Politics & Economics

This book is a print on demand title. Orders of this title are expected to be fulfilled within 4 to 6 weeks upon purchase. Click here to find out more about when your print on demand title will ship. How have legal ideas and institutions affected Western culture? And how has the law itself been shaped by its cultural context? In a work spanning 4,500 years, these questions are addressed by 57 experts, each contributing an authoritative study of a theme applied to a period in history. Supporte...

This book is a print on demand title. Orders of this title are expected to be fulfilled within 4 to 6 weeks upon purchase. Click here to find out more about when your print on demand title will ship. “Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” But money is always a medium of communication too, whether about price or about political conviction and authority, fealty, desire, or disdain. In a work that spans 4,500 years, 54 experts chart across six volumes ho...

Award-winning poet and playwright Alfian Sa'at calls for greater support for the arts in our city-state.Paperback: 48 PagesProduct Dimensions: 120 x 175 mmISBN: 9789814845007Published by Epigram Books

In three thousand years of history, China has spent at least eleven centuries at war. The Roman Empire was in conflict during at least 50 per cent of its lifetime. Since 1776, the United States has spent over one hundred years at war. The dream of peace has been universal in the history of humanity. So why have we so rarely been able to achieve it? In A Political History of the World, Jonathan Holslag has produced a sweeping history of the world, from the Iron Age to the present, that investi...

Political equality is the most basic tenet of democracy. Yet in America and other democratic nations, those with political power have special access to markets and public services. A Republic of Equals traces the massive income inequality observed in the United States and other rich democracies to politicized markets and avoidable gaps in opportunity-and explains why they are the root cause of what ails democracy today. In this provocative book, economist Jonathan Rothwell draws on the latest...

Artistic labour was exemplary for Utopian Socialist theories of 'attractive labour', and Marxist theories of 'nonalienated labour', but the rise of the anti-work movement and current theories of 'fully automated luxury communism' have seen art topple from its privileged place within the left's political imaginary as the artist has been reconceived as a prototype of the precarious 24/7 worker. Art and Postcapitalism argues that art remains essential for thinking about the intersection of labou...

The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years―because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims o...

Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren't necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it. In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours ...

Where does prosperity come from, and how does it spread through a society? What role does innovation play in creating prosperity and why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more democratically, and others, including our own, find the opposite? In Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan, legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, distils a lifetime of grappling with these questions into a profound assessment of the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history. In p...

illustrated by Piero Capitalism shapes every aspect of our world, beyond just our economic structures; it moulds our values and influences the way we write laws, wage wars and even conduct personal relationships. From its beginnings to the present day, Capitalism: A Graphic Guide tells the story of capitalism’s remarkable and often ruthless rise, evolving through strife and struggle as much as innovation and enterprise. This non-fiction graphic novel explores the key developments that have sh...

Former diplomat Bilahari Kausikan highlights two global trends that can shape Singapore's future—identity politics and the rise of China—and how China is using them to influence the Singapore identity.Paperback: 48 PagesProduct Dimensions: 120 x 175 mmISBN: 9789814845045Published by Epigram Books

The constitutional settlement under which Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the PRC in 1997 was based on the idea of "one country, two systems". At the time of Hong Kong's handover from British to Chinese rule, there was much speculation over how and whether an open society and market economy would be respected by an authoritarian state, one which has since risen to become the world's second largest economy. Since the protests and street occupations over the issue of democra...

Discussions of the Arab world, particularly the Gulf States, increasingly focus on sectarianism and autocratic rule. These features are often attributed to the dominance of monarchs, Islamists, oil, and 'ancient hatreds'. To understand their rise, however, one has to turn to a largely forgotten but decisive episode with far-reaching repercussions - Bahrain under British colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined Arabic literature as well as Brit...

When Trump fired James Comey, he triggered the appointment of Robert Mueller as an independent special counsel and caused the FBI to open a formal investigation into the President himself. This set in motion a chain of events, which would join in unprecedented and potentially mortal combat two vital institutions of American democracy: the Presidency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the investigative arm of the Department of Justice. The stakes could not be higher: the rule of law itse...

‘The writer is the engineer of the human soul,' claimed Stalin. Although one wonders how many found nourishment in Turkmenbashi's Book of the Soul (once required reading for driving tests in Turkmenistan), not to mention Stalin's own poetry. Certainly, to be considered great, a dictator must write, and write lots. Mao had his Little Red Book, Mussolini and Saddam Hussein their romance novels, Kim Jong-il his treatise on the art of film, Hitler his hate-filled tracts. What do they reveal about...

Bitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold-until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting priv...

Shannon Watts was a stay-at-home mom folding laundry when news of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary flashed across the television screen. In one moment, she went from outraged to engaged and decided to do something about it. What started as a simple Facebook group to connect with other frustrated parents grew into Moms Demand Action, a national movement with millions of supporters and a powerful grassroots network of local chapters in all 50 states. Shannon has been called "the NRA...

2008 saw one of the worst financial crises in generations, the global implications of which are still being felt today. Ten years later Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and Hank Paulson reflect on the causes of the crisis, why it was so damaging, and what it ultimately took to prevent a second Great Depression. All three had crucial roles in the government's response--Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve; Henry M. Paulson, Jr., as secretary of the Treasury under President George W...

Finding opportunities for innovation on the path between farmer and table. Even if we think we know a lot about good and healthy food--even if we buy organic, believe in slow food, and read Eater--we probably don't know much about how food gets to the table. What happens between the farm and the kitchen? Why are all avocados from Mexico? Why does a restaurant in Maine order lamb from New Zealand? In Food Routes, Robyn Metcalfe explores an often-overlooked aspect of the global food system: how...

As digital transformations continue to accelerate in the world, discourses of big data have come to dominate in a number of fields, from politics and economics, to media and education. But how can we really understand the digital world when so much of the writing through which we grapple with it remains deeply problematic? In a compelling new work of feminist critical theory, Bassett, Kember and O'Riordan scrutinise many of the assumptions of a masculinist digital world, highlighting the tend...

Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K-12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them. In Get Together, Bailey, Kevin and Kai share true stories of everyday people who created thriving communities, both in-person and online. They untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together into clear steps, helpi...

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and soci...

The West's two-century epoch as global powerhouse is at an end. A new world order, with China and India as the strongest economies, dawns. How will the West react to its new status of superpower in decline? In Kishore Mahbubani's timely polemic, he argues passionately that the West can no longer presume to impose its ideology on the world, and crucially, that it must stop seeking to intervene, politically and militarily, in the affairs of other nations. He examines the West's greatest follies...

In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before. Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.Paperback: 320 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm ISBN: 9780241381359 Published by Penguin Books

Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date. Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and parano...

It is quite normal to feel frustrated and sorrowful about aspects of modern capitalism, but realistic hope of change can seem either utopian or demented. In fact, the way that capitalism works is inherently open to alteration and improvement. This is because the problems of capitalism are, in their essence, not about money, law or politics, but about human psychology - the field of expertise of The School of Life. As this hugely original essay argues, the path to a better sort of capitalism s...

The destiny I put down in my novel has become mine. I am now under arrest like the hero I created years ago. I await the decision that will determine my future, just as he awaited his. I am unaware of my destiny, which has perhaps already been decided, just as he was unaware of his. I suffer the pathetic torment of profound helplessness, just as he did. Like a cursed oracle, I foresaw my future years ago not knowing that it was my own. Confined in a cell four metres long, imprisoned on absu...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen major advances in recent years. While machines were always central to the Marxist analysis of capitalism, AI is a new kind of machine that Marx could not have anticipated. Contemporary machine-learning AI allows machines to increasingly approach human capacities for perception and reasoning in narrow domains. This book explores the relationship between Marxist theory and AI through the lenses of different theoretical concepts, including surplus-value, lab...

This book examines the staying power of the People's Action Party, a political party that has governed Singapore since June 1959. A political titan with few chinks in its armour, the party has kept winning elections under three prime ministers and Singapore is about to witness a transition to the fourth prime minister. The party's seemingly unstoppable sterling performance makes the issue of the durability of the PAP highly critical. In light of the serious weakness of the Opposition and the ...

Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or does the times make the man? In Leadership Goodwin draws upon four of the presidents she has studied - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entry into public life, ...

Why was Marx so successful as a thinker? Did he have a system and if so, what does it consist of? How did Marxism develop in the twentieth century and what does it mean today? Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. The movements associated with his name have lent hope to many victims of tyranny and aggression but have also proven disastrous in practice and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of millions. If after the collapse of the Soviet Union ...

Marx's Capital is one of the most important texts of the modern era. The three volumes, published between 1867 and 1883, changed the destiny of countries, politics and people across the world - and continue to resonate today. In this book, David Harvey lays out their key arguments. In clear and concise language, Harvey describes the architecture of capital according to Marx, placing his observations in the context of capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. He considers the de...

