Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in History & Theory

From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.

Henry Every was the 17th century’s most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular - and wildly inaccurate - reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Every’s most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a major shift in the global economy. Enemy of All Mankind focuses on one key event - the attack on an Indian treasure ship by Every and his crew - and its surprising repercussions across time and space.

In a hyper-competitive world obsessed with rankings, super-wealth and greatness, how can we live up to democratic ideals of equality? Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about these questions from different angles in different countries. Adventures in Democracy draws on her experiences and the deep history of democracies - in ancient Rome and Athens, the American and French revolutions and Renaissance Florence - to offer an unflinching portrait of modern democracy.

Since the early 20th century, Traditionalism has defined itself against modernity and Enlightenment values. Traditionalist thinkers such as René Guénon and Julius Evola celebrated hierarchy, denounced the idea of progress and regarded liberal secularism, capitalism and communism as aligned forces working to replace social, cultural and political norms. Through exclusive interviews and deep historical context, Teitelbaum reveals the radical worldview infusing the thinking of powerful actors and inspiring a renegade reinterpretation of humanity, geopolitics and history.

From Brexit, to Donald Trump, to extremist parties in Europe and the developing world, populism has dominated recent headlines. But what explains the rise of leaders who stoke nationalist anger in their countries, from Le Pen to Erdogan? How long will the populist wave last? Who will be the winners and losers in this climate, and how can we defend the values of democracy, free trade and international cooperation?

'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents of the eighteenth century and the whole Enlightenment Age. Written by Thomas Jefferson, it is frequently evoked today as a shorthand for that idea we call the 'American Dream'. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates - of a free and happy world - owes a great deal to British thinkers too.

White House, Inc. is a newsmaking exposé that details President Trump’s efforts to make money off of politics, taking us inside his exclusive clubs, luxury hotels, overseas partnerships, commercial properties, and personal mansions. Alexander tracks hundreds of millions of dollars flowing freely between big businesses and President Trump. He explains, in plain language, how Trump tried to translate power into profit, from the 2016 campaign to the ramp-up to the 2020 campaign.

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded on three vital principles: liberty, equality and also uncertainty. The latter, he argues, is crucial for ensuring democracy's dynamic and creative character.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Global Discontents by Noam Chomsky, read by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian. Global Discontents is an essential guide to geopolitics and how to fight back, from the world's leading public intellectual. What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? How are the discontents kindled today likely to blaze and explode tomorrow?

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Marx and Marxism by Gregory Claeys, read by Michael Gould. 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 20th 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.

On 27 October 2018 the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah was the site of the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most of us, the massacre in Pittsburgh came as a total shock. But to those who have been paying attention, it was only a more violent, extreme expression of the broader trend that has been sweeping Europe and the US for the past two decades.

An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.

A good society needs a balance between aptitudes relating to head (cognitive), hand (manual/craft) and heart (caring/emotional). In recent decades in Western societies, they have got out of kilter. One form of human aptitude - cognitive ability - has become the gold standard of human esteem. The cognitive class now shapes society, and largely in its own interests: in the knowledge economy, the over-expansion of higher education and in the very idea of a successful life. To put it bluntly: smart people have become too powerful.

The story starts with the initial moments of COVID's appearance in Wuhan and ends with Joseph Biden's inauguration in an America ravaged by well over 400,000 deaths - a mortality already some 10 times worse than US combat deaths in the entire Vietnam War. This is an anguished, furious memorial to a year in which all of America's great strengths - its scientific knowledge, its great civic and intellectual institutions, its spirit of voluntarism and community - were brought low by political incompetence and cynicism on a scale for which there has been no precedent.

Today, globalism has a bad reputation. 'Citizens of the world' are depicted as recklessly uninterested in how international economic forces can affect local communities. Meanwhile, nationalists are often derided as racists and bigots. But what if the two were not so far apart? What could globalists learn from the powerful sense of belonging that nationalism has created? Faced with the injustices of the world's economic and political system, what should a responsible globalist do?

On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....

In A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider's Account, Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior adviser to the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for nearly two years, for the first time speaks out about the internal failures of the 2012 campaign. The book illuminates the chain of errors that ultimately contributed to Romney's defeat. Rich with detail and full of high drama, it will be of interest to anyone who wants to go behind the scenes to gain an inside look at how our political system actually operates, with all of its charms and all of its flaws.

Based on Nixon’s overlooked recordings, New York Times best-selling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we’ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate.

A tour de force of groundbreaking reportage by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jo Becker, Forcing the Spring follows the historic legal challenge mounted against California’s ban on same-sex marriage, a remarkable lawsuit that forced the issue of marriage equality before the highest court in the land. For nearly five years Becker embedded with the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, was given free rein within the legal and political war rooms where strategy was plotted, and attended every day of the trial and every appellate argument.

In an extraordinary series of private interviews, conducted over 16 years with the stipulation that they not be released until after Gerald Ford's death, the 38th president of the United States reveals a profoundly different side of himself: funny, reflective, gossipy, strikingly candid, and the stuff of headlines.