On Saturday, August 2, 1941, the Washington Post reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would depart the next day for a fishing vacation aboard his yacht, Potomac. By the morning of August 5, the Potomac was sailing toward the fishing waters off Cape Cod -- but the president was not on board. Having quietly disembarked in the middle of the night, the president, now joined by his top military advisors, was headed for Newfoundland, where the U.S. and British governments would meet in a secret summit to coordinate their military efforts, although the United States had yet to declare war on Germany. The British were appalled at the state of American preparedness, one British colonel remarking, "They have a long way to go before they can play any decisive part in the war." But ready or not, the United States would be catapulted into World War II within a matter of months. Alan Schom's superb histories and biographies have been lauded for their dramatic sweep, their focus on extraordinary personalities, and their refreshingly iconoclastic perspective. Schom begins this magisterial account of World War II in the Pacific by demonstrating an ironic paradox: on one hand, the American government and people were as inadequately prepared for war as any major power ever has been; on the other, the Japanese high command plunged headlong into the Pacific campaign despite clear evidence -- from their own analysts -- that Japan had too little oil and too feeble an economy to prevail against the United States. It was a war that should not have been fought. Schom recounts a tense saga of diplomatic maneuvering, strategic blunders, and pivotal successes played out in the halls of the White House, Downing Street, and the Imperial Palace, as well as on the seas and shores of the Pacific. Key figures in the war come vividly to life in a series of brilliant biographical sketches: Emperor Hirohito, a devotee of Western pursuits such as golf and jazz, who hungered to expand Japan's global reach; the destructively egotistical General Douglas MacArthur, whose splendid achievements in World War I stood in stark contrast to his incompetent leadership in the Philippines; Rear Admiral Kelly Turner, whose realism and tactical savvy played a crucial role in turning the tide of the war; and the cool-headed Admiral Tanaka Raizo, who repeatedly slipped through the Allied net, transporting troops and supplies to and from Guadalcanal. The Eagle and the Rising Sun embraces the broad strategic concerns of the war and the telling details and turning points of individual engagements. As Rear Admiral Thomas Marfiak, Ret., CEO and publisher of the U.S. Naval Institute, writes in the Foreword: "From time to time, we are privileged to be given extraordinary insights into the history of our age. Alan Schom has given us a tapestry, into which he has woven figures of immense proportions, yet he has not lost sight of their humanity. He writes ... in the grand tradition of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August." Book jacket.

"James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, which sold approximately 36K copies, returns with a new book exploring the looming collapse of the techno-industrial economy, featuring profiles of individuals who have drastically altered their lives due to financial difficulties"--

Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of American leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009. This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author HowardBloom argues that there's a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It's struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things-passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined. The author explains why the secret to capitalism's next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways-that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society. This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.

"Global capitalism is facing an unprecedented crisis. The global economy is mired in prolonged stagnation. The worldwide social fabric is in decay. Civil strife and social upheaval are tearing up political systems and, in some cases, leading to the collapse of states. The planetary ecosystem is breaking down. Millions are fleeing, displaced by climate change, transnational corporate land grabs, wars and political persecution. How far into the future can global capitalism endure? In this urgent new study, sociologist William I. Robinson presents a "big picture" snapshot of the crisis of capitalism and the battle for the future of humanity. Drawing on 30 years of scholarship and activism, Robinson applies his original theory of global capitalism to the emerging digital age. He shows how global elites have pinned their hope on economic reactivation through the application of radical new digital technologies and financial strategies to the global economy and society. The rulers will turn to enhancing a global police state to contain mass rebellion as humanity enters a season of chaos and global civil war. The capitalist class and privileged strata of humanity may be able to survive collapse for decades to come even as a majority of humanity faces desperate struggles for survival that lead many to perish in the coming years. But there is eventually a terminal point to capitalist expansion as mass extinction and the radical alteration of the natural environment make life for our species and most others impossible. The only solution is a reversal of escalating inequalities through a radical redistribution of wealth and power downward as a first step in replacing the capitalist system, with its relentless pursuit of private profit at all cost, by an ecosocialism that prioritizes social need and harmony with the rest of nature. Theoretically sophisticated and engaging, this concise study will be satisfying to scholars yet accessible to a broader public concerned with the urgent political affairs of our day"--

"Meltdown is the gripping account of the financial collapse that destroyed the West's investment banks, brought the global economy to its knees, and undermined three decades of neoliberal orthodoxy. Covering the development of the crisis from the economic front line, BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason explores the roots of the US and UK's financial hubris, documenting the real-world causes and consequences from the Ford factory, to Wall Street, to the City of London. In this fully updated new edition, he recounts how the credit crunch became a full-blown financial crisis, and explores its impact on capitalist ideology and politics in our new age of austerity."--P. [4] of cover.

