Social Science Theory

Is America Doomed? Uncover the Hidden Forces Driving Our Decline and How We Can Still Reverse It. Is America on the brink of total collapse? Are we witnessing the final days of a once-great superpower? The Death of America: Understanding the Age of Decadence holds the answers you need. This shocking book pulls back the curtain on the hidden forces unraveling the very fabric of American society—forces that threaten to plunge the nation into irreversible decline if left unchecked.

What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.

Addressing today’s conversation about race, empowerment, and inclusion in America, Koa Beck, writer and former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, boldly examines the history of feminism, from the true mission of the suffragists to the rise of corporate feminism with clear-eyed scrutiny and meticulous detail. She also examines overlooked communities - including Native American, Muslim, transgender, and more - and their ongoing struggles for social change.

In this detailed study, P. D. Newman pushes the roots of theurgy all the way back before the time of Homer. He shows how the Chaldean Oracles were not only written in Homeric Greek but also in dactylic hexameter, the same meter as the epics of Homer. Linking the Greek shamanic practices of the late Archaic period with the theurgic rites of late antiquity, the author explains how both anabasis, soul ascent, and katabasis, soul descent, can be considered varieties of shamanic soul flight and how these practices existed in ancient Greek culture prior to the influx of shamanic influence.

With liberal democracy embattled, public discourse grown toxic, family life breaking down, and drug abuse and depression on the rise, many fear what the future holds. In Morality, respected faith leader and public intellectual Jonathan Sacks traces today's crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and our elevation of self-interest over the common good.

As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.

In 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm broke the ice in American politics when she became the first Black woman to run for president of the United States. Chisholm left behind a coalition-building model personified by a once-in-an-era Hollywood party hosted by legendary actress and singer Diahann Carroll, and attended by the likes of Huey P. Newton, Barbara Lee, Berry Gordy, David Frost, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn and others. In A More Perfect Party, MSNBC political analyst Juanita Tolliver presents a path to people-centered politics through the lens of this soiree.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.

In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe.

In this highly anticipated follow-up to his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The Amateur, former New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Edward Klein delves into the rocky relationship between the Obamas and the Clintons. An old-school reporter with incredible insider contacts, Klein reveals just how deep the rivalry between the Obamas and the Clintons runs, with details on closed-door meetings buttressed by hundreds of interviews.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.

This third edition of Hans Bertens’ bestselling book is an essential guide to the often confusing and complicated world of literary theory. Exploring a broad range of topics from Marxist and feminist criticism to postmodernism and new historicism, Literary Theory: The Basics covers contemporary topics including: reception theory and reader response theory; the new criticism of postmodernism; the ‘after theory’ debate; post-humanism, biopolitics and animal studies; and aesthetics.

Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that.

The award-winning author of The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.

In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, US officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.

Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.

Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides critical context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.

Based on a wildly popular UC Berkeley course, a primer on how to think critically, make sound decisions, and solve problems—individually and collectively—using scientists’ tricks of the trade.

On a hot summer afternoon in 1928, the leaders of the world assembled in Paris to outlaw war. Within the year, the treaty signed that day, known as the Peace Pact, had been ratified by nearly every state in the world. War, for the first time in history, had become illegal the world over. But the promise of that summer day was fleeting. Within a decade of its signing, each state that had gathered in Paris to renounce war was at war. And in the century that followed, the Peace Pact was dismissed as an act of folly and an unmistakable failure.

In Leading from Behind, New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Richard Miniter presents the first book to explore President Obama’s abilities as a leader, by unearthing new details of his biggest successes and failures. Based on exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, Leading from Behind investigates the secret world of the West Wing and the combative personalities that shape historic events.

In The Rise of BlueAnon, David Harsanyi reveals how the left has been consumed by a uniquely dangerous and delusional brand of conspiracy theories. And unlike those on the right, the Left’s conspiracy theories are rarely kept in check by mainstream institutions. From shrieks that we’re just one election away from living in The Handmaid’s Tale, to panic that the world will end in 12 years from a corporation-caused climate catastrophe, Democrats have whipped themselves up with unfounded fears and falsehoods.

Historian and journalist Tony Perrottet chronicles the events of the Cuban Revolution and the figures at the center of the guerrilla uprising: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them.

The United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom, and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western world, and to oppose autocracy and repression. But as Bernard-Henri Levy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence.