Archives de catégorie : London 2021 Nonfiction

THE REVENGE OF POWER de Moisés Naím

In his New York Times bestselling book The End of Power, Moises Naim examined power-diluting forces. Now, in THE REVENGE OF POWER, Naim turns to the trends, conditions, and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration and augmentation of power and to the clash between the forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it.

THE REVENGE OF POWER:
The Global Assault on Democracy and How to Defeat It
by Moisés Naím
St. Martin’s Press, February 2022

Moisés Naím concentrates on the three “P”s—populism, polarization, and post-truths. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naim reveals how the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. These outcomes will, in turn, depend on the capacity of our democracies to survive the attacks and dirty tricks of autocratic leaders bent on weakening the checks and balances that limit their power. Naim addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: What are, in practice, those attacks and tricks? Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: what is the future of freedom?

Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. For over a decade he was the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine and under his leadership, the magazine was re-launched, won the National Magazine award for General Excellence three times and became one of the world’s most influential publications in international affairs. Naím also served as Venezuela’s Minister of Industry and Trade and as executive director of the World Bank. He holds a PhD from MIT and lives in Washington, DC.

PARACHUTE WOMEN de Elizabeth Winder

In the tradition of Girls Like Us, a group biography of the extraordinary women at the center of the Rolling Stones’ world.

PARACHUTE WOMEN:
Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones
by Elizabeth Winder
Hachette US, September 2021

The Rolling Stones have long been considered one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time. At the forefront of the British Invasion and heading up the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the Stones’ innovative music and iconic performances defined a generation, and fifty years later, they’re still performing to sold-out stadiums around the globe. Yet, as the saying goes, behind every great man is a greater woman, and behind these larger-than-life rockstars were four incredible women whose stories have yet to be fully unpacked. . . until now.
In PARACHUTE WOMEN, Elizabeth Winder introduces us to the four women who inspired, styled, wrote for, remixed, and ultimately helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg put the glimmer in the Glimmer Twins and taught a group of straight-laced boys to be bad. They opened the doors to subterranean art and alternative lifestyles, turned them on to Russian literature, occult practices, and LSD. They connected them to cutting edge directors and writers, won them roles in art house films that renewed their appeal. They often acted as unpaid stylists, providing provocative looks from their personal wardrobes. They remixed tracks for chart-topping albums, and sometimes even wrote the actual songs. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves, they consciously (and unconsciously) kept the band current—and confident—with that mythic lasting power they still have today.
Lush in detail and insight, and long overdue, PARACHUTE WOMEN is a group portrait of the four audacious women who transformed the Stones into international stars, but who were themselves marginalized by the male-dominated rock world of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Written in the tradition of Sheila Weller’s
Girls Like Us, it’s a story of lust and rivalries, friendships and betrayals, hope and degradation, and the birth of rock and roll.

Elizabeth Winder is the author of Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy, and Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Antioch Review, American Letters, and other publications. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, and earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University.

AFTERSHOCKS de Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright

From two of America’s leading national security experts, comes the most definitive look at the geopolitical impact of COVID-19, a book that is both a riveting journalistic account of one of the strangest years on record and a comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on the foundational institutions and ideas that have shaped the modern world.

AFTERSHOCKS:
Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order
by Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright
St. Martin’s Press, August 2021