A secular regime is toppled by Western intervention, but an Islamic backlash turns the liberators into occupiers. Caught between interventionists at home and fundamentalists abroad, a prime minister flounders as his ministers betray him, alliances fall apart, and a runaway general makes policy in the field. As the media accuse Western soldiers of barbarity and a region slides into chaos, the armies of God clash on an ancient river and an accidental empire arises. This is not the Middle East of the early twenty-first century. It is Africa in the late nineteenth century, when the river Nile became the setting for an extraordinary collision between Europeans, Arabs, and Africans. A human and religious drama, the conflict defined the modern relationship between the West and the Islamic world. The story is not only essential for understanding the modern clash of civilizations but is also a gripping, epic, tragic adventure. "Three Empires on the Nile" tells of the rise of the first modern Islamic state and its fateful encounter with the British Empire of Queen Victoria. Ever since the self-proclaimed Islamic messiah known as the Mahdi gathered an army in the Sudan and besieged and captured Khartoum under its British overlord Charles Gordon, the dream of a new caliphate has haunted modern Islamists. Today, Shiite insurgents call themselves the Mahdi Army, and Sudan remains one of the great fault lines of battle between Muslims and Christians, blacks and Arabs. The nineteenth-century origins of it all were even more dramatic and strange than today's headlines. In the hands of Dominic Green, the story of the Nile's three empires is an epic in the tradition of Kipling, the bard of empire, and Winston Churchill, who fought in the final destruction of the Mahdi's army. It is a sweeping and very modern tale of God and globalization, slavers and strategists, missionaries and messianists. A pro-Western regime collapses from its own corruption, a jihad threatens the global economy, a liberation movement degenerates into a tyrannical cult, military intervention goes wrong, and a temporary occupation lasts for decades. In the rise and fall of empires, we see a parable for our own times and a reminder that, while American military involvement in the Islamic world is the beginning of a new era for America, it is only the latest chapter in an older story for the people of the region.

Review “Leo Panitch and Colin Leys have written a book whose significance extends far beyond the specific case of the British Labour Party.”—Critical Sociology “... a brilliant refutation of New Labour’s version of history. With an impressive range of evidence, careful analysis and a theoretical framework, [Panitch and Leys] have provided a highly readable and committed book ... recommended for everyone who really wants to understand the politics and recent history of the Labour Party.”—Contemporary Politics “... a rich and immensely enjoyable narrative, full of detail about the trajectory taken by Labour over the last quarter-century.”—Times Literary Supplement Product Description This trenchant account of the last twenty-five years of the British Labour Party argues that Tony Blair’s modernizing tendency was profoundly mistaken in asserting that the only alternative to traditional social democracy and narrow parliamentarianism was an acceptance of neo-liberalism. In blaming the Labour left, rather than the social-democratic right for the party’s years in the electoral wilderness, the modernizers rejected the creativity and energy which the party’s New Left had mobilized, and without which their own professed aim of democratic renewal was unlikely to be realized. About the Author Colin Leys is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. His previous books include Politics in Britain, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory and, with Leo Panitch, The End of Parliamentary Socialism. Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University. Editor of The Socialist Register for 25 years, his many books include Working Class Politics in Crisis, A Different Kind of State, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, and American Empire and The Political Economy of Global Finance.

Foreign policy, for leftists, used to be relatively simple. They were for the breakdown of capitalism and its replacement with a centrally planned economy. They were for the workers against the moneyed interests and for colonized peoples against imperial (Western) powers. But these easy substitutes for thought are becoming increasingly difficult. Neo-liberal capitalism is triumphant, and the workers movement is in radical decline. National liberation movements have produced new oppressions. A reflexive anti-imperialist politics can turn leftists into apologists for morally abhorrent groups. In Michael Walzers view, the left can no longer (in fact, could never) take automatic positions but must proceed from clearly articulated moral principles. In this book, adapted from essays published in Dissent, Walzer asks how leftists should think about the international scene -- about humanitarian intervention and world government, about global inequality and religious extremism -- in light of a coherent set of underlying political values.

2010 Reprint of 1944 First Edition. In World Commodities and World Currency, Graham offers a global analysis of the systems that could reduce dangerous cycles of price instability in order to achieve stability in a postwar economy. Graham, in an astonishing display of foresight, shows how commodity reserves should play an important part in any economic policy. Throughout the book, Graham maintains that stabilization of commodities offers a comparatively simple technique by which the world could achieve the fourfold objective of foreign-exchange stability, reasonable price stability, protective stockpiles, and -- most importantly -- a balanced expansion of the world's output and consumption of useful goods. Readers today will discover that this landmark book has timely interest. In the aftermath of the Asian currencies collapse, and in the face of the organization of the European Common Union and the merging of European banks into a European Central Bank with one common currency, Graham's warnings about the dangers of a floating currency and his trenchant corrective prescriptions bear even greater relevance than ever.

