"The updated edition of the bestselling title, Trust is the first serious response to the era of post-financial and political meltdown, Dr. Anthony Seldon lays out a blueprint for regaining trust within the national life. In part a wide-ranging meditation on notions of trust and responsibility in civic society, Trust is a powerful and important analysis of ten essential areas where trust in national life has broken down. Using examples from throughout the world and from history, it offers ten solutions for a better, more positive future."--Publisher description.

The railways of Manchuria offer an intriguing vantage point for an international history of northeast Asia. Before the completion of the Trans-Siberian railway in 1916, the only rail route from the Imperial Russian capital of St. Petersburg to the Pacific port of Vladivostok transited Manchuria. A spur line from the Manchurian city of Harbin led south to ice-free Port Arthur. Control of these two rail lines gave Imperial Russia military, economic, and political advantages that excited rivalry on the part of Japan and unease on the part of weak and divided China. Meanwhile, the effort to defend and retain that strategic hold against rising Japanese power strained distant Moscow. Control of the Manchurian railways was contested in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5; Japan's 1931 invasion and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo; the second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in Asia; and, the Chinese civil war that culminated in the Communist victory over the Nationalists. Today, the railways are critical to plans for development of China's sparsely populated interior. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to explore this fascinating history.

During the opening years of the 21st century, anti-­Semitic venom and incidents of violent assault on Jews have begun spreading. They are not a historical aberration. They are fueled by today's capitalist crises and fracturing of the post-World War II imperialist "order," described in recent decades as "globalization." At every turning point in history-from antiquity through feudalism, to capitalism's rise and the imperialist death throes of the past century-Jews have been targets of persecution. Including the genocide cold-bloodedly touted by Hitler as the "Final Solution." Why is Jew-hatred still raising its ugly head? What are its class roots? Why is there "no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to other problems before humanity," without revolutionary struggles that transform us as we fight to transform our world? Abram Leon was killed in October 1944, at age 26, in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz. He left us this book to help answer those questions.

Austria experienced remarkable economic and social growth in the years following World War II, especially considering the troubled nature of its politics. A small, land-locked country, Austria has emerged as the European Union's fourth richest state, yet it still wrestles with old decisions and demons. Merging personal observation with rich historical scholarship, a renowned journalist and award-winning memoirist tracks Austria's unique trajectory, beginning the origins of its peoples and following through to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918. Paul Lendvai investigates whether Austrians have come to terms with Hitler s Anschluss and the Waldheim affair and how they have met the challenge of Jorg Haider s radical right-wing ascendancy. Lendvai identifies a positive moral toughness, internal cohesion, and social discipline within Austria, especially during the years of occupation and subsequent crises, such as the Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Yugoslav wars. A probing study of Austria's long quest for nationhood, this volume offers a firsthand look at the factors and players that have influenced an evolving power.Praise for the German edition: Daring, exciting, unmasking...Lendvai presents hitherto hardly known facts and] incredible details.& mdash; NEWS (Vienna Weekly)Lendvai seeks to explain what Austria is like. He has succeeded exactly in this endeavor.& mdash; Die Wel

In addition to producing much other literature, Marxist economist Perlo (1912-99) wrote more than 3,000 People vs. Profits columns over 39 years for the Communist Party paper People's Weekly World . Survivors and colleagues reprint a selection based on their portrayal of conditions at the time. Presumably a second volume will consider foreign matters. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

As chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the seventies, Arthur Burns had a unique view of the Nixon administration. Burns first joined the Nixon administration as an advisor in 1969 and was privy to the dynamics of the president's coterie over the course of six tumultuous years. Now the recently released secret diary of this top-level economist offers a surprisingly candid inside look at Richard Nixon's fall. The diary tracks Burns's growing awareness of Nixon's behind-the-scenes maneuverings and worrisome behavior (such as "insane shouting") and reveals how such things undermined his respect and enthusiasm for the president. Perhaps even more telling, Burns's evaluations of his colleagues provide piercing insights into the president's inner circle, including Henry Kissinger ("a brilliant political analyst, but admittedly ignorant of economics"), George Schultz ("a no less confused amateur economist"), John Connally ("a thoroughly confused politician"), and the "vulgarians" H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman-the only people he thought Nixon felt relaxed around. The Burns diary also offers rare and telling glimpses into the era's economy--particularly an account of how Nixon exerted political pressure to shape monetary policies that helped to fuel the stagflation of the 1970s. The administration sought to close the so-called gold window, an approximate valuation of dollars with gold bullion, by floating the dollar, and the consensus over many years has been that Nixon himself arranged this-speculation now confirmed by Burns's diary. It also underscores the growing pressure Burns felt to serve the needs of Nixon's reelection bid rather than the economic welfare of the nation. Sequestered for decades and unavailable until 2008, this document reveals an honest and relatively apolitical man surrounded by partisans in top administrative positions who were dishonest, inept-or both. "The President has many shortcomings," wrote Burns. "He has few convictions, but now and then he gets into a euphoric mood where he wants to persuade himself that he's a statesman. But his sycophantic advisers cannot even recognize that." Deftly annotated by distinguished historian Robert Ferrell, who provides effective historical context and perspective, the Burns diary is a potent-and poignant-testament to the Machiavellian and often Byzantine world of American presidential politics.

