A classic work of political theory by a major twentieth-century figure of the Italian Left.
 
Italian political thinker Mario Tronti is most famous for being the author of Workers and Capital, which became the central theoretical formulation of Italian operaismo or workerism, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionized the institutional and extra-parliamentary Left in Italy and beyond. In The Twilight of Politics, written originally in 1998, Tronti argues that modern politics, which reached its apogee in the twentieth century, has ended.
 
Realism and Utopia, Tronti explains, were the foundational qualities of modern politics, which it always tried to clasp together. But behind this highwater mark of politics was a history over the longue durée, encompassing the wars of religion, Hobbes’ Leviathan, revolution, great individuals, and popular movements, as well as innovations such as the nation-state and the party-form. Historically, the modern period is also a coming together of the categories of the political and the laws of political economy. At the heart of this book is Tronti’s attempt to hold together a view of the course of political history with a critique of the “dictatorship of the present” to help us escape being “chained to the bars of an eternal present . . . which deprives us both of the freedom to look back and to see ahead.”

Today, health insurance is a key component in the system of social security in most European Union countries. In many of these countries, modern health-insurance funds and healthcare insurers play an essential role in implementing the public health-insurance system. Many of these health-insurance funds have a long and fascinating history, of which clear traces can be seen today in the organisation and structure of health insurance, as well as health-insurance funds and insurers.In Two centuries of solidarity, the authors compare the systems of health insurance, health-insurance funds and healthcare insurers in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Given the similar political, economic and social development that these countries have undergone in the past 60 years and the availability of a qualitatively high level of health care, one might expect a high degree of similarity between these countries’ healthcare insurance systems. However, the dissimilarities are surprising. In fact, these differences are currently becoming ever more apparent between systems in general, and the structure and operation of the health insurance funds and health care insurers in particular. The differences include the compulsory nature of insurance, the extent of coverage, premiums, entrepreneurship, competition, and the degree of private insurance. Many of these national singularities can be understood and explained only by considering the historical background of the health insurance systems, the insurers, and their evolution over the past two centuries. This study adopts an institutional and political perspective towards a further understanding of the development of health insurance, and of how this ultimately determined the specific nature of the healthcare insurers and funds and the way they currently operate in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin.

However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.

In September 1755, the most famous Indian in the world—a Mohawk leader known in English as King Hendrick—died in the Battle of Lake George. He was fighting the French in defense of British claims to North America, and his death marked the end of an era in Anglo-Iroquois relations. He was not the first Mohawk of that name to attract international attention. Half a century earlier, another Hendrick worked with powerful leaders in the frontier town of Albany. He cemented his transatlantic fame when he traveled to London as one of the “four Indian kings.”

Until recently the two Hendricks were thought to be the same person. Eric Hinderaker sets the record straight, reconstructing the lives of these two men in a compelling narrative that reveals the complexities of the Anglo-Iroquois alliance, a cornerstone of Britain’s imperial vision. The two Hendricks became famous because, as Mohawks, they were members of the Iroquois confederacy and colonial leaders believed the Iroquois held the balance of power in the Northeast. As warriors, the two Hendricks aided Britain against the French; as Christians, they adopted the trappings of civility; as sachems, they stressed cooperation rather than bloody confrontation with New York and Great Britain.

Yet the alliance was never more than a mixed blessing for the two Hendricks and the Iroquois. Hinderaker offers a poignant personal story that restores the lost individuality of the two Hendricks while illuminating the tumultuous imperial struggle for North America.

This is the first book that explores the relationship between the United States and Japan in terms of the competition for industrial raw materials. With startling consistency, their responses to similar problems appear to stem from each country's history and culture, almost as if the country had no choice but to pursue the policy selected. Vernon suggests that in this field of policy, political leaders are prisoners of their national environment more than anyone--including the leaders themselves--has been prepared to recognize.

Examining in turn the world markets in oil, aluminum, copper, and steel, Vernon shows how Japan has learned to cope with its have-not status, using flexible and inventive national policies designed to help industries acquire what they need. The United States, on the other hand, lacking an explicit and consistent national policy, is torn between protecting domestic producers of these resources and trying to develop dependable sources of supplies abroad. The result is a haphazard and unstable raw-materials policy.

This unique commingling of political and economic analysis will appeal not only to scholars of international relations, domestic political behavior, and commodity markets but also to the informed layman who wishes to understand what is likely to happen as two economic superpowers range the world to satisfy their appetites for raw materials.

Economists have long counseled reliance on markets rather than on government to decide a wide range of questions, in part because allocation through voting can give rise to a "tyranny of the majority." Markets, by contrast, are believed to make products available to suit any individual, regardless of what others want. But the argument is not generally correct. In markets, you can't always get what you want. This book explores why this is so and its consequences for consumers with atypical preferences.

When fixed costs are substantial, markets provide only products desired by large concentrations of people. As a result, people are better off in their capacity as consumers when more fellow consumers share their product preferences. Small groups of consumers with less prevalent tastes, such as blacks, Hispanics, people with rare diseases, and people living in remote areas, find less satisfaction in markets. In some cases, an actual tyranny of the majority occurs in product markets. A single product can suit one group or another. If one group is larger, the product is targeted to the larger group, making them better off and others worse off.

The book illustrates these phenomena with evidence from a variety of industries such as restaurants, air travel, pharmaceuticals, and the media, including radio broadcasting, newspapers, television, bookstores, libraries, and the Internet.