Politiek

Nederland heeft lang een zelfbeeld van openheid en tolerantie gehad. Dat beeld kwam voort uit het naoorlogse optimisme van de middenklasse, die geloofde in kansengelijkheid, ongeacht afkomst of achternaam, en het belang van goede publieke voorzieningen. Zo zou elke nieuwe generatie het beter krijgen dan de vorige. Het geloof in vooruitgang is de afgelopen jaren afgebrokkeld en heeft onder invloed van de politiek plaatsgemaakt voor een sterke hang naar zelfbehoud, met extreme sentimenten tot gevolg. In 'Eigen welzijn eerst' laat Roxane van Iperen op prikkelende wijze zien hoe dit heeft kunnen gebeuren, en spreekt ze de hoop uit dat de middenklasse opnieuw de vooruitgangsgedachte omarmt.

Een pleidooi voor meer empathie in de politiek

The 1960s and ’70s were a time of dramatic upheaval in American universities as a new generation of scholar-activists rejected traditional humanism in favor of a radical ideology that denied esthetic merit and objective truth. In The Victims’ Revolution, critic and scholar Bruce Bawer provides the first true history of this radical movement and a sweeping assessment of its intellectual and cultural fruits.

Once, Bawer argues, the purpose of higher education had been to introduce students to the legacy of Western civilization—“the best that has been thought and said.” The new generation of radical educators sought instead to unmask the West as the perpetrator of global injustice. Age-old values of goodness, truth, and beauty were disparaged as mere weapons in an ongoing struggle of the powerful against the powerless. Shifting the focus of the humanities to the purported victims of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, the new politicized approach to the humanities gave rise to a series of identity-based programs, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. As a result, the serious and objective study of human civilization and culture was replaced by “theoretical” approaches emphasizing group identity, victimhood, and lockstep “progressive” politics.

Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom warned against the corruption of the humanities in The Closing of the American Mind. Bawer’s book presents compelling evidence that Bloom and other conservative critics were right to be alarmed. The Victims’ Revolution describes how the new identity-based disciplines came into being, examines their major proponents and texts, and trenchantly critiques their underlying premises. Bawer concludes that the influence of these programs has impoverished our thought, confused our politics, and filled the minds of their impressionable students with politically correct mush. Bawer’s book is must-reading for all those concerned not only about the declining quality of American higher education, but also about the fate of our society at large.

In maar acht maanden tijd werd hij de meest opzienbarende verschijning die Het Binnenhof ooit had gezien. Tot die zesde mei, iets na zessen... De moordaanslag op Pim Fortuyn schokte Nederland, Europa en zelfs een deel van de wereld. Na het geweld van 11 september 2001, ging er opnieuw een schok door de ziel van eenieder die prijsstelt op vrijheid en democratie. Het Nederland van na 6 mei, is anders dan dat van daarvoor en zal altijd een ander blijven. De aanslag op 'professor Pim', werd in de hardste bewoordingen veroordeeld. De dader gepakt. Maar wat hebben de kogels van Volkert van der G. nog meer veroorzaakt dan de dood van Pim Fortuyn? Dat zal de komende jaren pas blijken, als Nederland ook antwoord heeft op de vraag hoe de gedreven politicus zósnel, zó veel indruk kon maken op miljoenen Nederlanders. In dit actuele boek, schetst journalist Evert Santegoeds een eerste beeld van het geschokte Nederland na de aanslag en krijgt de lezer uit de mond van intieme bronnen naast Pim, antwoord op prangende vragen: wie voorspelde de aanslag? hoe kon het in godsnaam zover komen? hoe had de eerste politieke aanslag sinds 1672, eenvoudig voorkomen kunnen worden? Een compleet portret van Pim Fortuyn

A Moment of Anguish captures the dramatic events leading to the historic separation of Singapore from Malaysia. This book is based on research material drawn from the archives in Singapore. Britain, Australia and the United States. It goes beyond other studies to unravel the hidden story behind this traumatic and controversial episode in Singapore's recent history. Unpublished sources have been put together to recreate key events which bring out the tensions and conflicts of the period - the "snap" election in Singapore in 1963, the controversial participation of the PAP in the Federal elections of 1964, the two race riots in Singapore in 1964, the formation of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention and the secret negotiations for disengagement. Written in an engaging style, the book also offers new insights into the principal personalities of the period and the circumstances under which painful and fateful decisions were made.

CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES ARE HEADING TOWARD A WAR NEITHER WANTS. The reason is Thucydides's Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable." Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries "great again," the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war.

In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides's Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past -- and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

Born and raised on a small Canadian farm, Galbraith began teaching at Harvard during the Depression. He was FDR"s "price czar" during the war and then a senior editor of Fortune before returning to Harvard and to fame as a bestselling writer. Parker shows how, from his early championing of Keynes to his acerbic analysis of America"s "private wealth and public squalor," Galbraith regularly challenged prevailing theories and policies. And his account of Galbraith"s remarkable friendship with John F. Kennedy, whom he served as a close advisor while ambassador to India, is especially relevant for its analysis of the intense, dynamic debates that economists and politicians can have over how America should manage its wealth and power. This masterful chronicle gives color, depth, and meaning to the record of an extraordinary life.

Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny.
 
Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them:
- Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West?
- Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority?

Hoe ook de Sovjetunie zich in maatschappelijk en politiek opzicht de komende tijd verder zal ontwikkelen, het staat vast dat zich in de jaren 1982 to 1987 een aantal beslissende veranderingen hebben voltrokken. Het zijn deze jaren vanaf de begrafenis van Brezjnev tot de doorbraak van de nieuwe politiek van Gorbatsjov, die NRC Handelsblad-correspondent Raymond van den Boogaard in Moskou heeft doorgebracht. De bundel Moskou aan zee, die hij uit zijn observaties en uiteenzettingen van de afgelopen jaren samenstelde, geeft enerzijds inzicht in de aard van deze veranderingen. Anderzijds hebben deze ontwikkelingen hem ook duidelijk gemaakt wat nu juist de onveranderlijke karakteristieken an de Russische samenleving zijn.

In De Braziliaanse affaire reconstructeert Evaldo Cabral de Mello het diplomatieke spel rondom de Vrede van Münster (1648) tussen de Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën en Portugal, met als medespelers Spanje, Frankrijk en Engeland, en als inzet de rijkdommen van Brazilië.
In 1630 veroverde de West-Indische Compagnie het suikerrijke Recife. Onder Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen leek de kolonie een stevige bezitting, maar na zijn vertrek in 1644 ging het bergafwaarts. In 1640 werd Portugal onafhankelijk van Spanje en begon het onderhandelen met de Republiek. Na de verdrijving van de Nederlanders in 1654 duurden de onderhandelingen tot 1661, toen Portugal zwaar moest betalen voor de Nederlandse aanspraken op de kolonie.
Evaldo Cabral de Mello is een gerenommeerd historicus en auteur, en zijn studie toont aan dat internationale politiek in de 17e eeuw vooral draaide om eigenbelang.

Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually everything you do has become a paid for experience. It is part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends Jeremy Ritkin. After several hundred years as the organising principles of civilisation, the traditional market systems is beginning to break down. On the horizon looms the age of access, where we trade experiences instead of objects.

China, the world's oldest and most populous state, remains an enigma to most people in the West, even at a time when that country is playing an increasingly prominent role on the international stage. At the heart of modern Chinese history have been the efforts of the Chinese people to transform their polity into a modern nation state, the Confucian orthodoxy into an ideology that can help direct that process, and an agrarian economy into an industrial one. These efforts are ongoing and of great importance.

This book is both an introduction to the major features of modern Chinese history and a resource for researchers interested in virtually any topic relating to the Chinese experience of the last 220 years. This valuable reference contains:

- a historical narrative providing a comprehensive overview of five core aspects of Chinese history: domestic politics, society, the economy, the world of culture and thought, and relations with the outside world;

- a compendium of 250 short, descriptive articles on key figures, events, and terms;

- a resource guide containing approximately 500 annotated entries for the most authoritative sources for further research in English, as well as descriptions of important films depicting modern China and a guide to electronic resources; and

- appendices, including a chronology, excerpts from key primary source documents, and a wealth of tables and graphs on demographic, social, and economic trends.

Luxe uitgave van De genocidefax - vlammend essay over opstaan tegen groepsdruk, onmogelijke individuele keuzes en diepe gewetenswonden

'Vanaf jonge leeftijd zoeken mensen aansluiting bij een collectief - een gezin, (sub)cultuur of gemeenschap - en willen erin opgenomen worden, ook als dat betekent: zwijgend toekijken of actief bijdragen aan uitsluiting en wanpraktijken.'

In haar ijzersterke essay De genocidefax laat Roxane van Iperen zien dat we altijd op zoek zijn naar bevestiging en aansluiting bij een groep, ook als dat betekent: liegen, zwijgen of wegkijken. In helder proza laat ze de voorgeschiedenis van de Rwandese genocide in 1994 zien, en hoe er toen niet werd ingegrepen. Naadloos trekt ze de lijn van haar betoog door naar het heden, naar ons, naar Nederland. Want bovenal is het een essay over ieder individu, en over de gecompliceerde keuze tussen je conformeren aan de groep of je uitspreken over onacceptabel gedrag, met elk risico van dien.

An assessment of how the United States dominant position may be effectively reconciled with the urgent need, in the 21st century, to achieve a new world order. Kissinger examines America's present and future relations with Russia, China, Europe, the Middle East, and other areas in the world. He covers areas such as globilization, military intervention, free trade and the eroding of the planet's natural environment.

Informele gesprekken tussen twee senior-journalisten (NRC) over Nederland in de Koude Oorlog, de dekolonisatie en Europese eenwording.

Essay over het actuele aanzien van de Nederlandse politiek, bezien vanuit een historische context.

