The most significant development in global politics following the end of the bi-polar Cold War era has been the rise of a multi-polar state system. This has led to the emergence of major potential super-powers, global rivalry, international terrorism and the gradual weakening of the one remaining hegemonic, uni-polar state after the Cold War - the US. The idealistic hopes following the collapse of communism have evaporated and Cold War competition between liberal capitalism and communism has been replaced by multi-polar global rivalry that can only be resolved by a balance of power buttressed by international law. In this ambitious and thought-provoking book, Professor Rein Mullerson outlines the challenges associated with the new geopolitics of the twenty-first century. Based on in-depth research over several decades it is an essential tool for understanding the new world order and the ensuing crises in global politics.

In this original and timely book, Bruno Maçães argues that the best word for the emerging global order is 'Eurasian', and shows why we need to begin thinking on a super-continental scale. While China and Russia have been quicker to recognise the increasing strategic significance of Eurasia, even Europeans are realizing that their political project is intimately linked to the rest of the supercontinent - and as Maçães shows, they will be stronger for it. Weaving together history, diplomacy and vivid reports from his six-month overland journey across Eurasia from Baku to Samarkand, Vladivostock to Beijing, Maçães provides a fascinating portrait of this shifting geopolitical landscape. As he demonstrates, we can already see the coming Eurasianism in China's bold infrastructure project reopening the historic Silk Road, in the success of cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, in Turkey's increasing global role and in the fact that, revealingly, the United States is redefining its place as between Europe and Asia. An insightful and clarifying book for our turbulent times, The Dawn of Eurasia argues that the artificial separation of the world's largest island cannot hold, and the sooner we realise it, the better.

The Microsoft interdisciplinary scientist largely credited with popularizing virtual reality reflects on his lifelong relationship with technology, showing VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and how the brain and body connect to the world. By the author of You Are Not a Gadget. --Publisher.

In war, no one is safe. War has come to Thornstone, Tarkin’s Point, and Thoriddon, throwing all three nations into chaos. Led by the demon lord Vagborar, the legions of orcs are bent on nothing less than the total annihilation of both human and dwarf. With their demonic allies, they just might succeed. But not without a fight. As Serena tries to find answers and a path to victory, Orin and Brom fight with both sword and spell to turn back the tide of darkness. Beside them are a kingdom of dwarves and a city of humans, but even they may not be enough to beat back such a force. If they hope to survive, they need to come together, but with each nation under siege, uniting as one is easier said than done. When one of them is freed from battle, hope is rekindled, but prejudices rise to the surface, threatening everything. If any of them hope to survive, past actions and old hatreds must be forgotten. Hard decisions and painful sacrifices must be made. And pride and egotism must be set aside for the greater good. If not, a new age of evil will dawn upon the world.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Thousands of years before the time of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, on the remote world Tython, ancient philosophers and scientists share their mystical knowledge and study the ways of the Force. They establish the order of the Je'daii - which, in years to come, will become the Jedi. But first these visitors from so many different planets must colonise a dangerous new homeworld and surmount societal conflicts as the burgeoning Rakatan Empire prepares to conquer the known galaxy.

The father of virtual reality explains its dazzling possibilities by reflecting on his own lifelong relationship with technology. Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Jaron Lanier has written a three-pronged adventure into 'virtual reality', by exposing its ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species.