The World Crisis

The aftermath of World War I is explored in the fourth volume of Winston Churchill’s “remarkable” eyewitness account of history (Jon Meacham, bestselling author of Franklin and Winston). Once the war was over, the story didn’t end—not for Winston Churchill, and not for the West. The fourth volume of Churchill’s series, The World Crisis: The Aftermath documents the fallout of WWI—including the Irish Treaty and the peace conferences between Greece and Turkey. The period immediately after World War I was extremely chaotic—and it takes a genius of narrative description and organization to accurately and accessibly describe it for us. Churchill, who went on to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, depicts the international disorganization and anarchy in the period immediately after the war—with the unique perspective of both a historian and a political insider. “Whether as a statesman or an author, Churchill was a giant; and The World Crisis towers over most other books about the Great War.” —David Fromkin, author of A Peace to End All Peace

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.

World War 1 and its aftermath.

Science and technology have made the modern world possible, but also created all the global problems that threaten our future: the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass extinction of species, environmental degradation, overpopulation, lethal modern war, and the menace of nuclear weapons. Nicholas Maxwell, world-renowned philosopher of science and author of 14 books, argues that all these problems have come about because humans have solved only the first of two great problems of learning — how to acquire scientific knowledge and technological know-how — but not the second — how to create a civilized, wise world.The key disaster of our times is that we have science without wisdom. At present, universities all over the world are devoted to the pursuit of specialized knowledge and technology, or 'knowledge-inquiry'. Maxwell contends that they need to be radically transformed so that their basic function becomes to help humanity tackle global problems, with a more rigorous and socially beneficial perspective he calls 'wisdom-inquiry'. The World Crisis — And What to Do About It spells out in detail the changes that need to be made to academic inquiry, why they need to be made, and how they would enable universities to help humanity actively and effectively tackle and solve current global problems.Related Link(s)

Originally published: London: Cassell, 1956.

Most mainstream economists view capitalism’s periodic breakdowns are nothing more than temporary aberrations from another wise unbroken path toward prosperity. For Marxists, this fundamental flaw has long been acknowledged as a central feature of the free market system. This groundbreaking volume brings together Marxist scholars from around the world to offer an empirically grounded defense of Marx’s law of profitability and its central role in explaining these capitalist crises. Gugliemo Carchedi has worked at the United Nations in New York and has taught at the University of Amsterdam. Michael Roberts has worked as an economist for over thirty years in the city of London financial center.

Renowned political scientist Ian Bremmer draws lessons from global challenges of the past 100 years—including the pandemic—to show how we can respond to three great crises unfolding over the next decade. In this revelatory, unnerving, and ultimately hopeful book, Bremmer details how domestic and international conflicts leave us unprepared for a trio of looming crises—global health emergencies, transformative climate change, and the AI revolution. Today, Americans cannot reach consensus on any significant political issue, and US and Chinese leaders behave as if they’re locked in a new Cold War. We are squandering opportunities to meet the challenges that will soon confront us all. In coming years, humanity will face viruses deadlier and more infectious than Covid. Intensifying climate change will put tens of millions of refugees in flight and require us to reimagine how we live our daily lives. Most dangerous of all, new technologies will reshape the geopolitical order, disrupting our livelihoods and destabilizing our societies faster than we can grasp and address their implications. The good news? Some farsighted political leaders, business decision-makers, and individual citizens are already collaborating to tackle all these crises. The question that should keep us awake is whether they will work well and quickly enough to limit the fallout—and, most importantly, whether we can use these crises to innovate our way toward a better world. Drawing on strategies both time-honored and cutting-edge, from the Marshall Plan to the Green New Deal, The Power of Crisis provides a roadmap for surviving—even thriving in—the 21st century. Bremmer shows governments, corporations, and every concerned citizen how we can use these coming crises to create the worldwide prosperity and opportunity that 20th-century globalism promised but failed to deliver.