Other books that might interest you

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  Cuba Since the Revolution of...

  Samuel Farber

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  “Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba’s economic and social performance.” —Foreign Affairs 
   
  Uncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution’s impact and legacy. 
   
  “The Cuban story twists and turns as we speak, so thank goodness for scholars such as Samuel Farber, an unapologetic Marxist whose knowledge of Cuban affairs is unrivalled . . . In this excellent, necessary book, Farber takes stock of fifty years of revolutionary control by recognizing achievements but lambasting authoritarianism.” —Latin American Review of Books 
   
  “A courageous and formidable balance-sheet of the Cuban Revolution, including a sobering analysis of a draconian ‘reform’ program that will only deepen the gulf between revolutionary slogans and the actual life of the people.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

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  The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's...

  Roger Moorhouse

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  History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals, the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners. The Pact that they agreed had a profound and bloody impact on Europe, and is fundamental to understanding the development and denouement of the war. 
   
  The Devils' Alliance explores the causes and implications of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, whose creation and dissolution were crucial turning points in World War II. Forged by Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, the nonaggression treaty briefly united the two powers in a brutally efficient collaboration. The Germans and Soviets quickly conquered and divided central and eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people caught between Hitler and Stalin were expropriated, deported, or killed. Fortunately for the Allies, the partnership ultimately soured. Ironically, however, the powers' exchange of material, blueprints, and technological expertise during the period of the Pact made possible a far more bloody and protracted war than would have otherwise been conceivable. 
   
  Combining comprehensive research with a gripping narrative, The Devils' Alliance is the authoritative history of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

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  Mad in USA The Ravages of the...

  Michel Desmurget

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  In America, liberalism brings prosperity to the majority? False. - In America, "anything is possible" for those who work hard? False. - In America, the unemployment rate is minimal? False.
  In America, poverty is relative and the poor live "like modest Europeans?"
  False. - In America, those excluded from the health care system receive free care when they really need it? False—really false. 
  
  In an excellent investigation, with clear and relevant examples, Michel Desmurget shatters the myth of a beautiful and prosperous America where everyone can succeed as long as they are hardworking and courageous. Taking the opposite view of the current dominant discourse on the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, the author writes a disconcerting antithesis, based on American researchers, sociologists and journalists who have studied the failures of the American model and who, for the most part, recommend surprisingly European solutions (universal social security, introduction of a minimum wage indexed to inflation, federalized education, etc.).

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  The Demon in Democracy -...

  Ryszard Legutko

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  Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish ant-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature. 
   
    
   
  In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet-style brutality. 
   
    
   
  Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.

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  Interview with Former Presidents...

  PBS NewsHour

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  Former Presidents Ford and Carter talk about their advice to President-elect George H.W. Bush, particularly on the need to focus his attention on the federal deficit.

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  The City of The Sun

  Tommaso Campanella

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  The City of the Sun is a philosophical work by the Italian Dominican philosopher Tommaso Campanella. It is an important early utopian work. The work was written in Italian in 1602, shortly after Campanella's imprisonment for heresy and sedition. A Latin version was written in 1613–1614 and published in Frankfurt in 1623. 
  The book is presented as a dialogue between "a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea-Captain". Inspired by Plato's Republic and the description of Atlantis in Timaeus, it describes a theocratic society where goods, women and children are held in common. It also resembles the City of Adocentyn in the Picatrix, an Arabic grimoire of astrological magic. In the final part of the work, Campanella prophesies—in the veiled language of astrology—that the Spanish kings, in alliance with the Pope, are destined to be the instruments of a Divine Plan: the final victory of the True Faith and its diffusion in the whole world. While one could argue that Campanella was simply thinking of the conquest of the New World, it seems that this prophecy should be interpreted in the light of a work written shortly before The City of the Sun, The Monarchy in Spain, in which Campanella exposes his vision of a unified, peaceful world governed by a theocratic monarchy.

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