START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality - all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the Israel effect, there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.

After two consecutive elections in which Democratic candidates failed to turn economic advantages into electoral victory, a debate is raging over what the Democrats should do now. Here, Clinton's economic advisor Sperling argues that the best strategy for our nation--and the best strategy for progressives whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independent--is to pursue policies that are both progressive and pro-growth, that promote progressive values of upward mobility, fair starts, and economic dignity as well as embrace markets and innovation. Democrats too often pretend that the way to promote progressive values is to slow the pace of the global economy, stop outsourcing, and intervene in the market. Republicans hold fast to the bankrupt vision that the best thing for economic growth is the smallest government possible. Sperling lays out a third way, a realistic vision in which government can improve education, reduce poverty, and restore the country to fiscal sanity.--From publisher description.

Raymond Aron's In Defense of Decadent Europe was first conceived at a time of great uncertainty for the Western democracies. The postwar economic boom had been interrupted by "stagflation," while communist and socialist parties in Italy and France were powerful factors in Europe's political landscape. Aron's book has a threefold purpose: the analysis of the Soviet Russian regime and its Marxist-Leninist theoretical foundation; the detailed empirical comparison between liberal democracies and collectivist regimes of the East; and, above all, the exploration of what might be termed the "problem" of democracy the tendency of democratic regimes to undermine themselves unless checked in their most extreme tendencies. Aron denounces the clash between democracy and the Marxist-Leninist mystification and explains how Marxism leads to Soviet-style ideology. The second part of the book constitutes a defense of liberal Europe. The author makes comparisons in terms of productivity, technical innovation, living standards, scientific progress, and human freedom. But Aron also notes there are important ways in which the West must put her house in order by cultivating authority in the church, in universities, in business, and even in the army. This paradox is conveyed by the title of the book, the juxtaposition of the words In Defense of and Decadent Europe. In the new introduction, Daniel Mahoney and Brian Anderson discuss the disenchanted conservative liberalism of Raymond Aron that set him apart. Among the topics they cover are: the challenge of ideocracy, the decadence of democracy, and Aron as a civic philosopher. In Defense of Decadent Europe combines ideological debate with economic and social analysis. Its thorough examination of Western freedom versus the Eastern communism of the recent past extends well beyond parochial debates into a basic vision of Western societies. The book will be compelling for historians, political scientists, economists, and philosophers.

"In Apogee of Empire, the authors argue that the inability to renovate the Hapsburg legacies reflected reluctance to undertake radical changes first at home, then in Spain's relationship with its colonies." "The Steins trace in detail efforts to reform the Spanish establishment in the early 1760s, initially under the leadership of the marques de Esquilache, who accompanied Charles from Naples. Reformers had to determine which adjustments could be made without risking radical innovation. The ensuring seven-year conflict between reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup that outsted Esquilache. The authors then analyze the shift in focus to the colonies and the emphasis on incrementally modifying a key element of Spanish colonialism, transatlantic trade, via so-called free trade within the imperial system. Comercio libre, like most Bourbon reformism in general, neither realized a colonial pact nor improved Spain's competitive position in the Atlantic trading system. At the time of Charles III's death, the authors conclude, Spain had only made superficial changes, rather than the profound transformation the situation demanded, and by 1789 Spain and its wealthiest colony, New Spain, would be ill-prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America."--Jacket