O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks

Mostrando postagens com marcador book. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador book. Mostrar todas as postagens

segunda-feira, 25 de março de 2024

Book: Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity - Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson (2024)

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Author: Daron Acemoglu Simon Johnson 

Published by PublicAffairs, Hachette Book Group

Year: 2024

 

A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear: progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either ser
ve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals, while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates the path of technology was once—and may again—be brought under control. Cutting-edge technological advances can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.

With their bold reinterpretation of economics and history, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson fundamentally change how we see the world, providing the vision needed to redirect innovation so it again benefits most people.


Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization - Harold James (2024)

 

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization

Author: Harold James

Published by Yale University Press

Year: 2024

 

The eminent economic historian Harold James presents a new perspective on financial crises, dividing them into “good” crises, which ultimately expand markets and globalization, and “bad” crises, which result in a smaller, less prosperous world. Examining seven turning points in financial history—from the depression of the 1840s through the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Covid-19 crisis—James shows how crashes prompted by a lack of supply, like the oil shortages of the 1970s, lead to greater globalization as markets expand and producers innovate to increase supply. By contrast, crises triggered by a lack of demand—such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008—result in less globalization as markets contract, austerity measures are imposed, and skepticism of government grows.

By considering not only the times but also the observers who shaped our understanding of each crisis—from Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Larry Summers—James shows how the uneven course of globalization has led to new economic thinking, and how understanding this history can help us better prepare for the future.


quarta-feira, 6 de dezembro de 2023

Stanley E. Hilton: Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917–1947 (Texas University Press, 1991)

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917–1947 

Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 1991

Between 1918 and 1961, Brazil and the USSR maintained formal diplomatic ties for only thirty-one months, at the end of World War II. Yet, despite the official distance, the USSR is the only external actor whose behavior, real or imagined, influenced the structure of the Brazilian state in the twentieth century. In Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917–1947, Stanley Hilton provides the first analysis in any language of Brazilian policy toward the Soviet Union during this period.

Drawing on American, British, and German diplomatic archives and unprecedented access to official and private Brazilian records, Hilton elucidates the connection between the Brazilian elite’s perception of a communist threat and the creation of the authoritarian Estado Novo (1937–1945), the forerunner of the post-1964 national security state. He shows how the 1935 communist revolt, prepared by Comintern agents, was a pivotal event in Brazilian history, making prophets of conservative alarmists and generating irresistible pressure for an authoritarian government to contain the Soviet threat. He details the Brazilian government’s secret cooperation with the Gestapo during the 1930s and its concomitant efforts to forge an anti-Soviet front in the Southern Cone. And he uncovers an unexplored aspect of Brazil’s national security policy, namely, the attempt to build counterintelligence capabilities not only within Brazil but also in neighboring countries.

While the history of the Brazilian communist movement has been extensively studied, this is the first work to explore how images of the Soviet Union and its policies influenced the Brazilian foreign policy elite. It will be important reading for all students of twentieth-century political history.


  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Texas Press; Illustrated edition (June 1, 1991)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 303 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1477303553
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1477303559
Sample in Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Brazil-Soviet-Challenge-1917-1947-Stanley/dp/1477303553/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AR6Z5ULWD330&keywords=Stanley+Hilton%2C+Brazil+and+Soviet+Challenge&qid=1701852215&s=books&sprefix=stanley+hilton%2C+brazil+and+soviet+challenge%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C212&sr=1-1&asin=B00EENJMUI&revisionId=d3e70431&format=1&depth=2

sábado, 9 de setembro de 2023

A memória e o legado do Gulag: The Unquiet Ghost By Adam Hochschild - Book

A memória e o legado do Gulag:
The Unquiet Ghost
By Adam Hochschild

From the celebrated author of King Leopold’s Ghost: This New York Times Notable Book examines the legacy of Joseph Stalin through interviews with gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, human rights activists, and more. 



An in-depth exploration of the legacy of Joseph Stalin on the former Soviet Union, by the author of King Leopold’s Ghost.

Although some twenty million people died during Stalin’s reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin.


