Chesterton called “the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. ”. Trump’s presence in the white house follows from an American regime change over the last twenty-five years during which a weakened but still operational democracy gave way to a stupefied and dysfunctional plutocracy.

He embodies the spirit of an age of folly abandoned to conspicuous consumption of vanity and greed. To regard trump as an amazement beyond belief is to give him credit where none is due, to mistake a symptom for the cause. The history of that change is a hedge against the despair of the present, making possible the revolt against what G.

A self-glorifying photo-op, trump is made to the measure of an infotainment media in which presidential candidates are game show contestants brought to judgment on election day before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they are produced. Trump is undoubtedly a menace, but he isn’t a surprise. K.

America’s leading essayist on the frantic retreat of democracy, in the fire and smoke of the war on terrorIn office as President of the United States, Donald J.

Money and Class in America

In the native tradition of twain, and Mencken, Veblen, the editor of Lapham's Quarterly here examines our fascination with the ubiquitous green goddess. Focusing on the wealthy sybarites of New York City, whom Lewis H. Extensively expanded and revised, with a new foreword by Thomas Frank In the United States, happiness and wealth are often regarded as synonymous.

Lapham has been able to observe firsthand in their natural habitat, portrait of a segment of the American population who, in the thirty years since the book was originally written, Money and Class in America is a caustic, and often hilarious, have become only further removed—both in terms of wealth and social awareness—from everyone else.

Consumerism, greed, and the insatiable desire for more are American obsessions.

How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System

The provocative political thinker asks if it will be with a bang or a whimperAfter years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. The regulatory institutions that once restrained the financial sector’s excesses have collapsed and, after the final victory of capitalism at the end of the Cold War, there is no political agency capable of rolling back the liberalization of the markets.

Ours has become a world defined by declining growth, institutional corruption and international anarchy, a shrinking public sphere, oligarchic rule, and no cure to these ills is at hand. The marriage between democracy and capitalism, ill-suited partners brought together in the shadow of World War Two, is coming to an end.

Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated. In how will capitalism end?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that the world is about to change.

In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power Dispatch Books

Alfred W. Mccoy then analyzes the marquee instruments of American hegemony—covert intervention, psychological torture, client elites, and worldwide surveillance. In a completely original analysis, trade pacts, from the 1890s through the Cold War and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power, and military alliances.

. Mccoy’s 2009 book policing america’s Empire won the Kahin Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.

Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

The names of the americans involved are well-known—paul manafort, george papadopoulos, and Sergey Kislyak, Jared Kushner, Carter Page—but here Harding also shines a light on powerful Russian figures like Aras Agalarov, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Michael Flynn, whose motivations and instructions may have been coming from the highest echelons of the Kremlin.

A month later, steele’s now-famous dossier sparks what may be the biggest scandal of the modern era. Luke harding, the guardian reporter and former Moscow bureau chief, quietly meets former MI6 officer Christopher Steele in a London pub to discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s Russia connections.

. Drawing on new material and his expert understanding of moscow and its players, mobsters, sketchy real estate deals, off-shore banks, computer hacking, money laundering, Harding takes the reader through every bizarre and disquieting detail of the “Trump-Russia” story—an event so huge it involves international espionage, the Miss Universe pageant, poisoned dissidents, and the most shocking election in American history.

1 new york times bestseller an explosive exposé that lays out the story behind the Steele Dossier, including Russia’s decades-in-the-making political game to upend American democracy and the Trump administration’s ties to Moscow. Harding…presents a powerful case for russian interference, and Trump campaign collusion, by collecting years of reporting on Trump’s connections to Russia and putting it all together in a coherent narrative.

The nation December 2016.

The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, left unchecked, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, possess the desire and ability to make things worse. A true realism, is based on the understanding that the historical norm has always been toward chaos--that the jungle will grow back, he argues, if we let it.

