Mandarins of the Future


Book Description

By connecting modernization theory to the welfare state liberalism programs of the New Deal order, Gilman not only provides a new intellectual context for America's Third World during the Cold War, but connects the optimism of the Great Society to the notion that American power and good intentions could stop the postcolonial world from embracing communism.







The New Mandarins


Book Description

Not since Anthony Eden launched the Suez War in 1956 has Britain's foreign policy provoked such intense controversy. Every Government statement throughout the recent Iraq crisis has highlighted the strains of Prime Minister Tony Blair in taking a reluctant country into war. Walking a diplomatic tightrope, he has sought to balance his transatlantic loyalties as a steadfast ally of the United States with his electoral pledge of strengthening Britain's position "at the heart of Europe". Each decision was destined to have a serious impact not just in the Labour Party but among ordinary British voters prepared as never before to parade their views in the streets. The Prime Minister also had to recognise the momentous repercussions his decisions could have on the credibility of the UN, the unity of Europe, the effectiveness of NATO and the cohesion of the Commonwealth. How are these British foreign policy decisions taken? How do British diplomacy and decision-making actually work? For generations the Foreign Office operated as an elitist, secretive institution resisting intrusion and change. Now, with this book, the doors have been opened on the quiet revolution which has transformed the Foreign Office. John Dickie's penetrating journey through the corridors of power reveals for the first time how the new mandarins are tested, selected, trained and promoted in Britain's Diplomatic Service. His unrivalled knowledge has enabled him to disclose the structures and mechanism of foreign policy-making in London and t




For Reasons Of State


Book Description

Chomsky S Second Major Collection Of Political Writings, Following His Pathbreaking American Power And The New Mandarins An Essential Record Of Chomsky S Political And Social Thought As It Was Sharpened On The Upheavals In Domestic And International Affairs Of The Early 1970S, For Reasons Of State Is A Major Addition To The Intellectual History Of The Vietnam Era. It Includes Articles On The War In Vietnam And The 'Wider War' In Laos And Cambodia, An Extensive Dissection Of The Pentagon Papers, Reflections On The Role Of Force In International Affairs, Essays On Civil Disobedience And The Role Of The University, And A Now-Classic Introduction To Anarchism. These Contributions Reveal Very Different Facets Of Chomsky S Powers As A Thinker, From His Uncanny Ability To Join Abstract Philosophical Considerations With The Concrete Political Realities Of His Time, To His Singular Capacity To Mount Withering, Fact-Based Critiques Of American Foreign Policy.




Mandarins


Book Description

Prefiguring the vital modernist voices of the Western literary canon, Akutagawa writes with a trenchant psychological precision that exposes the shifting traditions and ironies of early twentieth-century Japan and reveals his own strained connection to it. These stories are moving glimpses into a cast of characters at odds with the society around them, singular portraits that soar effortlessly toward the universal. "What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" Akutagawa once mused. Both piercing intelligence and "useful melancholy" buoy this remarkable collection. Mandarins contains three stories published in English for the first time: "An Evening Conversation," "An Enlightened Husband," and "Winter."




The Responsibility of Intellectuals


Book Description

Selected by Newsweek as one of “14 nonfiction books you’ll want to read this fall” Fifty years after it first appeared, one of Noam Chomsky’s greatest essays will be published for the first time as a timely stand-alone book, with a new preface by the author As a nineteen-year-old undergraduate in 1947, Noam Chomsky was deeply affected by articles about the responsibility of intellectuals written by Dwight Macdonald, an editor of Partisan Review and then of Politics. Twenty years later, as the Vietnam War was escalating, Chomsky turned to the question himself, noting that "intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments" and to analyze their "often hidden intentions." Originally published in the New York Review of Books, Chomsky's essay eviscerated the "hypocritical moralism of the past" (such as when Woodrow Wilson set out to teach Latin Americans "the art of good government") and exposed the shameful policies in Vietnam and the role of intellectuals in justifying it. Also included in this volume is the brilliant "The Responsibility of Intellectuals Redux," written on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which makes the case for using privilege to challenge the state. As relevant now as it was in 1967, The Responsibility of Intellectuals reminds us that "privilege yields opportunity and opportunity confers responsibilities." All of us have choices, even in desperate times.




Work's Intimacy


Book Description

This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.




Why America Needs a Left


Book Description

The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.




Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe


Book Description

“There are two problems for our species’ survival—nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, ” says Noam Chomsky in this new book on the two existential threats of our time and their points of intersection since World War II. While a nuclear strike would require action, environmental catastrophe is partially defined by willful inaction in response to human-induced climate change. Denial of the facts is only half the equation. Other contributing factors include extreme techniques for the extraction of remaining carbon deposits, the elimination of agricultural land for bio-fuel, the construction of dams, and the destruction of forests that are crucial for carbon sequestration. On the subject of current nuclear tensions, Chomsky revisits the long-established option of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, a proposal set in motion through a joint Egyptian Iranian General Assembly resolution in 1974. Intended as a warning, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe is also a reminder that talking about the unspeakable can still be done with humor, with wit and indomitable spirit.




Cognitive Capitalism


Book Description

This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;