"Naked Emperors" explains in sharp detail how the historic congressional election of 1994 utterly failed to live up to the promise of the Republican Revolution and its Contract for America--and what citizens can do to make government more accountable.

This selection of Brian Sewell's criticism from the London Evening Standard is his first collection to be published in nearly twenty years and has been selected from his art reviews of exhibitions by English contemporary artists. The reviews are gathered chronologically under artist or institution and discuss nearly every important contemporary English art exhibition for the past quarter of a century.

DURING A SCANDAL-FILLED DECADE, after they had buried the saintly Founder of the institution, eleven "spiritual" leaders and managers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)--more commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement--(along with the Governing Body Commission which spawned them), utilized deception and collective fantasy to enact what some called "a bloodless coup." This ultimately resulted in the hijacking of a Gaudiya-Vaishnava religious institution, the banishment of dissenters, the abuse of innocents, the alienation of the public, the brutal murder of one outspoken reformer, and the near-fatal hemorrhaging of the Society. Thousands of formerly loyal members defected, were blacklisted, or, in some cases, even committed suicide. This decade-long reign of self-aggrandizement and political intrigue by the leaders appointed by the GBC, periodically characterized by strong-armed tactics, tainted the Society which had been painstakingly cultivated for more than a decade by the ISKCON Founder and spiritual preceptor, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977). After Prabhupada passed away, eleven senior disciples were installed by the GBC as his successors. Each of the eleven ruled their own zones, where they were worshiped as good as God. Known among their supporters as "The Magnificent Eleven," they claimed their orders came directly from Lord Krishna, whom devotees consider the Absolute Truth and Cause of All Causes. They also claimed that Prabhupada had appointed them as perfect and pure "Acharyas." Unfortunately they, like the main character in Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 tale of The Emperor's New Clothes, pretended to be something they were not, and were eventually revealed as frauds. The system of succession that they and the GBC established collapsed like a house built upon sand. This book chronicles the ISKCON era of the zonal-acharyas from their first appearance in 1978 through their meteoric rise to power, their ten-year reign, their fall in 1987, and beyond. For fifteen years (1978-1993), the author served as a faithful disciple of one of the zonal acharyas, and he lived through many of the events described in this book. Recently, he has interviewed major players in this drama, who have contributed important inside information to help everyone interested more fully understand this unfortunate and little-documented chapter in the history of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

This book seeks to provide the most comprehensive and sustained engagement and critique of neo-Gramscian analyses available in the literature. In examining neo-Gramscian analyses in IR/IPE, the book engages with two fundamental concerns in international relations: (i) The question of historicity and (ii) The analysis of radical transformation.

Ming Da is only nine years old when he becomes the emperor of China, and his three advisors take advantage of him by stealing his stores of rice, gold, and precious stones. But Ming Da has a plan. With the help of his tailors, he comes up with a clever idea to outsmart his devious advisors: He asks his tailors to make “magical” new clothes for him. Anyone who is honest, the young emperor explains, will see the clothes’ true splendor, but anyone who is dishonest will see only burlap sacks. The emperor dons a burlap sack, and the ministers can’t help but fall for his cunning trick.