A bold new approach to combatting the inherent corruption of representative democracy This provocative book reveals how the majority of modern liberal democracies have become increasingly oligarchic, suffering from a form of structural political decay first conceptualized by ancient philosophers. Systemic Corruption argues that the problem cannot be blamed on the actions of corrupt politicians but is built into the very fabric of our representative systems. Camila Vergara provides a compelling and original genealogy of political corruption from ancient to modern thought, and shows how representative democracy was designed to protect the interests of the already rich and powerful to the detriment of the majority. Unable to contain the unrelenting force of oligarchy, especially after experimenting with neoliberal policies, most democracies have been corrupted into oligarchic democracies. Vergara explains how to reverse this corrupting trajectory by establishing a new counterpower strong enough to control the ruling elites. Building on the anti-oligarchic institutional innovations proposed by plebeian philosophers, she rethinks the republic as a mixed order in which popular power is institutionalized to check the power of oligarchy. Vergara demonstrates how a plebeian republic would establish a network of local assemblies with the power to push for reform from the grassroots, independent of political parties and representative government. Drawing on neglected insights from Niccolo Machiavelli, Nicolas de Condorcet, Rosa Luxemburg, and Hannah Arendt, Systemic Corruption proposes to reverse the decay of democracy with the establishment of anti-oligarchic institutions through which common people can collectively resist the domination of the few.

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award Wealth and power on the trail of the super-rich In 2012, Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista was the eighth richest man in the world, his $30bn fortune built on Brazil's incredible natural resources. By the middle of 2013 he had lost it all, engulfed in scandal. Brazillionaires is a fast-paced account of Batista's rise and fall: a story of helicopter flights, beach-front penthouses and high-speed car crashes. Along the way, it tells the parallel story of Brazil itself, a country caught in the cycle of boom and bust, renewed hope and dashed promise; a country where the hyper-rich are at the heart of the economy - and where their wealth can buy immense political power. Stefan Zweig said in 1941 that Brazil was the country of the future; Brazilians joke that it always will be. Today, rampant corruption and endemic inequality threaten to derail the new Brazilian Dream. The brazillionaires are the key to understanding that dream; through them Brazillionaires tells the story of their country's past, present and future.

An explosive and news-making look at Donald Trump and his relationships with women, from his girlfriends to his multiple marriages, painting a portrait of a pathological liar, serial philanderer, and misogynist.

Based on groundbreaking original reporting, an extensive new look at Donald Trump's relationships with women, revealing new accusations of sexual misconduct, exploring the roots of his alleged predatory behaviour, and illustrating how Trump's presidency has helped catalyse the #MeToo movement and revitalise women's activism.

SOON TO BE A FIVE-PART HBO SERIES, STARRING WOODY HARRELSON AND JUSTIN THEROUX The true story of the White House Plumbers, a secret unit inside Nixon's White House, their ill-conceived plans to stop the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, and how they led to Watergate and the President's demise. On July 17, 1971, Egil "Bud" Krogh was summoned to a closed-door meeting by his mentor - and a key confidant of the president - John Ehrlichman. Expecting to discuss the most recent drug control program launched in Vietnam, Krogh was shocked when Ehrlichman handed him a file and the responsibility for the Special Investigations Unit, or SIU, later to be notoriously known as "The Plumbers." The Plumbers' work, according to Nixon, was critical to national security: they were to investigate the leaks of top secret government documents, including the Pentagon Papers, to the press. The White House Plumbers is Krogh's account of what really happened behind the closed doors of the Nixon White House, how a good man can make bad decisions, and the redemptive power of integrity. Including the story of how Krogh served time and later rebuilt his life, The White House Plumbers is gripping, thoughtful, and a cautionary tale of placing loyalty over principle.

Winner of the McKitterick Prize 2018. "Never cover an assignment without collecting a brown envelope," Boniface had said. "It is a real life saver for all journalists in this country." Ifiok, a young journalist working for the government radio station in Lagos, Nigeria, always aspires to do the right thing, but the odds seem to be stacked against him. Government pressures cause the funding to his radio drama to get cut off, his girlfriend leaves him when she discovers he is having an affair with an intern, and kidnappings and militancy are on the rise in the country. When Ifiok travels to his hometown to do a documentary on some ex-militants' apparent redemption, a tragi-comic series of events will make him realise he is unable to swim against the tide of corruption. Building on the legacy of the great African satirist tradition of Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Ayi Kwei Armah, Radio Sunrise paints a sharp-tongued portrait of (post) post-colonial Nigeria.

