Our Way of life and our very existence are under threat. Get educated and resist.

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, published in 1932, we are provided with a view into a possible future that shows humanity under total control. It's a world in which babies are created in the laboratory to fit specific job functions and a small number of savages live in the restricted wild lands. "Journey to a Brave New World" uses examples of news reports and the real history- not always the version taught in the classroom -to show how we are being managed and manipulated to allow for a total tyrannical takeover and massive depopulation that could lead us to Huxley's vision.

For over six years, author David Watts has undertaken deep research into the real history of the world and the ways in which it is being manipulated toward a future that only benefits an elite few. He provides many news reports, official documents and quotes from the so called 'elites' to piece the puzzle together. He presents a cohesive exploration of what to expect in the future if we don't become involved in determining our own fate.

"Journey to a Brave New World" seeks to help everyone to put the pieces together, deprogram, and understand both how we are being manipulated and how we can change direction now.

No Accident, Comrade argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers--politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others--contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. They claimed that the USSR perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction amplified by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the popular American refrain used to refer to Marxism: "It was no accident, Comrade").
By reading an expansive range of American novels published between 1947-2005, alongside nonfiction texts by the likes of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Bell, Ian Hacking, and mid-century game theorists, No Accident, Comrade explains how associations of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War America. Chance became tied to the liberties of U.S. democracy, whereas its eradication or denial became symptomatic of Soviet tyranny. With works by Nabokov, Ellison, Pynchon, Didion, DeLillo, Colson Whitehead, and many others, Steven Belletto shows how writers developed innovative strategies for dealing with and incorporating these ever-present beliefs about chance and its role in their culture. These newly developed narrative techniques allowed them to theorize, satirize, and make sense of the constantly changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict.

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry offers thirty-eight chapters of ground breaking research that form a collaborative guide to the many groupings and movements, the locations and styles, as well as concerns (aesthetic, political, cultural and ethical) that have helped shape contemporary poetry in Britain and Ireland. The book's introduction offers an anthropological participant-observer approach to its variously conflicted subjects, while exploring the limits and openness of the contemporary as a shifting and never wholly knowable category. The five ensuing sections explore: a history of the period's poetic movements; its engagement with form, technique, and the other arts; its association with particular locations and places; its connection with, and difference from, poetry in other parts of the world; and its circling around such ethical issues as whether poetry can perform actions in the world, can atone, redress, or repair, and how its significance is inseparable from acts of evaluation in both poets and readers. Though the book is not structured to feature chapters on authors thought to be canonical, on the principle that contemporary writers are by definition not yet canonical, the volume contains commentary on many prominent poets, as well as finding space for its contributors' enthusiasms for numerous less familiar figures. It has been organized to be read from cover to cover as an ever deepening exploration of a complex field, to be read in one or more of its five thematically structured sections, or indeed to be read by picking out single chapters or discussions of poets that particularly interest its individual readers.

Explores the ways television documents, satirizes, and critiques the political era of the Trump presidency. In American Television during a Television Presidency, Karen McNally and contributors critically examine the various ways in which television became transfixed by the Trump presidency and the broader political, social, and cultural climate. This book is the first to fully address the relationship between TV and a presidency consistently conducted with television in mind. The sixteen chapters cover everything from the political theater of televised impeachment hearings to the potent narratives of fictional drama and the stinging critiques of comedy, as they consider the wide-ranging ways in which television engages with the shifting political culture that emerged during this period. Approaching television both historically and in the contemporary moment, the contributors-an international group of scholars from a variety of academic disciplines-illuminate the indelible links that exist between television, American politics, and the nation's broader culture. As it interrogates a presidency played out through the lens of the TV camera and reviews a medium immersing itself in a compelling and inescapable subject, American Television during a Television Presidency sets out to explore what defines the television of the Trump era as a distinctive time in TV history. From inequalities to resistance, and from fandom to historical memory, this book opens up new territory in which to critically analyze television's complex relationship with Donald Trump, his presidency, and the political culture of this unsettled and simultaneously groundbreaking era. Undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of film and television studies, comedy studies, and cultural studies will value this strong collection.