From Publishers Weekly

Hochschild spent the first half of 1991 in the former Soviet Union interviewing gulag survivors, former camp guards and members of the secret police, writers, artists, human rights activists, neo-Stalinists and ordinary citizens about their opinions of Stalin. This haunting and powerful report reveals that the dictator's legacy persists in widespread denial, amnesia, numbness and pervasive fear among people whose lives were scarred by mass arrests, killings and Stalin's spy network. Hochschild ( The Mirror at Midnight ) traveled to Kolyma, site of the deadliest camps; he interviewed Valentin Berezhkov, who was Stalin's English-language interpreter and privy to the regime's inner circle; he visited Moscow's KGB archives and was given files of American victims of the gulag. Comparing Stalin's purges to the witch craze of early medieval Europe, Hochschild attributes this "self-inflicted genocide" partly to Russians' age-old habits of scapegoating and passive obedience. Photos not seen by PW. First serial to New York Times Magazine .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hochschild's search for survivors of Stalin's Terror results in a moving historical horror story. He spent half of 1991 in the disintegrating USSR, listening to former prisoners, guards, executioners, and families describe mass murder, imprisonments, interrupted lives, and hopes destroyed. Russian-speaking journalist Hochschild, a founder of Mother Jones , was among the first Americans to enter KGB archives, where he received records of executed Americans. He visited gulag sites and chapters of Memorial, an organization documenting the Terror. He traveled to Kolyma, the frozen final destination for many and a name that resonates among Russians with the power of Auschwitz. Hochschild's questions are disturbing and timeless: Why did the Revolution devour itself? What makes someone an executioner? Hochschild's people, as well as his honesty and passion, make this unforgettable book essential for everyone concerned about history and human rights. Strongly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/93.
- Donna L. Cole, Leeds P.L., Ala.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Although 20 million people died during Stalin's two-decade reign of terror, Russians have only recently, with the advent of glasnost, begun to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, journalist and memoirist Hochschild (Half the Way Home, 1986; The Mirror at Midnight, 1990) spent six months in Russia talking to prison camp survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others: the result is a riveting and eloquent evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin. Hochschild compares Russia to an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse who has spent years denying ``the elephant in the living room.'' Many of Hochschild's subjects open up to him with the intensity of patients confessing long-repressed secrets to a therapist. In the Siberian town of Kolpashevo, Galina Nikiforova, the daughter of a school principal who was taken away one night in 1937 and executed, reveals her certainty that her father was among those buried in a secret mass grave ripped open by the flooding river Ob in 1979 and immediately destroyed by the KGB. Galina can forgive her country anything but its refusal to grant its dead a decent burial. Meanwhile, Galina's neighbor and childhood friend, Inna Sukhanova, daughter of the chief of Kolpashevo's secret police, struggles with her love for her father--a former doctor who spoke four languages--and the anguish she bears for his having ordered the execution of thousands, including Galina's father, for ``nothing.'' Vladimir Glebov, a philosophy teacher in his 60s and son of Party boss Lev Kamenev, who was shot in 1936, spent his childhood wandering through Siberian orphanages and was sentenced, in 1949, to ten years in the gulag for preferring Emily Dickinson to Mayakovsky--experiences that, miraculously, have not dulled his sense of humor or his passion for anti-Stalin jokes. As sensitive, subtle, and moving as Chekhov: journalism raised to the level of art. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The decaying gulag isn't everyone's idea of a four-star itinerary, but Hochschild braved the discomfort to take a tour in 1991. Fluent in Russian, he made his way to dreadful places like Kolyma, the Auschwitz of the labor-camp system, but his real interest, and the value of this narrative, was in talking to people, both jailers and victims, who lived through the horrors. Nobody was exempt from an instant dispatch into hell, as his interview with Stalin's translator shows, but for some, those days weren't all bad. In the steppe town of Karaganda, Hochschild was entertained by a former camp commandant, who proudly showed pictures of himself speaking to an audience of convicts. He spoke with the daughter of a secret-police officer responsible for mass executions, a woman anguished by that knowledge but who, like millions at the time, figured the dead really were enemies of the people. The why of such supinity, and of complicity, is what pulls this acute observer across the vast archipelago. Hochschild attempts to convey some answers, but ultimately his contribution is to seek out witnesses of Stalinism and preserve their ruthlessly realistic testimony. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

ADAM HOCHSCHILD is the author of ten books. King Leopold’s Ghost was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was To End All Wars. His Bury the Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

domingo, 23 de outubro de 2022

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion 


Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
 
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally 
groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

 

Descrição do produto

Sobre o Autor

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He lives in New York City.

