Uprisings in the Middle East

Sample

Charles Hornsby

"Since independence in 1963, Kenya has survived nearly five decades as a functioning nation-state, with regular elections, its borders intact and without experiencing war or military rule. However, Kenya's independence has always been circumscribed by its failure to transcend its colonial past; its governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens; and its politics have been fraught with controversy - illustrated most recently by the post-election protests and violence in 2007. The decisions of the early years of independence, and the acts of its leaders in the decades since - from Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga to Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki - have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, tribalism - including the simmering Kikuyu-Luo rivalries - money, power, national autonomy and the distribution of resources. The political elite's endless struggle for access to state resources has damaged Kenya's economy and the political exploitation of ethnicity still threatens the country's stability. In this definitive new history, Charles Hornsby demonstrates how independent Kenya's politics have been dominated by a struggle to deliver security, impartiality, efficiency and growth, but how the legacies of the past have continued to undermine their achievement, making the long-term future of Kenya far from certain."--

Sample

Maxime Rodinson

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Maxime Rodinson's Marxist analyses of contemporary politics and economics in the Muslim world are more salient than ever. In this collection, Rodinson emphasizes the economic and political, rather than religious, characteristics of Islam, covering topics like the history of the Marxist movement in the Islamic Middle East; the dialogue between socialism and Islam, and Marxism and Arab nationalism; the relationship between national conflicts and class struggle, and the history of communism in Arab states such as Syria and Egypt. Unashamedly political and polemical, Rodinson offers an insightful picture of political Islam and Marxism, and their profound implications for the Arab working class and the future of the region.--

Sample

Helen Graham

An account of the story of the Spanish socialist movement (Party and trade union) during the crucial years of the Civil War. These vital years determined the long-term future of Spain itself, and the Spanish socialist party (PSOE) was the axis of the Republican war effort.

Sample

Michael Kazin

Our Constitution promises a government of the people, by the people, and for the people - but who are "the people"? And who can honestly claim to speak for "the people"? Here, in the first comprehensive history of populism in our nation, Michael Kazin examines the strange career of populist politics from the era of Thomas Jefferson to the era of William Jefferson Clinton. Once identified with the dispossessed, the poor and exploited workers from farm and factory, populism in recent years has been brought to the forefront of the political landscape, embraced by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson and glibly applied to figures ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Rush Limbaugh. Kazin calls populism an impulse rather than an ideology. He defines it as a mode of political persuasion that combines anti-elitism, adoration of the common people (usually defined as hardworking, pious, and, until quite recently, white), and a belief in the American ideal of democracy that the power brokers in business, government, and academia have betrayed. Kazin argues that populism has undergone two major transformations since the defeat of the People's Party, the original Populists, in the mid-1890s. The first was a split between those who viewed "the people" as a group belonging above all to God and those who viewed ordinary Americans in primarily economic terms. The second, an ongoing shift to the Right, began in the McCarthy era. The movement was transformed by the onset of the Cold War, the ideological mellowing of the labor movement, and the New Left's self-imposed alienation from the American mainstream. In the 1960s, George Wallace showed how to attract blue-collar Democrats with populist rhetoric. Then Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan captured and refined populist themes for the benefit of the Republican Party. Kazin shows that the Right's conception of a struggling middle class beset by an inept, immoral state remains vigorous and limits what Bill Clinton or anyone to his left can accomplish. The Populist Persuasion unrolls a fascinating narrative of our country's history, richly endowed with examples demonstrating the flexibility of populist rhetoric. Bringing to life the powerful voices of past leaders, Kazin shows how they both inform the political debates of our own time and point with hope toward a future in which the country will live up to its original democratic ideals.