Social Science Theory

From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.

From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of "religion" and the "supernatural." The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.

From one of the most prominent voices on the American left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism in the US today. Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to health care, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities.

Just about everybody knows the name Rikers Island. A fixture of pop culture and underground prison lore alike, the sprawling East River jail complex has become synonymous with both the horrors of mass incarceration and the structurally-racist class domination at its core. But how did Rikers Island get to be this way?

Capitalism has blessed the world with wealth and technological miracles. It has also cursed it with urban slums, powerless workers, and the vicious boom-and-bust economy. If only there were some way to fix the problems of capitalism and keep all its benefits. In 1897, Henry George published his solution to this puzzle, Progress and Poverty. He suggested that, unlike all other taxes, a tax on land doesn't discourage entrepreneurship. A single tax on land can raise the revenues we need to help the poor without destroying the incentive to create wealth.

Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.

Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.

Theodore Rex is the story—never fully told before—of Theodore Roosevelt’s two world-changing terms as President of the United States. A hundred years before the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, “TR” succeeded to power in the aftermath of an act of terrorism.

No one noticed when capitalism died. Perhaps we were too distracted by the implosion of global finance, or the rise of populism, or the demise of the planet - or all of those cute cats on Instagram. But gradually, quietly, a yet more exploitative new system has taken hold: techno-feudalism. Crafted in the form of a letter to his late father, who first taught him about the power of new technologies to shape human history, Yanis Varoufakis explains how Big Tech has effected an invisible but fundamental transformation in all our lives.

In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention.

Posted directly outside President Clinton's Oval Office, former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the first family in Crisis of Character, the most anticipated book of the 2016 election.

How do politics shape our world, our lives, and our perceptions? How much of “common sense” is actually driven by the ruling class’ needs and interests? And how are we to challenge the capitalist structures that now threaten all life on the planet? Consequences of Capitalism exposes the deep, often unseen, connections between neoliberal “common sense” and structural power. In making these linkages, we see how the current hegemony keeps social justice movements divided and marginalized. And, most importantly, we see how we can fight to overcome these divisions.

In his audiobook, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of powe, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

lf a man cannot stand freedom, he will probably turn fascist. This, in the fewest possible words, is the essential argument in this modem classic, Escape from Freedom. The author, Erich Fromm, is a distinguished psychologist, late of Berlin and Heidelberg, now of New York City.

This Very Short Introduction introduces listeners to the key concepts of political philosophy: authority, democracy, freedom and its limits, justice, feminism, multiculturalism, and nationality. Accessible and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, it encourages the listener to think clearly and critically about the leading political questions of our time. Miller first investigates how political philosophy tackles basic ethical questions such as "how should we live together in society?"

For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.

Reform or Revolution, also titled Social Reform or Revolution?, is an 1899 pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg, in which she argues that trade unions, reformist political parties, and the expansion of social democracy could not create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. She contends from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism is economically unsustainable and will eventually collapse and that a revolution is necessary to transform capitalism into socialism.