Trecho. © Reimpressão autorizada. Todos os direitos reservados

Introduction
 
“Can we all get along?” That appeal was made famous on May 1, 1992, by Rodney King, a black man who had been beaten nearly to death by four Los Angeles police officers a year earlier. The entire nation had seen a videotape of the beating, so when a jury failed to convict the officers, their acquittal triggered widespread outrage and six days of rioting in Los Angeles. Fifty-three people were killed and more than seven thousand buildings were torched. Much of the mayhem was carried live; news cameras tracked the action from helicopters circling overhead. After a particularly horrific act of violence against a white truck driver, King was moved to make his appeal for peace.
 
King’s appeal is now so overused that it has become cultural kitsch, a catchphrase1 more often said for laughs than as a serious plea for mutual understanding. I therefore hesitated to use King’s words as the opening line of this book, but I decided to go ahead, for two reasons. The first is because most Americans nowadays are asking King’s question not about race relations but about political relations and the collapse of cooperation across party lines. Many Americans feel as though the nightly news from Washington is being sent to us from helicopters circling over the city, delivering dispatches from the war zone.
 
The second reason I decided to open this book with an overused phrase is because King followed it up with something lovely, something rarely quoted. As he stumbled through his television interview, fighting back tears and often repeating himself, he found these words: “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”
 
This book is about why it’s so hard for us to get along. We are indeed all stuck here for a while, so let’s at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.
 
###
 
People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything. Books have been published in recent years on the transformative role in human history played by cooking, mothering, war . . . even salt. This is one of those books. I study moral psychology, and I’m going to make the case that morality is the extraordinary human capacity that made civilization possible. I don’t mean to imply that cooking, mothering, war, and salt were not also necessary, but in this book I’m going to take you on a tour of human nature and history from the perspective of moral psychology.
 
By the end of the tour, I hope to have given you a new way to think about two of the most important, vexing, and divisive topics in human life: politics and religion. Etiquette books tell us not to discuss these topics in polite company, but I say go ahead. Politics and religion are both expressions of our underlying moral psychology, and an understanding of that psychology can help to bring people together. My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity. We are downright lucky that we evolved this complex moral psychology that allowed our species to burst out of the forests and savannas and into the delights, comforts, and extraordinary peacefulness of modern societies in just a few thousand years. My hope is that this book will make conversations about morality, politics, and religion more common, more civil, and more fun, even in mixed company. My hope is that it will help us to get along.
 
BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS
 
I could have titled this book 
The Moral Mind to convey the sense that the human mind is designed to “do” morality, just as it’s designed to do language, sexuality, music, and many other things described in popular books reporting the latest scientific findings. But I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.
 
The word 
righteous comes from the old Norse word rettviss and the old English word rihtwis, both of which mean “just, upright, virtuous.” This meaning has been carried into the modern English words righteous and righteousness, although nowadays those words have strong religious connotations because they are usually used to translate the Hebrew word tzedek. Tzedek is a common word in the Hebrew Bible, often used to describe people who act in accordance with God’s wishes, but it is also an attribute of God and of God’s judgment of people (which is often harsh but always thought to be just).
 
The linkage of righteousness and judgmentalism is captured in some modern definitions of 
righteous, such as “arising from an outraged sense of justice, morality, or fair play.” The link also appears in the term self- righteous, which means “convinced of one’s own righteousness, especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others; narrowly moralistic and intolerant.” I want to show you that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self- righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error that crept into minds that would otherwise be objective and rational.
 
Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife. Some degree of conflict among groups may even be necessary for the health and development of any society. When I was a teenager I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance, systems of accountability keep us all from getting away with too much, and fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means. Not a very romantic wish, but one that we might actually achieve.
 
WHAT LIES AHEAD
 
This book has three parts, which you can think of as three separate books—except that each one depends on the one before it. Each part presents one major principle of moral psychology.
 
Part I is about the first principle: 
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning. If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.
 
The central metaphor of these four chapters is that 
the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior. I developed this metaphor in my last book, The Happiness Hypothesis, where I described how the rider and elephant work together, sometimes poorly, as we stumble through life in search of meaning and connection. In this book I’ll use the metaphor to solve puzzles such as why it seems like everyone (else) is a hypocrite and why political partisans are so willing to believe outrageous lies and conspiracy theories. I’ll also use the metaphor to show you how you can better persuade people who seem unresponsive to reason.
 
