launch the League of Nations to the disavowal of environmental issues that, he argues, cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. His analysis is surprising, often irreverent, but always enlightening. And the conclusion he draws -- that candidates who best serve the people also serve themselves -- is a breath of fresh air in the often bloodthirsty arena that is politics. - Jacket flap.

Edited by Stephen Shore, author of Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Ask and Tell: Self-Advocacy and Disclosure for People on the Autism Spectrum aims to help people with autism effectively self-advocate in their pursuit of independent, productive, and fulfilling lives. Ask and Tell is unique by being the first book to speak to the twin issues of self-advocacy and disclosure for people with autism and by consisting exclusively including the cover art and the preface by Temple Grandin of contributions by those on the autism spectrum for persons on the spectrum.

"In the most comprehensive study of political ritual yet written, David I. Kertzer explains why ritual has been and will continue to be an essential part of political life. Weaving together examples from around the world and throughout history, Kertzer shows that the success of all political groups, whether conservative or revolutionary, is linked to their effective use of ritual." --

"In this collection of essays from 1969-2013, many in book form for the first time, Noam Chomsky exposes the real nature of state power. With unrelenting logic, he holds the arguments of empire up to critical examination and shatters the myths of those who protect the power and privilege of the few against the interests and needs to the many"--

Presents the major ideas that have formed the modern Latin American political mind and profiles influential revolutionaries, thinkers, poets, and novelists, from Che Guevara to Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez