A World of Nations


Book Description

Now updated to address recent developments in the post-9/11 world, A World of Nations, Second Edition, provides an analytical narrative of the origins, evolution, and end of the Cold War. The second edition has been reorganized along regional lines while still maintaining the chronological approach of the previous edition. It discusses International Relation theory and explores such timely topics as human rights, environmental issues, NGOs, immigration, and international terrorism.




World of Nations


Book Description

The world of nations is the world men have made, in contrast to the world of nature. Seeking to understand the civil society Americans have made, Christopher Lasch, author of The Agony of the American Left, reexamines the liberal and radical traditions in the United States and the limitations of both, along the way challenging a number of accepted interpretations of American history.




The Poverty of Nations


Book Description

We can win the fight against global poverty. Combining penetrating economic analysis with insightful theological reflection, this book sketches a comprehensive plan for increasing wealth and protecting stability at a national level.




The Agony of the American Left


Book Description

Five long essays by an American historian, the author of The New Radicalism in America (1965). Under the rubric of "the collapse of mass-based radical movements," Lasch examines the decline of populism, the disintegration of the American socialist party, and the weaknesses of black nationalism. Also included is a history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and a discussion of the '60's revival of ideological controversy.




The Welfare of Nations


Book Description

What damage is being done by failing welfare states? What lessons can be learned from the best welfare states? And—is it too late to stop welfare states from permanently diminishing the lives and liberties of people around the world? Traveling around the globe, James Bartholomew examines welfare models, searching for the best education, health care, and support services in 11 vastly different countries; illuminating the advantages and disadvantages of other nations' welfare states; and delving into crucial issues such as literacy, poverty, and inequality. This is a hard-hitting and provocative contribution to understanding how welfare states, as the defining form of government today, are changing the very nature of modern civilization.




The Size of Nations


Book Description

The authors of this timely and provocative book use the tools of economic analysis to examine the formation and change of political borders. They argue that while these issues have always been at the core of historical analysis, international economists have tended to regard the size of a country as "exogenous," or no more subject to explanation than the location of a mountain range or the course of a river. Alesina and Spolaore consider a country's borders to be subject to the same analysis as any other man-made institution. In The Size of Nations, they argue that the optimal size of a country is determined by a cost-benefit trade-off between the benefits of size and the costs of heterogeneity. In a large country, per capita costs may be low, but the heterogeneous preferences of a large population make it hard to deliver services and formulate policy. Smaller countries may find it easier to respond to citizen preferences in a democratic way. Alesina and Spolaore substantiate their analysis with simple analytical models that show how the patterns of globalization, international conflict, and democratization of the last two hundred years can explain patterns of state formation. Their aim is not only "normative" but also "positive"—that is, not only to compute the optimal size of a state in theory but also to explain the phenomenon of country size in reality. They argue that the complexity of real world conditions does not preclude a systematic analysis, and that such an analysis, synthesizing economics, political science, and history, can help us understand real world events.




On the Wealth of Nations


Book Description

The #1 New York Times–bestselling political humorist reads Adam Smith’s classic economic treatise—so you don’t have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long. The original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes—including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page “Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during the Course of the Four last Centuries,” which, to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu. Although daunting, Adam Smith’s tome is still essential to understanding such current hot topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this witty, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, P. J. O’Rourke puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important. “If there is anyone on the planet who can make Adam Smith as entertaining and informative as he was prophetic, it’s P. J. O’Rourke.” —The Weekly Standard “Hilarious . . . Learning history while better understanding the current economy—and laughing while doing it? Hard to ask for more.” —Rocky Mountain News




The Knowledge Capital of Nations


Book Description

A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.




The New Wealth of Nations


Book Description

The emerging world was poor and illiterate just forty years ago. Today, over 70 per cent of the world’s middle class resides in the erstwhile poor countries; world income inequality is down to levels last observed in 1870; and there has been a large reduction in absolute poverty. What accounts for such rapid development and catch-up? Distinguished economist Surjit S. Bhalla’s The New Wealth of Nations offers a short answer—the spread of education. The very large increase in college graduates in the non-Western world, the growing educational achievements of women, and the radical change in gender roles is critical to the understanding of current-day mega-trends. Indeed, this unprecedented development—which creates competition globally and lowers employment costs—is also why world inflation has been low, and declining, for nearly twenty years. Here is a book that breaks new ground. Besides identifying the fallacies in anti-globalization rhetoric—voiced by Brexit and Trump supporters—it points out a major lacuna in current attempts to measure wealth inequality. Through a series of compelling arguments, anecdotes, studies, calculations, tables, and charts, Bhalla emphatically reminds us that education is the new wealth, and is, in fact, currently of a greater magnitude than financial wealth, and much more equally distributed. Even while acknowledging the giant strides made by the developing world, The New Wealth of Nations investigates the downsides to the explosion of education and technology, and why countries, rich and emerging, will have to explore options like basic income and negative income tax, so that a new welfare order, appropriate for the changed—and changing—21st century can emerge. * Surjit S. Bhalla has been recently appointed as a member of PM Modi’s Economic Advisory Council, and his new work is a ground-breaking achievement that argues for a new welfare order across nations which is better suited for the constantly transforming time we live in. * Through a series of compelling arguments, anecdotes, studies, calculations, tables, and charts, noted economist Surjit S. Bhalla establishes in his latest book that education is the new wealth of nations. * This book offers insights into the definitions of the poor, the middle class, and the rich, while relating each of these to advances in schooling attainment. It explores the economic reasons behind the political success of globalization in the Western world till the early 2000s, and now its fall from grace in these same countries as notably evidenced by Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump.




An Infinity of Nations


Book Description

An Infinity of Nations explores the formation and development of a Native New World in North America. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, indigenous peoples controlled the vast majority of the continent while European colonies of the Atlantic World were largely confined to the eastern seaboard. To be sure, Native North America experienced far-reaching and radical change following contact with the peoples, things, and ideas that flowed inland following the creation of European colonies on North American soil. Most of the continent's indigenous peoples, however, were not conquered, assimilated, or even socially incorporated into the settlements and political regimes of this Atlantic New World. Instead, Native peoples forged a New World of their own. This history, the evolution of a distinctly Native New World, is a foundational story that remains largely untold in histories of early America. Through imaginative use of both Native language and European documents, historian Michael Witgen recreates the world of the indigenous peoples who ruled the western interior of North America. The Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples of the Great Lakes and Northern Great Plains dominated the politics and political economy of these interconnected regions, which were pivotal to the fur trade and the emergent world economy. Moving between cycles of alliance and competition, and between peace and violence, the Anishinaabeg and Dakota carved out a place for Native peoples in modern North America, ensuring not only that they would survive as independent and distinct Native peoples but also that they would be a part of the new community of nations who made the New World.