Donald Trump s catastrophic final year

Grunberg reist naar Georgie, Oekraine en Polen en onderzoekt hoe het vluchtelingen vergaat

Begin dit jaar verscheen "Bloemen van het kwaad", een door Paul Damen verzorgde, meer dan 500 pagina's tellende bundeling van gedichten door 33 dictators, met telkens een toelichting en een korte biografie. Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, allemaal schreven ze gedichten. Te vaak vroegen lezers: moet Geert Wilders er niet bij, als dictator in de dop? Als definitief antwoord daarop nu, van dezelfde auteur, de bijlage "Gedachten over de Grote Geert", waarom Wilders wel of niet een dichtende dictator is.

Over de opkomst en heerschappij van Vladimir Poetin

Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio - the declassified CIA story behind the Oscar-winning film

WINNER OF BEST PICTURE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, THE BAFTAS AND THE GOLDEN GLOBES

Tehran, November 1979. Militant students stormed the American embassy and held sixty Americans captive for a gruelling 444 days. But until now the CIA has never revealed the twist to the Iran Hostage Crisis: six Americans escaped.

The escape plot was run by Antonio Mendez, head of the CIA's extraction team and a master of disguise. Mendez came up with an idea so daring and potentially foolish that it seemed destined for Hollywood... and indeed it was. He invented a fake sci-fi film called 'Argo' (from the actual name of the CIA mission, a reference to Jason and the Argonauts). After announcing the production to the movie industry, Mendez put together a team of real 1970s Hollywood actors, directors and producers - along with covert CIA officers. They would travel to revolutionary Iran under a foreign film visa, and while 'scouting locations' throughout the country they would track down the six Americans who were hiding out. After giving them false identities as part of the film crew, they would spirit them back across the border.

One part 'Ocean's 11' and another part 'Black Hawk Down', Mendez's mind-bogglingly complicated and risky gamble paid off: each escapee was extracted without a shot being fired. Mendez is considered one of the greatest officers in CIA history. The story of this, his greatest mission, has never been told.

Now an acclaimed film directed by and starring Ben Affleck, with Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman'

Antonio Mendez was cited by Richard Clarke as one of the top two or three CIA agents in history. He received the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Trailblazer Medallion and the Intelligence Star - for his rescue of six Americans from revolutionary Iran. He and his wife, also a famed agent, were technical consultants on the television series 'The Agency' and founding board members of the International Spy Museum in Washington.

Matt Baglio is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist. His writing appears regularly in the Daily Mail and the Associated Press.

Based on Nixon s overlooked recordings, New York Times bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened
Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate.
In The Nixon Defense, former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Nixon s secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President
Nixon know and when did he know it?
Through narrative and contemporaneous dialogue, Dean connects dots that have never been connected, including revealing how and why the Watergate break-in occurred, what was on the mysterious 18 1/2 minute gap in Nixon s recorded conversations, and more.
In what will stand as the most authoritative account of one of America s worst political scandals, The Nixon Defense shows how the disastrous mistakes of Watergate could have been avoided and offers a cautionary tale for our own time."

The only book to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the EU. Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors - including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave - Tim Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, and offers a gripping, day-by-day account of what really happened behind-the-scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe. Shipman gives his readers a ringside seat on how decisions were made, mistakes justified and betrayals perpetrated. Filled with stories, anecdotes and juicy leaks the book does not seek to address the rights and wrongs of Brexit but to explore how and why David Cameron chose to take the biggest political gamble of his life and explain why he lost. This is a story of calculation, attempted coups, individuals torn between principles and loyalty. All the events are here - from David Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum, through to the campaign itself, his resignation as prime minister, the betrayals and rivalries that occurred during the race to find his successor to the arrival of Theresa May in Downing Street as Britain's second female prime minister. All Out War is a book about leaders and their closest aides, the decisions they make and how and why they make them, as well as how they feel when they turn out to be wrong. It is about men who make decisions that are intellectually consistent and - by their own measure - morally sound that are simultaneously disastrous for themselves and those closest to them. It is about how doing what you know has worked before doesn't always work again. Most of all it is about asking the question: how far are you prepared to go to win?

A former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and an eminent economist tackle the biggest social issue of our time.

Of all the issues swirling around the 2008 election, the staggering projected costs for the upkeep of America's largest entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—loom with gathering intensity. Government revenues alone cannot solve the problem, but a solution must be found. In this book George P. Shultz and John B. Shoven take a practical—and optimistic—look at the issues at hand, offering an agenda for reform that will make these essential programs solvent. Drawing on a trove of original research, they take stock of the current situation, consider plans on offer from major thinkers in the field, and chart a course toward a system that provides income for the elderly and universal access to health care in ways that are fiscally sound. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to make an informed decision about the country's future.

Journalistieke analyse van de opkomst en ondergang van Pim Fortuyn en zijn partij LPF.

C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s. Woodward convincingly shows that, even under slavery, the two races had not been divided as they were under the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s. In fact, during Reconstruction, there was considerable economic and political mixing of the races. The segregating of the races was a relative newcomer to the region.

Hailed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century, The Strange Career of Jim Crow has sold almost a million copies and remains, in the words of David Herbert Donald, "a landmark in the history of American race relations."

Essay over godsdienstvrijheid, waarin ervoor wordt gepleit om deze drastisch uit te breiden, zowel in Nederland als elders in de wereld.