Countries & Regions

Selected as one of ‘100 Notable African Books of 2022’ in Brittle Paper 

A leading African political philosopher’s searing intellectual and moral critique of today’s decolonisation movement.

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers.

This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

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American Politics For Dummies is an engaging and accessible guide to the inner workings of the U.S. government, cutting through the political jargon, to give you the facts. The book begins with the basics, including government structure and processes, and later covers current events that make the news.

The world of American politics can be bewildering to anyone not born and bred in the U.S.A. This plain-English guide is perfect whether you are a student or simply fascinated by the world’s most powerful democracy. From the electoral process to ‘special relationships’, you discover all you need to know with American Politics For Dummies.

• The birth of America – find out about the emergence of the US,from the ideas upon which America was founded to the creation

of the US Constitution

• Go government – understand the powers of the President, how Congress operates, the function of the Supreme Court and how

US laws are created and passed

• Party on – discover the ins and outs of elections and political parties, from the electoral process and the two-party system to the voting behaviour amongst Americans

• One nation, many identities – get to understand the workings of a truly multicultural society

• All the world’s a stage – grasp the grand strategy of the US to understand why the nation acts as it does in international politics

2014 kicks off the latest round of U.S. Congressional election and marks the beginning the 2016 Presidential election cycle. There will be headlines, there will be debate and there will be news. If you’re looking to keep up and understand it all, American Politics For Dummies is a great place to start.

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Illustrator Jules Scheele teams up with Dr Laura Locker in this comic-book introduction to the political history of the Land of Opportunity.

How did a political outsider like Trump win the 2016 presidential election? Why do some Americans feel so strongly about gun rights? Is there a role for more than two political parties in the system?

Politics isn’t something that just occurs in the West Wing or the gleaming Capitol building – it comes from the interaction between state and society, the American people living their daily lives. In this unique graphic guide, we follow modern citizens as they explore everything from the United States’ political culture, the Constitution and the balance of power, to social movements, the role of the media, and tensions over race, immigration, and LGBT rights.

Step right up, and see what lies beneath the pageantry and headlines of this great nation.

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A Financial Times Book of the Year
‘Jaw-dropping’ Daily Express

‘Grimly fascinating’ Financial Times

‘Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched’ Irish Times

The dictator who grew so rich on his country’s cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business.

And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.

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Pankaj Mishra’s provocative account of how China, India and the Muslim World are remaking the world in their own image – shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2013

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2013

Viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, the Victorian period was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire or burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, it was clear that for Asia to recover a new way of thinking was needed. Pankaj Mishra re-tells the history of the past two centuries, showing how a remarkable, disparate group of thinkers, journalists, radicals and charismatics emerged from the ruins of empire to create an unstoppable Asian renaissance, one whose ideas lie behind everything from the Chinese Communist Party to the Muslim Brotherhood, and have made our world what it is today.

Reviews:

‘Arrestingly original … this penetrating and disquieting book should be on the reading list of anybody who wants to understand where we are today’ John Gray, Independent

‘A riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections … deeply entertaining and deeply humane’ Hisham Matar

‘Fascinating … a rich and genuinely thought-provoking book’ Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

‘Provocative, shaming and convincing’ Michael Binyon, The Times

‘Lively … engaging … retains the power to shock’ Mark Mazower, Financial Times

‘Subtle, erudite and entertaining’ Economist, New Delhi

About the author:

Pankaj Mishra is the author of Butter Chicken in Ludiana, The Romantics, An End to Suffering and Temptations of the West. He writes principally for the Guardian, The New York Times, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. He lives in London, Shimla and New York.

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SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘If you think the UK isn’t corrupt, you haven’t looked hard enough … This terrifying book follows a global current of dirty money, and the murders and kidnappings required to sustain it’ GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN

AN ECONOMIST AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

‘When you pick this book up, you won’t be able to put it down’ MISHA GLENNY, author of MCMAFIA

‘Gripping, disturbing and deeply reported’ BEN RHODES, bestselling author of THE WORLD AS IT IS

In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis reveals a terrifying global web of kleptocracy and corruption.

Kleptopia follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, enriching oligarchs and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, London to the Trump White House, it shows how the thieves are uniting – and the terrible human cost.

A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London – the world’s piggy bank for blood money.

Riveting, horrifying and written like fiction, this book shows that while we are looking the other way, all that we hold most dear is being stolen.

Tom Burgis’ book ‘KLEPTOPIA’ was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 14-03-2022.

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Building on the success of previous editions, Politics in the Republic of Ireland continues to provide an authoritative introduction to all aspects of government and politics in this seventh edition.

Written by some of the foremost experts on Irish politics, it explains, analyses and interprets the background to Irish government and contemporary political processes. It devotes chapters to every aspect of contemporary Irish government and politics, including the political parties and elections, the constitution, deliberative democracy, referendums, the Taoiseach and the governmental system, women and politics, the position of the Dáil, and Ireland’s place within the European Union.

