Power History

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.

Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force - one that is more critical than ever to our future. In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it.

In the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler’s National Socialists surged at the polls. Paul von Hindenburg, an aging war hero and avowed monarchist, was a reluctant president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the prospect of a Reichstag majority and the path to political power. But instead, the Nazis lost two million votes.

In this follow-up to his best-selling The 80/20 Principle, the power law that helped hundreds of thousands achieve more by doing less, Richard Koch puts science to work, applying 92 other natural laws to promote the "science of success" within the ever-changing world of business. What does Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection prove about developing a niche product line? How can Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravity help in a crowded marketplace?

In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood’s corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more.

Best-selling author Ted Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions. Today's Court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage. This fascinating book reveals the complex history of the Court as told through seven pivotal decisions.

Will abortion be legal? Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry? May colleges prefer black applicants over white ones? These are among the most bitterly contested issues in the United States today. We answer these questions, and many more, by presenting them to nine lawyers—the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. No other nation commits so many important questions to its highest court. Stuart Banner’s The Most Powerful Court in the World is an authoritative history of the United States Supreme Court from the Founding era to the present.

The gripping account of how the Royal family really operates, from the journalist who has spent years studying them. Who really runs the show and, as Charles III begins his reign, what will happen next?

Susan L. Shirk, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for China, knows many of today's Chinese rulers personally and has studied them for three decades. She offers invaluable insight into how they think—and what they fear. In this revealing book, you will see the world through the eyes of men like President Hu Jintao and former President Jiang Zemin. We discover a fragile communist regime desperate to survive in a society turned upside down by miraculous economic growth and a stunning new openness to the greater world.

Volume Three of 2,000 Years of Christ's Power, in showing the progression of the Reformation era and the daring bravery of its figures, presents a period of history from which there are many lessons to be learnt—not least of all, the vibrancy of people's lives and the courage with which they faced death.

An extraordinary chronicle of Fisk's trademark rigorous journalism, historical analysis and eyewitness reporting. Fully immersed in the Middle East and critical of the West's ongoing interference, Fisk was committed to uncovering complex and uncomfortable truths that rarely featured on the traditional news agenda. With a foreword from fellow Middle East correspondent and former colleague Patrick Cockburn, Night of Power delivers an essential and final account from one of the world's finest journalists, and proves itself timely as ever.

In 1929, Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive "revolution from above", a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power for a new war. He forced 25 million peasant families into state-run collectives and transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument. In 1939, he concluded the pact with Hitler that enabled him to grasp at Eastern Europe while Hitler made war in the West.

In this new history of the conflict that defined the postwar era, Sergey Radchenko provides a deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution. This tension drove Soviet policies from Stalin's postwar scramble for territory to Khrushchev's reckless overseas adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, Brezhnev's jockeying for influence in the third world, and Gorbachev's failed attempts to reinvent Moscow.

For decades, James MacGregor Burns has been one of the great masters of the study of power and leadership in America. Now he turns his eye to an institution of government that he believes has become more powerful---and more partisan---than the Founding Fathers ever intended: the Supreme Court. Much as we would like to believe that the Court remains aloof from ideological politics, Packing the Court reveals how often justices behave like politicians in robes.

Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and field marshals. It's about states, armies, and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?

Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging listeners to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life.

In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely.

In Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the analyst Hussein Agha and the diplomat Robert Malley offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas) and US presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and their participation in secret talks over decades, Agha and Malley offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides.

Long before the first pharmaceutical companies opened their doors in the 1850s, doctors treated people, not symptoms. And although we've become used to popping pills, Americans have finally had it with the dangerous side effects, addiction, and over-prescribing - and they're desperate for an alternative. Here's the good news: That alternative has been here all along in the form of ancient treatments used for eons in traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Greek medicine.

Organized crime - the Italian American kind - has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise - from the 1880s to the post-World War II era - that is as exciting as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia.