Society & Politics

Our systems are failing. Old models - for education, healthcare and government, food production, energy supply - are creaking under (read more)

Our systems are failing. Old models - for education, healthcare and government, food production, energy supply - are creaking under the weight of modern challenges. As the world's population heads towards 10 billion, it's clear we need new approaches.

Futurologist Mark Stevenson sets out to find them, across four continents. From Brazilian favelas to high tech Boston, from rural India to a shed inventor in England's home counties, We Do Things Differently travels the world to find the advance guard re-imagining our future. At each stop, he meets innovators who have already succeeded in challenging the status quo, pioneering new ways to make our world more sustainable, equitable and humane. (hide)

It has become all too easy to disparage the role of the US government today. Many Americans are influenced by a simplistic anti-government (read more)

It has become all too easy to disparage the role of the US government today. Many Americans are influenced by a simplistic anti-government ideology that is itself driven by a desire to roll back the more democratically responsive aspects of public policy. But government has improved the lives of Americans in numerous ways, from providing income, food, education, housing, and healthcare support, to ensuring cleaner air, water, and food, to providing a vast infrastructure upon which economic growth depends.

In What American Government Does, Stan Luger and Brian Waddell offer a practical understanding of the scope and function of American governance. They present a historical overview of the development of US governance that is rooted in the theoretical work of Charles Tilly, Karl Polanyi, and Michael Mann. Touching on everything from taxes, welfare, and national and domestic security to the government's regulatory, developmental, and global responsibilities, each chapter covers a main function of American government and explains how it emerged and then evolved over time.

Published:18 Jun 2017 (hide)

'In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I've often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. (read more)

'In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I've often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I'm letting my guard down.' - Hillary Rodham Clinton, from the introduction of What Happened For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference and an opponent who broke all the rules.

This is her most personal memoir yet. In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterwards. With humour and candour, she tells readers what it took to get back on her feet - the rituals, relationships and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. (hide)

"At the conclusion of my discussions with one group of the Magdalene Women one of those present sang 'Whispering Hope'. A line from (read more)

"At the conclusion of my discussions with one group of the Magdalene Women one of those present sang 'Whispering Hope'. A line from that song stays in my mind - 'when the dark midnight is over, watch for the breaking of day'. Let me hope that this day and this debate heralds a new dawn for all those who feared that the dark midnight might never end." Taoiseach Enda Kenny's State apology to the Magdalene women.

On 19 February 2013 the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny apologized to the women who had been incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene laundries. In the audience sat Steven O'Riordan, a documentary filmmaker and founder of the charity Magdalene Survivors Together. And by his side, waiting patiently for the words they'd been fighting to hear, were some of the women he had helped.
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'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' - John Jeremiah Sullivan'I see how we are all the same, that none (read more)

'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' - John Jeremiah Sullivan'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we're a series of mouths, and that every mouth needs filling: with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love'This is an extraordinary, complex portrait of 'white girls,' an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures more diverse than you might think.

Published:1 Feb 2018 (hide)

Based on groundbreaking original research, The Why Axis is a colourful examination of why people do what they do - and how effective (read more)

Based on groundbreaking original research, The Why Axis is a colourful examination of why people do what they do - and how effective incentives can spur people to change their behaviour and achieve more. Uri Gneezy and John List are a little like the anthropologists who spend months in the field studying people in their native environments. But rather than acting as impartial observers, these two intrepid economists have set out to study the ways people act in order to try to solve major problems in society, such as the gap between rich and poor students and the violence plaguing inner city schools; the real reasons people discriminate; and the continuing pay disparity between men and women.

Their field experiments in the factories, communities, and shops where real people live, work, and play show how incentives can change outcomes. Their results will change the way you think about and take action on both small and large problems, and force us as a society to stop making assumptions and to rely instead upon the evidence of what really works. (hide)

Published on 15/11/2015 - Even as inequalities widen, the effects of austerity deepen, and the consequences of recession linger, (read more)

Published on 15/11/2015 - Even as inequalities widen, the effects of austerity deepen, and the consequences of recession linger, in many countries the wealth of the rich has soared. "Why We Can t Afford the Rich" exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others through the control of property and money. Leading social scientist Andrew Sayer shows how over the past three decades the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness, and expand their political influence.

Aimed at all engaged citizens, this important and accessible book uses simple distinctions to burst the myth of the rich as especially talented wealth creators. But more than this, as the risk of runaway climate change grows, it shows how the rich are threatening the planet by banking on unsustainable growth. Forcefully arguing that the crises of economy and climate can only be resolved by radical change, Sayer makes clear that we must make economies sustainable, fair, and conducive to well being for all." (hide)

Why the popular resonance of 'mansplaining' (despite the intense dislike of the term felt by many men)? It hits home for us because (read more)

Why the popular resonance of 'mansplaining' (despite the intense dislike of the term felt by many men)? It hits home for us because it points straight to what it feels like not to be taken seriously: a bit like when I get lectured on Roman history on Twitter. Britain's best-known classicist Mary Beard, is also a committed and vocal feminist. With wry wit, she revisits the gender agenda and shows how history has treated powerful women.

Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. Beard explores the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, considering the public voice of women, our cultural assumptions about women's relationship with power, and how powerful women resist being packaged into a male template. With personal reflections on her own experiences of the sexism and gendered aggression she has endured online, Mary asks: if women aren't perceived to be within the structures of power, isn't it power that we need to redefine?From the author of international bestseller SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
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Before 1893 no woman anywhere in the world had the vote in a national election. A hundred years later almost all countries had enfranchised (read more)

Before 1893 no woman anywhere in the world had the vote in a national election. A hundred years later almost all countries had enfranchised women, and it was a sign of backwardness not to have done so. This is the story of how this momentous change came about.

The first genuinely global history of women and the vote, it takes the story of women in politics from the earliest times to the present day, revealing startling new connections across time and national boundaries - from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world post-9/11. A story of individuals as well as of wider movements, it includes the often dramatic life-stories of women's suffrage pioneers from across the world, painting vivid biographical portraits of everyone from Susan B. Anthony and the Pankhursts to hitherto lesser-known activists in China, Latin America, and Africa.
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Throughout the twentieth century and long before, hundreds of determined British women defied the social conventions of their day (read more)

Throughout the twentieth century and long before, hundreds of determined British women defied the social conventions of their day in order to seek adventure and influence on the world stage. Some became travellers and explorers; others business-owners or buyers; others still devoted their lives to worthy international causes, from anti-slavery and women's suffrage to the League of Nations and world peace. Yet until 1946, no British woman could officially represent her nation abroad.

It was only after decades of campaigning and the heroic labours performed by women during the Second World War that diplomatic careers were finally opened to both sexes. Women of the World tells this story of personal and professional struggle against the dramatic backdrop of war, super-power rivalry and global transformation over the last century and a half. From London to Washington, Geneva to Tehran, and in the deserts of Arabia, the souks of Damascus and the hospitals of Sarajevo, resolute women undaunted by intransigent officials and hostile foreign governments proved their worth. (hide)