Download or read book From Democrats to Kings written by Michael Scott and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular history of how the ancient world turned from a democracy to a monarchy and “shine[s] a light on the culture that bloomed as Athens faded.”(The Daily Mail) Athens, 404 BC. The Democratic city-state has been ravaged by a long and bloody war with neighboring Sparta. The search for scapegoats begins and Athens, liberty's beacon in the ancient world, turns its sword on its own way of life. Civil war and much bloodshed ensue. Defining moments of Greek history, culture, politics, religion and identity are debated ferociously in Athenian board rooms, back streets and battlefields. By 323 BC, Athens and the rest of Greece, not to mention a large part of the known world, has come under the control of an absolute monarch and a model for despots for millennia to come: Alexander the Great. In this superb popular history, Michael Scott explores the dramatic and little-known story of how the ancient world went from democracy to monarchy in less than 100 years. A superb example of popular history writing, From Democrats to Kings gives us a fresh take on the challenges we face today as democracies—old and new—fight for survival, in which war-time and peace-time have become indistinguishable and in which the severity of the economic crisis is only matched by a crisis in our own sense of self. “Accessible and punchy . . . a wide readership cannot fail to be entertained as well as instructed about a world that is both familiar and alien, modern as well as ancient.” —Paul Cartledge, author of Thermopylae “Gloriously entertaining and provocative.” —Tom Holland, author of Rubicon, Persian Fire
Download or read book From democrats to kings written by Michael Scott and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book 40 More Years written by James Carville and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every four years Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins and somebody loses. That's life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of President Barack Obama is about something far bigger than four or even eight years in the White House. Since 2004, Americans have been witnessing and participating in the emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but forty years. To understand the emergence of a lasting Democratic majority we'll first have to spend a few moments reviewing the profound and relentless incompetence of the Bush administration -- and the pursuant collapse of the Republican Party. That means looking back at the failure of Republican ideas -- including a wholesale rejection of the myth of conservative superiority on the economy -- and holding our noses long enough to survey the gallery of truly repellent scoundrels, scandals, and screwups that the Republican Party has been responsible for over the last eight years. After completing the unpleasant but edifying task of autopsying the Republican Party, we'll examine the underpinnings of Democratic victories in 2004, 2006, and 2008 -- and make the argument for why Democrats are going to keep winning. (Two words: young people.) In short, the Republicans are going to keep getting spanked again and again for forty more years because we're right and they're wrong, and Americans know it.
Download or read book Politics Lost written by Joe Klein and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-06-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn’t holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters’ trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue. The question is: Why? The more urgent question is: What can be done about it? Few people are more qualified to deal with both questions than Joe Klein. There are many loud and opinionated voices on the political scene, but no one sees or writes with the clarity that this respected observer brings to the table. He has spent a lifetime enmeshed in politics, studying its nuances, its quirks, and its decline. He is as angry and fed up as the rest of us, so he has decided to do something about it—in these pages, he vents, reconstructs, deconstructs, and reveals how and why our leaders are less interested in leading than they are in the “permanent campaign” that political life has become. The book opens with a stirring anecdote from the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Klein re-creates the scene of Robert Kennedy’s appearance in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, where he gave a gut-wrenching, poetic speech that showed respect for the audience, imparted dignity to all who listened, and quelled a potential riot. Appearing against the wishes of his security team, it was one of the last truly courageous and spontaneous acts by an American politician—and it is no accident that Klein connects courage to spontaneity. From there, Klein begins his analysis—campaign by campaign—of how things went wrong. From the McGovern campaign polling techniques to Roger Ailes’s combative strategy for Nixon; from Reagan’s reinvention of the Republican Party to Lee Atwater’s equally brilliant reinvention of behind-the-scenes strategizing; from Jimmy Carter to George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W.—as well as inside looks at the losing sides—we see how the Democrats become diffuse and frightened, how the system becomes unbalanced, and how politics becomes less and less about ideology and more and more about how to gain and keep power. By the end of one of the most dismal political runs in history—Kerry’s 2004 campaign for president—we understand how such traits as courage, spontaneity, and leadership have disappeared from our political landscape. In a fascinating final chapter, the author refuses to give easy answers since the push for easy answers has long been part of the problem. But he does give thoughtful solutions that just may get us out of this mess—especially if any of the 2008 candidates happen to be paying attention.
