Crisis Without End

This major re-assessment by a leading political economist shows that the 2008 financial crash was no ordinary crisis, but the harbinger of a much deeper convulsion comparable to the major past crises of capitalism. While it is still uncertain whether it will become a transformative crisis for the international order, what we do know already is that: - While the crash particularly affected western states, and those unevenly, no part of the international economy is immune from its effects. - While the immediate crisis was contained, its magnitude is shown by how long it has taken western economies to recover, and by the need for exceptional measures, such as near-zero interest rates over a prolonged period. - There is not a single crisis, but a series of crises, highlighting in particular a deeper set of dilemmas about western leadership, democracy and prosperity which unless addressed, will preclude sustained recovery and pave the way to new and deeper crises. Andrew Gamble maps out likely scenarios in a turbulent world in which the weakening of the old western international order as a result of the decline in the capacities and will of the United States combine with internal deadlocks in both the US and the Eurozone over the management of austerity and debt and in many of the rising powers, especially China, over the management of growth and rising expectations. The path to a new era of prosperity depends on a reformed international order, solutions to budget as well as fiscal deficits, and new forms of sustainable growth. But these demand a political will so far notable by its absence at all levels without which there is little prospect of escape from a future of crisis without end.

Expert essays provide the first comprehensive analysis of the long-term health and environmental consequences of the Fukushima nuclear accident. On the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts were brought together at the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine by Helen Caldicott, the world’s leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement. This was the first comprehensive attempt to address the health and environmental damage done by one of the worst nuclear accidents of our times. A compilation of these important presentations, Crisis Without End represents an unprecedented look into the profound aftereffects of Fukushima. In accessible terms, leading experts from Japan, the United States, Russia, and other nations weigh in on the current state of knowledge of radiation-related health risks in Japan, impacts on the world’s oceans, the question of low-dosage radiation risks, crucial comparisons with Chernobyl, health and environmental impacts on the United States (including on food and newborns), and the unavoidable implications for the US nuclear energy industry. Crisis Without End is both essential reading and a major corrective to the public record on Fukushima.

"An extraordinarily informative scholarly history of the debate over working hours from 1920 to 1940." --New York Times Book Review For more than a century preceding the Great Depression, work hours were steadily reduced. Intellectuals, labor leaders, politicians, and workers saw this reduction in work as authentic progress and the resulting increase in leisure time as a cultural advance. Benjamin Hunnicutt examines the period from 1920 to 1940 during which the shorter hour movement ended and the drive for economic expansion through increased work took over. He traces the political, intellectual, and social dialogues that changed the American concept of progress from dreams of more leisure in which to pursue the higher things in life to an obsession with the importance of work and wage-earning. During the 1920s with the development of advertising, the "gospel of consumption" began to replace the goal of leisure time with a list of things to buy. Business, which increasingly viewed shorter hours as a threat to economic growth, persuaded the worker that more work brought more tangible rewards. The Great Depression shook the newly proclaimed gospel as well as everyone's faith in progress. Although work-sharing became a temporary solution to the shortage of jobs and massive unemployment, when faced with legislation that would limit the work week to thirty hours, Roosevelt and his New Deal advisors adopted the gospel of consumption's tests for progress and created more work by government action. The New Deal campaigned for the right to work a full time job--and won. "Work Without End presents a compelling history of the rise and fall of the 40-hour work week, explains bow Americans became trapped in a prison of work that allows little room for family, bobbies or civic participation and suggests bow they can free themselves from relentless overwork. [This book] is a sober reconsideration of a topic that is critical to America's future. It suggests that progress doesn't mean much if there is not time for love as well as work, and liberation is an empty achievement if the work it frees one to do is truly without end." --The Washington Post "Hunnicutt, with this excellent book, becomes the first United States historian to examine fully why this momentous change occurred." --The Journal of American History "Hunnicutt's achievement is to ask the questions, and to provide the first extended answer which takes in the full array of economic, social, and political forces behind the ‘end of shorter hours' in the crucial first half of the twentieth century." --Journal of Economic History "This thoroughly documented history [is] a valuable book well worth reading." --Libertarian Labor Review "This is an important book in the emerging debate about alternatives to full employment. Hunnicutt is a skilled historian who is on to an important issue, writes well, and can bring many different kinds of historical sources to bear on the problem." --Fred Block, University of Pennsylvania "Work Without End is a disturbing but impressive indictment of both big business and the New Deal program of Franklin D. Roosevelt.... Hunnicutt presents an unusual but persuasive description of a successful conspiracy to deprive American workers of their vision of a shorter-hours work week and the individual and societal liberation which would flow from it." --Labor Studies Journal

In this critical rethinking of the categories of politics within a new sociopolitical and historical context, the distinguished political philosopher Giorgio Agamben builds on his previous work to address the status and nature of politics itself. Bringing politics face-to-face with its own failures of consciousness and consequence, Agamben frames his analysis in terms of clear contemporary relevance. He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gesture--a politics of means without end.

#1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The “extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece” (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett’s already phenomenal career—and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended. “Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect—a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother. A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

It's time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. Instead we need to brace for impact, because global crisis is no longer avoidable. The 'Great Disruption' started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological change like the melting polar icecap. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet's ecosystems and resources. The Great Disruption offers a stark and unflinching look at the challenge humanity faces - yet also a deeply optimistic message. The coming decades will see loss, suffering and conflict as our planetary overdraft is paid. However, they will also bring out the best humanity can offer: compassion, innovation, resilience and adaptability. Gilding tells us how to fight, and win, what he calls 'the One Degree War' to prevent catastrophic warming of the earth, and how to start today. The crisis we are in represents a rare chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and it's already happening. It's also an unmatched business opportunity: old industries will collapse while new companies literally reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure 'growth' in a new way. It will mean not quantity of stuff, but quality, and happiness, of life. And, yes, there is life after shopping. The Great Disruption is an invigorating and well-informed polemic by an advocate for sustainability and climate change who has dedicated his life to campaigning for a balanced use of Earth's limited resources. It is essential reading.

With an experienced journalist's eye, La Guardia offers a close look at the Israelis as they come to terms with the "post-Zionist" demolition of national myths and the Palestinians as they try to build their own state. 16 illustrations.