Both China and Taiwan have fairly similar political cultures. However, the Chinese intellectual and political elite have, by and large, failed to democratize the Middle Kingdom since 1919 when they started the 4 May Movement to bring 'Mr D' (democracy) and 'Mr S' (science) to th…
"Concentrating on the years 1953-64, this history describes how North Korea became more despotic even as other Communist countries underwent de-Stalinization. The author's principal new source is the Hungarian diplomatic archives, which contain extensive reporting on Kim Il Sung…
"Concentrating on the years 1953-64, this history describes how North Korea became more despotic even as other Communist countries underwent de-Stalinization. The author's principal new source is the Hungarian diplomatic archives, which contain extensive reporting on Kim Il Sung…
"Slavery appears as a figurative construct during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, and again in the American and French revolutions, when radicals represent their treatment as a form of political slavery. What, if anything, does figurative, political slaver…
Slavery appears as a figurative construct during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, and again in the American and French revolutions, when radicals represent their treatment as a form of political slavery. What, if anything, does figurative, political slavery…
"Drawing on a wide range of sources and historiographical material, Between East and West provides a comprehensive analysis of the efforts of the Moscow princes to form a centralized Russian state. According to the author, the unification of Russia around Moscow was not historic…
"A disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world. One day they'll be like us. That was once the West's complacent and self-regarding assumption about countries emerging from poverty, imperial rule, or communism. But man…
"Questions about how and why the Trump era happened prompt us to think about universal themes in politics, philosophy, and morality. This book shows how the theater and tragedy of contemporary US politics can be distilled down into the behavior of three actors: the tyrant, the s…
The Vindiciae, contra tyrannos was the most infamous of the monarchomach treatises produced during the French wars of religion, and continued to be revered (or execrated) as a key part of the radical canon for well over a century after its publication. It is one of the first att…
"In an elegant and graceful account of the transformation of European attitudes toward the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucette Valensi follows the genealogy of the concept of Oriental despotism. The Birth of the Despot examines a crucial moment…
Introduction: history after libertas -- Libertas and the political thought of Tacitus -- The principate and the corruption and restoration of military libertas -- The corruption and restoration of libertas senatoria -- The corruption and restoration of libertas as freedom of spe…
Roman historian Tacitus wrote a damning critique of the first centry CE Roman empire, presenting emperors almost universally as tyrants surrounded by flatterers and informants and depicting a society that has lost the liberty enjoyed under the Roman Republic. Yet Tacitus also po…
The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is…