Download or read book The Wish for Kings written by Lewis H. Lapham and published by Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 1993 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the current distaste for dissent, the widespread support for Perot, and the public obsession with celebrity reveal a desire for autocracy
Download or read book The Return of Great Power Rivalry written by Matthew Kroenig and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to answer to a central international politics: why do great powers rise and fall? It provides an innovative argument about how domestic political institutions are the key to a state's ability to amass power and influence in the international system. This text also offers a sweeping historical analysis of democratic and autocratic competitors from ancient Greece through the Cold War. This book employs a unique framework to understand and analyze the state of today's competition between the democratic United States and its autocratic competitors, Russia and China.
Download or read book The Invention of Power written by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world? Western exceptionalism—the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent—is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in The Invention of Power, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the twelfth century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivized economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not. The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history.
Download or read book Kings and Presidents written by Bruce Riedel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's account of the often-fraught U.S.-Saudi relationship Saudi Arabia and the United States have been partners since 1943, when President Roosevelt met with two future Saudi monarchs. Subsequent U.S. presidents have had direct relationships with those kings and their successors—setting the tone for a special partnership between an absolute monarchy with a unique Islamic identity and the world's most powerful democracy. Although based in large part on economic interests, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has rarely been smooth. Differences over Israel have caused friction since the early days, and ambiguities about Saudi involvement—or lack of it—in the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States continue to haunt the relationship. Now, both countries have new, still-to be-tested leaders in President Trump and King Salman. Bruce Riedel for decades has followed these kings and presidents during his career at the CIA, the White House, and Brookings. This book offers an insider's account of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, with unique insights. Using declassified documents, memoirs by both Saudis and Americans, and eyewitness accounts, this book takes the reader inside the royal palaces, the holy cities, and the White House to gain an understanding of this complex partnership.
Download or read book Running Against the Devil written by Rick Wilson and published by Crown Forum. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A savvy guidebook for beating Trump’s tricks, traps, and tweets from a founder of The Lincoln Project, now updated with new material on the historic battle between Trump and Joe Biden—and how the pandemic has changed the race “If you believe America’s future depends on Donald Trump’s political machine being crushed at the polls next year, then Rick Wilson’s Running Against the Devil is a must-read.”—Joe Scarborough, MSNBC Donald Trump is exactly the disaster we feared for America. Hated by a majority of Americans, Trump’s administration is corrupt, inept, and rocked by daily scandals. In the handling of 2020’s coronavirus pandemic, its incompetence has been deadly. Trump can’t win in 2020, right? Wrong. As 2016 proved, Trump can’t win, but Joe Biden can sure as hell lose. Only one thing can save Trump, and that’s a Democratic campaign that runs the race Trump wants Democrats to run instead of the campaign they must run to win in 2020. Wilson combines decades of national political experience and insight in his take-noprisoners analysis, hammering Trump’s destructive and dangerous first term in a case-by-case takedown of the worst president in history and describing the terrifying prospect of four more years of Trump. Like no one else can, Wilson blows the lid off Trump’s 2020 political war machine, showing the exact strategies and tactics Republicans will use against Biden, and how the Democrats can avoid the catastrophes waiting for them if they fall into Trump’s traps. Running Against the Devil is sharply funny, brutally honest, and infused with Wilson’s biting commentary. It’s a vital indictment of Trump, a no-nonsense, no-holds-barred road map to saving America, and the guide to making Donald Trump a one-term president. The stakes are too high to do anything less.
Download or read book From Democrats to Kings written by Michael Scott and published by Icon Books Limited. This book was released on 2009 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling history of radical upheaval and a bitter power struggle in the ancient world, from young Cambridge historian and 'real life Indiana Jones' Michael Scott.
Download or read book Con Job written by Crystal Wright and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Democrat Party likes to pose as the party of compassion. But where is the compassion in "sanctuary cities" that allow foreign criminals to prey on innocent Americans? Where is the compassion in encouraging envy and lawlessness? Crystal Wright isn't falling for the liberal con job any longer. A one-time (2008) Obama supporter herself—and now a totally fearless "Conservative Black Chick"—Wright blows the whistle on the Democrat Party and its policies that are destroying America. In Con Job you'll learn why Democrat politicians have no problem with inner-city riots; why Democrats so fervently defend Planned Parenthood, how Democrats are remaking America through massive immigration and more. The 2016 presidential election is set to be one of the most consequential in American history—and Crystal Wright's book is the one you need to help friends and family avoid falling for the Democrat con job yet again.
