Politics

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

11,000.00

Now with an epilogue that speaks directly to the current energy crisis, The Prize recounts the panoramic history of the world’s most important resource—oil. Daniel Yergin’s timeless book chronicles the struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded oil for decades and that continues to fuel global rivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny of men and nations. This updated edition categorically proves the unwavering significance of oil throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first by tracing economic and political clashes over precious “black gold.”

With his far-reaching insight and in-depth research, Yergin is uniquely positioned to address the present battle over energy which undoubtedly ranks as one of the most vital issues of our time. The canvas of his narrative history is enormous—from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm, and both the Iraq War and current climate change. The definitive work on the subject of oil, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement, and great value—crucial to our understanding of world politics and the economy today—and tomorrow.

Uncommon Wealth

11,000.00

In Uncommon Wealth, Kojo Koram traces the tale of how after the end of the British empire an interconnected group of well-heeled British intellectuals, politicians, accountants and lawyers offshored their capital, seized assets and saddled debt in former ‘dependencies’. This enabled horrific inequality across the globe as ruthless capitalists profited and ordinary people across Britain’s former territories in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were trapped in poverty. However, the reinforcement of capitalist power across the world also ricocheted back home. Now it has left many Britons wondering where their own sovereignty and prosperity has gone…

Decolonisation was not just a trendy buzzword. It was one of the great global changes of the past hundred years, yet Britain – the protagonist in the whole, messy drama – has forgotten it was ever even there. A blistering uncovering of the scandal of Britain’s disastrous treatment of independent countries after empire, Uncommon Wealth shows the decisions of decades past are contributing to the forces that are breaking Britain today.

Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency

11,000.00

We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning?

Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his #1 bestselling blockbuster Fire and Fury. Now, in Landslide, he closes the door on the presidency with a final, astonishingly candid account.

Wolff embedded himself in the White House in 2017 and gave us a vivid picture of the chaos that had descended on Washington. Almost four years later, Wolff finds the Oval Office even more chaotic and bizarre, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the “alternative facts” he hungers to hear―about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning reelection. Once again, Wolff has gotten top-level access and takes us front row as Trump’s circle of plotters whittles down to the most enabling and the president reaches beyond the bounds of democracy as he entertains the idea of martial law and balks at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the institution of democracy itself.

As the Trump presidency’s hold over the country spiraled out of control, an untold and human account of desperation, duplicity, and delusion was unfolding within the West Wing. Landslide is that story as only Michael Wolff can tell it.

The Targeter

10,500.00

In 1999, 30-year-old Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, D.C., to join the CIA. Quickly realizing her affinity for intelligence work, Nada was determined to rise through the ranks of the agency first as an analyst and then as a Targeting Officer, eventually finding herself on the frontline of America’s war against Islamic extremists.

In this role, Nada was charged with determining if Iraq had a relationship with 9/11 and Al-Qaida, and finding the mastermind behind this terrorist activity: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Her team’s analysis stood the test of time, but it was not satisfactory for some members of the Administration.

In a tight, tension-packed narrative that takes the reader from Langley deep into Iraq, Bakos reveals the inner workings of the Agency and the largely hidden world of intelligence gathering post 9/11. Entrenched in the world of the CIA, Bakos, along with her colleagues, focused on leading U.S. Special Operations Forces to the doorstep of one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.

Filled with on-the-ground insights and poignant personal anecdotes, The Targeter shows us the great personal sacrifice that comes with intelligence work. This is Nada’s story, but it is also an intimate chronicle of how a group of determined, ambitious men and women worked tirelessly in the heart of the CIA to ensure our nation’s safety at home and abroad.

Solved

10,500.00

Denmark is set to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
Iceland has topped the gender equality rankings for a decade and counting.
South Korea’s average life expectancy will soon reach ninety.

How have these places achieved such remarkable outcomes? And how can we apply those lessons to our own communities?

The future we want is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed. By bringing together for the first time tried and tested solutions to society’s most pressing problems, from violence to inequality, Andrew Wear shows that the world we want to live in is already within reach.

Solved is a much-needed dose of optimism in an atmosphere of doom and gloom. Informative, accessible and revelatory, it is a celebration of the power of human ingenuity to make the future brighter for everyone.

The Shah

10,000.00

More than ten years in the making, The Shah tells the story of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi, the controversial and conflicted leader whose ousting set the stage for the totalitarian Islamic Republic of Iran that we know today. In this account of the political intrigue and religious tension that led to the Islamic Revolution, Abbas Milani reveals how the Shah’s personal relationships, society’s expectations, and the ultimate betrayal of his allies led to his exile and death. With its rich details, vivid descriptions, and dialogue, this superbly executed biography offers readers a unique account of the Shah’s private life, sovereignty, and downfall.