Part II is about the second principle of moral psychology, which is that 
there’s more to morality than harm and fairness. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. Secular Western moralities are like cuisines that try to activate just one or two of these receptors—either concerns about harm and suffering, or concerns about fairness and injustice. But people have so many other powerful moral intuitions, such as those related to liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. I’ll explain where these six taste receptors come from, how they form the basis of the world’s many moral cuisines, and why politicians on the right have a built- in advantage when it comes to cooking meals that voters like.
 
Part III is about the third principle: 
Morality binds and blinds. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that human beings are 90 percent chimp and percent bee. Human nature was produced by natural selection working at two levels simultaneously. Individuals compete with individuals within every group, and we are the descendants of primates who excelled at that competition. This gives us the ugly side of our nature, the one that is usually featured in books about our evolutionary origins. We are indeed selfish hypocrites so skilled at putting on a show of virtue that we fool even ourselves.
 
But human nature was also shaped as groups competed with other groups. As Darwin said long ago, the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish individualists. Darwin’s ideas about group selection fell out of favor in the 1960s, but recent discoveries are putting his ideas back into play, and the implications are profound. We’re not always selfish hypocrites. We also have the ability, under special circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger body, or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group. These experiences are often among the most cherished of our lives, although our hivishness can blind us to other moral concerns. Our bee-like nature facilitates altruism, heroism, war, and genocide.
 
Once you see our righteous minds as primate minds with a hivish overlay, you get a whole new perspective on morality, politics, and religion. I’ll show that our “higher nature” allows us to be profoundly altruistic, but that altruism is mostly aimed at members of our own groups. I’ll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality. It is not a virus or a parasite, as some scientists (the “New Atheists”) have argued in recent years. And I’ll use this perspective to explain why some people are conservative, others are liberal (or progressive), and still others become libertarians. People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
 
(A note on terminology: In the United States, the word 
liberal refers to progressive or left- wing politics, and I will use the word in this sense. But in Europe and elsewhere, the word liberal is truer to its original meaning—valuing liberty above all else, including in economic activities. When Europeans use the word liberal, they often mean something more like the American term libertarian, which cannot be placed easily on the left- right spectrum. Readers from outside the United States may want to swap in the words progressive or left- wing whenever I say liberal.) In the coming chapters I’ll draw on the latest research in neuroscience, genetics, social psychology, and evolutionary modeling, but the take- home message of the book is ancient. It is the realization that we are all self- righteous hypocrites:
 
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? . . . You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matthew 7:3–5)
 
Enlightenment (or wisdom, if you prefer) requires us all to take the logs out of our own eyes and then escape from our ceaseless, petty, and divisive moralism. As the eighth- century Chinese Zen master Sen-ts’an wrote:
 
The Perfect Way is only difficult
for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike;
all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference,
and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you,
never be for or against.
The struggle between “for” and “against”
is the mind’s worst disease.
 
I’m not saying we should live our lives like Sen-ts’an. In fact, I believe that a world without moralism, gossip, and judgment would quickly decay into chaos. But if we want to 
understand ourselves, our divisions, our limits, and our potentials, we need to step back, drop the moralism, apply some moral psychology, and analyze the game we’re all playing. .
 
Let us now examine the psychology of this struggle between “for” and “against.” It is a struggle that plays out in each of our righteous minds, and among all of our righteous groups.

Detalhes do produto

  • Editora ‏ : ‎ Pantheon Books; Illustrated edição (13 março 2012)
  • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
  • Capa dura ‏ : ‎ 419 páginas
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307377903
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307377906
  • Dimensões ‏ : ‎ 16.13 x 3.89 x 24.21 cm


segunda-feira, 1 de agosto de 2022

Existe essa coisa de “capitalismo global”? Livro de Jeffry Frieden sobre Global Capitalism

 Acho que ainda é cedo demais para essa realida diáfana, e talvez nunca venha a existir…

Jeffry A. Frieden: Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, and Its Stumbles in the Twenty-first  


Vou procurar esse livro, mas sempre tenho uma reação “braudeliana” quando alguém fala de “capitalismo global”, algo que não existe. 

