For decades, Africa was falling apart. But now it is coming together, and Africans are achieving greatness. Despite the advances, though, the twenty-first century brings challenges to match each and every major opportunity. In Things Come Together, Robert Rotberg brings all of contemporary Africa into a single volume, extolling the successes and explaining the struggles. Rotberg is one of the world's foremost authorities on African politics and society, and in this book he synthes...

Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer a troubled ‘dark continent.’ Most of its constituent countries are now enjoying significant economic growth and political progress. The new Africa has begun to banish the miseries of the past, and appears ready to play an important role in world affairs. Thanks to shifts in leadership and governance, an African renaissance could be at hand.Yet the road ahead is not without obstacles. As world renowned expert on African affairs, Robert Rotberg, expert...

Global poverty Paul Collier points out is actually falling quite rapidly for about eighty percent of the world. The real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states the bottom billion whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty. In The Bottom Billion Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines a much needed light on this group of small nations largely unnoticed by...

**From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world."Brilliant at diagnosing the failings of Western intervention in the Third World." —BusinessWeek**In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired...

"The most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism." —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of BooksIn this "clear, provocative" (Boston Globe) New York Times bestseller, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, examines the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense...

Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America's two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and econom...

In this groundbreaking work, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement offers a new perspective on the troubles facing Africa today. Too often these challenges are portrayed by the media in extreme terms connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai, the author of Unbowed, sees things differently, and here she argues for a moral revolution among Africans themselves. Illuminating the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, Maathai of...

"[The Groundwork Guides] are excellent books, mandatory for school libraries and the increasing body of young people prepared to take ownership of the situations and problems previous generations have left them." -- Globe and MailThink Africa, and many people think of brutal war, endless famine, pervasive corruption, unworthy rulers, universal poverty, an AIDS epidemic out of control. As this book in the Groundwork Guides series shows, these characteristic...

From Wisconsin to Washington, DC, the claims are made: unions are responsible for budget deficits, and their members are overpaid and enjoy cushy benefits. The only way to save the American economy, pundits claim, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In "They're Bankrupting Us!": And 20 Other Myths about Unions, labor leader Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as he unpacks the twenty-one myths most...

As international organizations become ever more prominent in global politics it is increasingly urgent to understand their power, their limits, and their effects. Now in its fourth edition, this leading textbook provides the definitive introduction to modern international organizations, from the legal charters of their beginnings, to the issues they engage with in the contemporary world. In his analysis of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court a...

The untold story of the global poor: “Powerful, lucid, and revelatory, The Great Surge…offers indispensable prescriptions about sustaining global economic progress into the future” (George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management).We live today at a time of great progress for the global poor. Never before have so many people, in so many developing countries, made so much progress, in so short a time in reducing poverty, increasing incomes, improving health...

Human society is constantly evolving, but is democracy keeping pace?Most citizens of today’s democracies spend 12 years in public schools. Humanity is more educated now than at any time in history. Yet we still vote as though most of our citizens are illiterate.The present ballot system was created in a time when people who left school by the 4th grade were considered educated. For democracy to work at that time, illiterate citizens needed a tool that enabled them to exerci...