Kagan makes clear how the "realist" impulse to recognize our limitations and focus on our failures misunderstands the essential role America has played for decades in keeping the world's worst instability in check. An incisive, elegantly written, new book about America’s unique role in the world. Tom friedman, the new york timesa brilliant and visionary argument for America's role as an enforcer of peace and order throughout the world--and what is likely to happen if we withdraw and focus our attention inward.

Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. In this powerful, urgent essay, robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray.

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Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason

Karl marx's capital is one of the most important texts written in the modern era. Since 1867, when the first of its three volumes was published, it has had a profound effect on politics and economics in theory and practice throughout the world. It demonstrates how and why Capital remains a living, breathing document with an outsized influence on contemporary social thought.

Harvey shows the work's continuing analytical power, doing so in the clearest and simplest terms but never compromising its depth and complexity. Marx, capital, and the madness of economic Reason provides an accessible window into Harvey's unique approach to Marxism and takes readers on a riveting roller coaster ride through recent global history.

But marx wrote in the context of capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century: his assumptions and analysis need to be updated in order to address to the technological, economic, and industrial change that has followed Capital's initial publication. In marx, david harvey not only provides a concise distillation of his famous course on Capital, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, but also makes the text relevant to the twenty-first century's continued processes of globalization.

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The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

While countries like poland and hungary have made hard turns towards authoritarianism, the electoral upsets of 2016 revealed the citizens of the US and UK in revolt against their countries’ longstanding policies and values. But this threat to the West also presents the opportunity to better understand the pillars of our own political order.

Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. In the last six years, it has creeped from east to west as nationalism inflames Europe, abetted by Russian propaganda and cyberwarfare. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system dedicated solely to the consolidation and exercise of power.

By showcasing the stark choices before us—between equality or oligarchy, truth and falsehood—Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, individuality or totality, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty. But we now know this to be premature. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy.

With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be absolute.

The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War

The pentagon papers demonstrated that the government had systematically lied to both the public and to Congress. This incomparable, 1964 by neil sheehanthe consensus to bomb north vietnam: august, 1966-may, 1965 by neil sheehanthe launching of the ground war: march-july, 1966 by fox butterfieldsecretary mcnamara’s disenchantment: october, 1965-september, 1964-February, 848-page volume includes:The Truman and Eisenhower Years: 1945-1960 by Fox ButterfieldOrigins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam by Fox ButterfieldThe Kennedy Years: 1961-1963 by Hedrick SmithThe Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem: May-November, 1965 by Neil SheehanThe Buildup: July, 1963 by Hedrick SmithThe Covert War and Tonkin Gulf: February-August, 1967 by Hedrick SmithThe Tet Offensive and the Turnaround by E.

Kenworthy analysis and commentCourt RecordsBiographies of Key FiguresWith a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the pulitzer prize–winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception, and shed some light on issues in the past and the present so that we can better understand and improve the future.

The washington post called them “the most significant leaks of classified material in American history” and they remain relevant today as a reminder of the importance of a free press and First Amendment rights. W. The wikileaks of its day” Time is as relevant as ever to present-day American politics.

The most significant leaks of classified material in American history. The washington postnot fake news! the basis for the 2018 film the post by academy award-winning director Steven Spielberg, The Pentagon Papers are a series of articles, documents, and studies examining the Johnson Administration’s lies to the public about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing to light shocking conclusions about America’s true role in the conflict.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

New york times bestseller • “the single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States. T. Nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year. Lawrence o’donnell how did we get here? in this sweeping, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, eloquent history of America, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character.

. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. A provocative new study of America’s cultural history. Newsday “Compelling and totally unnerving. The village voice“a frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards.

The guardian “this is an important book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in the age of Trump. Walter isaacson, #1 new York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci. Barnum to hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged.

With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers. And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, relentless, he created a vast, discovered Buchanan, Charles Koch, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok.

If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be. Npr an explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, suppress voting, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots.

. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting.