Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Rivalry Peril - How...

  Van Jackson, Michael Brenes

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  How the US policy of competition with China is detrimental to democracy, peace, and prosperity—and how a saner approach is possible 
   
   
    
  For close to a decade, the US government has been preoccupied with the threat of China, fearing that the country will "eat our lunch," in the words of Joe Biden. The United States has crafted its foreign and domestic policy to help constrain China's military power and economic growth. Van Jackson and Michael Brenes argue that great-power competition with China is misguided and vastly underestimates the costs and risks that geopolitical rivalry poses to economic prosperity, the quality of democracy, and, ultimately, global stability. 
   
   
    
  This in-depth assessment of the trade-offs and pitfalls of protracted competition with China reveals how such a policy exacerbates inequality, leads to xenophobia, and increases the likelihood of violence around the world. In addition, it distracts from the priority of addressing such issues as climate change while at the same time undercutting democratic pluralism and sacrificing liberty in the name of prevailing against an enemy "other." Jackson and Brenes provide an informed and urgent critique of current US foreign policy and a road map toward a saner, more democratically accountable strategy of easing tension and achieving effective diplomacy.

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  American Presidents in Diplomacy...

  Thomas R. Parker

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  American Presidents in Diplomacy and War chronicles the major foreign policy crises faced by twelve American presidents in order to uncover the reoccurring patterns of successful and less successful uses of diplomatic, economic, and military power. In this book, Thomas R. Parker reveals how America's most successful leaders manage events instead of allowing events to control them. 
   
   
   
  Parker explores how the U.S. presidency, from the days of the early Republic to the present, shaped the world. Ranging from George Washington to George H. W. Bush, Parker shows how successful statecraft requires the understanding of complex situations, the prudent evaluation of various courses of action, the ability to adapt and to anticipate, and personal determination. Parker compares each of these leaders to their contemporaries—reasonable political leaders who nonetheless made serious mistakes, such as Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama—to examine the dangers of being unable to strike the right balance of aggressiveness and caution and to examine the costs of inexperience and ambivalence toward military power. The book concludes by discussing the increasingly complex international situation of today, particularly the manifold challenges posed by China and Russia to U.S. foreign policy, and the continued necessity of effective statecraft.

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  Future Tense - Reflections on My...

  Tony Leon

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  ‘From the vantage point of years in active politics, Tony Leon provides a lucid analytical balance sheet of SA Ltd 2021. Eschewing political correctness, Leon tells it as he sees it.’ – Judge Dennis Davis 
    
  ‘Anyone who wants to understand South Africa today – a country so beautiful, yet so broken – simply has to read this book.’ - Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money 
  In his riveting new book, Future Tense, Tony Leon captures and analyses recent South African history, with a focus on the squandered and corrupted years of the past decade. With unique access and penetrating insight, Leon presents a portrait of today’s South Africa and prospects for its future, based on his political involvement over thirty years with the key power players: Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. His close-up and personal view of these presidents and their history-making, and many encounters in the wider world, adds vivid colour of a country and planet in upheaval. 
    
  Written during the first coronavirus lockdown, Future Tense examines the surge of the disease and the response, both of which have crashed the economy and its future prospects. 
    
  As the founding leader of the Democratic Alliance, Leon also provides an insider view for the first time of the power struggles within that party, which saw the exit of its first black leader in 2019. 
    
  There is every reason to fear for the future of South Africa but, as Leon argues, ‘the hope for a better country remains an improbable, but not an impossible, dream’.

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  Play It Again! - Duke...

  Bob Harris, Mike Waters

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  Play It Again!, with voice of the Blue Devils Bob Harris and color commentator Mike Waters, features radio highlights from Duke University's 1991 NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship run that saw the team defeat Louisiana-Monroe, Iowa, UConn, St. John's, and exact revenge on UNLV, before beating the University of Kansas, 72-65, on April 1, 1991, in the title game. Three players from the 1991 squad (Laettner, Hurley, and Grant Hill) had their jerseys retired by Duke.

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  Voices of Dissent - An Essay...

  Romila Thapar

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  Written by one of India's best-known public intellectuals, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in India's fascinating history as well as the direction in which the nation is headed.
  
  People have argued since time immemorial. Disagreement is a part of life, of human experience. But we now live in times when any form of protest in India is marked as anti-Indian and met with arguments that the very concept of dissent was imported into India from the West. As Romila Thapar explores in her timely historical essay, however, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved through the centuries.
   
  In Voices of Dissent: An Essay, Thapar looks at the articulation of nonviolent dissent and relates it to various pivotal moments throughout India's history. Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first millennium BCE, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the Shramanas-the Jainas, Buddhists, and Ajivikas. Going forward in time, she also explores the views of the Bhakti sants and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhi's satyagraha. Then Thapar places in context the recent peaceful protests against India's new, controversial citizenship law, maintaining that dissent in our time must be opposed to injustice and supportive of democratic rights so that society may change for the better.

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  The Birth of Anarchism - 1849-1887

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail...

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  Mankind can rule itself without the force of top-down authority, and freedom is more than just choosing how to meet the needs and demands of capital. Inequality is structural and intentional, not inevitable and necessary.  
  It does not have to be this way. In solidarity, we are better. 
  Think for yourself, and question authority. 
  This is the essence of anarchism, which has a bad name and reputation because it attacks the necessity of centralised power and authority. The media archetype is Tyler Durden, filled with violence and nihilism – yet anarchism is the most positive of political philosophies, one that Jesus and Buddha both preached, stating that empathy and a rejection of authority were key to human flourishing. Neither would disagree with most early anarchists. 
  Proudhon, whose “property is robbery” is perhaps the most well-known anarchist slogan, lays out the conceptual foundation for key anarchist ideas. He argues that usury (charging interest) is a fundamental harm to society, that there is enough for everyone if we simply take other values to be higher than capital gain, that mutualism is inevitable, and that all governments and ideologies make the same mistake, in trying to change society from the top. Positive change must arise from the great masses of humanity, not from their rulers. 
  Bakunin's speeches are about solidarity arising from the masses, and the ground for a global reconfiguration. 
  Louis Lingg was convicted to death with six others, for being one of the ‘Chicago Anarchists’. They were executed to make a political point, based on corrupted evidence and perjury. His statement is one of contempt for the powers that be, and his belief that mankind should be free and should fight until it is. 
  We end with Kropotkin, who firmly believed in decentralized society. He believed that the greatest strength of mankind lies in the masses, not their rulers, and exhorts us to “Act for Yourselves”.

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