Here are 100 books that Leftism Reinvented fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am researching how elites and societies in Russia and East Central Europe have adapted to the social, political, and economic transformation processes following the end of Communism. What fascinates me about this topic is understanding why many of these countries continued to fall back to the same patterns of re-autocratization as they did during the Communist times. My answer is that it is because many institutions and elites in these regions have continued certain policies and behaviors from Communist times, which are still affecting their politics and economics. I also examine the impact of the transformational shock on Russia's international revisionism and democratic backsliding across the region.
For anyone interested in populism, this book is a must. It is one of the classic books for understanding the nature of populism, its causes, its worldwide dynamic, and its effects on politics in various contexts.
One of the most cited books on the topic, it also introduces the classic definition of populism as an ideology grounded in a Manichean worldview that divides society into two antagonistic camps: the "pure people" and the "corrupt elites."
Populism is a central concept in the current media debates about politics and elections. However, like most political buzzwords, the term often floats from one meaning to another, and both social scientists and journalists use it to denote diverse phenomena. What is populism really? Who are the populist leaders? And what is the relationship between populism and democracy? This book answers these questions in a simple and persuasive way, offering a swift guide to populism in theory and practice.
Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovera Kaltwasser present populism as an ideology that divides society into two antagonistic camps, the "pure people"…
I am researching how elites and societies in Russia and East Central Europe have adapted to the social, political, and economic transformation processes following the end of Communism. What fascinates me about this topic is understanding why many of these countries continued to fall back to the same patterns of re-autocratization as they did during the Communist times. My answer is that it is because many institutions and elites in these regions have continued certain policies and behaviors from Communist times, which are still affecting their politics and economics. I also examine the impact of the transformational shock on Russia's international revisionism and democratic backsliding across the region.
This book is fascinating because it shows how underlying informal political structures remained the same even after empires and political regimes collapsed.
Ledeneva explores the nature of the informal patronal networks connecting Russian elites and how that explains the persistent non-democratic dynamic over time and under various contexts. This book sheds light on the informal nature of Russian politics.
During the Soviet era, blat-the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures-was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s-from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. She discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor…
I am researching how elites and societies in Russia and East Central Europe have adapted to the social, political, and economic transformation processes following the end of Communism. What fascinates me about this topic is understanding why many of these countries continued to fall back to the same patterns of re-autocratization as they did during the Communist times. My answer is that it is because many institutions and elites in these regions have continued certain policies and behaviors from Communist times, which are still affecting their politics and economics. I also examine the impact of the transformational shock on Russia's international revisionism and democratic backsliding across the region.
This is one of my favorite books on the topic: it explains how and why electorates in postcommunist Europe became disillusioned with the promises of modernization and liberalization following the collapse of the Communist system. It shows how naïve and cheerful they were at first and how skeptical and disillusioned they’ve subsequently become.
The reforms were painful, and the results of those reforms were not always as expected. This disillusionment led to the rise of populism across the region. The authors also trace similar dynamics in Russia and the United States, which led to the rise of Putin and Trump, respectively.
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance?
In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.
In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that…
I am researching how elites and societies in Russia and East Central Europe have adapted to the social, political, and economic transformation processes following the end of Communism. What fascinates me about this topic is understanding why many of these countries continued to fall back to the same patterns of re-autocratization as they did during the Communist times. My answer is that it is because many institutions and elites in these regions have continued certain policies and behaviors from Communist times, which are still affecting their politics and economics. I also examine the impact of the transformational shock on Russia's international revisionism and democratic backsliding across the region.
Like the above, the book analyses the social consequences of the transition across the post-communist region. It tracks how painful and shocking some of its aspects were to the corresponding countries. It helps us understand why the reform overachievers, the countries that did best in reforming their economies (like Hungary and Poland), subsequently suffered some of the most pronounced political backlashes against these reforms.
The book is well-written and fun to read despite the serious topic.
Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein blend empirical data with lived experiences to produce a robust picture of who won and who lost in post-communist transition, contextualizing the rise of populism in Eastern Europe.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, more than 400 million people suddenly found themselves in a new reality, a dramatic transition from state socialist and centrally planned workers' states to liberal democracy (in most cases) and free markets. Thirty years later, postsocialist citizens remain sharply divided on the legacies of transition. Was it a success that produced great progress after a short recession,…
The search for meaning in history is all part of the search for meaning in life. Whether archaeologists or historians, economists or physicists, they are not just looking for artefacts when digging in the dirt or scanning the skies, they are looking for evidence to piece together a bigger picture—meaning in the minutiae. I’m sceptical, but the philosophy of history remains a fascinating subject, which is why I’ve explored ideas about civilization, progress, and progressive history in a number of books and articles. My primary concern about teleological accounts of history is that they tend to deny people's agency, especially non-Western peoples.
I love the way this book brings together two seemingly unrelated topics, art, and socio-political organization, to offer a new perspective on the development of human societies—linear, of course. The policies and practices of development agencies do not just draw on the latest fads of economics, rather, our thinking about the shape and trajectory of ideal societies has long been influenced by the way we quite literally see and perceive the world.
In his groundbreaking study, Art, Politics and Development, Philipp Lepenies contributes to the ongoing controversy about why the track record of development aid is so dismal. He asserts that development aid policies are grounded in a specific way of literally looking at the world. This "worldview" is the result of a mental conditioning that began with the invention of linear perspective in Renaissance art. It not only triggered the emergence of modern science and brought forth our Western notion of progress, but ultimately, development as well.Art, Politics, and Development examines this process by pulling from a range of disciplines, including…
I've been making messes with paint, string, and words, as well as in love, mothering, and in virtually every other way imaginable my whole life. Eventually, an expertise began to grow, and the confusion in my life began to make sense through my creations, while at the same time, the seemingly irrelevant words and textures I was making started to tell me something about my life. Eventually, my lived experience and training in the Expressive Arts Therapies have led me to the roles of teacher, educator, and contemplative artist. If we pay attention to what we express and how we express things, we can find our way through any mess we find ourselves in.
A great insight in my life has been realizing that the Western world has tricked us into believing there is only one way to know and understand the world.
What do stories of ancient cultures from across the world have to do with creativity and healing? Wade Davis has spent his life living intimately with other cultures and plants; the lessons captured in this book require us to take pause and realize everything we have taken for granted about what we know and how we know it.
As Davis says, "rediscovering the diversity of the human spirit" requires us to unshackle ourselves from our biases and recognize that some things can’t be explained or understood through the narrow lens of the Western world.
Creativity and the imagination are fundamental to being human; this book caused me to question what I was missing by not fully recognizing them as a way…
Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.
In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we…
I freely admit to reading romances―"Nurse Janes," as one of my teachers used to call them―whenever I need a break from heavier material or just from life. While I have some favorite authors (who doesn't?), I do not limit myself to any particular era or style of romance. To me, romance has many shades and flavours, and I enjoy them all. Believe you me, choosing just five to recommend was no piece of cake.
I know, it sounds absurd to recommend a book entitled Heller with a Gun as a romance. But in fact many books of the Western genre have all the elements of romance along with the ultra-American setting, action, and adventure that gave them their own niche. In this particular book, I found the Mr./Miss Right versus Mr./Miss Wrong dilemma and could not put the book down until the problem resolved itself in classic Western style.
Tom Healy was in trouble. His theatrical troupe needed to get to Alder Gulch, Montana, and the weather was turning. Andy Barker promised Tom he could get them there safely, but Tom was reluctant to trust him: he had the lives of three actresses to consider, and his personal feelings for Janice further heightened his concern. Then King Mabry showed up. Although Tom didn’t like the way he looked at Janice, he could see that Mabry made Barker uneasy. So Tom invited Mabry to join them. Tom was right to be worried, because Barker had a plan. He knew that…
What could possibly captivate the mind more than monsters? As a kid, I eagerly consumed books from authors like R.L. Stine, Stephen King, and HP Lovecraft. I watched George Romero, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter, and played games like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, andThe Call of Cthulhu.When I discovered monster studies in my PhD years—a way to read monsters as cultural productions that tell us something about the people that create them—I was hooked. Ever since, I get to continue reading my favorite books, watching my favorite movies, and playing my favorite games. It’s just that now someone’s paying me to do it.
