Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist , Financial Times , Inc. , Prospect Magazine , and The Conversation “The most comprehensive and reasonable story of this shift that has yet been attempted . . . Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it.” — The Washington Post “An intellectual tour de force about the origins of identity politics and the threat it presents to genuine, honest, old-fashioned liberalism.” — Bret Stephens, The New York Times “Among the most insightful and important books written in the last decade on American democracy and its current torments, because it also shows us a way out of the trap.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind , and coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind “Outstanding.” — David Brooks, The New York Times A fascinating account of the origins of “wokeness”—and a trenchant explanation for why the noble goals of identity politics are doomed to fail For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many came to believe that members of mar­ginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice. But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minority groups transformed into our contemporary form of identity politics, a counterproductive obsession with group identity. This new ideology denies that members of different groups can truly understand each other and insists that the way governments treat their citizens should depend on the color of their skin. This, Yascha Mounk argues, is the identity trap. Those who battle for these ideas are often full of good intentions. But they ultimately stand in the way of the genuine equality we desperately need. Mounk was one of the first to warn of the risks that right-wing populists pose to American democracy, a danger that remains as serious as ever. But as he shows here, the identitarian left and the populist right actually reinforce each other; to vanquish one, it is necessary to oppose both. In The Identity Trap , Mounk provides the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences, and limitations of “wokeness.” He shows how postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory conquered many college campuses and forged an “identity synthesis” that gained tremendous influence in business, media, and government by 2020. Finally, Mounk makes a nuanced philosophical case for why these ideas are so counterproductive—and why universal, humanist values can best serve the vital goal of true equality. The Identity Trap provides truth and clarity where they are needed most.

“Step aside Tom Friedman, Sam Huntington, and Amy Chua. Franklin Foer’s dark and witty tale of the soccer world reveals the meaning of globalization in all its joys and horrors.”—Robert Kagan Just in time for the 2026 World Cup in North America—a reissue of the bestselling sports classic, featuring a new preface from the author. With the 2026 World Cup in all three nations of North America, the power and scope of soccer has truly become global. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work, Franklin Foer argues that soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a unique window into the crosscurrents of modern globalization, with all of its benefits and pitfalls. Soccer clubs don’t represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies. Unlike baseball or tennis, soccer is freighted with ancient hatreds and history. It’s a sport with real stakes—a catalyst capable of ruining regimes and launching liberation movements. Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shattering myths and dire predictions. Instead of destroying local cultures, as the left warned, globalization has revived tribalism. Far from the triumph of capitalism that the right anticipated, it has entrenched corruption. From Brazil to Bosnia, Italy to Iraq, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, whether it’s terrorism, poverty, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, or radical Islam—issues that continue to affect all of us. At a time when globalization is under attack and many Americans yearn for retrenchment and retreat from the world, this remarkable book—filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity—continues to make sense of our troubled times.

A personal, journalistic ethnography of the modern American working class, based on the travels and interactions of the author through the American heartland. " Second Class is the most important book you will read all year. A political realignment is coming, and it's my hope that the end result will work in favor of our all-too-neglected American working class. When that realignment comes, Batya and her book will help lead the way." --Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind Who is the American working class? Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life? While writing this book, Batya Ungar-Sargon visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working class who are fighting tooth and nail to survive. In Second Class , working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories--cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives--as well as what policies they think would improve them. Second Class combines deep reporting with a look at the data and expert opinions on America's emergent class divide, in which the most basic elements of a secure and stable life are increasingly out of reach for those without a college education. America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land, where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty? It's not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work--and the American worker.

Stone Age Economics is a classic study of anthropological economics, first published in 1974. As Marshall Sahlins stated in the first edition, "It has been inspired by the possibility of 'anthropological economics,' a perspective indebted rather to the nature of the primitive economies than to the categories of a bourgeois science." Ambitiously tackling the nature of economic life and how to study it comparatively, the book includes six studies which reflect the author's ideas on revising traditional views of the hunter-gatherer and so-called primitive societies, revealing them to be the original affluent society. The book examines notions of production, distribution and exchange in early communities and examines the link between economics and cultural and social factors. It consists of a set of detailed and closely related studies of tribal economies, of domestic production for livelihood, and of the submission of domestic production to the material and political demands of society at large. Marshall Sahlins is one of the most prominent American anthropologists of our time. He holds the title of Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is How Natives Think: About Captain Cook, for Example.