A writer in self-imposed exile in London receives a call from the Prime Minister of his former country, inviting him to return to write the Prime Minister's biography. As he embarks from his small flat in west London to the modern Caribbean island he once called home, he immediately finds himself thrust into a world of exceptional wealth, power, and corruption. In the midst of this turmoil the writer falls deeply in love. As the love affair advances, the writer's passion for the island resurfaces, until the loss of a close friend propels him to make one final, potentially cataclysmic decision that will change everything.

An in-depth look at the historic and strategic deployment of rights in political conflicts throughout the world Rights are usually viewed as defensive concepts representing mankind's highest aspirations to protect the vulnerable and uplift the downtrodden. But since the Enlightenment, political combatants have also used rights belligerently, to batter despised communities, demolish existing institutions, and smash opposing ideas. Delving into a range of historical and contemporary conflicts from all areas of the globe, Rights as Weapons focuses on the underexamined ways in which the powerful wield rights as aggressive weapons against the weak. Clifford Bob looks at how political forces use rights as rallying cries: naturalizing novel claims as rights inherent in humanity, absolutizing them as trumps over rival interests or community concerns, universalizing them as transcultural and transhistorical, and depoliticizing them as concepts beyond debate. He shows how powerful proponents employ rights as camouflage to cover ulterior motives, as crowbars to break rival coalitions, as blockades to suppress subordinate groups, as spears to puncture discrete policies, and as dynamite to explode whole societies. And he demonstrates how the targets of rights campaigns repulse such assaults, using their own rights-like weapons: denying the abuses they are accused of, constructing rival rights to protect themselves, portraying themselves as victims rather than violators, and repudiating authoritative decisions against them. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of examples, including nineteenth-century voting rights movements; the American civil rights movement; nationalist, populist, and religious movements in today's Europe; and internationalized conflicts related to Palestinian self-determination, animal rights, gay rights, and transgender rights. Comparing key episodes in the deployment of rights, Rights as Weapons opens new perspectives on an idea that is central to legal and political conflicts.

Breitbart.com editor Jerome Hudson returns with even more red pills, facts, and statistics to counteract the lies and blind spots of the mainstream media. Did you know Donald Trump has allocated more funding to historically black colleges and universities than any other president? In 50 Things They Don't Want You to Know About Trump, Jerome Hudson uncovers all the things Americans have not been told about our 45th president. We're surrounded by supposed influencers shouting about the scandals that Americans care about the least, from TV talking heads to social media activists, from feckless Washington swamp monsters to candidates fighting for the soap box. Your teachers, your politicians, and your local paper are not likely to ever tell you: Drug overdoses dropped for the first time in 30 years under Trump. America once again led the world in reducing carbon emissions in 2019. Trump is the first pro-gay marriage candidate elected president. (Obama endorsed it after his election.) Democrats backed out of attending an award ceremony from a criminal justice reform organization when they found out Trump won the award. The famous "Muslim ban" excluded 87 percent of the world's Muslims. Under Trump, blue-collar workers enjoyed three-times the wage growth of the top 1-percent of households. After finishing 50 Things They Don't Want You to Know About Trump, you'll be stunned at the many Trump accomplishments which just aren't reported by the powers that be.

