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The Origin of the Family Private Prop...
Brief Summary
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies.
Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.
ISBN:9780141191119
Author:Friedrich Engels
The Parliament of Man
Brief Summary
The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations
The Parliament of Man is the first definitive history of the United Nations, from one of America's greatest living historians. Distinguished scholar Paul Kennedy, author of the bestselling The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, gives us a thorough and timely account that explains the UN's roots and functions while also casting an objective eye on its effectiveness and its prospects for success in meeting the challenges that lie ahead.
Kennedy shows the UN for what it is: fallible, human-based, often dependent on the whims of powerful national governments or the foibles of individual administrators—yet also utterly indispensable. With his insightful grasp of six decades of global history, Kennedy convincingly argues that "it is difficult to imagine how much more riven and ruinous our world of six billion people would be if there had been no UN."
ISBN:9780375703416
Author:Paul Kennedy
The Music Shop
The Geopolitics of Emotion
Brief Summary
The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are reshaping the World
The first book to expose and investigate the far-reaching emotional impact of globalization.
In his celebrated 1993 book The Clash of Civilizations, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that the fundamental source of conflict in the post–Cold War world would not be primarily ideological or economic, but cultural. In The Geopolitics of Emotion Dominique Moïsi, a leading authority on international affairs, demonstrates that our post-9/11 world has become divided by more than cultural fault lines between nations and civilizations. Moïsi brilliantly chronicles how the geopolitics of today is characterized by a "clash of emotions,” and how cultures of fear, humiliation, and hope are reshaping the world.
Moïsi contends that both the United States and Europe have been dominated by fears of the "other” and of their loss of a national identity and purpose. Instead of being united by their fears, the twin pillars of the West are more often divided by them—or, rather, by bitter debates over how best to confront or transcend them.
For Muslims and Arabs, the combination of historical grievances, exclusion from the economic boon of globalization, and civil and religious conflicts extending from their homelands to the Muslim diaspora have created a culture of humiliation that is quickly devolving into a culture of hatred. Meanwhile, Asia has been able to concentrate on building a better future and seizing the economic initiative from the American-dominated West and so creating a new culture of hope.
Do these emotions represent underlying cultural tendencies characteristic of particular regions and populations today? How will these varying emotions influence the political, social, and cultural conflicts that roil our world? How can the West transcend its fear and avoid sliding into protectionism or militarism? What can the Muslim world do to overcome is legacy of humiliation?
Will China and India manage to maintain their status as the cultures of hope? And what will the effect of the world economic crisis be? By delineating the necessity of confronting emotions to understand our changing world and deciphering the driving emotions behind our cultural differences, The Geopolitics of Emotion presents a provocative new perspective on globalization.
ISBN:9780385523769
Author:Dominique Moisi
Secret Lives of Cheating Wives A Novel
Brief Summary
Delve into the minds of several frisky women who are willing to risk it all in the pursuit of pleasure from bestselling author Curtis Bunn.
With sensual language and a unique understanding of women, The Secret Lives of Cheating Wives by Curtis Bunn is a gripping novel that reveals the lengths today’s women will go to indulge their deepest desires.
The most unlikely of women—God-fearing, child-raising, career-driven, soft-spoken women—are taking risks outside their marriages unlike any time before, a state of affairs that has become an underground movement. Refusing to boast about their extramarital affairs like men, these women keep quiet and yet, the more they engage, the more daring they become—and the more at risk their marriages become, too.
With relatable and complex characters, The Secret Lives of Cheating Wives, is more than your typical romance: it strives to explore the psyche of these women and challenges you into understanding their actions, all while enjoying a tense, steamy ride filled with edge-of-your-seat drama.
ISBN:9781593096861
Author:Curtis Bunn
Of Women In the 21st Century
Brief Summary
A powerful, urgent and timely polemic on why women still need equality, and how we get there
It is the greatest human rights abuse on the planet. It blights first and developing worlds, rich and poor women's health, wealth, education, representation, opportunity and security everywhere. It is no exaggeration to describe it as an 'apartheid', but not limited to one country or historical period. Gender injustice, Shami Chakrabarti shows, is an ancient and continuing wrong that is millennial in duration and global in reach.
As we move forward in the twenty-first century, a time of crises the world over, Shami Chakrabarti lays out the huge challenges we face with honesty and clarity. We have not yet done enough to create a more equal world: one where women and men share power, responsibility and opportunity. One that is potentially happier and more peaceful. One where no life is wasted, and everyone has a chance to fulfil their potential. Instead, we've been playing around at the edges. What's needed now is radical change.
From the disparity in the number of births to issues of schooling, work, ownership, faith, political representation and international diplomacy, Of Women outlines what needs fixing and makes clear, inspiring proposals about what we do next, putting women's rights at the centre of the progressive political agenda.
ISBN:9780241296349
Author:Shami Chakrabarti
The Clothing of Books
Brief Summary
How do you clothe a book?
In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer.
Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, "the covers become a part of me.”
ISBN:9780525432753
Author:Jhumpa Lahiri
Speak No Evil
Brief Summary
A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.
ISBN:9780062798961
Author:Uzodinma Iweala
The Woman Who Stole My Life
Brief Summary
Stella Sweeney is back in Dublin. After living the dream in New York for a year - touring her self-help book, appearing on talk shows all over the USA and living it up in her 10-room duplex on the Upper West Side - she's back to normality with a bang. And she's got writer's block.
Stella wants a clean break as she didn't exactly leave New York on a high. Why is she back in Ireland so soon? Who is it who keeps calling? Stella wants to get back to being the woman she used to be.
But can she? And should she?