O que existe são gradações diferenciadas da economia de mercado, jamais universal, pois que fragmentada pela infinita variações de capitalismos específicos, geralmente nacionais, mas alguns transnacionais. 

O de maior sucesso relativo no momento presente é esse “com características chinesas”, que alguns pretendem que seja o “socialismo do século XXI”, mas que nada mais é do que uma variante da economia de mercado, no caso dirigida por um partido leninista, outra variante da autocracia política.

terça-feira, 5 de julho de 2022

Henry Kissinger: Leadership; his new, perhaps the last, book (unless there are secret papers to be revealed post mortem)

Well, after those six great strategists he dissects, how could we transpose to a single concept the kind of strategy of leadership Kissinger himself developed during his years in power? 
Perhaps the old Roman adage, divide et impera, could represent his work at the height of Soviet power, when he inserted China in his great game to change the balance of powers among the greats.
He was a kind of Metternichean personality, interested solely in how to maintain control of everything in times of turbulence.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Leadership

Publisher Description

Henry Kissinger, consummate diplomat and statesman, examines the strategies of six great twentieth-century figures and brings to life a unifying theory of leadership and diplomacy

“Leaders,” writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, “think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.”
 
In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft, which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls “the strategy of humility.” Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by “the strategy of will.” During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by “the strategy of equilibrium.” After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a “strategy of transcendence.” Against the odds, Lee Kuan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by “the strategy of excellence.” And, though Britain was known as “the sick man of Europe” when Margaret Thatcher came to power, she renewed her country’s morale and international position by “the strategy of conviction.”

To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and—because he knew each of the subjects and participated in many of the events he describes—personal knowledge. Leadership is enriched by insights and judgements that only Kissinger could make and concludes with his reflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today. 


domingo, 26 de junho de 2022

Um outro livro de Carroll Quigley, que ainda não li: Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

 

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time - Paperback – March 1, 2014


UNCENSORED! Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley is the ultimate insider admission of a secret global elite that has impacted nearly every modern historical event. Learn how the Anglo-American banking elite were able to secretly establish and maintain their global power. This massive book provides a detailed world history beginning with the industrial revolution and imperialism through two world wars, a global depression and the rise of communism. Tragedy & Hope is the definitive work on the world's power structure and an essential source material for understanding the history, goals and actions of the New World Order.

ALL ORIGINAL CONTENT, UNABRIDGED. This Millennium Edition is a larger page format, allowing for the same content in less pages. The larger page format also allows for a larger font than previous editions, for easier reading.

ORIGINAL BOOK DESCRIPTION: TRAGEDY AND HOPE shows the years 1895-1950 as a period of transition from the world dominated by Europe in the nineteenth century to the world of three blocs in the twentieth century. With clarity, perspective, and cumulative impact, Professor Quigley examines the nature of that transition through two world wars and a worldwide economic depression. As an interpretative historian, he tries to show each event in the full complexity of its historical context. The result is a unique work, notable in several ways. It gives a picture of the world in terms of the influence of different cultures and outlooks upon each other; it shows, more completely than in any similar work, the influence of science and technology on human life; and it explains, with unprecedented clarity, how the intricate financial and commercial patterns of the West prior to 1914 influenced the development of today's world.


Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2015
This tome reveals the inner workings and machinations of leaders in each country and how they worked behind the scenes to control the operations of the country politically and economically. Great read. The book was so revealing that after it was published and started to become popular the publisher stopped publishing it and suppressed the book. You will see how Quigley by accident uncovered what the insiders did not want to be revealed.
15 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2021
Most readers quote from this book to illuminate the ideas that the Illuminati and more importantly baking institutions really run both the U.S. government and the world. However, the reader must take the time to read the whole book. Dr. Carroll Quigley wrote a book for the ages and especially with its focus on the first half of the 20th century. The book was written in 1966 and Dr. Carroll Quigley died in 1977, but his theories on the economic policies on the West in such countries as the United States, Great Britain, France, and Nazi Germany were fascinating to me. I have to admit that in some cases, the man was so brilliant that I did not understand all the subject material in his book. I can honestly write that he was a great historian who loved to write history books, and teach, which came out in his book. Rest In Peace (R.I.P.) to Dr. Carroll Quigley!