Weitere Bücher, die Sie mögen werden

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  Confronting Capitalism - How the...

  Vivek Chibber

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  Why is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it so difficult for working people to organize around common interests? How do we begin to build a more equal and democratic society? 
   
   
   
  Vivek Chibber provides a clear and accessible map of how capitalism works, how it limits the power of working and oppressed people, and how to overcome those limits. The capitalist economy generates incredible wealth but also injustice. Those who own the factories, hotels, and farms always have an advantage over the people who rely on that ownership class for their livelihoods. This inequality in power and income is reflected in the operation of the state, where capitalists are able to exert their will even under relatively democratic conditions. The most important reason is that states depend on the employment and profits from capitalist enterprise for both finances and legitimacy. Every meaningful victory for working people has been won through collective struggle but collective action is very difficult to coordinate. In the final section of the book, Chibber walks the listener through some of the historical attempts to build socialism and presents a vision of how we might, perhaps against the odds, build a socialist future.

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  Thinking Historically - A Guide...

  Francis J. Gavin

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  It seems obvious that we should use history to improve policy. If we have a good understanding of the past, it should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the extraordinarily consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy. But how do we gain that knowledge? How should history be used? Sadly, it is rarely done well, and historians and decision-makers seldom interact. But in this remarkable book, Francis J. Gavin explains the many ways historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us. Good historical work convincingly captures the challenges and complexities the decisionmaker faces. At its most useful, history is less a narrowly defined field of study than a practice, a mental awareness, a discernment, and a responsiveness to the past and how it unfolded into our present world—a discipline in the best sense of the word. Gavin demonstrates how a historical sensibility helps us to appreciate the unexpected; complicates our assumptions; makes the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar; and requires us, without entirely suspending moral judgment, to try to understand others on their own terms. This book is a powerful argument for thinking historically as a way for listeners to apply wisdom in encountering what is foreign to them.

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  Plowshares into Swords -...

  David Ekbladh

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  An in-depth look at how the ideas formulated by the interwar League of Nations shaped American thinking on the modern global order. 
  Plowshares into Swords recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, David Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.

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  Worse Than Nothing - The...

  Erwin Chemerinsky

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  Why originalism is a flawed, incoherent, and dangerously ideological method of constitutional interpretation 
   
   
   
  Originalism, the view that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it is adopted, was once the fringe theory of a few extremely conservative legal scholars but is now a well-accepted mode of constitutional interpretation. Three of the Supreme Court's nine justices explicitly embrace the originalist approach, as do increasing numbers of judges in the lower courts. 
   
   
    
  Noted legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky gives a comprehensive analysis of the problems that make originalism unworkable as a method of constitutional interpretation. He argues that the framers themselves never intended constitutional interpretation to be inflexible and shows how it is often impossible to know what the "original intent" of any particular provision was. Perhaps worst of all, though its supporters tout it as a politically neutral and objective method, originalist interpretation tends to disappear when its results fail to conform to modern conservative ideology.

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  The Architecture of Disability -...

  David Gissen

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  Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for "the construction of disability," this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world. 
   
   
   
  Stressing the connection between architectural form and the capacities of the human body, David Gissen demonstrates how disability haunts the history and practice of architecture. Examining various historic sites, landscape designs, and urban spaces, he deconstructs the prevailing functionalist approach to accommodating disabled people in architecture and instead asserts that physical capacity is essential to the conception of all designed space. 
   
   
   
  By recontextualizing the history of architecture through the discourse of disability, Gissen presents a unique challenge to current modes of architectural practice, theory, and education. Envisioning an architectural design that fully integrates disabled persons into its production, it advocates for looking beyond traditional notions of accessibility and shows how certain incapacities can offer us the means to positively reimagine the roots of architecture.

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  The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis...

  Karl Marx

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  "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is a book written by Karl Marx, a German philosopher and economist, in 1852. The book analyzes the political situation in France during the mid-19th century and provides a critique of the bourgeois republicanism that had taken hold there. 
  The title of the book refers to the date of the coup d'état in which Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, seized power in France. Marx used this event as a lens through which to examine the larger historical forces that had led to the rise of Louis Bonaparte and the decline of the bourgeois republic. 
  In the book, Marx argues that the bourgeois republic had failed to address the fundamental economic and social problems facing France, and that this failure had paved the way for the rise of a new form of authoritarian rule. He believed that the only way to truly address these problems was through a proletarian revolution that would overthrow the capitalist system. 
  "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is considered to be one of Marx's most important works, and it has had a significant impact on the field of political theory. The book's analysis of the relationship between economic and political power has influenced generations of scholars and activists, and it continues to be studied and debated to this day.

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