ISBN:9780718155346
Author:Marian Keyes
Born to Love Cursed to Feel
Brief Summary
For fans of r.h. Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King’s raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human "curse to feel.” Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing.
Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love—the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it’s not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel.
This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don’t have to be what defines them.
ISBN:9781449480950
Author:Samantha King
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Brief Summary
The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday.
Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
ISBN:9780061124297
Author:Lionel Shriver
The Selfish Capitalist Origins of Aff...
Brief Summary
In the bestselling Affluenza, world-renowned psychologist Oliver James introduced us to a modern-day virus sweeping through the English-speaking world — how our obsessive, envious tendencies make us twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions as people in other developed nations.
Now The Selfish Capitalist provides more detailed substantiation for the claims made in Affluenza, and outlines the political, economic and social climate in which the virus has grown.
A modern-day The State We’re In, the book’s argument will chime with a public deeply disenchanted with all the main political parties. James points out that, since the Seventies, the rich have become much, much richer, yet the average person’s wage has not increased at all.
He provides a wealth of evidence to show that we have become more miserable and distressed during this time, and suggests that this is a direct consequence of Thatcherite/Blairite "Selfish Capitalism,” whose most significant act has been to rob the poor to give to the rich.
The Selfish Capitalist is a rallying cry to reduce levels of distress by adopting a form of unselfish capitalism.
It is a hard-hitting and thought-provoking work that tells us why our personal well-being must take precedence over the wealth of a tiny minority if we are to cure ourselves of this disease.
ISBN:9780091923815
Author:Oliver James
Spilt Milk
Brief Summary
A story of two passionate people who share a shameful past and a tenuous present, this remarkable narrative follows headmistress Mohumagadi—of the elite Sekolo sa Ditlhora school for talented black children—and Father Bill, a disgraced preacher, as they are brought together again decades after a childhood love affair expelled them from their communities.
Much to the dismay of her students, Mohumagadi hires Father Bill as a teacher, resulting in a battle of wills and wits for the hearts and minds of the children living in the shadow of revolution and change.
Entertaining and thought-provoking, this unique account offers insight into the workings of African culture.
ISBN:9781770097919
Author:Kopano Matlwa
What Will People Say
Brief Summary
Rehana Rossouw’s unique voice gives life and drama to this family saga.
Hanover Park. The heart of the Cape Flats. It is 1986. Michael Jackson and Brenda Fassie rule every hi-fi. Princess Di and George Michael hairstyles are all the rage. There are plans to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1976 student uprising.
Neville and Magda Fourie live in Magnolia Court with their three children. They are trying to ‘raise them decent’ in a township festering with gang wars and barricaded with burning tyres.
Suzette, the eldest, is beautiful and determined to escape her family’s poverty. Nicky, the sensitive middle child, has ambitions to use her intellect as a way out. Anthony, the only son, attracted by power and wealth, is lured away from his family by a gangster.
In What Will People Say? a rich variety of township characters – the preachers, the teachers, the gangsters and the defeated – come to life in vivid language as they eke out their lives in the shadows of grey concrete blocks of flats.
Which members of the Fourie family will thrive, which ones will not survive?
Generously spiced with Cape Flats slang; lots of vivid and gritty description that give an authentic feel to the story; plenty of plot – the writer draws us in and makes us curious about what will happen next; and very human characters we come to care about.
ISBN:9781431420247
Author:Rehana Rossouw
Gone West A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery
Brief Summary
In September 1926, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.
Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase.
Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions. But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events, in Gone West.
ISBN:9780312675486
Author:Carola Dunn
Civil War Land in Bad Decline
Brief Summary
Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way.
In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With a new introduction by Joshua Ferris and a new author’s note by Saunders himself, this edition is essential reading for those seeking to discover or revisit a virtuosic, disturbingly prescient voice.
ISBN:9780812987683
Author:George Saunders
The Presidents The Transformation of ...
Brief Summary
The Presidents: The Transformation of the American Presidency from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama.
In this magisterial examination of the Presidency over the course of the 20th Century, the author explores the history of the world's greatest elective office and the role each incumbent has played in changing the scope of its powers.
Using individual presidential portraits of each of the presidents of the past century Graubard asks, and answers, a wide variety of crucial questions about each President. What intellectual, social and political assets did they bring to the White House, and how quickly did they deplete or mortgage that capital? How well did they cope with crises, foreign and domestic? How much attention did they pay to their election pledges after they were elected? How did they use the media, old and new? Above all, how did they conduct themselves in office and what legacy did they leave to their successors? Graubard provides original analysis in each case, and reaches many surprising conclusions.
ISBN:9780713996180
Author:Stephen Graubard
This Secret We are Keeping
Brief Summary
A pupil and a teacher. Is it ever right to break the rules? Jessica Hart has never forgotten Matthew Landley. After all, he was her first love when she was fifteen years old. But he was also her school math’s teacher, and their forbidden affair ended in scandal with his arrest and imprisonment.
Now, seventeen years later, Matthew returns to Norfolk, with a new identity and a long-term girlfriend and a young daughter, who know nothing of what happened before. Yet when he runs into Jessica, neither of them can ignore the emotional ties that bind them together.
With so many secrets to keep hidden, how long can Jessica and Matthew avoid the dark mistakes of their past imploding in the present? From debut author Rebecca Done, This Secret We're Keeping is a powerful and provocative novel about the ties which can keep us together - or tear us apart.
ISBN:9781405923941
Author:Rebecca Done
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She's not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale.
One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.
Native Son
Brief Summary
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.
Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
ISBN:9780060837563
Author:Richard Wright