A collection of new English translations of writings by José Carlos Mariátegui (1894 - 1930)

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.

Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.

The causes of the Great War are examined in this first volume of the series that is "essential reading, as fresh and compelling as ever" (Jon Meacham, bestselling author of Franklin and Winston). An absorbing history of the outbreak of World War I from a true insider's point of view, the first volume of Winston S. Churchill's five-volume The World Crisis is unsurpassed as both a historical and personal account of the earth-shaking events leading up to WWI. Beginning in 1911, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, this report is based on thousands of his personal letters and memos. Churchill's epic series opens with a chilling description of the Agadir Crisis, and provides an in-depth account of naval clashes in the Dardanelles, one of Churchill's major military failures. It takes readers from the fierce bloodshed of the Gallipoli campaign to the tide-turning battles of Jutland and Verdun-as well as the United States' entry into the combat theatre. Written in powerful prose by a great leader who would also go on to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, The World Crisis, 1911-1914 provides a perspective you won't find anywhere else: a dynamic insider's account of events that would shape the outcome of modern history. "Whether as a statesman or an author, Churchill was a giant; and The World Crisis towers over most other books about the Great War." -David Fromkin, author of A Peace to End All Peace

The aftermath of World War I is explored in the fourth volume of Winston Churchill’s “remarkable” eyewitness account of history (Jon Meacham, bestselling author of Franklin and Winston). Once the war was over, the story didn’t end—not for Winston Churchill, and not for the West. The fourth volume of Churchill’s series, The World Crisis: The Aftermath documents the fallout of WWI—including the Irish Treaty and the peace conferences between Greece and Turkey. The period immediately after World War I was extremely chaotic—and it takes a genius of narrative description and organization to accurately and accessibly describe it for us. Churchill, who went on to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, depicts the international disorganization and anarchy in the period immediately after the war—with the unique perspective of both a historian and a political insider. “Whether as a statesman or an author, Churchill was a giant; and The World Crisis towers over most other books about the Great War.” —David Fromkin, author of A Peace to End All Peace

By reaching beyond "how" the crisis happened to "why" the crisis happened, the authors provide fresh thinking about how to respond