In a myth-busting analysis of the world's most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting, "one of the most important writers" in the field ( The New York Times ), argues that only one weapon has yielded progress: force. Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace proposals, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions, and state-building efforts. The conventional story is that these well-meaning attempts at peacemaking were repeatedly, perhaps terminally, thwarted by violence. Through a rich interweaving of reportage, historical narrative, and powerful analysis, Nathan Thrall presents a startling counter-history. He shows that force—including but not limited to violence—has impelled each side to make its largest concessions, from Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution to Israeli territorial withdrawals. This simple fact has been neglected by the world powers, which have expended countless resources on initiatives meant to diminish friction between the parties. By quashing any hint of confrontation, promising an imminent negotiated solution, facilitating security cooperation, developing the institutions of a still unborn Palestinian state, and providing bounteous economic and military assistance, the United States and Europe have merely entrenched the conflict by lessening the incentives to end it. Thrall’s important book upends the beliefs steering these failed policies, revealing how the aversion of pain, not the promise of peace, has driven compromise for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Published as Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza reaches its fiftieth anniversary, which is also the centenary of the Balfour Declaration that first promised a Jewish national home in Palestine, The Only Language They Understand advances a bold thesis that shatters ingrained positions of both left and right and provides a new and eye-opening understanding of this most vexed of lands.

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.

2020: A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. Packer explores four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. He shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy: we must look for a common American identity and find it in the passion for equality that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. -- adapted from jacket

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.

The Black Diaspora tells the enthralling story of African-descended people outside Africa, spanning more than five centuries and a dozen countries of settlement, from Britain, Canada, and the United States to Haiti, Guyana, and Brazil. Ronald Segal's account begins in Africa itself, with the cultures and societies flourishing there before the arrival of the Atlantic slave trade, which transported over ten million people to the Americas, after killing at least as many in their procurement and passage. He examines the extent of the profits made through the trade by merchants, manufacturers, investors, and planters, along with the racist ideology that developed as whites strove to rationalize an enormous economic dependence. Segal describes the various ways in which the system of slavery developed and provides the most comprehensive account to date of the resistance by the slaves themselves, from escape and arson to guerrilla warfare and revolution. When emancipation finally came, the former slaves were left in the fetters of poverty and discrimination. Segal details the course of the struggle against colonial rule and the racial oppressions of self-styled democracies. In recounting his own travels through the Diaspora, he shows the continuing plight of peoples confined by the consequences of the past and the prejudices of the present: racked by violence, as in Jamaica and the ghettos of America; denied the right to assert their sense of identity, as in Cuba; acknowledged only to be repudiated, as in Brazil. Yet this is also, Segal reveals, a Diaspora of wondrous achievement. It has immeasurably enriched world culture in music, language and literature, painting, sculpture and architecture; has done much to make sports a form of art; and has invested Western culture with the ecological reverence derived from its African source. Segal argues that the black Diaspora has a unique destiny, infused by the love of freedom that is its creative impulse.

A collection of fourteen essays in which Professor Postan draws together for the first time his contributions to the debate on historical method, and discusses from a variety of different angles, the inter-relation of history and the social sciences. After making, in his first three essays, a direct statement of his point of view, the author deals with two main aspects of the subject: time sequences and theoretical relevance of facts. He then proceeds to exemplify his point of view more particularly with relation to macro-economics and to certain specific issues within economic history as well as to economic history in general. In the final two chapters, one is on Karl Marx, the other on Hugh Gaitskell, he seeks to describe the intellectual climate in which the debate on methodology was held and in which his opinions on the subject were formed. The essays contained in this book will be of interest to all those involved in the social sciences, economics and history, as well as to those specifically concerned with historical methodology.

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.

The last 15 years have witnessed deep changes in Israeli society. The naive solidarity of the early years of statehood has given way to more sophisticated approaches, and the atmosphere of the 1990s was conducive towards critique and open discussion. It was the age of the Oslo Accords, of the large wave of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, economic growth and prosperity, and a concurrent feeling of security and well-being. Israel was fast becoming a postcapitalist society, a junior member of the global village. This newly acquired self-assurance led to openness towards unorthodox views on basic questions of Israeli identity. This book attempts to come to grips with these themes. The complex texture of Israeli society is drawn here by a number of hands, presenting up-to-date approaches, as viewed by experts.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.