Weitere Bücher, die Sie mögen werden

• 

  Hope & Despair

  Neil Findlay

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Is Scottish politics mired in a constitutional dogfight with no end in sight?
  Why has Scottish Labour failed to develop a radical and credible alternative to independence?
  Is it possible for a campaigning politician to make a difference?
  Can people power lead to positive change?
  Over the last few years, political campaigner and former Labour msp Neil Findlay kept a log of his time in the Scottish Parliament, a time which he describes as one of perpetual crisis and scandal.
  
  This book is my account of being an elected politician. My comments convey my feelings and emotions as events unfolded. If they cause upset to some, then so be it. I can only report the truth.
  There is little doubt the tectonic plates of Scottish politics are shifting. Is this a time of hope or of despair? Time will tell. As a socialist, I am an optimist and live in hope and have a belief that tomorrow will always be better than today.

  Zum Buch

• 

  Volga Blues - A Journey into the...

  Marzio G. Mian

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Winner of the Estense Prize 
    
  A risky undercover reporting trip along Russia’s great mother-river, the Volga, reveals the tortuous history and frightening current fantasies of a nation. 
    
  Since the invasion of Ukraine and ban on foreign reporters, Russia seems to have sunk into an even deeper shadow than in the darkest times of the Soviet Union. Only by presenting himself as an historian was Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian able to penetrate the Russian heartland, leading to his groundbreaking cover story for Harpers’ Magazine, “Behind the New Iron Curtain.” 
    
  In Volga Blues, Russian history and literature inform every step of Mian’s revealing and perilous journey along Russia’s most culturally significant river, the fulcrum of its history, “the mother.” Along with Alessandro Cosmelli, his photographer; Vlad, their translator and fixer; and Katya, Vlad‘s girlfriend, Mian manages to gather firsthand accounts from ordinary Russians. They discuss not only the impact of the war, Western sanctions, and their country’s isolation, but how Russian culture has changed as a result. Stalin is back in favor, Lenin has been downgraded as a “Europeanized intellectual.” Newly sophisticated local and seasonal cuisine is all the rage. People cite centuries-old grievances to explain their fear of Western invasion, as they claim a willingness to accept nuclear apocalypse to save Russian pride. Talking with contemporary Russian intellectuals, entrepreneurs, priests, widows, mercenaries, and pacifists, Mian discovers how little the West knows about Russia and Russians. Deeply distrustful of democracy, yearning for the ideological and spiritual purity of the Orthodox Church, betrayed by and fearful of the West, and reassured by the brutal, fragile, ancient dream of an imperial civilization, they make clear that the Cold War has not yet ended. 
    
  In visceral prose, Mian takes us across the floodplains where the Russian Orthodox faith first took root, where the Soviet empire asserted itself, and where the neo-imperial project of Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet autocracy is currently being consolidated. The result is a harrowing, haunting vision of today’s great clash of civilizations—between Russia and the West—including a United States that at times seems uncannily similar. 
    
  "Volga Blues blends history, myth, and comedy with the paranoia of a nation in which Stalin seems to be rising from the dead, minus the communism but with brutality intact. Marzio Mian is Alexis de Tocqueville in what has once again become a land of the czars, a Joan Didion for the new authoritarianism's absurdity and sorrow."—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

  Zum Buch

• 

  Politics for Everybody - Reading...

  Ned O'Gorman

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In this age of nearly unprecedented partisan rancor, you’d be forgiven for thinking we could all do with a smaller daily dose of politics. In his provocative and sharp book, however, Ned O’Gorman argues just the opposite: Politics for Everybody contends that what we really need to do is engage more deeply with politics, rather than chuck the whole thing out the window. In calling for a purer, more humanistic relationship with politics—one that does justice to the virtues of open, honest exchange—O’Gorman draws on the work of Hannah Arendt (1906–75). As a German-born Jewish thinker who fled the Nazis for the United States, Arendt set out to defend politics from its many detractors along several key lines: the challenge of separating genuine politics from distorted forms; the difficulty of appreciating politics for what it is; the problems of truth and judgment in politics; and the role of persuasion in politics. O’Gorman’s book offers an insightful introduction to Arendt’s ideas for anyone who wants to think more carefully.