A deep, diverse edited volume addressing the most critical issues regarding the future of humanity and intelligence -- with chapters authored by a who's-who of leading futurist thinkers and doers. According to Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil and a rapidly increasing chorus of techno-futurists, we are living on the brink of a technological Singularity - a time when machines will become vastly more intelligent than humans. In such a scenario, death, disease and everyday material scarcity will be radically diminished, and life will be dramatically different in many other ways. But what will the path to this amazing future look like? How will human life grow and unfold as technology advances and Singularity approaches? The chapters in this book approach this issue from the perspectives of multiple visionary authors from around the globe, covering topics such as the impact of life extension, the future of money and exchange, the future of human psychology, biological self-modification, intelligence enhancement, automation and escalating unemployment, the possibility of global war between pro and anti technology forces, the impact of future technology on Asia and Africa, the emerging Global Brain, the future of surveillance and privacy, and much more. There are no easy or definite answers here - but lots of fascinating questions to explore. CONTENTS Chapter One: Predicting the Age of Post-Human Intelligences , by Ted Goertzel and Ben Goertzel Chapter Two: A Tale of Two Transitions , by Robin Hanson Chapter Three: Longer Lives on the Brink of Global Population Contraction: A Report from 2040 , by Max More Chapter Four: Implanting Post-Human Intelligence in Human Bodies , by John Hewitt Chapter Five: The Singularity and the Methuselarity: Similarities and Differences , by Aubrey de Grey Chapter Six: Robotics and AI: Impacts Felt on Every Aspect of Our Future World , by Daryl Nazareth Chapter Seven: Robotics, AI, the Luddite Fallacy and the Future of the Job Market , by Wayne Radinsky Chapter Eight: Moral Responsibility and Autonomous Machines , by David Burke Chapter Nine: How Will the Artilect War Start? , by Hugo de Garis Chapter Ten: Return to Eden? Promises and Perils on the Road to Global Superintelligence , by Francis Heylighen Chapter Eleven: Distributing Cognition: From Local Brains to the Global Brain , by Clément Vidal Chapter Twelve: A World of Views: A World of Interacting Post-human Intelligences , by Viktoras Veitas and David Weinbaum (Weaver) Chapter Thirteen: Chinese Perspectives on the Approach to the Singularity , by Mingyu Huang Chapter Fourteen: Africa Today and the Shadow of the Coming Singularity , by Hruy Tsegaye Chapter Fifteen: The World's First Decentralized System for Financial and Legal Transaction , by Chris Odom Chapter Sixteen: Beyond Money: Offer Networks, a Potential Infrastructure for a Post-Money Economy , by Ben Goertzel Chapter Seventeen: Sousveillance and AGI , by Ben Goertzel and Stephan Vladimir Bugaj Chapter Eighteen: The Future of Human Nature , by Ben Goertzel Chapter Nineteen: Capitalism, Socialism, Singularitarianism , by Ted Goertzel Chapter Twenty: Toward a Human-Friendly Post-Singularity World , by Ben Goertzel Chapter Twenty-one: Looking Backward from 2100 , by Ben Goertzel and Ted Goertzel

This book provides a comparative analysis of environmental regulation in multi-jurisdictional legal and political systems, focusing on the United States, the European Union, and the international community. Each of these systems must deal with environmental interdependencies that cross local borders, in some cases creating regional problems, such as acid deposition, ozone type smog, and pollution of shared water bodies. Some transjurisdictional environmental problems are global, including stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity. Other environmental problems, however, are localised in their effect on health and the environment.

Understanding the Crash starts with a simple question that still haunts us all: What has happened to the world economy? With the kind of striking precision that only graphic nonfiction can provide, Seth Tobocman and Eric Laursen explain just how we got into this mess — and how we can get out of it. Looking back across more than a quarter century, the authors outline the roots of our current economic crisis. They show how the troubles of a working-class community in Cleveland or a newly built suburb of Miami became an international financial crisis, explaining the complex new forms of credit that came into being because of financial deregulation, and how they created an economic whirlpool. From there they discuss how, over the same time span, a smaller and smaller group of people came to control a larger and larger percentage of the world’s money — a result of rising inequality that, combined with the shortage of affordable housing, a decline in real wages, and our unwavering belief in an “ownership society,” impelled poor people into debt. Tobocman and Laursen conclude with a consideration of a restructured financial system and a look toward a culture of sustainability — one that covets real wealth in the form of security, meaningful work, and community.

