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Progress and Poverty (Paperback)
Book Description
To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state, and would strive for its attainment. -Henry George, Progress and Poverty
Why do we have ups and downs in the national economy? Why does poverty continue to exist while a minute number of Americans enjoy a staggering increase in their personal wealth year after year? What went wrong in a country that professes to be dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal? As timely now as it was when it was written in 1871, Progress and Poverty is an honest and fascinating look at the financial order and the increasingly distorted distribution of income and wealth of life in America. George lays out simply and elegantly what the underlying problem is and how we might solve it.
AUTHOR BIO: HENRY GEORGE (1839-1897) was a noted American economist and founder of the single-tax movement. He first outlined the doctrine in the pamphlet Our Land and Land Policy in 1871 and later wrote the more elaborate treatise Progress and Poverty (1879), which sold millions of copies all over the world.
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Small Is Beautiful (Paperback)
Book Description
The classic of common-sense economics. "Enormously broad in scope, weaving together threads from Galbraith and Gandhi, capitalism and Buddhism, science and psychology."-- The New Republic
AUTHOR BIO: E. F. SHUMACHER (1911-1977) was a Rhodes Scholar in economics and the head of planning at the British Coal Board. He was also the president of the Soil Association and the founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group.
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1984 (Paperback)
Book Description
Novel by George Orwell, published in 1949 as a warning about the menaces of totalitarianism. The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for modern political abuses.
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Animal Farm (Paperback)
Book Description
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy.
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The Architecture of Democracy (Paperback)
Book Description
Reynolds brings together the leading scholars to discuss the successes and failures of constitutional design. Arend Lijphart and Donald Horowitz debate their own contributions to the field. Emerging scholars then present important new evidence from Europe, the CIS, Latin America, and Africa. Chapters analyse the effect of presidential and parliamentary systems, issues of federalism and autonomy, and the varying impact of electoral systems. The book concludes with case studies of Fiji, Ireland, Eritrea, Indonesia, Nigeria, and India. The Architecture of Democracy is the culmination of the study of constitutional engineering in the third wave of democracy and sets parameters for this crucial research as democracy diffuses across the world.
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Collapse (Paperback)
Book Description
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
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Letter to a Christian Nation (Paperback)
Book Description
“Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.”
So begins Letter to a Christian Nation…
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The Ecology of Commerce (Paperback)
Book Description
Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is no ordinary capitalist. Drawing as much on Baba Ram Dass and Vaclav Havel as he does on Peter Drucker and WalMart for his case studies, Hawken is on a one-man crusade to reform our economic system by demanding that First World businesses reduce their consumption of energy and resources by 80 percent in the next 50 years. As if that weren't enough, Hawken argues that business goals should be redefined to embrace such fuzzy categories as whether the work is aesthetically pleasing and the employees are having fun; this applies to corporate giants and mom-and-pop operations alike. He proposes a culture of business in which the real world, the natural world, is allowed to flourish as well, and in which the planet's needs are addressed. Wall Street may not be ready for Hawken's provocative brand of environmental awareness, but this fine book is full of captivating ideas.
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Humanist Manifesto 2000 (Paperback)
Book Description
This entirely new HUMANIST MANIFESTO is designed to address the problems of the twenty-first century and the millennium beyond. Providing a strong defense of scientific naturalism and technology, it is offered as a contribution to the dialogue among the different cultural, political, and economic viewpoints in the world. HUMANIST MANIFESTO 2000 begins by endorsing a humanist ethics based on reason and a planetary bill of rights and responsibilities. It then proposes a new global agenda, stresses the need for international institutions (including a new world parliament and regulation of global conglomerates), and concludes on a note of optimism about the Human Prospect. It is endorsed by a distinguished list of humanist intellectuals, including Arthur C. Clarke, Alan Cranston, Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey, Jill Tarter, E.O. Wilson, and ten Nobel Laureates.
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Paperback)
Book Description
Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work. It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people--a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic--who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with politics, humanity, passion, innovative technical speculation, and a firm belief in the pursuit of human freedom.
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The Corporation (DVD)
Product Description
In this acclaimed documentary from the co-director of MANUFACTURING CONSENT: Noam Chomksy and the Media, 40 corporate insiders and critics—including Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, NO LOGO author Naomi Klein and Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman—explore the nature and spectacular rise of the most pervasive institution of our time. Combining analysis with footage from advertising, television news and industrial films, THE CORPORATION is an entertaining and provocative look at the inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures of the modern global conglomerate. This Two-Disc Special Edition features more than 8 hours of additional material.
IMPORTANT - This is a REGION 1 DVD. If it is to be viewed anywhere other than the USA, a multi-region DVD player will be required.
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The Fog of War (DVD)
Product Description
The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ's fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War--and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as--well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same.
IMPORTANT - This is a REGION 1 DVD. If it is to be viewed anywhere other than the USA, a multi-region DVD player will be required.
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