In retelling the story of the Radical Alexander Hamilton, Parenti rewrites the history early America and global economic history writ large. For much of the twentieth century, Hamilton - sometimes seen as the bad boy of the founding fathers or portrayed as the patron saint of bankers- was out of fashion. In contrast his rival Thomas Jefferson, the patrician democrat and slave owner who feared government overreach, was claimed by all. But more recently, Hamilton has become a subject of serious interest again. He was a contradictory mix: a tough soldier, austere workaholic, exacting bureaucrat, yet also a sexual libertine, and a glory-obsessed romantic with suicidal tendencies. As Parenti argues, we have yet to fully appreciate Hamilton as the primary architect of American capitalism and the developmental state. In exploring his life and work, Parenti rediscovers this gadfly as a path breaking political thinker and institution builder. In this vivid historical portrait, Hamilton emerges as a singularly important historical figure: a thinker and politico who laid the foundation for America's ascent to global supremacy - for better or worse.

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure.

In "Tropic of Chaos," investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency.

Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism"--a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

Prison privatization is a rapidly increasing phenomenon in many Western countries as governments seek to manage burgeoning prison populations within the constraints of a neo-liberal political agenda. But how is public well being served when prisons are run for profit? Bringing together a group of the most accomplished writers and activists on human rights and prison priva-tization, Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights discusses privatization within its historical and ideological context, and in relation to international standard minimum rules developed by the United Nations in relation to prison management. Capitalist Punishment examines the adverse effects of private prisons on inmates related to physical and sexual abuse, health care, education, training, and rehabilitation, as corporations seek to maximize profits. It describes the impact on prison staff, from whose salaries corporate profits are wrung, of further cost cutting in the design of facilities and allocation of personnel. Special attention is paid to the effect on vulnerable groups such as women, children, and dispro-portionately incarcerated minority and indigenous communities. Even as serious questions emerge in the West as to whether privatized prisons offer a more effective and efficient prison system for either inmates or the public at large, the trend to privatization is spreading. Revealing important links between neo-liberal policies locally and their global effects, Capitalist Punishment offers a disturbing glimpse into the transnational spread of privatized incarceration, as developing nations bound by IMFrestrictions are forced into the hands of transnational corporations to the detriment of local incarceration alternatives.

Lockdown America documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the war on drugs. Its accessible and vivid prose makes clear the links between crime and politics in a period of gathering economic crisis.

Why is criminal justice so central to American politics? "Lockdown America" not only documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the federalization of the war on crime, it also explains the political and economic history behind the massive crackdown. This fully updated and expanded edition includes an afterword on the War on Terror, a meditation on surveillance and the specter of terrorism as they help reanimate the criminal justice attack. Written in vivid prose, "Lockdown America" will propel readers toward a deeper understanding of the links between crime and politics in a period of gathering economic crisis.

On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless (and clandestine) expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries-from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice and tracking immigrants. Parenti explores the role computers are playing in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies-such as credit cards, website "cookies," and electronic toll collection-that have expanded this trend in the twenty-first century. "The Soft Cage" offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives.

Consistently compared with the work of Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr, "The Freedom" provides a fearless and unsanitized tour of the disastrous occupation of Iraq, in all its surreal and terrifying detail. Drawing on the best tradition of war reporting, here is a rare book that "embeds" with both sides--the U.S. military and the Iraqi resistance.

Acclaimed journalist Christian Parenti takes us on a high-speed ride along treacherous roads to the centers of the ongoing conflict in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Sadr City through the first year of the occupation. He introduces us to relatives waiting anxiously outside the holding fortress of Abu Ghraib and takes a night drive around Baghdad with the insurgents. He recounts the military's use of drugs and prostitutes, the imperial buffoonery of the Green Zone, and the religious ecstasy of the Shiites. And he allows us to witness, close up and in riveting detail, the cataclysmic violence, rampant gangsterism, and quotidian heroism that is today's Iraq.

As predicted by the "San Francisco Bay Guardian," when "historians of tomorrow start writing, they will doubtless have copies of "The Freedom" close at hand."

Consistently compared with the work of Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr, "The Freedom" provides a fearless and unsanitized tour of the disastrous occupation of Iraq, in all its surreal and terrifying detail. Drawing on the best tradition of war reporting, here is a rare book that "embeds" with both sides--the U.S. military and the Iraqi resistance.

Acclaimed journalist Christian Parenti takes us on a high-speed ride along treacherous roads to the centers of the ongoing conflict in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Sadr City through the first year of the occupation. He introduces us to relatives waiting anxiously outside the holding fortress of Abu Ghraib and takes a night drive around Baghdad with the insurgents. He recounts the military's use of drugs and prostitutes, the imperial buffoonery of the Green Zone, and the religious ecstasy of the Shiites. And he allows us to witness, close up and in riveting detail, the cataclysmic violence, rampant gangsterism, and quotidian heroism that is today's Iraq.

As predicted by the "San Francisco Bay Guardian," when "historians of tomorrow start writing, they will doubtless have copies of "The Freedom" close at hand."

Why is criminal justice so central to American politics? "Lockdown America" not only documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the federalization of the war on crime, it also explains the political and economic history behind the massive crackdown. This fully updated and expanded edition includes an afterword on the War on Terror, a meditation on surveillance and the specter of terrorism as they help reanimate the criminal justice attack. Written in vivid prose, "Lockdown America" will propel readers toward a deeper understanding of the links between crime and politics in a period of gathering economic crisis.

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure.

In "Tropic of Chaos," investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency.

Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism"--a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.