In the summer of 1980, the eyes of the world turned to the Gdansk shipyard in Poland which suddenly became the nexus of a strike wave that paralyzed the entire country. The Gdansk strike was orchestrated by the members of an underground free trade union that came to be known as Solidarnosc [Solidarity]. Despite fears of a violent response from the communist authorities, the strikes spread to more than 800 sites around the country and involved over a million workers, mobilizing its working population. Faced with crippling strikes and with the eyes of the world on them, the communist regime signed landmark accords formally recognizing Solidarity as the first free trade union in a communist country. The union registered nearly ten million members, making it the world's largest union to date. In a widespread and inspiring demonstration of nonviolent protest, Solidarity managed to bring about real and powerful changes that contributed to the end of the Cold War. Solidarity:The Great Workers Strike of 1980 tells the story of this pivotal period in Poland's history from the perspective of those who lived it. Through unique personal interviews with the individuals who helped breathe life into the Solidarity movement, Michael Szporer brings home the momentous impact these events had on the people involved and subsequent history that changed the face of Europe. This movement, which began as a strike, had major consequences that no one could have foreseen at the start. In this book, the individuals who shaped history speak with their own voices about the strike that changed the course of history.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet state. The daughter of a distinguished Russian aristocratic and artistic family, Osipenko was born in 1932, but raised almost in a cocoon of pre-Revolutionary decorum and protocol. In Leningrad she studied directly under Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors. In 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, movement both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and projected those traditions into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. Five years later, she was a key figure in the sensational success of the Kirov in its European debut. But Osipenko's sharp tongue and candid independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. She discusses her traumatic relationship to the Soviet state, her close but often-fraught relationship with her family, her four husbands, her lovers, her colleagues, her son's arrest for selling dollars in Leningrad and subsequent death. This biography features a cast of characters drawn from all sectors of Soviet and post-Perestroika society.

"Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change since the 1980s" presents a comprehensive examination of the causes of the Japanese economic bubble in the late 1980s and the socio-political consequences of the recent financial collapse. Represents the only book to examine in depth the turmoil of Japan since Emperor Hirohito died in 1989, the Cold War ended, and the economy collapsed Provides an assessment of Japan's dramatic political revolution of 2009 Analyzes how risk has increased in Japan, undermining the sense of security and causing greater disparities in society Assesses Japan's record on the environment, the consequences of neo-liberal reforms, immigration policies, the aging society, the US alliance, the Imperial family, and the 'yakuza' criminal gangs Selected as a 2011 Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE

How should failed states in Africa be understood? Catherine Scott here critically engages with the concept of state failure and provides an historical reinterpretation. She shows that, although the concept emerged in the context of the post-Cold War new world order, the phenomenon has been attendant throughout (and even before) the development of the Westphalian state system. Contemporary failed states, however, differ from their historical counterparts in one fundamental respect: they fail within their existing borders and continue to be recognised as something that they are not. This peculiarity derives from international norms instituted in the era of decolonisation, which resulted in the inviolability of state borders and the supposed universality of statehood. Scott argues that contemporary failed states are, in fact, failed post-colonies. Thus understood, state failure is less the failure of existing states and more the failed rooting and institutionalisation of imported and reified models of Western statehood. Drawing on insights from the histories of Uganda and Burundi, from pre-colonial polity formation to the present day, she explores why and how there have been failures to create effective and legitimate national states within the bounds of inherited colonial jurisdictions on much of the African continent.

The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews' former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill this void, becoming heavily invested in culture as a way to shape their new, but also vexed, self-understandings. By isolating the years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of people, places, and events as "Jewish" accompanied the crises occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary's collapse, leaving profound effects on Austria's cultural legacy. In some cases, the consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and physicist and philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their murderous deeds. But engagements with the terms of Jewish difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in Hugo Bettauer's satirical novel The City without Jews and its film adaptation, other novels by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs, Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the role Jewish difference played in the lives, works, and deeds of a broad range of Austrians, this study reveals how the social codings of politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost with the application of the "Jewish" label.

When Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, his first priority was to reestablish the intelligence agencies' grip on the country by portraying himself as a strongman protecting Russian citizens from security threats. Despite condemnation by the United Nations, the European Parliament, and European Union, the policy of brutal "ethnic cleansing" in Chechnya continued. For Putin, Islamist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were a welcome opportunity to rebrand the war against Chechen independence, not as the crushing of a democracy, but as a contribution to President George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In the years that followed, Putin's regime covertly supported and manipulated extremist factions in Chechnya and stage-managed terrorist attacks on its own citizens to justify continuing aggression. US and European condemnation of Russian atrocities in Chechnya dwindled as Russia continued to portray Chechen independence as an international terrorist threat. Chechnya's Prime Minister-in-Exile Akhmed Zakaev, who had to escape Chechnya, faced Russian calls for his extradition from the United Kingdom, which instead granted him political asylum as Russia's increased its oppressive operations.

Modern China and the New World focuses upon a few of the main topics associated with China's recent rise to global prominence. Dr. Randall Doyle discusses the impact that China will have on the geopolitical balance throughout the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the effect of China's new power on U.S.-China relations in the 21st century. Dr. Zhang Boshu addresses China's continuing struggles with Tibet and the Dalai Lama. He also discusses the existing political system within China today and the future possibility of democratic reforms occurring and transforming Chinese society itself. Modern China and the New World presents these important topics by incorporating not just traditional reading and research, but also integrating the personal experiences of the authors.

Philip tackles the major problems posed by military radicalism in Peru between 1968 and 1976. He discusses the ideology of the military, the commitment of the officer corps to reform, the degree of reformism, and the limits of popular participation, and attempts to answer why it was possible for a radical military government to arise in Peru. The answers contribute not only to an understanding of modern Peru but also to the general study of the military in politics.

Adnan Menderes' election to power in 1950 signalled a new epoch in the history of modern Turkey. For the first time a democratic government ruled the country, taking over Kemal Ataturk's political heirs, the People's Republican Party (CHP), and challenging the Kemalist elite's monopoly on the control of state institutions and society itself. However, this period was short-lived. In 1960, Turkey's army staged a coup d'etat and Menderes was hanged the following year. Here, Mogens Pelt beings by examining the era of the rule of the Democratic Party, and what led to its downfall. Among the chief accusations raised against Menderes by the army was that he had undermined the principles of the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk, and that he had exploited religion for political purposes. Military Intervention and a Crisis Democracy in Turkey furthermore, and crucially, examines the legacy of the military intervention that brought this era of democratic rule to an end. Although the armed forces officially returned power to the civilians in 1961, this intervention - indeed, this crisis of democracy - allowed the military to become a major player in Turkey's political process, weakening the role of elected politicians. The officer corps claimed that the army was the legal guardian of Kemalism, and that it had the right and duty to intervene again, if the circumstances proscribed it and when it deemed that the values of Ataturk were threatened. Indeed, these were precisely that ground on which the armed forces justified its coup d'etats of 1971 and 1980. This unique exploration of the Menderes period sheds new light on the shaping of post-war Turkey and will be vital for those researching the Turkish Republic, and the influence of the military in its destiny.

In The Feminine Mystique, Jewish-raised Betty Friedan struck out against a postwar American culture that pressured women to play the role of subservient housewives. However, Friedan never acknowledged that many American women refused to retreat from public life during these years. Now, A Jewish Feminine Mystique? examines how Jewish women sought opportunities and created images that defied the stereotypes and prescriptive ideology of the "feminine mystique." As workers with or without pay, social justice activists, community builders, entertainers, and businesswomen, most Jewish women championed responsibilities outside their homes. Jewishness played a role in shaping their choices, shattering Friedan's assumptions about how middle-class women lived in the postwar years. Focusing on ordinary Jewish women as well as prominent figures such as Judy Holliday, Jennie Grossinger, and Herman Wouk's fictional Marjorie Morningstar, leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore here the wide canvas upon which American Jewish women made their mark after the Second World War.

