Tag: Short

Free Download The Insecurity Trap
by Paul Rogers
English | 2024 | ISBN: 1912480956 | 128 pages | True EPUB | 7.35 MB

Free Download Wild Ride: A short history of the opening and closing of the Chinese economy by Anne Stevenson-Yang
English | April 16, 2024 | ISBN: 173942431X | 176 pages | PDF | 1.03 Mb
How did China grow from an impoverished country to become the second largest economy in the world in just over four decades? And how did this economic miracle come to an end, as seems the case today? To understand the story of China’s rapid rise and equally rapid fall, author Anne Stevenson-Yang takes us back to the beginning, when Deng Xiaoping took over and opened its moribund economy to Western money and know-how. Stevenson-Yang, who lived and worked in China for a quarter of a century, traces each decade of China’s tumultuous development, from the roaring 1980s to today’s malaise. In her first-hand account, Wild Ride, Stevenson-Yang concludes that China is returning to the poverty and isolation of the Mao era. What happened to the promise of the political change that would come with the opening of the economy? And the institutional reforms of the last four decades? The author says all that change was all an illusion. Communist China, being interested only in survival, played along and the West fell for it. With the rise of Xi Jinping, that capitalist experiment is over. ‘It took me years to understand that I was an unwitting player in an elaborate dramatic confection.’

Free Download Simone Weil: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone
English | May 22nd, 2024 | ISBN: 0192846965 | 161 pages | True PDF | 9.25 MB
This Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the intriguing and provocative life and ideas of twentieth century French philosopher, mystic, and social activist Simone Weil. Weil was not a typical, systematic philosopher. Despite her short life, Weil’s philosophy has much to offer us in our times of personal, communal, political, and environmental crises, both in the breath and poignancy of her philosophy, and the topics it covers.

Free Download Short Journey Home: Awakening to Freedom with Thich Nhat Hanh by Richard Brady
English | September 17th, 2024 | ISBN: 1952692806 | 208 pages | True EPUB | 1.70 MB
A friend on our path of mindfulness practice, Richard Brady shares one of the first deeply personal accounts of a lay practitioner following in the steps of world-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Free Download Imagination: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei
English | May 23rd, 2024 | ISBN: 0198830025 | 161 pages | True PDF | 19.79 MB
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

Free Download Horace: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Llewelyn Morgan
English | May 23rd, 2024 | ISBN: 0192849646 | 145 pages | True PDF | 11.04 MB
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

Free Download A Short History of the Weimar Republic
by Colin Storer;
English | 2024 | ISBN: 1350172359 | 265 pages | True PDF | 23.19 MB

Free Download The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Martin Bunton
English | October 1, 2013 | ISBN: 9780199603930 | 160 pages | PDF | 6.05 Mb
The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles of modern times, a dangerous tinderbox always poised to set the Middle East aflame-and to draw the United States into the fire. In this accessible and stimulating Very Short Introduction, Martin Bunton illuminates the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence. Adopting a fresh and original approach, Bunton explores the Palestinian-Israeli dispute in twenty-year segments, to highlight the historical complexity of the conflict throughout successive decades. Each chapter starts with an examination of the relationships among people and events that marked particular years as historical stepping stones in the evolution of the conflict, including the 1897 Basle Congress, the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British occupation of Palestine, and the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the war for Palestine.

Free Download Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Gary Gutting
English | December 1, 2019 | ISBN: 0198830785 | 160 pages | PDF | 2.01 Mb
Born in 1926 in France, Foucault is one of those rare philosophers who has become a cult figure. Over the course of his life he dabbled in drugs, politics, and the Paris SM scene, all whilst striving to understand the deep concepts of identity, knowledge, and power. From aesthetics to the penal system; from madness and civilisation to avant-garde literature, Foucault was happy to reject old models of thinking and replace them with versions that are still widely debated today. A major influence on Queer Theory and gender studies (he was openly gay and died of an AIDS-related illness in 1984), he also wrote on architecture, history, law, medicine, literature, politics, and of course philosophy.

Free Download Alain Caillé, "The Gift Paradigm: A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences"
English | ISBN: 0996635599 | 2020 | 58 pages | PDF | 2 MB
In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In TheGift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS-or, "Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences," combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a "general social science" seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss-as vital now as ever.