Provides a comprehensive overview of the interventions available to optimise water management in agriculture, including rainwater harvesting and farm reservoirsConsiders the development and application of alternative irrigation techniques which carry a reduced environmental impact, such as solar powered irrigationAddresses the importance of diversification and collaboration in securing water resources for a rapidly growing population

The Chinese Communist Party and China’s Capitalist Revolution examines issues of political change and development in China. In the last 30 years China has experienced a profound political transformation and a degree of political progress but these are largely mired in the assumption that the free market is inherently incompatible with communism, and the perceived lack of political reforms in China. Indeed, there has not been much in the sense of democratization, multi-party competition, fr...

The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relations...

A "lively" memoir by the Hollywood legend about the making of Spartacus, with a foreword by George Clooney ( Los Angeles Times).One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladia...

Michael Hopkinson's Green Against Green is the definitive study of the Irish civil war, putting in perspective a bitter and passionate conflict, the legacy of which still divides Irish society today. Widely praised and frequently cited as the most authoritative work on the subject, it continues to hold its place as one of the finest works on modern Irish history. Unlike the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, the Irish Civil War has been largely overlooked by historians, put off by ...

A provocative and eye-opening study of the essential role the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency played in the advancement of communication studies during the Cold War era, now with a new introduction by Robert W. McChesney and a new preface by the authorSince the mid-twentieth century, the great advances in our knowledge about the most effective methods of mass communication and persuasion have been visible in a wide range of professional fields, inclu...

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a Russian revolutionary and theorist, and has often been called the father of anarchist theory. Bakunin studied philosophy, finding himself drawn to works by Fichte and Hegel, eventually converting himself entirely to Hegelianism. Bakunin gained criminal status after being deported from France where he met George Sand, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx and later being arrested for his involvement in the Czech rebellion of 1848. His unfinished 1871 work, "...

Dispatches from a workers' revolt by the Memoirs of a Revolutionary author, "one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes" (Susan Sontag, winner of the National Book Award).Following in the wake of the carnage reaped across Europe by World War I, German workers undertook a struggle that would prove decisive in determining the course of the entire twentieth century. In 1923, the fledgling Comintern (The Communist Inte...

Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook by Susan Rubin Suleiman (71,000 words and 2 photographs)Can you forget the place you once called home? What does it take to make you recapture it? In this moving memoir, Susan Rubin Suleiman describes her returns to the city of her birth — where she speaks the language like a native but with an accent. Suleiman left Budapest in 1949 as a young child with her parents, fleeing communism; thirty-five years later, she returne...

This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all o...

Saving Congress from Itself proposes a single reform: eliminate all federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments. This action would reduce federal spending by over $600 billion a year and have a profound effect on how we govern ourselves. The proliferation of federal grants-in-aid programs is of recent vintage: only about 100 such grants existed before Lyndon Johnson took office, and now they number more than 1,100. Eliminating grants to the states will result in enormous ...

Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the life of Stalin in next to no time with this concise guide.50Minutes.com provides a clear and engaging analysis of the life of Joseph Stalin. Following the death of Lenin, who had overthrown the tsarist regime with the Russian Revolution, Stalin carefully eliminated his opponents and rose to power, immediately establishing a full dictatorship. Despite his many deplorable crimes, his contributions to Russian indu...