The Audacity To Win: The Inside Story And Lessons Of Barack Obama's Historic Victory
David Plouffe not only led the effort that put Barack Obama in the White House, but he also changed the face of politics forever and reenergized the idea of democracy itself. The Audacity to Win is his story of that groundbreaking achievement, taking readers inside the remarkable campaign that led to the election of the first African American president. For two years Plouffe worked side by side with Obama, charting the course of the campaign. His is the ultimate insider & rsquo;s tale, revealing both the strategies that delivered Obama to office and how the candidate and campaign handled moments of great challenge and opportunity. Moving from the deliberations about whether to run at all, through the epic primary battle with Hillary Clinton and the general election against John McCain, Plouffe showcases the high-wire gamesmanship that fascinated pundits and the drama and intrigue that captivated a nation. The Audacity to Win chronicles the arrival of a new moment in American life at the convergence of digital technology and grassroots organization, and the exciting possibilities revealed by a campaign that in many ways functioned as a $1 billion start-up with laser-like focus and discipline. In this extraordinary book, David Plouffe unfolds one of the most important political stories of our time, one whose lessons are not limited to politics, but reach to the greatest heights of what we dream about for our country and ourselves.
The Age Of The Strongman: How The Cult Of The Leader Threatens Democracy Around The World
From Putin, Trump, and Bolsonaro to Erdogan, Orban, and Xi, an intimate look at the rise of strongman leaders around the world.The first truly global treatment of the new nationalism, underpinned by an exceptional level of access to its key actors, from the awardwinning journalist and author of Easternization.This is the most urgent political story of our time: authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since 2000, selfstyled strongmen have risen to power in capitals as diverse as Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Budapest, Ankara, Riyadh, and Washington. These leaders are nationalists and social conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent, or the interests of foreigners. At home, they claim to be standing up for ordinary people against globalist elites; abroad, they posture as the embodiments of their nations. And everywhere they go, they encourage a cult of personality. What & rsquo;s more, these leaders are not just operating in authoritarian political systems but have begun to emerge in the heartlands of liberal democracy.Gideon Rachman has been in the same room with most of these strongmen and reported from their countries over a long journalistic career. While others have tried to understand their rise individually, Rachman pays full attention to the widespread phenomenon and uncovers the complex and often surprising interaction among these leaders. In the process, he identifies the common themes in our local nightmares, finding global coherence in the chaos and offering a bold new paradigm for navigating our world.
Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan To Renew America's Promise
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States is a defining moment in American history. After years of failed policies and failed politics from Washington, this is our chance to reclaim the American dream. Barack Obama has proven to be a new kind of leader & ndash;one who can bring people together, be honest about the challenges we face, and move this nation forward. Change We Can Believe In outlines his vision for America. In these pages you will find bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world. Change We Can Believe In asks us not just to believe in Barack Obama & rsquo;s ability to bring change to Washington, it asks us to believe in our ability to change the world.
There is a very subjective sense, near mystical, in which I feel that the mantle has been placed on my shoulders to respond to the rhetorical question posed in the title of this address: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Fortunately this also compels me to discharge the onerous burden of conforming to a moral and legal caution which goes & ndash; ubi jus ibi remedium. I promise this is the last time I shall talk Latin, no matter how much Greek provocation we encounter along the way: That last item means simply: he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.
The New Nomads: How The Migration Revolution Is Making The World A Better Place
We have lost the plot when it comes to migration. In our collective consciousness, the term 'migration' conjures up images of hordes of refugees fleeing 'their' country, escaping on rafts and coming to invade 'ours'. When we think of migration, we think of (largely unwanted) immigration and its ills.We've got it all wrong.Far from being abnormal, the act of going in search of a better life is at the core of the human experience. And now a new kind of nomad is emerging. What used to be a movement largely from east to west, south to north, developing to developed country is becoming more of a multilateral phenomenon with each passing day. Young people from everywhere are moving everywhere. Or rather, they are moving to where they expect to improve their lives and are turning the world into a beauty contest of cities and regions and companies vying to attract them. They are doing so because movement has become a key to their emancipation. After centuries of becoming sedentary, the future of humanity and the key to its enlightenment in the 21st century lies in re-embracing nomadism. Migration fosters the qualities that will allow our children to flourish and succeed. Our times require more migration, not less. Part memoir, part generational manifesto, The New Nomad is both the chronicle of this revolution and a call to embrace it.
