Between 1928 and 1930, the Paris magazine Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game) ran to three issues. During its brief period of activity, however, Le Grand Jeu was more than a little magazine that vanished in the orbit of the Surrealist movement. The journal was the public face of a tightly-bound group of artists and writers who since adolescence had systematically attacked their perceptions of reality by means such as drugs and near-death experiences. The theory of Le Grand Jeu is presented in the group's own words, through the essays and articles which formed the magazine.
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.
Eric Walberg’s POSTMODERN IMPERIALISM: Geopolitics and the Great Game is a riveting and radically new analysis of the imperialist onslaught which first engulfed the world in successive waves in the 19th–20th centuries and is today hurtling into its endgame. The term “Great Game” was coined in the nineteenth century, reflecting the flippancy of statesmen (and historians) personally untouched by the havoc that they wreaked. What it purported to describe was the rivalry between Russia and Britain over interests in India. But Britain was playing its deadly game across all of Eurasia, from the Balkans and Palestine to China and southeast Asia, alternately undermining and carving up “premodern” states, disrupting the lives of hundreds of millions, with consequences that endure today. With roots in the European enlightenment, shaped by Christian and Jewish cultures, and given economic rationale by industrial capitalism, the inter-imperialist competition turned the entire world into a conflict zone, leaving no territory neutral. The first “game” was brought to a close by the cataclysm of World War I. But that did not mark the end of it. Walberg resurrects the forbidden “i” word to scrutinize an imperialism now in denial, but following the same logic and with equally horrendous human costs. What he terms Great Game II then began, with America eventually uniting its former imperial rivals in an even more deadly game to destroy their common revolutionary antagonist and potential nemesis-communism. Having “won” this game, America and the new player Israel-offspring of the early games-have sought to entrench what Walberg terms “empire and a half” on a now global playing field-using a neoliberal agenda backed by shock and awe. With swift, sure strokes, Walberg paints the struggle between domination and resistance on a global canvas, as imperialism engages its two great challengers-communism and Islam, its secular and religious antidotes. Paul Atwood (War and Empire: The American Way of Life) calls it an “epic corrective”. It is a “carefully argued-and most of all, cliche-smashing-road map” according to Pepe Escobar (journalist Asia Times). Rigorously documented, it is “a valuable resource for all those interested in how imperialism works, and sure to spark discussion about the theory of imperialism”, according to John Bell (Capitalism and the Dialectic).
A concise history of an uprising that took down a three-hundred-year-old dynasty and united the great powers. The year is 1900, and Western empires are locked in entanglements across the globe. The British are losing a bitter war against the Boers while the German kaiser is busy building a vast new navy. The United States is struggling to put down an insurgency in the South Pacific while the upstart imperialist Japan begins to make clear to neighboring Russia its territorial ambition. In China, a perennial pawn in the Great Game, a mysterious group of superstitious peasants is launching attacks on the Western powers they fear are corrupting their country. These ordinary Chinese—called Boxers by the West because of their martial arts showmanship—rise up seemingly out of nowhere. Foreshadowing the insurgencies of our recent past, they lack a centralized leadership and instead tap into latent nationalism and deep economic frustration to build their army. Many scholars brush off the Boxer Rebellion as an ill-conceived and easily defeated revolt, but in The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, the military historian David J. Silbey shows just how close the Boxers came to beating back the combined might of the imperial powers. Drawing on the diaries and letters of allied soldiers and diplomats, he paints a vivid portrait of the war. Although their cause ended just as quickly as it began, the Boxers would inspire Chinese nationalists—including a young Mao Zedong—for decades to come.
The first book to use the world's most popular sport to test economic theories and document novel human behavior A wealth of research in recent decades has seen the economic approach to human behavior extended over many areas previously considered to belong to sociology, political science, law, and other fields. Research has also shown that economics can provide insight into many aspects of sports, including soccer. Beautiful Game Theory is the first book that uses soccer to test economic theories and document novel human behavior. In this brilliant and entertaining book, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta illuminates economics through the world's most popular sport. He offers unique and often startling insights into game theory and microeconomics, covering topics such as mixed strategies, discrimination, incentives, and human preferences. He also looks at finance, experimental economics, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics. Soccer provides rich data sets and environments that shed light on universal economic principles in interesting and useful ways. Essential reading for students, researchers, and sports enthusiasts, Beautiful Game Theory is the first book to show what soccer can do for economics.
The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over one of the volatile areas in the world: the long border region stretching from Iran through Pakistan to Kashmir. In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, one of America's most respected Central Asia experts, explores the dynamics of the new competition over the region since 9/11. All three great powers are pursuing important goals: basing rights for the US, access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians. But Central Asian governments have proven themselves powerful forces in their own right, establishing local rules that serve to fend off foreign involvement, enrich themselves and reinforce their sovereign authority. Cooley's careful and surprising explanation of how small states interact with great powers in this vital region greatly advances our understanding of how world politics actually works in this contemporary era.
From the romantic conflicts of the Victorian Great Game to the war-torn history of the region in recent decades, Tournament of Shadows traces the struggle for control of Central Asia and Tibet from the 1830s to the present. The original Great Game, the clandestine struggle between Russia and Britain for mastery of Central Asia, has long been regarded as one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history. Many believed that control of the vast Eurasian heartland was the key to world dominion. The original Great Game ended with the Russian Revolution, but the geopolitical struggles in Central Asia continue to the present day. In this updated edition, the authors reflect on Central Asia's history since the end of the Russo-Afghan war, and particularly in the wake of 9/11.
Praised by Entertainment Weekly as “the man who put the fizz into physics,” Dr. Len Fisher turns his attention to the science of cooperation in his lively and thought-provoking book. Fisher shows how the modern science of game theory has helped biologists to understand the evolution of cooperation in nature, and investigates how we might apply those lessons to our own society. In a series of experiments that take him from the polite confines of an English dinner party to crowded supermarkets, congested Indian roads, and the wilds of outback Australia, not to mention baseball strategies and the intricacies of quantum mechanics, Fisher sheds light on the problem of global cooperation. The outcomes are sometimes hilarious, sometimes alarming, but always revealing. A witty romp through a serious science, Rock, Paper, Scissors will both teach and delight anyone interested in what it what it takes to get people to work together.
This book is an introduction to mathematical game theory, which might better be called the mathematical theory of conflict and cooperation. It is applicable whenever two individuals—or companies, or political parties, or nations—confront situations where the outcome for each depends on the behavior of all. What are the best strategies in such situations? If there are chances of cooperation, with whom should you cooperate, and how should you share the proceeds of cooperation? Since its creation by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in 1944, game theory has shed new light on business, politics, economics, social psychology, philosophy, and evolutionary biology. In this book, its fundamental ideas are developed with mathematics at the level of high school algebra and applied to many of these fields (see the table of contents). Ideas like “fairness” are presented via axioms that fair allocations should satisfy; thus the reader is introduced to axiomatic thinking as well as to mathematical modeling of actual situations.
