Book cover of Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century by Joshua L. Cherniss
International & World Politics

Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century

A timely defense of liberalism that draws vital lessons from its greatest midcentury proponents

Today, liberalism faces threats from across the political spectrum. While right-wing populists and leftist purists righteously violate liberal norms, theorists of liberalism seem to have little to say. In Liberalism in Dark Times, Joshua Cherniss issues a rousing defense of the liberal tradition, drawing on a neglected strand of liberal thought. […Learn More]

Book cover of Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison  by Ben Macintyre
Europe

Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis’ Fortress Prison 

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. […Learn More]

Book cover of Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation by Amanda Ciafone
Business & Money

Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation

Counter-Cola charts the history of one of the world’s most influential and widely known corporations, The Coca-Cola Company. Over the past 130 years, the corporation has sought to make its products, brands, and business central to daily life in over 200 countries. Amanda Ciafone uses this example of global capitalism to reveal the pursuit of corporate power within the key economic transformations—liberal, developmentalist, neoliberal—of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. […Learn More]

Book cover of A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
History

A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA

A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency’s intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA. […Learn More]

Book cover of Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin
Africa

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent

An exuberant, opinionated, stereotype-busting portrait of contemporary Africa in all its splendid diversity, by one of its leading new writers.

So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of famines and safaris, poverty and strife, stripped of all nuance. In this bold and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective, weaving a vibrant tapestry of stories that bring to life Africa’s rich diversity, communities, and histories. […Learn More]

Book cover of In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism by J. P. Daughton
Africa

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism

The epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and the human costs and contradictions of modern empire.

The Congo-Océan railroad stretches across the Republic of Congo from Brazzaville to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noir. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony, and it stands as one of the deadliest construction projects in history. Colonial workers were subjects of an ostensibly democratic nation whose motto read “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” but liberal ideals were savaged by a cruelly indifferent administrative state. […Learn More]

Book cover of Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II by Paul Kennedy
History

Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II 

In this engaging narrative, brought to life by marine artist Ian Marshall’s beautiful full‑color paintings, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War—the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan—Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. […Learn More]