  Zum Buch

• 

  The New Goliaths - How...

  James Bessen

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  An approach to reinvigorating economic competition that doesn’t break up corporate giants, but compels them to share their technology, data, and knowledge 
    
  “Bessen is a master of unpacking the nuances of a complex array of interrelated trends to build a coherent story of how the promise of the democratized Internet ended up under the control of just a few. Read The New Goliaths to see how the forest came to have only room for a few tall trees with the rest of us in the undergrowth.”—Joshua Gans, coauthor of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence 
    
  Historically, competition has powered progress under capitalism. Companies with productive new products rise to the top, but sooner or later, competitors come along with better innovations and disrupt the threat of monopoly. Dominant firms like Walmart, Amazon, and Google argue that this process of “creative destruction” prevents them from becoming too powerful or entrenched. 
    
  But the threat of competition has sharply decreased over the past twenty years, and today’s corporate giants have come to power by using proprietary information technologies to create a tilted playing field. This development has increased economic inequality and social division, slowed innovation, and allowed dominant firms to evade government regulation. In the face of increasing calls to break up the largest companies, James Bessen argues that a better way to restore competitive balance and dynamism is to encourage or compel these companies to share technology, data, and knowledge.

  Zum Buch

• 

  Tom Nairn: Old Nations Auld...

  Tom Nairn

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Tom Nairn has been the most forceful and original mind to confront, de-mask and anatomise the British state. The perception that Great Britain was a multinational state and not a united nation had never quite been lost over the centuries, but it was Nairn who almost single-handedly hammered this truth into the skull of British intellectuals and campaigners until it became – as it is today – practically uncontested by the political class.
  
  NEAL ASCHERSON, London Review of Books
  
  
  For the last fifty years Tom Nairn has been one of Britain's most consistently provocative and influential voices. No other writer has left so deep an impression on mainstream debates about Scotland, Britain and nationalism. No other writer has so thoroughly interrogated the United Kingdom's post-war crisis and decline.
  
  
  Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times brings together, for the first time, the full span of Nairn's work, from his ground-breaking analysis of the British state in the 1960s and '70s to his more recent examinations of globalisation, the English question and Scotland's independence referendum.
  
  
  
  Nairn stands alongside the great Scottish intellectual and literary figures of recent decades. Old Nations is the definitive Nairn collection – and an indispensable guide for anyone looking to understand the current moment in Scottish and British politics.
  
  
  For originality of mind, Tom Nairn is without equal among his contemporaries. In fifty years, there has never been a time in my memory in which that he was saying went with the flow of opinion, on the left or at large ... All of this in a style of extraordinary vigour and beauty – and not least humour: writing as democratic as his own unswerving politics. One thinks: if only there were more like him. But that would be a contradiction in terms.
  
  PERRY ANDERSON, New Left Review
  
  Tom Nairn is well known both as a major contributor to debates about Scottish nationalism and the re-configuring of the current UK, and as a supremely thoughtful and witty writer. This collection of his writings illustrates the evolution of his ideas and will be invaluable. Whether one agrees with Nairn or not, his arguments always make one think afresh.
  
  LINDA COLLEY, Professor of History, Princeton University

  Zum Buch

• 

  More Stories from Langley -...

  Edward Mickolus

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Who knew the CIA needed librarians? More Stories from Langley reveals the lesser-known operations of one of the most mysterious government agencies in the United States. 
   
   
   
  Edward Mickolus is back with more stories to answer the question, "What does a career in the CIA look like?" Advice and anecdotes from both current and former CIA officers provide a look at the side of intelligence operations that is often left out of the movies. What was it like working for the CIA during 9/11? Do only spies get to travel? More Stories from Langley has physicists getting recruited to "the agency" during the Cold War, foreign-language majors getting lucky chances, and quests to "learn by living" turning into sweaty-palmed calls to the U.S. embassy after being detained by Russian intelligence officers. 
   
   
   
  The world only needs so many suave super spies. More Stories from Langley shows how important academics, retired soldiers, and bilingual nannies can be in preserving the security of our nation.

  Zum Buch