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the narrow corridor book

A must-read. Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank . . . erudite and fascinating’ Paul Collier, Guardian, on Why Nations Fail

By the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms- and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats.

Liberty is hardly the ‘natural’ order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it’s a steady state, arrived at by ‘enlightenment’. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society – between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives.

Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today – and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted – this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future.

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buy the room where it happened

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting re-elected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy – and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.

He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal – about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.

Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk – all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work – and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”

The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there – from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.

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the silk road book

Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next. From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts.

Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century–this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

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Summary:

Motivational, passionate and persuasive, this is a compilation of the world’s 100 greatest speeches by some of the most significant people in history who have played an important role in shaping the world as we know it now. These speeches−by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, freedom fighters and political leaders, dictators and writers−have made a mark in world history. These speeches not only give us an insight into the past, but also inspire us with their demands for equality, cries of freedom, a call to arms, rooting for the cause of the individual or the nation.

Learn from the inspirational words of King Charles, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Mohandas K. Gandhi, George Washington, Rabindranath Tagore, Anne Besant, Theodore Roosevelt and Subhas Chandra Bose, among many others.

About the Author
Terry O’Brien is an esteemed academician and an ardent quiz aficionado. He is keenly interested in kindling the quizzing instinct in people and an aptitude to develop the 3Rs of learning: Read, Record and Recall. He is a trainers’ instructor and a motivational speaker. He has penned a number of books. He is very well known for his flair for speaking and his articulating abilities in writing.

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buy To The Point Current Affairs online

Prospective CSS and Current Affairs aspirants are concerned, the new syllabus for CSS exam seems challenging for them. This edition contains the fruits of writer’s close study and research. This book covers Pakistan’s domestic affairs; political, economic and social. Enough material has been presented on Pakistan’s external affairs, including Pakistan’s relation with neighbouring countries, Muslim World and Pakistan’s relation with regional and international organizations.