Showing results by narrator "Macat.com" in All Categories

James E. Lovelock says the Earth (Gaia) is a superorganism, made up of all living things, interacting with the air, the oceans, and the surface rocks of the planet. He suggests Gaia takes an active role in keeping the planet safe for life, with automatic feedback mechanisms making adjustments as needed. Lovelock describes feedback mechanisms that are widely accepted. It is the implication that Gaia is somehow self-aware that is controversial.

Born in 1858, Franz Boas permanently changed the standards and practices of anthropology. A German-born secular Jew, he became known for his distinctive approach to the discipline - non-hierarchical, open to diverse inputs, and unbiased. Throughout his career, Boas used his scholarship to effect social change. His work convinced his colleagues to abandon the theories that had decided one race (Caucasian) and one culture (Western European) were more fully developed and worthier than others.

Originally written as 13 individual books around 397 CE, Augustine of Hippo's Confessions is one of the most referenced works in the Western literary tradition. Augustine lived from 354-430 CE, and the work is in part an autobiography. But it also tells us much about the period in which he lived. The first nine books draw a compelling narrative of the first 43 years of Augustine's life, which were spent in North Africa and Italy. In the 10th book, Augustine uses these experiences as a meditation on the nature of memory.

Note: This is a summary and analysis of Mao's Great Famine and not the original book. Historian Frank Dikötter used a brief window of political openness before the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China to get inside official archives and gather evidence of the terrible toll the Great Chinese Famine took on ordinary people. He also discovered how Communist leaders caused, and then covered up, the catastrophe. Dikötter shows the disaster was much worse than previously thought, with a death toll of at least 45 million.

Though written around 1513, more than 500 years ago, Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is still very influential. Listeners turn to it for its direct advice on the question of how to attain - and retain - power. Machiavelli's answer, in brief: use any means necessary to make sure the state survives. Given the changeable nature of politics, the strong ruler that Machiavelli describes may need to lie or cheat, deceive and, if necessary, resort to acts of violence - all the while maintaining an "image" of goodness.

Business scholars C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel base their 1990 argument for a strategy change on a comparison of case studies. They note that some corporations are adept at inventing new markets, quickly entering emerging markets, and shifting patterns of customer choice in established markets. The authors suggest that the ability to identify core competencies allows companies to develop new products quickly, and they challenge managers to emulate these best practices

A winner of the 1992 Bancroft Prize, Nature's Metropolis broke new ground in the burgeoning field of environmental history, while also adding weight to both urban and Western history. Before its publication in 1991, historians generally treated urban and rural areas as distinct from one another, each following separate lines of development and maturity. Using Chicago and its surrounding areas as a model, Cronon's book looks to disprove this idea.

More than 200 years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, governments around the world continue to address many of the issues discussed in the book. The most powerful states in the world are still committed to international trade, but questions are repeatedly asked about the role of governments in the economy and the effectiveness of the free market.

Reflections on the Revolution in France may read like an exercise in political theory. But when it was first published in 1790, Edmund Burke was fighting a real political battle. Burke saw that the Enlightenment ideas that had inspired radical political change in France the year before were beginning to take root in England. He wanted to discredit these dangerous thoughts before they sparked a revolution in his own country.

In 1963's The Feminine Mystique, she identified "the problem that has no name" afflicting women pressured to devote themselves to domestic life. After World War II, society fostered the idea that women wanted different things from men - namely, to run homes and live through the achievements of their husbands and children. In reality, rigid gender roles left housewives frustrated and depressed and caused tensions both in their marriages and in how couples raised their children.

What really happened when the world's two greatest superpowers went head to head during the Cold War? We Now Know is a major reappraisal of the struggle for political and ideological supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The ideas set out by American international relations expert Robert O. Keohane in 1984's After Hegemony have had a huge impact on policy debates over the last three decades, both in political circles and in academia. Hegemony means the social, cultural, ideological or economic influence of one dominant group. Contemplating a post-Cold War world half a decade before the Berlin Wall fell, Keohane asks if international cooperation can survive in the absence of a single superpower.

Published in 1938, Cyril Lionel Robert (C. L. R.) James' The Black Jacobins is the little-known story of the only successful slave revolution known in history. It was this 12-year struggle of the African slaves in the French colony of San Domingo that led to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804. The uprising was inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution that had begun in 1789, just two years before, and in this work James goes to great lengths to show the relationship between the two upheavals.

According to Aristotle, the ultimate human good is eudaimonia, an ancient Greek word that can be translated as happiness, or flourishing. Eudaimonia comes from a life of virtuous (or good) action. Virtues such as justice, restraint, and practical wisdom cannot simply be taught - they must be developed over time by cultivating virtuous habits. The making of virtuous choices can be developed by using practical wisdom and by recognizing the desirable middle ground between extremes of human behavior.

In her 1958 work, political theorist Hannah Arendt asks two fundamental questions: "Under what conditions do politics emerge?" and "Under what conditions can politics be eliminated?" In searching for answers she turns some long-established thinking on its head. Ancient political philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that a life spent thinking was more important than an active life of labor, work, and action. But Arendt argues that political action is every bit as important as political thinking.

Arguing first that what might be termed a morally good action is one that increases the general sum of happiness in the world, Mill then says that general principles of justice should be based on this idea. Therefore, in life, there is no conflict between what is just and what is morally right. Mill published Utilitarianism toward the end of a lifetime spent as a moral philosopher, political activist, and social reformer.

Clifford Geertz's first collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), made him a leading voice of anthropology's "symbolic" movement, which believed scholars should read the signs and symbols of a culture from the perspective of its natives. Geertz's approach helped anthropology reinvent itself as a scientific discipline that is still relevant today, making him - in the words of one critic - "a true giant of social and cultural theory."

First published in 1978, Palestinian American historian Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes is considered to be the definitive social history of 20th century Iraq. Tom Nieuwenhuis, a scholar specializing in the region, called it "the best, most detailed modern history of any Arab country," while an entire conference was held in 1989 to discuss its implications.

One of the most influential works of political theory ever written, The Federalist Papers collects 85 essays from 1787 and 1788, when the United States was a new country looking to find its way politically. Thomas Jefferson, author of the country's Declaration of Independence and a future US president, called the work "the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written".

Plato imagines a dinner party - a symposium - held in the Athens of the late fifth century BC. He invites seven important historical figures including the philosopher Socrates, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and the notorious military general Alcibiades. As entertainment, each guest gives a speech praising eros (human love or erotic desire). Plato then "collects" these seven speeches into Symposium.