This is the story of life in a street in Croydon in 1907. It is also the story of a young man's dream - to leave that street with all its violence, drunkenness and poverty behind, and to give his parents a better life.
This urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes - those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late. Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity. An Oxford philosopher committed to putting ideas into action, Toby Ord has advised the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Minister's Office, and the World Bank on the biggest questions facing humanity. In The Precipice, he offers a startling reassessment of human history, the future we are failing to protect, and the steps we must take to ensure that our generation is not the last. "A book that seems made for the present moment." —New Yorker
In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.
Based on several years of fieldwork in Egypt and Turkey, Caring for the Poor tells the stories of charity providers and volunteers. The book also places their stories within the overall development of Islamic ethics. Muslim charity, Tuğal argues, has interacted with Christian and secular Western ethics over the centuries, which themselves have a conflict-ridden and still evolving history. The overall arch that connects all of these distinct elements is (a combined and uneven) liberalization. Liberalization tends to transform care into a cold, calculating, and individualizing set of practices. Caring for the Poor meticulously documents this insidious process in Egypt and Turkey, while also drawing attention to its limits and contradictions (by using the American case to highlight the contested nature of liberalization even in its world leader). However, as historians have shown, charitable actors have intervened in decisive ways in the rise and demise of social formations. Tuğal raises the possibility, especially through his study of two controversial Turkish organizations, that Islamic charity might appropriate elements of liberalism to shift the world in a post-liberal direction.
"Book and man are brilliant, passionate, optimistic and impatient . . . Outstanding." —The Economist The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens, from one of the world's most renowned economists Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Marrying vivid storytelling with rigorous analysis, Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. Explaining his own work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, he offers an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the world's poorest countries. Ten years after its initial publication, The End of Poverty remains an indispensible and influential work. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade, the work that remains to be done, and how each of us can help. He also looks ahead across the next fifteen years to 2030, the United Nations' target date for ending extreme poverty, offering new insights and recommendations.
This book analyzes the discourse generated by pundits, politicians, and artists to examine how poverty and the income gap is framed through specific modes of representation. Set against the dichotomy of the structural narrative of poverty and the opportunity narrative, Lemke's modified concept of precarity reveals new insights into the American situation as well as into the textuality of contemporary demands for equity. Her acute study of a vast range of artistic and journalistic texts brings attention to a mode of representation that is itself precarious, both in the modern and etymological sense, denoting both insecurity and entreaty. With the keen eye of a cultural studies scholar her innovative book makes a necessary contribution to academic and popular critiques of the social effects of neoliberal capitalism.
The financial and economic crisis in Europe is not over, and the radically opposing strategies on how to proceed has only increased the complexity of problems in the region, revealing the shortcomings of the EU’s architecture. The European Union, perhaps for the first time in its history of more than seventy years, is being perceived as a threat to the financial and monetary stability of the world. A Global Perspective on the European Economic Crisis explores the connection between internal EU actions and institutions and the external factors that influence the ongoing response to the European crisis. With a unique collection of international and interdisciplinary essays, this book considers the complex macroeconomic and challenging political landscape of Europe, looking at how and why the European Union is untenable in its current state. The chapters outline what should be done to make the common currency area more resilient, and explain why external events are particularly problematic for the EU, ultimately offering suggestions for what Europeans should do in order to avoid harmful internal consequences. This volume confronts the causes of the crisis’ persistence, its economic and political consequences, and the impact of more recent events and policy decisions. It will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers keen to understand the EU relations and the influence of international organizations in the European economic crisis.
Making an urgent appeal for a bold new economic practice, eminent Dutch economists Bob Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange provide a provocative twelve-step program for eocnomic recovery based on compassion for the planet and all its people.
This important work of political and moral philosophy set off a firestorm of criticism upon its publication in the mid-nineteenth century. Most notably, Joseph-Pierre Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty compelled Karl Marx to write a treatise in response. Marx's rejoinder, entitled The Poverty of Philosophy, is a fascinating companion piece to this Proudhon's book.