Polity imprint: 1443 books

Michael Mann is one of the most influential sociologists writing today. His three-volume work The Sources of Social Power, the third volume of which has just been completed, has transformed our way of thinking about power and has rewritten the history of human societies. No one interested in understanding...

George Bush leaves the White House in January 2009 and the United States goes back to “normal”, right? Wrong, argues Susan George in this fascinating, thorough and often chilling account of the decades-long transformation of American society and political culture. Using the four “Ms” – money,...

Intelligence is, by definition, a shadowy business. Yet many aspects of this secret world are now more openly analyzed and discussed, a trend which has inevitably prompted lively debate about intelligence gathering and analysis: what should be allowed? What boundaries, if any, should be drawn? And...

The recent downturn in the Chinese economy has become a focal point of global attention, with some analysts warning that China is edging dangerously close to economic meltdown. Is it possible that the second largest economy in the world could collapse and drag the rest of the world with it? In...

A singular development in the post-Cold War era is the use of military force to protect human beings. From Rwanda to Kosovo, Sierra Leone to East Timor, and Libya to Côte d'Ivoire, soldiers have rescued civilians in some of the world's most notorious war zones. But what about Syria? Why have we observed...

Gorbachev’s Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to this question by providing the missing link between the internal and external aspects of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Andrei Grachev shows that the radical transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev years was an integral...

Egypt is one of the few great empires of antiquity that exists today as a nation state. Despite its extraordinary record of national endurance, the pressures to which Egypt currently is subjected and which are bound to intensify are already straining the ties that hold its political community together,...

The Horn of Africa is a deeply troubled region engulfed in three interlocking crises. The first is a security crisis characterized by a range of devastating inter-state and inter-communal conflicts, including civil wars. The second is an economic crisis, evidenced by widespread debilitating poverty,...

We spend more time shopping than doing anything else, after sleep and work. So why is it not taken more seriously? The answer: we take shopping for granted. Indeed, culture can only ‘work’ by being taken for granted. This paradox – that what is most familiar, like shopping, is also the hardest...

We live in an era dominated by terrorism but struggle to understand its meaning and the real nature of the threat. In this new edition of his widely acclaimed survey of the topic, Randall Law makes sense of the history of terrorism by examining it within its broad political, religious and social contexts...

Feminists have long differed in their view of prostitution. While some regard it as a classic form of exploitation and degradation, others offer a more sympathetic interpretation of women's involvement in the sex industry. In this important new book, Maggie O'Neill seeks to explore the theoretical...

Sociology began as a historical discipline, created by Marx, Weber and others, to explain the emergence and consequences of rational, capitalist society. Today, the best historical sociology combines precision in theory-construction with the careful selection of appropriate methodologies to address...

Abortion has remained one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the United States for over four decades. Americans are more divided today than ever over abortion, and this debate colors the political, economic, and social dynamics of the country. This book provides a balanced, clear-eyed...

Winner of the 2014 European Book Prize. A "United States of Europe", Winston Churchill proposed in 1946, could "as if by a miracle transform" that "turbulent and mighty continent". "In this way only", he continued, "will hundreds of millions of toilers...