The dominant view in economics is that money and government should play only a minor role in economic life. Money, it is claimed, is nothing more than a medium of exchange; and economic outcomes are best left to the 'invisible hand' of the market. The view taken in this important new book is that the omnipresence of uncertainty make money and government essential features of any market economy. One reason we need money is because we don't know what the future will bring. Government - good gov...

In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side---what he calls its "nocturnal body"---which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence t...

This collection of observations and thoughts on Singapore over the last two decades by Dr Chee Soon Juan adds crucially to a growing narrative of Singapore which varies from the official perspectives perpetuated by mainstream media. Dr Chee goes behind the façade of Singapore, a city-state and examines the factors which had made the city so economically successful for the last 5 decades after Singapore's independence, and highlights the longer-term implications of such factors which do not au...

In 1958, the U.S. Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military force. In 1967, the CIA sent live cats to spy on the Soviet government. In 1942, the British built a torpedo-proof aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. Of course, none of these things ever actually happened. But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vince Houghton proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating--and every bit as entertaining-as the ones that made it. Vividly capturing the fascinating stories of how t...

Dr Cheong Koon Hean, CEO of the Housing and Development Board (2010–Present) was the Institute of Policy Studies' 5th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book contains edited versions of the three IPS-Nathan Lectures she gave between March and April 2018, and highlights of her dialogue with the audience. Climate change, an ageing population, anti-globalisation sentiments the world over, technological disruption, and social media all pose unique problems and opportunities to cit...

What are the effects of decreasing social mobility? How does education help - and hinder - us in improving our life chances? Why are so many of us stuck on the same social rung as our parents? Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly det...

This radical new approach to dealing with North Korea offers a refreshing perspective on an intransigent and deadly situation. Imagine you control a multi-billion dollar capital fund, and North Korea is an underperforming corporation. You see it is undervalued and want to take it over, but it is controlled by an old-fashioned board of directors--the Kim family and a small number of ultra elites--who will not negotiate a deal. In this regressive situation, it is logical to offer its shareholde...

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us. The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now dep...

Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank that Lived a Little describes three decades of boardroom intrigue at one of Britain's biggest financial institutions. In a tale of feuds, grandiose dreams and a struggle for supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents, Philip Augar gives a riveting account of Barclays' journey from an old Quaker bank to a full-throttle capitalist machine. The disagreement between those ambitious for Ba...

From the Five Star Movement to Podemos, from the Pirate Parties to La France Insoumise, from the movements behind Bernie Sanders to those backing Jeremy Corbyn, the last decade has witnessed the rise of a new blueprint for political organisation: the digital party. Paolo Gerbaudo addresses the organisational revolution that is transforming political parties in the time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Cambridge Analytica. Drawing on interviews with political leaders and organisers, Gerbau...

Based on extensive interviews and archival material, The First Wave tells the story of the opposition in Singapore in its critical first thirty years in Parliament. Democratisation has been described to occur in waves. The first wave of a democratic awakening in post-independence Singapore began with J. B. Jeyaretnam’s victory in the Anson by-election of 1981. That built up to the 1984 general election, the first of many to be called a “watershed”, in which Chiam See Tong was also elected in ...

Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of Britain and other Western societies: thriving cities versus the provinces, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit...

Professor Tan Tai Yong is the Institute of Policy Studies' 6th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book is an edited collection of his six IPS-Nathan Lectures, delivered between September 2018 and May 2019, and includes highlights of his dialogue with the audience. In his lecture series, Professor Tan examines how Singapore has evolved over its 700-year history as a regional emporium, colonial port city and city-state. He shows that Singapore's history is influenced by the recu...

Since the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the twentieth-century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre--Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them--produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day. How did the production of literature become central to the running of...

Whether it was Churchill rousing the British to take up arms or the dream of Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro inspiring the Cuban revolution or Barack Obama on Selma and the meaning of America, speeches have profoundly influenced the way we see ourselves and society. Gathered here are some of the most extraordinary and memorable speeches of the last century - from Lenin to Reagan, Thatcher to Malala. Some are well known, others less so, but all helped form the world we now inhabit. Paperback:...

Former Nominated Member of Parliament Kuik Shiao-Yin shares the concerns of young voters and how a new generation of leaders can rise up to serve them.Paperback: 48 PagesProduct Dimensions: 120 x 175 mmISBN: 9789814845021Published by Epigram Books