Power, Personalities, and Policies


Book Description

A wide-ranging collection of essays in honour of Britain's leading historian of the international relations of the great powers in the twentieth century. The essays examine aspects of North Atlantic, European and Middle Eastern diplomacy.




People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent


Book Description

“Urgent work, by the foremost champion of ‘progressive capitalism.’ ” —The New Yorker An authoritative account of the dangers of unfettered markets and monied politics, People, Power, and Profits shows us an America in crisis. The American people, however, are far from powerless, and Joseph Stiglitz provides an alternative path forward through his vision of progressive capitalism, with a comprehensive set of political and economic changes.




Power and Personality


Book Description

This book concerns the wanting, getting, and giving of power. Recent advances in medicine, sociology, and psychology have deepened our understanding of the motives, skills, and experience that operate between leaders and those who are led. Since power is about decision-making, it figures not only in offi cial institutions but in other organizations, including political parties, pressure groups, trade associations, business enterprises, trade unions, and many other types of organizations.A general theory of the political personality is set forth here. Lasswell describes the process by which power becomes a value of first importance and the way appropriate skills in exercising power are acquired. He shows that special political types such as agitators or administrators are related to basic types of character that contribute to how they lead. Finally, his analysis offers original perspectives to understand democratic leadership.Lasswell offers definite suggestions for perfecting self-observatories in national and world affairs and for forming democratic personalities, selecting and training democratic leaders, and reducing destructive conflicts in human relationships. Power and Personality followed the author's 1930 work Psychopathology and Politics, which was widely hailed for its pioneering approach. Power and Personality reevaluated the entire issue of the relationship between psychology and politics in the light of subsequent experience and scientific developments since publication of that earlier work. Lasswell's ideas continue to carry great weight and persuasiveness.




Power from the People


Book Description

Over 90 percent of US power generation comes from large, centralized, highly polluting, nonrenewable sources of energy. It is delivered through long, brittle transmission lines, and then is squandered through inefficiency and waste. But it doesn't have to be that way. Communities can indeed produce their own local, renewable energy. Power from the People explores how homeowners, co-ops, nonprofit institutions, governments, and businesses are putting power in the hands of local communities through distributed energy programs and energy-efficiency measures. Using examples from around the nation - and occasionally from around the world - Greg Pahl explains how to plan, organize, finance, and launch community-scale energy projects that harvest energy from sun, wind, water, and earth. He also explains why community power is a necessary step on the path to energy security and community resilience - particularly as we face peak oil, cope with climate change, and address the need to transition to a more sustainable future. This book - the second in the Chelsea Green Publishing Company and Post Carbon Institute's Community Resilience Series - also profiles numerous communitywide initiatives that can be replicated elsewhere.




Who Rules America Now?


Book Description

The author is convinced that there is a ruling class in America today. He examines the American power structure as it has developed in the 1980s. He presents systematic, empirical evidence that a fixed group of privileged people dominates the American economy and government. The book demonstrates that an upper class comprising only one-half of one percent of the population occupies key positions within the corporate community. It shows how leaders within this "power elite" reach government and dominate it through processes of special-interest lobbying, policy planning and candidate selection. It is written not to promote any political ideology, but to analyze our society with accuracy.




Sources of Power


Book Description

An overview of naturalistic decision making, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced.




Margaret Thatcher


Book Description

The complete life of Margaret Thatcher in one volume. As Britain's first woman Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought about the biggest social and political revolution in the nation's post-war history. She achieved this largely by the driving force of her personality – a subject of endless speculation among both her friends and her foes. Jonathan Aitken has an insider's view of Margaret Thatcher's story. He is well qualified to explore her strong and sometimes difficult personality during half a century of political dramas. From first meeting her when she was a junior shadow minister in the mid 1960s, during her time as leader of the Opposition when he was a close family friend, and as a Member of Parliament throughout her years in power, Aitken had a ring side seat at many private and public spectacles in the Margaret Thatcher saga. From his unique vantage point, Aitken brings new light to many crucial episodes of Thatcherism. They include her ousting of Ted Heath, her battles with her Cabinet, the Falklands War, the Miners' Strike, her relationships with world leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the build up to the Shakespearian coup inside the Conservative Party which brought about her downfall. Drawing on his own diaries, and a wealth of extensive research including some ninety interviews which range from international statesmen like Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington to many of her No.10 private secretaries and personal friends, Jonathan Aitken's Margaret Thatcher – Power and Personality breaks new ground as a fresh and fascinating portrait of the most influential political leader of post-war Britain.




Power to the People


Book Description

Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. Power to the People offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.




7 Rules of Power


Book Description

If you want to "change lives, change organizations, change the world," the Stanford business school’s motto, you need power. Is power the last dirty secret or the secret to success? Both. While power carries some negative connotations, power is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Don’t blame the tool for how some people used it. If fully understood and harnessed effectively, power skills and understanding become the keys to increasing salaries, job satisfaction, career advancement, organizational change, and, happiness. In 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, provides the insights that have made both his online and on-campus classes incredibly popular—with life-changing results often achieved in 8 or 10 weeks. Rooted firmly in social science research, Pfeffer’s 7 rules provide a manual for increasing your ability to get things done, including increasing the positive effects of your job performance. The 7 rules are: 1) Get out of your own way. 2) Break the rules. 3) Show up in powerful fashion. 4) Create a powerful brand. 5) Network relentlessly. 6) Use your power. 7) Understand that once you have acquired power, what you did to get it will be forgiven, forgotten, or both. With 7 Rules of Power, you’ll learn, through both numerous examples as well as research evidence, how to accomplish change in your organization, your life, the lives of others, and the world.




The Vatican Diaries


Book Description

The New York Times–bestselling inside look at one of the world’s most powerful and mysterious institutions For more than twenty-five years, John Thavis held one of the most remarkable journalistic assignments in the world: reporting on the inner workings of the Vatican. In The Vatican Diaries, Thavis reveals Vatican City as a place struggling to define itself in the face of internal and external threats, where Curia cardinals fight private wars and sexual abuse scandals threaten to undermine papal authority. Thavis (author of The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age) also takes readers through the politicking behind the election of Pope Francis and what we might expect from his papacy. The Vatican Diaries is a perceptive, compelling, and provocative account of this singular institution and will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the challenges faced by religion in an increasingly secularized world.