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy despite major changes in the workings of the global political economy in the post–Cold War era—changes in which they are themselves deeply implicated. This pathbreaking volume, edited by anthropologists John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, explores the reasons behind the increasingly assertive politics of custom in many corners of Africa. Chiefs come in countless guises—from university professors through cosmopolitan businessmen to subsistence farmers–but, whatever else they do, they are a critical key to understanding the tenacious hold that “traditional” authority enjoys in the late modern world. Together the contributors explore this counterintuitive chapter in Africa’s history and, in so doing, place it within the broader world-making processes of the twenty-first century.

Capitalism makes possible a new form of domination by purely economic means, argues Ellen Meiksins Wood. So, surely, even the most seasoned White House hawk would prefer to exercise global hegemony in this way, without costly colonial entanglements. Yet, as Wood powerfully demonstrates, the economic empire of capital has also created a new unlimited militarism. By contrasting the new imperialism to historical forms such as the Roman and Spanish empire, and by tracing the development of capitalist imperialism back to the English domination of Ireland and on the British Empire in America and India, Wood shows how today's capitalist empire, a global economy administered by local states, has come tom spawn a new military doctrine of war without end, in purpose or time.

Examines five main aspects of peasant life: social structure;local and global economy;class and political action;culture;policies towards peasants. The study of peasant societies is a developing area of enquiry, reflected in this new edition of a work first published in 1971.

This new collection of essays by an international group of lawyers and social scientists examines the pattern of regulation now being put in place to cope with the major transformation in the territorial organization of economic activity and of political power. The essays address the question of how legal institutions will emerge to mediate the dynamic of the new international marketplace; the technical problem of selecting the appropriate level of government for economic regulation; and the concern that the global economy's operation outside of the control of national regulation will, absent of developed international legal institutions, frustrate the democratic process.

'Robert Peston's compelling account of global financial meltdown is a must-read..' - The Observer Former economics editor of BBC news explains the recent global economic mess and how to escape it - in his characteristically straightforward way. 'How do we fix this mess? I don't know. But don't stop reading now. Perhaps if we have a clearer understanding of what went wrong, we'll have a better idea of what needs to be done. This book is a map of what needs to be fixed.' The record-breaking unbroken growth between 1992 and 2008 wasn't the economic miracle that it seemed. It was based on a number of dangerous illusions - most notably that it didn't matter that the UK and US year after year consumed more than they earned. But we couldn't go on increasing our indebtedness forever. The financial crash of 2007/8 and the subsequent economic slump in much of the west was the moment when we realised we had borrowed more than we could afford to repay. So who got it wrong? Bankers, investors and regulators? And were they greedy, stupid or asleep? What was the role of government? And what part did we, as consumers, play in all this? How do we get through this difficult period of transition to a more sustainable economy, one based on investment and exports, rather than on borrowing and consumption? With the same probing lucidity he brought to WHO RUNS BRITAIN?, Robert Peston takes us step-by-step towards a common sense way to fix this mess.

In this timely and provocative study, William I. Robinson challenges received wisdom on Central America. He starts with an exposition on the new global capitalism. Then, drawing on a wide range of historical documentation, interviews, and social science research, he proceeds to show how capitalist globalization has thoroughly transformed the region, disrupting the conventional pattern of revolutionary upheaval, civil wars, and pacification, and ushering in instead a new transnational model of economy and society. Beyond his focus on Central America, Robinson provides a critical framework for understanding development and social change in other regions of the world in the age of globalization. Demonstrating how the very forces of capitalism have brought into being new social agents and political actors unlikely to acquiesce in the face of the emerging order, Transnational Conflicts shows why the Isthmus, along with other regions, is likely to return to the headlines in the near future.

For much of her career, Elfriede Jelinek has been maligned in the press for both her unrelenting critique of Austrian complicity in the Holocaust and her provocative deconstructions of pornography. Despite this, her central role in shaping contemporary literature was finally recognized in 2004 with the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee acknowledged Jelinek's groundbreaking work that offers a "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." Although she is an internationally recognized playwright, Jelinek's work is difficult to find in English, which makes this new volume, which includes Rechnitz: The Exterminating Angel and The Merchant's Contracts , all the more valuable. In Rechnitz , a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual historical event that took place near the Austrian/Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. More than a docu-drama, this work explores the very transmission of historic memory and has been called Jelinek's best performance text to date. In The Merchant's Contracts , Jelinek brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated and bearing the brunt of the economic crisis. In the age of the global economy, Jelinek turns the story of a merchant of Vienna into a universal comedy of errors, making this her most accessible work. Along with an extensive introduction by the translator that both contextualizes and analyzes the two brilliant texts, a DVD of performances of both plays accompanies this volume. Available for the first time in English, this is a collection that testifies to the power and universality of Jelinek's work.