The last two centuries have been the scene of dramatic change throughout Europe. And one of the main causes of these tremendous and spectacular changes was the economy. These transformations were achieved by people: scientists and political thinkers, inventors and entrepreneurs, educators, skilled and educated workers. Who not only invented machines and computers, but were able to renew economic and political systems. This volume, therefore, presents a new approach to the period by looking...

This book analyzes the European Great Recession of 2008-12, its economic and social causes, its historical roots, and the policies adopted by the European Union to find a way out of it. It contains explicit debates with several economists and analysts on some of the most controversial questions about the causes of the crisis and the policies applied by the European Union.It presents the cases of Iceland, Greece and Ireland, the countries that first declined into crisis in Europe, e...

Why did some countries and regions of Europe reach high levels of economic advancement in the nineteenth century, while others were left behind? This new transnational survey of the continent's economic development highlights the role of regional differences in shaping each country's economic path and outcome. Presenting a clear and cogent explanation of the historical causes of advancement and backwardness, Ivan Berend integrates social, political, institutional and cultural factors as we...

**This instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world’s leading economists offers a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied.“A magisterial history.” —Paul KrugmanNamed a Best Book of the Year by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company**Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population....

"Tony Judt's elegant essay is a good place to begin discussion of these two large postwar questions: What is Europe? And where is it going?" — Michael Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins University*"I am enthusiastically European; no informed person could seriously wish to return to the embattled, mutually antagonistic circle of suspicious and introverted nations that was the European continent in the quite recent past. But it is one thing to think an outcom...

This is a fascinating new overview of European-American relations during the long twentieth century. Ranging from economics, culture and consumption to war, politics and diplomacy, Mary Nolan charts the rise of American influence in Eastern and Western Europe, its mid-twentieth century triumph and its gradual erosion since the 1970s. She reconstructs the circuits of exchange along which ideas, commodities, economic models, cultural products and people moved across the Atlantic, capturing t...

Originally published in 1916, it was one of the first attempts to account for the increasing importance of the world market in the twentieth century. The essay is a synthesis of Lenin’s modifications and developments of economic theories that Karl Marx formulated in ‘Das Kapital’. This remarkable Marxist text explains fully the inescapable flaws and destructive power of Capitalism.Lenin offers a predictive scenario of a world shaken by competitive instability, warfare and crisis, dominated...

With The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class, Kees van der Pijl put class formation at the heart of our understanding of world politics and the global economy. This landmark study dissects one of the most decisive phenomena of the twentieth century-the rise of an Atlantic ruling class of multinational banks and corporations. A new preface by the author evaluates the book's significance in the light of recent political and economic developments.

Old Gods, New Enigmas is the highly-anticipated book by the best-selling author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums. Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler before his profile as one of the world's leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian survey of Los Angeles. Since then, he's developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial h...

A no-holds-barred biography of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has become a pivotal figure in European politics since 2010, this is the first English- language study of the erstwhile anti-communist rebel turned populist autocrat. Through a masterly and cynical manipulation of ethnic nationalism, generating fear of migrants and deep-rooted corruption, Orbán has exploited successive electoral victories to build a closely knit and super-rich oligarchy. He holds unfettered power in ...

During the First World War, Lenin found himself isolated, but he was not afraid to fight against the stream. He dedicated all his strength to educating and training the Bolsheviks on the basis of the genuine ideas of Marxism. His masterpiece, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, is an immortal monument to his work in the vital field of theory.No book has ever explained the phenomena of modern capitalism better. Indeed, all of Lenin's predictions concerning the concentratio...

Vladimir Ilich Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, originally published in 1916, was one of the first attempts to account for the increasing importance of the world market in the twentieth century. The essay is a synthesis of Lenin's modifications and developments of economic theories that Karl Marx formulated in 'Das Kapital'. This remarkable Marxist text explains fully the inescapable flaws and destructive power of Capitalism.Lenin offers a pred...