The COVID-19 crisis is the greatest shock to the world order since World War II. Millions have been infected and killed. The economic crash caused by the pandemic is the worst since the Great Depression, with the International Monetary Fund estimating that it will cost over $9 trillion of global wealth in the next few years. Many will be left impoverished and hungry. Fragile states will be further hollowed out, creating conditions ripe for conflict and mass displacement. Meanwhile, international institutions and alliances already under strain before the pandemic are teetering, while the United States and China, already at loggerheads before the crisis, are careening toward a new Cold War. China’s secrecy and assertiveness have shattered hopes that it will become a responsible stakeholder in the international order.
None of this came out of the blue. Public health experts and intelligence analysts had warned for a decade that a pandemic of this sort was inevitable; but the crisis broke against a global backdrop of rising nationalism, backsliding democracy, declining public trust in governments, mounting rebellion against the inequalities produced by globalization, resurgent great power competition, and plummeting international cooperation.
And yet, there are some signs of hope. The COVID-19 crisis reminds us of our common humanity and shared fate. The public has, for the most part, responded stoically and with kindness. Some democracies—South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, among others—have responded well. America may emerge from the crisis with a new resolve to deal with non-traditional threats, like pandemic disease, and a new demand for effective collective action with other democratic nations. America may also finally be forced to come to grips with our nation’s inadequacies, and to make big changes at home and abroad that will set the stage for opportunities the rest of this century holds.
But one thing is certain: America and the world will never be the same again.

Colin Kahl was Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor from 2013-2017 and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East from 2009-13. He is currently Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He has published numerous articles in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Politico, The Washington Post, and other popular outlets, and he is a frequent contributor to CNN and MSNBC.
Thomas Wright is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Tom has written several definitive pieces analyzing Donald Trump’s foreign policy, mixing research into the historical record of Trump’s remarks over three decades with reporting from contacts inside and near the administration. He is also author of the book All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power (Yale University Press 2017).

REIGN OF TERROR de Spencer Ackerman

An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction.

REIGN OF TERROR:
How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
by Spencer Ackerman
Viking, August 2021

For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, it has pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, as well as detaining people indefinitely and torturing them. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized, paranoid feature of American politics and security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era.
REIGN OF TERROR will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism and, though it is not a book about Donald Trump, it will provide a critical explanation of his rise to power and the sources of his political strength. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. That mistake turns out to have been portentous. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. A union of journalism and intellectual history, REIGN OF TERROR will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life.

As a journalist, Spencer Ackerman has spent his entire career on subjects we would like to turn our heads away from. He broke the story of Homan Square in Chicago, and Dan Jones’ report on torture. Over the past 17 years, he covered national security and the war on terrorism as a staff reporter for The New Republic, Wired and The Guardian, as well as other publications, where he reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and a number of military bases, naval ships and submarines. While at the Guardian, he was part of the team reporting on Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism, the Scripps Howard Foundation’s 2014 Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service Reporting, and the 2013 IRE medal for investigative reporting. Ackerman’s Wired series on Islamophobic counterterrorism training at the FBI won the 2012 online National Magazine Award for reporting. He frequently appears on MSNBC, CNN and other news networks. He has over 147,000 Twitter followers.

LESSONS FROM THE LAST WORLD de Raquel Willis

The story of a transgender trailblazer, reflecting on masculinity, blackness, community, and the American South—told in her own words.

LESSONS FROM THE LAST WORLD
by Raquel Willis
St. Martin’s Press, Spring 2022

Raquel Willis is a powerful woman. But growing up as a young boy in the South made being herself almost impossible. In this moving and provocative memoir, Raquel relives the many risks she faced in her struggle to become a fierce advocate for her community—and the powerful woman—that she is today. Today, she is known as a transgender trailblazer, both for work with the Transgender Law Center and speaker at the National Women’s March. She offers intimate reflections on masculinity and blackness, informed by a tumultuous relationship with her father. From a childhood built in opposition to expectations, all the way through her transition at a flagship Southern university, Raquel demonstrates that her story is but one thread in the larger tapestry of Black trans American life; a tapestry that has never truly been chronicled from this millennial, Southern perspective.

Raquel Willis is a Black queer transgender activist, writer, and speaker who has dedicated her life to inspiring and elevating marginalized individuals, particularly transgender women of color. In 2018, she was named a Jack Jones Literary Arts Sylvia Rivera Fellow. She is the founder of Black Trans Circles, a project of the Transgender Law Center. In 2018, she was named an Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow. Her writing has been featured in Out, Essence, Autostraddle, Buzzfeed, Medium’s Cuepoint, ForHarriet,The Root and VICE.