A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end extreme global poverty, now a Signal paperback. "The poor you will always have with you," according to Matthew 26:11. But Jeffrey Sachs, economics superstar, special advisor to the Secretary General of the UN and the author of The End of Poverty , vehemently disagrees. In his view, poverty -- especially the extreme deprivation of sub-Saharan Africa -- can easily be eradicated. The vast sums spent in foreign aid over the decades has not come close to alleviating the dire subsistence problems of Africans. Sachs believed he knew the reason: the developed world simply hadn't spent enough. In 2006, Sachs, backed by tens of millions of donor dollars, launched the five-year Millennium Villages Project. Sachs would test his theories in villages in different African countries, then, with each success, scale up until until the program was continent-wide. His first village "make-over" was a small community in Sauri, Kenya, and the immediate effect was encouraging. With that first inkling of success achieved, Sachs rolled out a dozen model Millennium villages in ten countries. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Project, following Sachs on official trips and listening in on conversations with heads of states, rival organisations and potential donors. And she has immersed herself in the lives of people in two of the remote villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting hospitality from these camel herders and smallhold farmers, and sharing in their struggles, Munk came to understand the on-the-ground issues challenging Sachs' one-size-fits-all approach to global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happened when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man met messy human reality.

Renowned investigative journalist Richard Behar delivers the definitive account of history’s largest—and longest-running—financial fraud, “the scale of the deception…beggars belief” ( New York Post ). Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar’s relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the conman. By the time Madoff died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of handwritten letters, participated in some fifty phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews—a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established relationships with hundreds of regulators, prosecutors, FBI agents, investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff’s, family members, school classmates, and others. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history’s most enduring fraud—and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar illuminates not only the fraud’s origins—decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession—but also the complicity of investors, Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity’s most consistent weakness: greed.

Reveals how Michael Milken sold $200 billion of junk bonds, turned corporate America upside down, killed dozens of S&Ls, cost the taxpayers billions, and gave America a push towards the longest recession in history. 50,000 first printing. National ad/promo. Tour.

Michael Wolff knows Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Jean-Marie Messier, Steve Ross and Ted Turner. He knows what they want, what fuels their appetites and what they can and can't see when they look in the mirror (or the financial pages). And he tells us all he knows in this report.

Los Angeles's history is a story of conflicting visions. Most historians, journalists, and filmmakers have focused on L.A. as a bastion of corporate greed, business boosterism, political corruption, cheap labor, exploited immigrants, and unregulated sprawl. The Next Los Angeles tells a different story: that of the reformers and radicals who have struggled for alternative visions of social and economic justice. The authors chronicle efforts of progressive social movements that worked throughout the twentieth century to create a more livable, just, and democratic Los Angeles. These movements—what the authors call Progressive L.A.—have produced a new kind of labor movement, community-oriented environmentalism, and multi-ethnic coalition politics. This book shows how reformers have fought to transform a city characterized by huge economic disparities, concrete-encased rivers, and an endless landscape of subdivisions, freeways, and malls into a progressive model for regions around the country. The Next Los Angeles includes a decade-by-decade historical snapshot of the city's progressive social movements and an in-depth exploration of key trends that are remaking L.A. at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It examines L.A.'s changing political landscape, including grassroots initiatives to construct a new agenda for social transformation. At once a history, a policy analysis, and a road map for a progressive future, this book provides an exciting portrayal of a city on the cutting edge of many of the social, economic, and environmental changes sweeping across America.

It was the summer of '81 and the brokers at the shabby offices of Bache & Co. couldn't have been happier: After years of their business being tainted by one scandal after another, the beleaguered firm was being purchased by one of America's most respected institutions, Prudential Insurance. Soon rechristened as Prudential-Bache Securities, the brokerage firm would continued the trust needed to attract thousands of new investors eager to put their savings into rock-solid investments. Yet as billions of dollars began pouring in from around the country, Pru-Bache executives and their outside sponsors of investment deals were secretly eating into the very cash Pru-Bache was supposed to be protecting - and indeed growing - for their customers. As their brokers were touting financially shaky limited partnership deals as safe and solid investments, everyone from elderly retirees to sophisticated investors was being duped, with hundreds of thousands of them losing their homes, their retirement funds, or massive chunks of their savings. Meanwhile, executives at Pru-Bache and their colleagues were enjoying lavish party vacations, exorbitant personal gifts, and business trips aboard ships like the QE2 - all paid for by the investor capital with which they were entrusted. By the time regulators could pin anything on Pru-Bache, what began as the comeback story of the '80s had become the most destructive scandal Wall Street had ever known. In Serpent on the Rock, award-winning reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who investigated the scandal for the New York Times, tells the whole devastating story of the rot behind the dignified facade of Wall Street. With intricate detail of the crimes and lies behind the "rock-solid" image, Eichenwald re-creates the colorful characters who were the primary enablers of the massive scandal the company is still reeling from today.