Meltdown: How Greed And Corruption Shattered Our Financial System And How We Can Recover
America's economy is in meltdown. Banks have failed, foreclosures are sweeping the housing market, and stocks have suffered their worst losses since the Great Depression. Faced with a complex and spiraling crisis, the government has poured billions of taxpayer cash into a bailout with no end in sight. At every step of the way, The Nation, America's oldest weekly magazine, has tackled the most urgent questions facing the nation's leaders and its citizens with clarity and insight. Meltdown draws together nearly twenty years of the best of their coverage of the financial crisis and explores what steps President Obama and his new administration must take to ensure a more secure future for everyone. Contributors include: William Greider on Alan Greenspan's flawed ideology Robert Sherrill on why the bubble popped Thomas Frank on the rise of market populism Christopher Hayes on the coming foreclosure tsunami Barbara Ehrenreich on the implosion of capitalism Kai Wright on how the subprime crisis is bankrupting black America Naomi Klein on Bush's final pillage Joseph E. Stiglitz on Henry Paulson's shell game Jesse Jackson on trickle-down economics Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser on why America needs a New Deal
Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." & mdash;The Washington Post Book WorldFrancis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing Of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
National Book Award FinalistTIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012A New York Times Notable BookA Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal, The Plain DealerIn the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages.
My Vision - Challenges In The Race For Excellence Hh Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makt
My Vision: Challenges In The Race For Excellence by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makto
My Vision: challenges in the race for excellence is a unique book in which His Highness Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Vice president and prime minister of United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, Examines aspect of the UAE & rsquo;S unique development experience
This is a book about a unique development experience that set a creative example for the Arab world to follow. This experience provide a reassuring message that if all the constituent of any given society agree to excel in all fields, different cultures and religions can co-exist without the slightest problem.
The Tragedy Of Liberation: A History Of The Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
A groundbreaking chronicle of the violent early years of the People & rsquo;s Republic of China, by the author of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize & ndash;winning Mao & rsquo;s Great Famine. & ldquo;The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a & lsquo;liberation. & rsquo; In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence. & rdquo; So begins Frank Dik & ouml;tter & rsquo;s stunning and revelatory chronicle of Mao Zedong & rsquo;s ascension and campaign to transform the Chinese into what the party called New People. Following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, after a bloody civil war, Mao hoisted the red flag over Beijing & rsquo;s Forbidden City, and the world watched as the Communist revolution began to wash away the old order. Due to the secrecy surrounding the country & rsquo;s records, little has been known before now about the eight years that followed, preceding the massive famine and Great Leap Forward.Drawing on hundreds of previously classified documents, secret police reports, unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, eyewitness accounts of those who survived, and more, The Tragedy of Liberationbears witness to a shocking, largely untold history. Interweaving stories of ordinary citizens with tales of the brutal politics of Mao & rsquo;s court, Frank Dik & ouml;tter illuminates those who shaped the & ldquo;liberation & rdquo; and the horrific policies they implemented in the name of progress. People of all walks of life were caught up in the tragedy that unfolded, and whether or not they supported the revolution, all of them were asked to write confessions, denounce their friends, and answer queries about their political reliability. One victim of thought reform called it a & ldquo;carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind. & rdquo; Told with great narrative sweep, The Tragedy of Liberation is a powerful and important document giving voice at last to the millions who were lost, and casting new light on the foundations of one of the most powerful regimes of the twenty-first century.
An award-winning military historian, professor, and political adviser delivers the definitive story of warfare in all its guises and applications, showing what has driven and continues to drive this uniquely human form of political violence.Questions about the future of war are a regular feature of political debate, strategic analysis, and popular fiction. Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best forms of defense? How might peace be preserved or conflict resolved?From the French rout at Sedan in 1870 to the relentless contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lawrence Freedman, a world-renowned military thinker, reveals how most claims from the military futurists are wrong. But they remain influential nonetheless.Freedman shows how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars-hence the stubborn persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive, nuclear first strike, or cyberattack. He also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s, and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred.Freedman's account of a century and a half of warfare and the (often misconceived) thinking that precedes war is a challenge to hawks and doves alike, and puts current strategic thinking into a bracing historical perspective.
Everything Under The Heavens: How The Past Helps Shape China's Push For Global Power
From the former New York Times Asia correspondent and author of China's Second Continent, an incisive investigation of China's ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players. Underlying this attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in decidedly historical terms, as the path to restoring the dynastic glory of the past. If we understand how that historical identity relates to current actions, in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal, we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China stands to become--and to interact wisely with a future peer. Steeped in deeply researched history as well as on-the-ground reporting, this is French at his revelatory best.