They have a dream—a dream of a world where everything and everybody can be bought and sold, a world run efficiently by managers, a world where “freedom” means the free market. Maurice Glasman argues that this dream is an unrealizable utopia—or a nightmare if put into practice. He takes the tired old clichés of management-speak of the New Right and New Left alike and turns them on their heads: managers are not efficient, they are barriers to work and production. “Liberal democracy”—which now means the free market and the strong state—should be turned upside down, with democracy at the level of the economy and liberalism at the level of the state. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, Glasman argues that there is no need to surrender solidarity and human rights to the march of the managers and the market. There is another tradition, represented by the labour movement and Catholic Church in postwar West Germany, and Solidarity in Poland before 1989, when statist communitarianism and the New Right took over. Unnecessary Suffering examines this tradition and issues a call that human beings and the environment cannot, should not, and will not be treated like commodities. For all workers drowning in a sea of dogma and management.memos, Unnecesary Suffering is necessary reading.

"In a world that is constantly awake, illuminated and exposed, there is much to gain from looking into the darkness of times past. This fascinating and vivid picture of nocturnal life in Middle Eastern cities shows that the night in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire created unique conditions for economic, criminal, political, devotional and leisurely pursuits that were hardly possible during the day. Offering the possibility of livelihood and brotherhood, pleasure and refuge; the darkness allowed confiding, hiding and conspiring - activities which had far-reaching consequences on Ottoman state and society in the early modern period. Instead of dismissing the night as merely a dark corridor between days, As Night Falls demonstrates how fundamental these nocturnal hours have been in shaping the major social, cultural and political processes in the early modern Middle East"--

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a benchmark of triumph and a harbinger of tragedy to come. Rather than herald a new era of Cuba joining the world community of nations as a paragon of democracy as many fervently hoped and believed it would, it became instead a new stage in authoritarian rule in the Western hemisphere. For more than a half century since then Cuba has been defined by the capacity of a single family to command and determine the fate of a nation--and to do so with a minimum of opposition. Incredibly, even those professing adhesion to democratic norms have been ready to forgive the dictator his excesses. This volume explains the theory and practice of this absence of internal opposition and the persistence of external support for the Castro family and its entourage. "The Long Night of Dark Intent" is chronological in order, with the author indicating major points in each of the five decades covered. The volume covers five centers of system analysis: economics, politics, society, military, and ideology. Who or what "determines" events and decisions is the stuff of real history. It is precisely due to variability in causal chains in society that we have huge variance in levels of predictability. The course of the Cuban Revolution gives strong support for such an approach to the Castro Era. This is a unique, unflinching account with a strong emphasis on the importance of U.S. policy decisions over time.

Thirteen essays by acknowledged economic experts explore the rapid changes in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, with discussions on political and economic freedom, monetary control and privatization, labor markets and social safety nets, and taxation and crime.

Few figures of interwar Germany were as influential as Leopold Schwarzschild, the brilliant editor of the liberal magazine 'Das Tage-Buch'. In the uncertain years of the Weimar Republic, Schwarzschild became famous for his perceptive political analyses and critique of the economic policies of successive governments in the twilight of Germany's first experiment with democracy. When he was forced to emigrate in 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, he pursued his analysis of developments in Germany from Paris, where he resumed publication of his journal under the new name 'Das Neue Tage-Buch', while also mounting a furious attack on the European powers taken by surprise by the Nazi ascendancy. 'One thing is already beyond question today...', he wrote in the spring of 1933, '...part of the new era is an unremitting descent into some kind of military conflagration'. Winston Churchill, a great admirer of Schwarzschild, made one of his later books required reading for the War Cabinet, yet his campaigning journalism has never before appeared in English. In bringing his writings to an English-speaking readership, Chronicle of a Downfall will restore Leopold Schwarzschild to his rightful place as one of the most poignant chroniclers of the fall of German democracy and the descent of Europe into World War II.

Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of a thousand years of Russian history. Encompassing all key periods in Russia's dramatic development, the book covers everything from early settlers, through medieval decline, Ivan the Terrible-the "English Tsar", Peter the Great, the Crimean War and the rise of capitalism, the revolution, and the Soviet period, finally ending with the return of capitalism after 1991. Setting Russia within the context of the "World System", as outlined by Wallerstein, this is a major work of historical Marxist theory that is set to become a future classic.

This is the third book of essays on the United States and the world economy produced by the fruitful collaboration of Monthly Review editors Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff. In these essays, written between 1977 and 1981, the authors assess the results of efforts taken to stabilize the economy after the epochal changes of the early 1970s, the end of capitalism's "golden age," by attempts to counteract the effects of inflation, debt dependence, speculation, and financial instability.

Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis offers analyses of the cultural, religious, political and intellectual history of Warsaw Jewry, once the leading Jewish metropolis in Europe and the world.

First published in 1988, The Crisis of Marxist Ideology in Eastern Europe states that since de-Stalinisation began in Eastern Europe, the 'dead hand' of institutional Marxism has been eroded by revisionist Marxism, with the turn to young Marx and the philosophy of human emancipation to undermine prevailing orthodoxies. But this revisionism clung to the old socialist dogmas and refused a total break with the system, and the effort eventually failed. The result was the emergence of a dissident counterculture rejecting the system entirely. Independent social movements (such as unofficial peace groups and trade unions like Solidarity) have given this counterculture a major role in Eastern Europe, whilst the ruling elites have responded with confusion. Tismaneanu concludes that the only hope for the anti-totalitarian intellectuals of Eastern Europe is to oppose the regimes with non-Marxist ideas - otherwise they will be permanently reduced to the status of a hopeless, albeit heroic minority. This book will be of interest to students of economics, political science and international relations.