On May 17th, 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists burst into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records (which they called "death certificates"), and burned the documents in a fire fueled by homemade napalm. The bold actions of the ''Catonsville Nine'' quickly became international news and captured headlines throughout the summer and fall of 1968 when the activists, defended by radical attorney William Kunstler, were tried in federal court. In The Catonsville Nine, Shawn Francis Peters, a Catonsville native, offers the first comprehensive account of this key event in the history of 1960's protest. While thousands of supporters thronged the streets outside the courthouse, the Catonsville Nine-whose ranks included activist priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan-delivered passionate indictments of the war in Vietnam and the brutality of American foreign policy. The proceedings reached a stirring climax, as the nine activists led the entire courtroom (the judge and federal prosecutors included) in the Lord's Prayer. Peters gives readers vivid, blow-by-blow accounts of the draft raid, the trial, and the ensuing manhunt for the Berrigans, George Mische, and Mary Moylan, who went underground rather than report to prison. He also examines the impact of Daniel Berrigan's play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, and the larger influence of this remarkable act of civil disobedience. More than 40 years after they stormed the draft board, the Catonsville Nine are still invoked by both secular and religious opponents of militarism. Based on a wealth of sources, including archival documents, the activists' previously unreleased FBI files, and a variety of eyewitness accounts, The Catonsville Nine tells a story as relevant and instructive today as it was in 1968.

This thought-provoking collection analyses the European Community's external relations between 1957 and 1992, with a particular focus upon their broader impact and global significance. Reconceptualizing the long arc of the EC's international role, from its inception in the 1950s to the end of the Cold War, the chapters identify and assess the factors that either supported or impeded Europe's international projection within this period. Organized into three parts, the authors investigate the EC's relations with key countries and world regions, discuss its activities within key policy areas, and offer reflections and conclusions on the various arguments that are put forward. Each chapter considers the entire period from 1957-1992 to identify and explain overarching trends, key decisions and historical conjunctions through scholarly literature, key debates and original discussion of each topic or policy issue. A final chapter situates the main findings within wider contexts, situating the EC in Cold War history. Bringing together international history and international relations, this project allows for cross-disciplinary dialogue and the careful discussion of key concepts, analytical approaches, and empirical findings. Filling a gap in our understanding of the early development of the EC's role as an autonomous global actor, this book holds important messages for the modern day, as the EU's position in global politics continues to shape the world.

To understand contemporary Irana??s notoriously complex politics, it is essential to grasp the monumental changes initiated by Mohammad Khatami. The previously little-known cleric stormed to victory in Irana??s 1997 presidential elections with nearly 70 percent of the vote, encouraging Irana??s reform movement to flourish during his eight year tenure as president. Ghoncheh Tazminia??s book offers a thought-provoking, astutely close-up yet systematic analysis of Khatami the man and the reform movement that supported him. She provides us with the first insight into Khatami and his politics, unravelling from the inside the dramatic emergence and consequences of Irana??s vibrant reform movement. Balanced and analytical, this book provides a comprehensive and finely detailed introduction to the subtleties of contemporary Irana??s complex political culture. At the same time it is an important reference point for a critical period of Irana??s post-revolutionary trajectory, especially given the controversial Post-Khatami developments in the country following the election of President Ahmadinejad.And with the Ahmadinejad view of Iranian politics creating a measure of discord in the country, Khatamia? ?s role as a player on the Iranian political scene remains firm.

Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels--many of questionable legality--to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Part, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations.
This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in post-war arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society."

A history of the Official Irish Republican movement, from the IRA's 1962 ceasefire to the Official IRA's permanent ceasefire in 1972. The civil rights movement, outbreak of violence in August 1969, links with the communist party, Official IRA's campaign, ceasefire, and developments towards 'Sinn Fein the Workers' Party' are explored. "This book is the first in-depth study of this crucial period in the history of Irish republicanism. Using his unprecedented access to the internal documents of the movement and interviews with key participants Swan's work will transform our understanding of this transformative period in the history of the movement." Henry Patterson, Author of 'The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA' and 'Ireland Since 1939'. "There is much fascinating material . and also much good sense." Richard English, Author of 'Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA' and 'Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State'.

Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies

Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History

It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis.

In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances--in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms--We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish "forgetfulness," she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy.

Diner also offers a compelling new perspective on the 1960s and its potent legacy, by revealing how our typical understanding of the postwar years emerged from the cauldron of cultural divisions and campus battles a generation later. The student activists and "new Jews" of the 1960s who, in rebelling against the American Jewish world they had grown up in "a world of remarkable affluence and broadening cultural possibilities" created a flawed portrait of what their parents had, or rather, had not, done in the postwar years. This distorted legacy has been transformed by two generations of scholars, writers, rabbis, and Jewish community leaders into a taken-for-granted truth.