Download or read book 33 Snowfish written by Adam Rapp and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Adam Rapp’s brilliant and haunting story will break your heart. But then his words will mend it. . . . Absolutely unforgettable." – Michael Cart On the run in a stolen car with a kidnapped baby in tow, Custis, Curl, and Boobie are three young people with deeply troubled pasts and bleak futures. As they struggle to find a new life for themselves, it becomes painfully clear that none of them will ever be able to leave the past behind. Yet for one, redemption is waiting in the unlikeliest of places. With the raw language of the street and lyrical, stream-of-consciousness prose, Adam Rapp hurtles the reader into a world of lost children, a world that is not for the faint of heart. Gripping, disturbing, and starkly illuminating, his hypnotic narration captures the voices of two damaged souls - a third speaks only through drawings - to tell a story of alienation, deprivation, and ultimately, the saving power of compassion.
Download or read book The King in Orange written by John Michael Greer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Details the magical war that took place behind the scenes of the 2016 election • Examines in detail the failed magical actions of Trump’s opponents, with insights on political magic from Dion Fortune’s war letters • Reveals the influence of a number of occult forces from Julius Evola to chaos magick to show how the political and magical landscape of American society has permanently changed since the 2016 election Magic and politics seem like unlikely bedfellows, but in The King in Orange, author John Michael Greer goes beyond superficial memes and extreme partisanship to reveal the unmentionable realities that spawned the unexpected presidential victory of an elderly real-estate mogul turned reality-TV star and which continue to drive the deepening divide that is now the defining characteristic of American society. Greer convincingly shows how two competing schools of magic were led to contend for the presidency in 2016 and details the magical war that took place behind the scenes of the campaign. Through the influence of a number of occult forces, from Julius Evola to chaos magicians as well as the cult of positive thinking, Greer shows that the main contenders in this magical war were the status quo magical state--as defined by the late scholar Ioan Couliano--which has repurposed the “manipulative magic” techniques of the Renaissance magi into the subliminal techniques of modern advertising, and an older, deeper, and less reasonable form of magic--the “magic of the excluded”--which was employed by chaos magicians and alt-right internet wizards, whose desires coalesced in the form of a frog avatar that led the assault against the world we knew. Examining in detail the magical actions of Trump’s opponents, with insights on political magic from occultist Dion Fortune’s war letters, the author discusses how the magic of the privileged has functioned to keep the comfortable classes from being able to respond effectively to the populist challenge and how and why the “Magic Resistance,” which tried to turn magic against Trump, has failed. Showing how the political and magical landscape of American society has permanently changed since the 2016 election cycle, Greer reveals that understanding the coming of the King in Orange will be a crucial step in making sense of the world for a long time to come.
Download or read book Dime s Worth of Difference written by Alexander Cockburn and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all who dare look, this timely book shows how voting for the lesser evil candidate still leaves the American people with evil. It calls on progressives to begin a new movement outside the death-embrace of the Democratic Party.
Download or read book Political Dissent in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-02 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.
Download or read book The Most Democratic Branch written by Jeffrey Rosen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at some of the most important Supreme Court cases in history and contends that the Supreme Court is most successful when it defers to the constitutional views of the American people.
Download or read book The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy written by Robert Hazell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much power does a monarch really have? How much autonomy do they enjoy? Who regulates the size of the royal family, their finances, the rules of succession? These are some of the questions considered in this edited collection on the monarchies of Europe. The book is written by experts from Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It considers the constitutional and political role of monarchy, its powers and functions, how it is defined and regulated, the laws of succession and royal finances, relations with the media, the popularity of the monarchy and why it endures. No new political theory on this topic has been developed since Bagehot wrote about the monarchy in The English Constitution (1867). The same is true of the other European monarchies. 150 years on, with their formal powers greatly reduced, how has this ancient, hereditary institution managed to survive and what is a modern monarch's role? What theory can be derived about the role of monarchy in advanced democracies, and what lessons can the different European monarchies learn from each other? The public look to the monarchy to represent continuity, stability and tradition, but also want it to be modern, to reflect modern values and be a focus for national identity. The whole institution is shot through with contradictions, myths and misunderstandings. This book should lead to a more realistic debate about our expectations of the monarchy, its role and its future. The contributors are leading experts from all over Europe: Rudy Andeweg, Ian Bradley, Paul Bovend'Eert, Axel Calissendorff, Frank Cranmer, Robert Hazell, Olivia Hepsworth, Luc Heuschling, Helle Krunke, Bob Morris, Roger Mortimore, Lennart Nilsson, Philip Murphy, Quentin Pironnet, Bart van Poelgeest, Frank Prochaska, Charles Powell, Jean Seaton, Eivind Smith.