An LA Times Best Book of the Year * A New York Times Editors' Pick * A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books * A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year "Gripping and beautiful. With the artistry of a poet and the intensity of a revolutionary, Lovato untangles the tightly knit skein of love and terror that connects El Salvador and the United States." -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes and Nickel and Dimed An urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador, Roberto Lovato's memoir excavates family history and reveals the intimate stories beneath headlines about gang violence and mass Central American migration, one of the most important, yet least-understood humanitarian crises of our time-and one in which the perspectives of Central Americans in the United States have been silenced and forgotten. The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming in California. In his teens, he lost friends to the escalating violence, and survived acts of brutality himself. He eventually traded the violence of the streets for human rights advocacy in wartime El Salvador where he joined the guerilla movement against the U.S.-backed, fascist military government responsible for some of the most barbaric massacres and crimes against humanity in recent history. Roberto returned from war-torn El Salvador to find the United States on the verge of unprecedented crises of its own. There, he channeled his own pain into activism and journalism, focusing his attention on how trauma affects individual lives and societies, and began the difficult journey of confronting the roots of his own trauma. As a child, Roberto endured a tumultuous relationship with his father Ramon. Raised in extreme poverty in the countryside of El Salvador during one of the most violent periods of its history, Ramon learned to survive by straddling intersecting underworlds of family secrets, traumatic silences, and dealing in black-market goods and guns. The repression of the violence in his life took its toll, however. Ramon was plagued with silences and fits of anger that had a profound impact on his youngest son, and which Roberto attributes as a source of constant reckoning with the violence and rebellion in his own life. In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father's complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget.

On 1 July 2018, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected as the next President of Mexico. AMLO's decisive victory speaks volumes about the corrupt state of the Mexican political elite, the temperament of the country's people, and the election of another outspoken politician, Donald Trump. A progressive politician often compared to Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, AMLO's campaign galvanised people across Mexico. Here, in his own words, AMLO paints a picture of a country plagued by cronyism and neoliberalism, and declares the dawn of a new era, vowing to uplift poor and indigenous communities and provide jobs and welfare for all. As Trump publicly derides the Mexican people as 'drug dealers, criminals and rapists', AMLO is critical of Mexico's capitulation to the US. The election of a true progressive for the first time in recent history has huge implications for the Mexican people, for the United States, and for the international progressive Left. This manifesto is the foundation on which a new progressive Latin American politics could emerge.

2020 Choice​ Outstanding Academic Title Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes analyzes the looming threats posed by climate change from a criminological perspective. It advances the field of green criminology through a examination of the criminal nature of catastrophic environmental harms resulting from the release of greenhouse gases. The book describes and explains what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the U.S. government, and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming. Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes integrates research and theory from a wide variety of disciplines, to analyze four specific state-corporate climate crimes: continued extraction of fossil fuels and rising carbon emissions; political omission (failure) related to the mitigation of these emissions; socially organized climate change denial; and climate crimes of empire, which include militaristic forms of adaptation to climate disruption. The final chapter reviews policies that could mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a warming world, and achieve climate justice.

In the 1980s, real estate developer and banker Charles H. Keating executed one of the largest savings and loans frauds in United States history. Keating had long used the courts to muzzle critical reporting of his business dealings, but aggressive reporting by a small trade paper called the National Thrift News helped bring down Keating and offered an inspiring example of business journalism that speaks truth to power. Rob Wells tells the story through the work of Stan Strachan, a veteran financial journalist who uncovered Keating's misdeeds and links to a group of US senators-the Keating Five-who bullied regulators on his behalf. Editorial decisions at the National Thrift News angered advertisers and readers, but the newsroom sold ownership on the idea of investigative reporting as a commercial opportunity. Examining the National Thrift News's approach, Wells calls for a new era of business reporting that can-and must-embrace its potential as a watchdog safeguarding the interests of the public.

Professor Allan J. Lichtman, who has correctly forecasted thirty years of presidential elections, makes the case for impeaching the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

In The Case For Impeachment, Professor Lichtman lays out the reasons why Congress removing Donald J. Trump has become a matter of `when' not `if'. Shedding some light on the consequences of his ties with Russia before and after the election, complicated financial conflicts of interest at home and abroad and abuse of executive authority, this is an authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the most controversial presidency since Richard Nixon.

While the literature of hybrid regimes has given up the presumption that post-communist countries must democratize, its language and concepts still mostly relate to Western democracies. Magyar and Madlovics strongly argue for a vocabulary and grammar tailored to the specifics of the region. In 120 theses they unfold a conceptual framework with (1) a typology of post-communist regimes and (2) a detailed presentation of ideal-type actors and the political, economic, and social phenomena in these regimes. The book is a more digestible companion to the 800-page The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), which was a detailed theoretical study with plenty of empirical illustrations. Each of the 120 theses contains a statement and its concise discussion supported by illustrative tables, figures, and QR-codes that connect the interested reader to the more detailed analysis in the Anatomy. In a condensed variety, this book has kept the holistic approach of the Anatomy and treats the spheres of political, market, and communal action as parts of a single, coherent whole. The endeavor to synthesize a vast range of ideas does not, however, result in a too complicated text. On the contrary, freed from the implicit presumptions of democracy theory, the new terminology yields a readily usable toolkit of unambiguous means of expression to speak about post-communism.