Cohen is a necessary starting point, but the contributions to Monsters and the Monstrousreally highlight how far monster studies came in the first couple of decades it was around. The contributions in this volume range farther than the Western world, touching on topics in Africa, the Caribbean, Japan, and a host of others. There is also additional theory to account for shifts in time and culture when thinking about the monstrous and contributions from powerhouses in the field like Debra Higgs Strickland, Debbie Felton, and Michael Dylan Foster. I have personally found Six and Thompson’s article “From Hideous to Hedonist” to be useful every time I teach my course on Religion and the Monstrous.
The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.
I’m a climate scientist at Harvard and an environmental activist. In my day job, I use satellite, aircraft, and surface observations of the environment to correct supercomputer models of the atmosphere. What I’ve learned has made me feel that I can’t just stay in the lab—I need to get out in the world and fight for a future that’s just and ecologically stable for everyone. My writing and activism imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis.
When I started to read the news as a kid, I understood right away that oil prices were important. Constant war in the Middle East was somehow linked to the gas my mom used to fill up her minivan. It wasn’t until I read this book in college that I truly knew why energy dominates politics.
Mitchell points out that with the rise of coal mining came the rise of democracy because workers suddenly had the power to shut down the entire national economy by striking at only a few mines. They demanded rights and fair treatment. The transition to oil changed everything because it was easy to transport and difficult for workers to shut down. Mitchell shows that oil isn’t just about convenience. It’s about power.
Carbon Democracy provides a unique examination of the relationship between oil and democracy. Interweaving the history of energy, political analysis, and economic theory, Mitchell targets conventional wisdom regarding energy and governance. Emphasizing how oil and democracy have intermixed, he argues that while coal provided the impetus for mass democracy, the shift to oil drastically limited democratic possibility; above all, the ability to confront contemporary ecological crises.
I’ve been rising for years. In fact, Dark Star: Reclaiming Lilithis the culmination of 18 years’ worth of my personal ascension, which is certainly still a work in progress. My book is written in an extremely magical realistic, sci-fi/fantastical manner. I do believe that there are a cohort of women here on Planet Earth right now who’ve incarnated to help carry Gaia into her 5th dimension. Especially now, it’s relevant to move our planet into a more sustainable, spiritual, and connected way. If our voices can span across genres, generations, and gender, then maybe, they can reach all corners of the Universe before it’s too late for us and our planet.
This book is like a reminder of the wisdom that already lies latent within us (by “us” I’m identifying as a cis-gender woman, but that does not exclude anyone else, just helps to clarify). Rather than a gentle nudge, Dancing in the Flames’ approach to uncovering the buried dark goddess in modern culture is more of a slap in the face. A wake-up call that, I personally, have been intuiting for years. Woodman and Dickson weave together true historical accounts and cultural representations of why the dark goddess is essential for human and societal growth. Eerily similar to my highly sci-fi/fantastical book, I stumbled uponDancing in the Flames while conducting research for my dark-fem-rising story. I hang on every word they write as it 100% rings true for me.
Dark, earthy, and immensely powerful, the Black Goddess has been a key force in world history, manifesting in images as diverse as the Indian goddess Kali and the Black Madonnas of medieval Europe. She embodies the energy of chaos and creativity, creation and destruction, death and rebirth. Images of Her, however, have been conspicuously missing in the Western world for centuries—until now, when awareness of the Goddess is re-arising in many spheres, from the women's movement to traditional religion, from the new discoveries of quantum physics to the dreams of ordinary men and women. Why now particularly? The answer provided…