Imagining Global Futures

10,000.00

What does a just world look like? This volume begins with a planet beset by accumulating crises—environmental, social, and political—and imagines how we can move beyond them.

Drawing on the legacy of post-colonial struggles for liberation, Imagining Global Futures explores a range of radical visions for a world after neoliberalism and empire. Centered on movements in the Global South, the collection challenges dominant patterns of social and political life and sketches more just and sustainable futures we might build in their place. What can we learn from alternative conceptions of the good life? How can we build a world where people are both freer and more equal? An urgent resource for collective imagination, Imagining Global Futures counterposes thick visions of a better world to our dystopian present.

The Black Panther Party

10,000.00

WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD • A bold and fascinating graphic novel history of the revolutionary Black Panther Party.

Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a radical political organization that stood in defiant contrast to the mainstream civil rights movement. This gripping illustrated history explores the impact and significance of the Panthers, from their social, educational, and healthcare programs that were designed to uplift the Black community to their battle against police brutality through citizen patrols and frequent clashes with the FBI, which targeted the Party from its outset.

Using dramatic comic book-style retellings and illustrated profiles of key figures, The Black Panther Party captures the major events, people, and actions of the party, as well as their cultural and political influence and enduring legacy.

Ministering Justice

10,000.00

Administration of the Justice Sector in Nigeria by Olasupo Shasore (SAN) and Dr Akeem Olajide Bello: Ministering Justice is part road map and part memoir. The book covers amongst others a treatise of the evolution of the Office of the Attorney General in Nigeria; it recommends both new angles to justice sector reform as well as appropriate measures for effective justice sector administration. It is an excellent record of several reform initiatives while also containig the pioneering intervention by the State Law Reform Commission.

The Iconoplast

10,000.00

Shinzo Abe entered politics burdened by high expectations: that he would change Japan. In 2007, seemingly overwhelmed, he resigned after only a year as prime minister. Yet, following five years of reinvention, he masterfully regained the premiership in 2012, and now dominates Japanese democracy as no leader has done before.

Abe has inspired fierce loyalty among his followers, cowing Japan’s left with his ambitious economic program and support for the security and armed forces. He has staked a leadership role for Japan in a region being rapidly transformed by the rise of China and India, while carefully preserving an ironclad relationship with Trump’s America.

The Iconoclast tells the story of Abe’s meteoric rise and stunning fall, his remarkable comeback, and his unlikely emergence as a global statesman laying the groundwork for Japan’s survival in a turbulent century.

Behind The Enigma

10,000.00

For a hundred years GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters – has been at the forefront of British secret statecraft. Born out of the need to support military operations in the First World War, and fought over ever since, today it is the UK’s biggest intelligence, security and cyber agency and a powerful tool of the British state.

Famed primarily for its codebreaking achievements at Bletchley Park against Enigma ciphers in the Second World War, GCHQ has intercepted, interpreted and disrupted the information networks of Britain’s foes for a century, and yet it remains the least known and understood of British intelligence services.

It has been one of the most open-minded, too: GCHQ has always demanded a diversity of intellectual firepower, finding it in places which strike us as ground-breaking today, and allying it to the efforts of ordinary men and women to achieve extraordinary insights in war, diplomacy and peace. GCHQ shapes British decision-making more than any other intelligence organisation and, along with its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership-including the United States’ National Security Agency-has become ever more crucial in an age governed by information technology.

Based on unprecedented access to documents in GCHQ’s archive, many of them hitherto classified, this is the first book to authoritatively explain the entire history of one of the world’s most potent intelligence agencies. Many major contemporary conflicts-between Russia and the West, between Arab nations and Israel, between state security and terrorism-become fully explicable only in the light of the secret intelligence record. Written by one of the world’s leading experts in intelligence and strategy, Behind the Enigma reveals the fascinating truth behind this most remarkable and enigmatic of organisations.

The Story Of China

10,000.00

After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world’s second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history.

The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China’s prehistory—the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the age of Confucius. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians, such as the renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He paints a vibrant picture of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China’s rich and diverse culture was at its height. Then, Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century that pushed China along the path to modernity.

Finally, he provides a clear up-to-date account of post-1949 China, including revelations about the 1989 crisis based on newly leaked inside documents, and fresh insights into the new order of President Xi Jinping. All woven together with landscape history and the author’s own travel journals, The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.

Biafra In The News

10,000.00

Fifty years ago, Nigeria endured a period of violent disturbance leading to the breakaway of the Eastern Region under the name Biafra. The resulting conflict (1967-70) aroused shock and protests around the world because of mass starvation in the war zone. While Britain supplied arms to the federal
Nigerian government, and France to the Biafrans, relief agencies with contributions from countless individuals organized a memorable airlift of food and medicine to the Biafrans’ Uli airstrip.