A comprehensive look at the world of illicit trade In the past three decades, technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in legitimate and illegal economies. The most advanced forms of illicit trade have broken with all historical precedents and operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social media. Dark Commerce examines how new technology, communications, and globalization fuel the exponential growth of dangerous forms of illegal trade—the markets for narcotics and child pornography, the escalation of sex trafficking, and the sale of endangered species. The illicit economy exacerbates many of the world’s destabilizing phenomena: the perpetuation of conflicts, the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass destruction, and environmental degradation and extinction. Dark Commerce demonstrates that the dark market is a business the global community cannot afford to ignore.

'Pertinent!' Margaret Atwood 'Illuminating . . . reveals why some people and systems are more likely to be corrupted by power than others' Adam Grant 'Passionate, insightful, and occasionally jaw-dropping . . . Corruptible sets out the story of the intoxicating lure of power-and how it has shaped the modern world' Peter Frankopan 'A brilliant exploration' Dan Snow 'Klaas is the rarest of finds: a political scientist who can also tell great stories. He mixes memorable anecdotes with stern analysis to tackle one of the biggest questions of all: do we have to be ruled by bad people?' - Peter Pomerantsev Does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are tyrants the products of bad systems or are they just bad people? And why do we give power to awful people? In Corruptible, professor of global politics Brian Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world's top leaders - from the noblest to the dirtiest - including presidents, war criminals, cult leaders, terrorists, psychopaths, and dictators to reveal the most surprising workings of power: how children can predict who is going to win an election based just on the faces of politicians; why narcissists make more money; what makes a certain species of bee more corrupt than others; whether a thirst for power is a genetic condition; and why being the second in command is in fact the smartest choice. From scans of psychopathic brains, to the effects of power on monkey drug use, Klaas weaves cutting-edge research with astonishing encounters (including a ski lesson with the former viceroy of Iraq, tea with a former UK prime minister, and breakfast with Madagascar's yogurt kingpin president). Written by the creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, Corruptible challenges our basic assumptions about power, from the board room to the war room, and provides a roadmap for getting better leaders at every level.

Over much of its rule, the regime of Hafez al-Asad and his successor Bashar al-Asad deployed violence on a massive scale to maintain its grip on political power. In this book, Salwa Ismail examines the rationalities and mechanisms of governing through violence. In a detailed and compelling account, Ismail shows how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectivities, defining their understanding of the terms of rule and structuring their relations and interactions with the regime and with one another. Examining ordinary citizens' everyday life experiences and memories of violence across diverse sites, from the internment camp and the massacre to the family and school, The Rule of Violence demonstrates how practices of violence, both in their routine and spectacular forms, fashioned Syrians' affective life, inciting in them feelings of humiliation and abjection, and infusing their lived environment with dread and horror. This form of rule is revealed to be constraining of citizens' political engagement, while also demanding of their action.

The People's Republic of China and the United States are today at war. It is being fought with the use of information, politics and finance. The Chinese believe that, as in all war, it would be better to win without engaging the enemy on the battlefield or having to resort to the likes of nuclear weapons if it can be avoided. To achieve this, China has engaged in a decades-long campaign to manipulate and corrupt America's ruling elite. This Broadside describes the degree to which Chinese influence has penetrated American society and what will be required to prevent Communist China from winning the struggle in which we find ourselves today.

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** A ground-breaking investigation into the oil and gas industry, international corruption and world politics. Oil. Corrupt? Yes. Unimaginably lucrative? Of course. But, the enemy of democracy? Blowout is the oil and gas industry as we've never seen it before, as told by America's most incisive political journalist, Rachel Maddow. A blackly comic journey from Washington to Siberia, to deep within the earth's crust and the icy Arctic seas, it reveals not just the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas but why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. This is our final wake-up call: to stop subsidizing oil and gas, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry before it destroys our democracy 'Each page in Blowout is a revelation into the depth of corruption and greed that is infused into the international economy' David Lammy, MP