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  Inside the Middle East - Making...

  Avi Melamed

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  Acclaimed Israeli intelligence analyst Avi Melamed has spent more than thirty years interpreting Middle East affairs. His long-awaited Inside the Middle East challenges widely accepted perceptions and provides a gripping and uniquely enlightening guide to make sense of the events unfolding in the region.Melamed considers all the major power players in the Middle East, explains the underlying issues, and creates a three-dimensional picture, an illustration that connects the dots and provides a fascinating road map. He elucidates developments such as the Arab Spring, the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rise of ISIS, the epic Sunni-Shiite animosity, the essence of the war in Syria, the role of the Caliphate and Jihad, and the looming nuclear arms race. He also provides a rare opportunity to journey into the psyche of Arab society.This unparalleled volume is a milestone in our understanding of the Middle East. It is the untold story of the struggles that will shape the region, and the world, for decades to come, and a groundbreaking guide that will shake you to the core, force you to reevalute your outlook, and give you tips to navigate the future.

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  Second Thoughts on Bernie Madoff

  J.M. Kuczynski

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  Bernie Madoff's crimes are often blamed on insufficient regulation: had the relevant regulatory agencies been doing their job, it is thought, the Madoff-debacle would never have happened. But I suspect that Madoff's crimes may themselves have been a consequence of a superabundance of regulations, the effect of which was to make it prohibitively difficult to make money in the financial sector without breaking the law.An Author's Republic audio production.

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  The Roman Imperial Succession

  John D. Grainger

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  An investigation of how a man could become a Roman emperor, and the failure to create an enduring, consistent system for selecting the next emperor.  
   
  John D. Grainger analyses the Roman imperial succession, demonstrating that the empire organized by Augustus was fundamentally flawed in the method it used to find emperors. Augustus’s system was a mixture of heredity, senatorial, and military influences, and these were generally antagonistic. Consequently, the Empire went through a series of crises, in which the succession to a previous, usually dead, emperor was the main issue. The infamous “Year of the Four Emperors,” AD 69, is only the most famous of these crises, which often involved bouts of bloody and destructive civil war, assassinations and purges. These were followed by a period, usually relatively short, in which the victor in the “crisis” established a new system, juggling the three basic elements identified by Augustus, but which was as fragile and short lived as its predecessor; these “consequences” of each crisis are discussed. The lucid and erudite text is supported by over 22 genealogical tables and 100 images illustrating the Emperors. 
   
  Praise of The Roman Imperial Succession 
   
  “For a general introduction to the question of how one becomes a Roman emperor, Grainger has provided a sound guide.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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  Finding George Orwell in Burma

  Emma Larkin

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  Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she has come to know all too well the many ways this police state can be described as  "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. The connection between George Orwell and Burma is not simply metaphorical, of course; Orwell's mother was born in Burma, and he was shaped by his experiences there as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. Both his first novel, Burmese Days, and the novel he left unfinished upon his death were set in Burma. And then there is the place of Orwell's work in Burma today: Larkin found it a commonplace observation in Burma that Orwell did not write one book about the country but three-the other two being Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. When Larkin quietly asked one Burmeseman if he knew the work of George Orwell, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, "Ah, you mean the prophet."Finding George Orwell in Burma is the story of the year Larkin spent traveling across this shuttered police state using the life and work of Orwell as her guide. Traveling from Mandalay and Rangoon to poor delta backwaters and up to the old hill-station towns in the mountains of Burma's far north, Larkin visits the places Orwell worked and lived and the places his books live still. She brings to vivid life a country and a people cut off from the rest of the world, and from one another, by the ruling military junta and its network of spies and informers. Orwell's spoor leads Larkin to strange, ghostly traces of the British colonial presence and to people who have found ways to bolster their minds against the state's all-pervasive propaganda. Orwell's moral clarity, hatred of injustice, and observant gaze serve as the author's compass in a less tangible sense too: they are qualities that also suffuse this, her own powerful reckoning with one of the world's least free countries.

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  The End of Growth - Adapting to...

  Richard Heinberg

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  Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.Richard Heinberg's latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes. Written in an engaging, highly readable style, it shows why growth is being blocked by three factors:Resource depletionEnvironmental impactsCrushing levels of debtThese converging limits will force us to re-evaluate cherished economic theories and to reinvent money and commerce.The End of Growth describes what policy makers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth's budget of energy and resources. We can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than continuing to pursue the now-unattainable prize of ever-expanding GDP.

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  Top Secret Tales of World War II

  William B. Breuer

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  World War II was fought by soldiers out of uniform. Stealth and ingenuity were their weapons. Victory was their only code of conduct.
  
  In this book, noted military historian William Breuer documents espionage—in all its forms—as it evolved in the hands of both Allied and Axis agents of intelligence and counterintelligence. Here you'll find riveting tales of patriotism and treachery, subversion and sabotage, kidnappings and assassinations, and bribes and blackmailing—with frequently startling revelations about the secret wars behind both the battlefields and the headlines.

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