Jonathan Derrick, then a journalist for the London weekly West Africa, followed these events closely and
recorded the war in the magazine’s news pages, right up to the federal forces’ final victory and the remarkable reconciliation between supporters of Biafra–predominantly Igbo–and other Nigerians. He later worked for some years in Nigeria, and has studied much of the material published on the war
since 1970.

Here, he recounts the history of the conflict as documented in West Africa, referring to later literature on and analysis of the events, which inspired passion at the time and have provoked debate ever since. His account deals with myths, misapprehensions and controversies surrounding the conflict, while recalling the tragic facts of a grim episode in African history.

Revolt

10,000.00

Revolt is an eloquent and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism today. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is unsustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological advances and social progress, or the breakdown of liberal democracy, as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs. Eyal illuminates the forces both benign and malignant that have so rapidly transformed our economic, political, and cultural realities, shedding light not only on the globalized revolution that has come to define our time but also on the counterrevolution waged by those globalization has marginalized and exploited.

With a mixture of journalistic narrative, penetrating vignettes, and original analysis, Revolt shows that within the mainstream the left and right have much in common. Teasing out the connections among distressed Pennsylvania coal miners, anarchists in communes on the outskirts of Athens, neo-Nazis in Germany, and Syrian refugee families whom he accompanied from the shores of Greece to their destination in Germany, Eyal shows how their stories feed our current state of unrest. More than just an analysis of the present, though, Revolt also takes a hard look at lessons from the past, from the Opium Wars in China to colonialist Haiti to the Marshall Plan. With these historical ties, Eyal shows that the roots of revolt have always been deep and strong. The current uprisings are no passing phenomenon—revolt is the new status quo.

Africa’s Security Challenges in the 21st Century

10,000.00

Against the backdrop of a globalized world, with the key players having to contend with the changing nature of power in international relations and Africa of the 21st century faced with new realities, this book was conceived to expand and push the scope of inquiry into a new direction in strategic thinking. It was designed to examine various issues that are related to the security of Africa as a sub-system within the international system.

The book is an attempt to examine how some basic security issues define the position of Africa within the international system and determine the dynamics of African participation in the ordering of a global world order. Part of the intention is to show the forms that the factors of African security would take in the foreseeable future as these factors would determine the relationship between African states and the non-African world as well as influence the developments within Africa itself.

From Third World to First: The Singapore Story – 1965-2000

10,000.00

Few gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when it was granted independence in 1965. How is it, then, that today the former British colonial trading post is a thriving Asian metropolis with not only the world’s number one airline, best airport, and busiest port of trade, but also the world’s fourth–highest per capita real income?

The story of that transformation is told here by Singapore’s charismatic, controversial founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Rising from a legacy of divisive colonialism, the devastation of the Second World War, and general poverty and disorder following the withdrawal of foreign forces, Singapore now is hailed as a city of the future. This miraculous history is dramatically recounted by the man who not only lived through it all but who fearlessly forged ahead and brought about most of these changes.

Delving deep into his own meticulous notes, as well as previously unpublished government papers and official records, Lee details the extraordinary efforts it took for an island city–state in Southeast Asia to survive at that time.

Lee explains how he and his cabinet colleagues finished off the communist threat to the fledgling state’s security and began the arduous process of nation building: forging basic infrastructural roads through a land that still consisted primarily of swamps, creating an army from a hitherto racially and ideologically divided population, stamping out the last vestiges of colonial–era corruption, providing mass public housing, and establishing a national airline and airport.

In this illuminating account, Lee writes frankly about his trenchant approach to political opponents and his often unorthodox views on human rights, democracy, and inherited intelligence, aiming always “to be correct, not politically correct.” Nothing in Singapore escaped his watchful eye: whether choosing shrubs for the greening of the country, restoring the romance of the historic Raffles Hotel, or openly, unabashedly persuading young men to marry women as well educated as themselves. Today’s safe, tidy Singapore bears Lee’s unmistakable stamp, for which he is unapologetic: “If this is a nanny state, I am proud to have fostered one.”

Though Lee’s domestic canvas in Singapore was small, his vigor and talent assured him a larger place in world affairs. With inimitable style, he brings history to life with cogent analyses of some of the greatest strategic issues of recent times and reveals how, over the years, he navigated the shifting tides of relations among America, China, and Taiwan, acting as confidant, sounding board, and messenger for them. He also includes candid, sometimes acerbic pen portraits of his political peers, including the indomitable Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the poetry–spouting Jiang Zemin, and ideologues George Bush and Deng Xiaoping.

Lee also lifts the veil on his family life and writes tenderly of his wife and stalwart partner, Kwa Geok Choo, and of their pride in their three children –– particularly the eldest son, Hsien Loong, who is now Singapore’s deputy prime minister.

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