Bringing readers up to date with the very latest developments, especially with the upheaval in the Irish party system and the implications of recent liberalising referendums, the seventh edition combines substance with a highly readable style, providing an accessible book that meets the needs of all those who are interested in knowing how politics and government operate in Ireland.

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This is the first book to define and explore the geopolitical economy of sport – the intersection of power, politics, money, and state interests that both exploit and shape elite sport around the world.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the global response, and the consequent ramifications for sport have put the geopolitical economy of sport front and centre in both public debate and academic thinking. Similarly, the Winter Olympics in Beijing and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar illustrate the political, economic, and geographic imperatives that shape modern sport. This book brings together studies from around the world to describe this new geopolitical economy of sport, from the way in which countries use natural resource revenues, accusations of sport washing, and the deployment of sport for soft power purposes, to the way in which sport has become a focus for industrial development. This book looks at the geopolitical economy of sport across the globe, from the Gulf States’ interests in European soccer to Israel seeking to build a national competitive advantage by positioning itself as a global sports tech start-up hub, and the United States continuing to extend its economic and cultural influence through geopolitical sport activities in Africa, Latin America, and the Indian subcontinent. This book captures a pivotal moment in the history of sport and sport business.

This is essential reading for any student, researcher, practitioner, or policymaker with an interest in sport business, the politics of sport, geopolitics, soft power, diplomacy, international relations, or international political economy.

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Politics Home: Parliamentarians’ Top Books for Christmas 2021
‘A must read for political geeks’ – Saqib Bhatti

There was a huge upsurge of global interest in US politics during the Trump presidency, culminating in the November 2020 election, the victory of the Democrat candidate Joe Biden and the subsequent, horrifying response in the storming of the US capitol. American politics is likely to remain deeply divided during the coming years, and also the focus of global attention – with Trump mobilising his base for 2024. But the transatlantic fascination with the role and office of the US President isn’t new at all, and in fact reaches all the way back to the birth of the United States itself.

The Presidents features essays, written by a range of academics, historians, political journalists and serving politicians, on all 46 American Presidents who have held the office over the last 230 years – from George Washington to Joe Biden. Each contributor has been carefully chosen based on expert knowledge of their subjects and personal connections, providing analysis of their subject’s successes, failures and influence. Any hagiographical writing is shunned in favour of a ‘warts and all’ perspective on each President and the impact they’ve had on US politics – past, present and future.

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Remember when Trump was a great boss, a great father, and a great businessman, before the liberal media rewrote that narrative? That’s still the real Trump.

Longtime Trump Organization executive and attorney George A. Sorial saw the real Trump firsthand, from the early days of The Apprentice to the passing of power to the younger generation before the inauguration. He learned from his boss how to use chaos, the media, and a single-minded focus to achieve things everyone else said were impossible.

He learned how to predict what the world’s least predictable leader would do next.

In The Real Deal, George A. Sorial and Damian Bates, a former newspaper editor who has covered Trump for years, explain the forty-fifth president’s business and political strategies in detail. Often what looks complicated is just a man giving the people what he wants. For instance, why would Trump run for president, when winning would be a financial disaster for him? He was forced to set aside his TV contracts and international expansion, costing him hundreds of millions of dollars. The answer is: because everyone he talked to wanted him to run to make America great again.

In this book we see a man barely recognizable from the media’s depiction. We see the deliberate and cunning reasons he scolds people, gets impatient with complicated briefings, hires neophytes, and starts fights in the media. We also see a boss who was hard-working, fun, well read, generous with opportunities, and endlessly interested in outside opinions.

The mainstream media has tried to undermine the president at every turn by spreading lies about his management abilities, his negotiation style, and his business success. Now, in The Real Deal, George A. Sorial and Damian Bates explain how Trump’s unusual style worked so well for decades—and how it’s working better in the White House than anyone realizes.

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A photo-illustrated record of Chilean protest art, along with reflections on artistic antecedents, global protest movements, and the long shadow cast by Chile’s authoritarian past.

From October 2019 until the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Chile was convulsed by protests and political upheaval, as what began as civil disobedience transformed into a vast resistance movement. Throughout, the most striking aspects of the protests were the murals, graffiti, and other political graphics that became ubiquitous in Chilean cities.

Authors Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov were in Santiago to witness and document the protests from their very beginning. The book is beautifully illustrated with over 150 photographs taken throughout the protests. Additional photos will be available on the publisher’s website.

From the introduction:
In the conclusion, we take stock of the crisis of the nation-state in the contemporary era. This chapter brings events into the present moment, noting the ways President Piñera took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to reclaim the streets of Santiago, a phenomenon echoed in countries across the globe. While most of the global protest movements were forced to go underground (or into the ether), the Black Lives Matter movement surged in the United States and drew massive amounts of support both domestically and abroad, suggesting a continued wave of grassroots protests. We close with reflections on the continued relevance of walls in a virtual world, the testimonial role that protest graphics play, and the future outlook for revolutionary movements in Chile and worldwide.

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