In this unconventionial and sharply written text, Hollander introduces the work of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill, and, on specific Malthus and Marx. He leads the student through the nuances of the arguments, making clear how he agrees with or challenges recieved ideas about their writings. Attention is given to the precursors of the classics, to their immediate successors, and to the Sraffian system.

"Books and Bidders: The Adventures of a Bibliophile" by A. S. W. Rosenbach offers a captivating glimpse into the world of rare books, book collecting, and the vibrant book trade of a bygone era. Rosenbach, a celebrated figure in bookselling history, recounts his experiences navigating auctions and building remarkable collections. This engaging narrative explores the intricacies of the bookseller's art, offering insights into the acquisition, appraisal, and appreciation of literary treasures. For the passionate bibliophile and anyone fascinated by the history of books, "Books and Bidders" provides a unique perspective on the intersection of business, biography, and the enduring allure of rare and significant volumes. A valuable resource for those interested in library science and collection development, this volume illuminates the thrilling pursuit of literary gems and the colorful personalities who shaped the American book trade. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"If a paternity test were done on South Africa's widely admired Constitution, whose DNA would come up? Is the Constitution just a beautiful piece of paper? If Oliver Tambo were alive today, walking around South Africa, would he be pleased with what he saw? In this riveting, direct account of the genesis of South Africa's Constitution, former Justice Albie Sachs answers these crucial questions. In Oliver Tambo's Dream, Sachs writes about the years he spent working under Tambo's leadership in exile preparing for a post-apartheid constitutional order in South Africa and about the extreme crises that were overcome during the post-1990 constitution-making process to arrive at the document we have today. Tackling the burning issues that face our country today, he argues that the Constitution is a framework for struggle and decolonization that can be used to bring about land reform and true equality"--

This comprehensive study offers an analysis of the museum as a public institution, provides an account of its historical roots, and gives a forecast of its future. In the Foreword, S. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, states: "Museums are becoming more and more important. For one thing, as Dr. Wittlin points out, museums provide immediate encounters with authenticity, or a reasonable simulacrum of it. They provide new ways of teaching and learning, and an introduction to processes of lifelong education, now a priority for everyone." An earlier book by Dr. Wittlin, The Museum: Its History and Its Tasks in Education, was the direct predecessor of the present work. The historical chapters have been expanded, and whereas the former volume ended with the outbreak of the Second World War, this study considers the achievements that took place in all parts of the world from 1945 up to the present time. The author's earlier work, published in England, gained international acclaim as a definitive publication in the field and was praised for its philosophical depth, historical breadth, and perceptive insights into the character of a complex institution. Museological events of a scope without precedent are today in a stage of drafting and builidng. Dr. Wittlin examines all aspects of a museum's function: from the traditional functions as a depository, a center of research, and an educational agency to the newer, perhaps peripheral, functions that the author summarizes under the term "cultural center." All these purposes, though valid, must be constantly reexamined in the light of the "extending frontiers of knowledge, rising standards of general education, and of access to new techniques based on scientific advances." In a chapter on a "Twelve-Point Program for Museum Renewal" the main, broad facets of the institution are clearly and concisely discussed. Dr. Wittlin begins with a definition of the term museum established by the International Council of Museums and describes problems of institutional identity and funding, training of personnel, and determining visitor population. She also points up the fallacies in the assumption that mere exposure to exhibits results in learning and stimulation. This book is an impressive and scholarly presentation of the museum pictured through its past and examined in its present functioning as well as what it may offer in the foreseeable future. It is also entertainingly written. The "hottest" current issue, as Dr. Wittlin calls it, is ecology, the study of the interdependence of all living things not only among themselves but with the organic environment. The museum's role in this issue is postulated and discussed. The work is amply illustrated.

This book assesses the politics of the West German trade unions in the context of their larger role as major actors in the polity of a democratic Federal Republic of Germany. By focusing on the historical realities of the labour movement, the study concentrates on explaining to what extent organised labour helped solidify, yet at the same time challenged the dominant structures of politics and authority in German history's most extensive and longest-lasting democracy. Professor Markovits explains the immediate financial, legal and political framework wherein the unions operate and differentiates the various political trends that have consistently determined inter-union co-operation, as well as rivalry. An analysis of four major unions, including the vast metal workers' grouping, shows how the industrial reality of each helps to shape its political outlook and strategic thinking. Contingent factors such as personal leadership are analysed in addition to objective industrial and historical criteria. This major study concludes by cautiously gauging the future of the West German trade unions in an increasingly complex and uncertain world.