Current affairs
Livres en anglais sur la politique, société et économie
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THE RUSSIA CONUNDRUM - HOW THE WEST FELL FOR PUTIN''S POWER GAMBIT - AND HOW TO FIX IT
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Martin Sixsmith
- Lane allen
- 16 April 2023
- 9780753559253
''I''m a fairly calm fellow; I don''t usually get het up about things. But I was, let''s say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn''t quite say ''dead or alive''. But it came close...'' Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021 Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin''s regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider''s battle to save his country''s soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country''s rise and fall against Khodorkovsky''s own journey, from Soviet youth to international oil executive, powerful insider to political dissident, and now a high-profile voice seeking to reconcile East and West. With unparalleled insight, written with Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith, The Russia Conundrum exposes the desires and damning truths of Putin''s Russia, and provides an answer to the West on how it must challenge the Kremlin - in order to pave the way for a better future.
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Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time. Dr John Barker was an ambitious psychiatrist with an uncontrollable interest in strange mental conditions. Then, in 1966, in the wake of a national disaster, he had an outlandish vision. He would collect the public''s premonitions and forebodings. He would build a database to predict the future and help avert future disasters. The Premonitions Bureau is the astonishing story of this bizarre real-life undertaking - the radical thinking and peculiar characters behind it; the hundreds of correspondents, their visions, the headlines that they made; and the Bureau''s two most gifted "percipients", a charismatic piano teacher and a troubled switchboard operator. Together, the pair predicted plane crashes and train wrecks, assassinations and international incidents with disturbing accuracy. And then, they called to give Barker their most unnerving premonition: a glimpse of his own imminent demise. The debut book from one of today''s most exciting long-form storytellers, The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling secret history of madness and wonder, promethean ambition and mortal fear - a journey to powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.
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HOW TO LOSE A COUNTRY - THE 7 STEPS FROM DEMOCRACY TO DICTATORSHIP
Ece Temelkuran
- Harper collins uk
- 17 July 2019
- 9780008294045
''This is essential'' Margaret Atwood on Twitter ''She''s one of the most acute and perceptive analysts of the furtive growth of fascism. Everyone should know about this'' Philip Pullman ''Vibrates with outrage'' The Times ''It couldn''t happen here'' Ece Temelkuran heard reasonable people in Britain say it the night of the Brexit vote. She heard reasonable people in America say it the night Trump''s election was soundtracked by chants of ''Build that wall.'' She heard reasonable people in Turkey say it as Erdogan rigged elections, rebuilt the economy around cronyism, and labelled his opposition as terrorists. How to Lose a Country is an impassioned plea, a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don''t march fully-formed into government; they creep. Award winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran, identifies the early-warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to define a global pattern, and arm the reader with the tools to root it out. Proposing alternative, global answers to the pressing - and too often paralysing - poltical questions of our time, Temelkuran explores the insidious idea of ''real people'', the infantilisation of language and debate, the way laughter can prove a false friend, and the dangers of underestimating one''s opponent. She weaves memoir, history and clear-sighted argument into an urgent and eloquent defence of democracy. No longer can the reasonable comfort themselves with ''it couldn''t happen here.'' It is happening. And soon it may be too late.
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The bestselling, prizewinning author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Cafe explores 700 years of writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human.
If you are reading this, it''s likely you already have some affinity with humanism, even if you don''t think of yourself in those terms. You may be drawn to literature and the humanities. You may prefer to base your moral choices on fellow-feeling and responsibility to others rather than on religious commandments. Or you may simply believe that individual lives are more important than grand political visions or dogmas.
If any of these apply, you are part of a long tradition of humanist thought, and you share that tradition with many extraordinary individuals through history who have put rational enquiry, cultural richness, freedom of thought and a sense of hope at the heart of their lives.
Humanly Possible introduces us to some of these people, as it asks what humanism is and why it has flourished for so long, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics and tyrants. It is a book brimming with ideas, personalities and experiments in living - from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell, and from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston. It takes us on an irresistible journey, and joyfully celebrates open-mindedness, optimism, freedom and the power of the here and now ? humanist values which have helped steer us through dark times in the past, and which are just as urgently needed in our world today. -
Liberalism - the comparatively mild-mannered sibling to the more ardent camps of nationalism and socialism - has never been so divisive as today. From the failed Cameron-Clegg Coalition to Putin''s populism and the Trump administration, it has both thrived and failed under identity politics, authoritarianism, and a weakened free press the world over. Since its birth following the post Reformation wars, liberalism has come under attack by conservatives and progressives alike, and today is dismissed as an ''obsolete doctrine.'' In this brilliant and concise exposition, Francis Fukuyama sets out the cases for and against its classical premises: observing the rule of law, independence of judges, means over ends, and most of all, tolerance. Pithy, to the point, and ever pertinent, this is political dissection at its very best.
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A cornucopia of wonders - about the transcendent modalities by which other animals perceive. Snakes with their stereo-olfactory tongues, killerflies with their high-speed vision, knifefishes that electrolocate their prey, and so much more. It''s all a fascinating reminder of the humbling truth that most of what happens among life forms on Earth is beyond our ken>
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THE NEW AGE OF EMPIRE - HOW RACISM AND COLONIALISM STILL RULE THE WORLD
Kehinde Andrews
- Penguin books uk
- 2 June 2022
- 9780141992365
The New Age of Empire destroys the self-congratulatory myth that the West was founded on the three great revolutions of science, industry and politics. Instead, genocide, slavery and colonialism are the key foundation stones upon which the West was built, and we are still living under this system today: America is now at the helm, perpetuating global inequality through business, government, and institutions like the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The West is rich because the Rest is poor. Capitalism is racism. The Enlightenment, which underlies every part of our foundational philosophy today, was and is profoundly racist. A work of essential clarity, The New Age of Empire is a groundbreaking new account of our place in our profoundly corrupt global system.>
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TRANS BRITAIN OUR JOURNEY FROM THE SHADOWS (LIVRE EN ANGLAIS)
BURNS CHRISTINE
- Unbound
- 23 May 2022
- 9781783528448
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FRAMERS - MAKE BETTER DECISIONS IN THE AGE OF BIG DATA
Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger
- Allen lane
- 12 May 2022
- 9780753555002
As technology and artificial intelligence advances, are humans at risk of becoming obsolete? No. Humans have a unique ability to think around any problem and find fresh ways to frame it in different ways. This crucial skill is an overlooked aspect of what has made humans so successful as a species, but it''s one we must learn to do better to manage a complex future. Frames are mental models of the world that we use to understand problems, and come up with new or refined solutions. From Copernicus to the Wright Brothers to the discovery of biomarkers for PTSD, Framers builds upon surprising and fascinating examples to show how we can choose the best frames and switch between them as the situation demands. The better we are at doing so, the more certain we can be that control over the most important decisions will remain in the hands of people rather than machines. Framers will change how you think about human potential, teach you the power of dreaming with constraints, letting your mind wander in a methodical and structured way. It will show you a way to improve how to make decisions in the era of algorithms, and how to develop the key skills to prosper amid the growing power of the machine age.
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CLOUDMONEY - CASH, CARDS, CRYPTO AND THE WAR FOR OUR WALLETS
Brett Scott
- Bodley head ltd
- 19 May 2022
- 9781847926654
The reach of corporations into our lives via cards and apps has never been greater; many of us rarely use cash these days. But what we''re told is a natural and inevitable move is the work of powerful interests. And the great battle of our time is the battle for ownership of the digital footprints that make up our lives. In Cloudmoney , Brett Scott tells an urgent and revelatory story about how the fusion of big finance and tech requires ''cloudmoney'' - digital money underpinned by the banking sector - to replace physical cash. He dives beneath the surface of the global financial system to uncover a long-established lobbying infrastructure: an alliance of partners waging a covert war on cash. He explains the technical, political, and cultural differences between our different forms of money, and shows how the cash system has been under attack for decades, as banking and tech companies promote a cashless society under the banner of progress. Cloudmoney take us to the frontlines of a war for our wallets that is also about our freedom. From marketing strategies against cash, to the weaponization of Covid-19 to push fintech platforms, and the rise of the cryptocurrency rebels and fringe groups pushing back. It asks the most pressing questions: Who benefits from a cashless society and who gets left behind? Is the end of cash the end of true privacy? And is our cloudmoney future closer than we think it is?
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THE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE - WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT SCIENCE, HISTORY AND THE MIND
A C Grayling
- Penguin books uk
- 14 April 2022
- 9780241304570
Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects'' Steven Pinkerbr>_________________________br>br>In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just 5 per cent of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning. br>br>What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don''t know? And what have we learnt about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Bestselling polymath and philosopher A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge: science, history and psychology. A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself, this is a compelling and fascinating tour de force, written with verve, clarity and remarkable breadth of knowledge.br>_________________________br>br>''Remarkable, readable and authoritative. How he has mastered so much, so thoroughly, is nothing short of amazing'' Lawrence M. Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothingbr>br>''This book hums with the excitement of the great human project of discovery'' Adam Zeman, author of Aphantasia>
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GREEN ENERGY: HOUW TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE (LIVRE EN ANGLAIS)
KOBIE NICOLE
- Cornerstone
- 25 May 2022
- 9781847943293
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Beneath the surface we are all connected . . . ''An authentically soothing, powerful, thought-provoker.'' MATT HAIG '' On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.'' MAX PORTER '' On Connection came to me when I needed it most, and reminded me that the links we have to places, people, words, ourselves, are what keep us alive.'' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other. Drawing on two decades of experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest champions the role of creativity - in whatever form we choose to practice it - as an act of love, helping us establish a deeper relationship to our true selves, and to others and the world we live in. Honest, hopeful and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is an inspiring personal meditation that will transform the way you see the world. ''Persuasive and profound.'' OBSERVER ''Tempest''s prose is crisp and thoughtful.'' NEW STATESMAN
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Liberalism - the comparatively mild-mannered sibling to the more ardent camps of nationalism and socialism - has never been so divisive as today. From the failed Cameron-Clegg Coalition to Putin''s populism and the Trump administration, it has both thrived and failed under identity politics, authoritarianism, and a weakened free press the world over. Since its birth following the post Reformation wars, liberalism has come under attack by conservatives and progressives alike, and today is dismissed as an ''obsolete doctrine.'' In this brilliant and concise exposition, Francis Fukuyama sets out the cases for and against its classical premises: observing the rule of law, independence of judges, means over ends, and most of all, tolerance. Pithy, to the point, and ever pertinent, this is political dissection at its very best.
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WHO LOST RUSSIA?: HOW THE WORLD ENTERED A NEW COLD WAR (LIVRE EN ANGLAIS)
CONRADI PETER
- Oneworld
- 9 November 2018
- 9781786072528
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PRICE WARS : HOW CHAOTIC MARKETS ARE CREATING A CHAOTIC WORLD(LIVRE EN ANGLAIS)
RUSSELL RUPPERT
- Orion
- 26 January 2022
- 9781474613989
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A collection of interviews with the world''s leading public intellectual from the time of the rise of Donald Trump to power to the end of his presidency. In it, Noam Chomsky sheds light into the phenomenon of Trumpism, exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of Trump''s policies, the environment and the planet on the whole. He also captures the dynamics and contradictions operating today - from the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat dog society to the unprecedented mobilization of millions of people against neoliberal capitalism, racism, and police violence.>
