Understanding Democracy
Explore top books on democracy to deepen your understanding of its principles, history, and impact. Essential reads for students, scholars, and engaged citizens.
Book
Manufacturing Consent
by Edward S. Herman
A "compelling indictment of the news media's role in covering up errors and deceptions" (The New York Times Book Review) due to the underlying economics of publishing—from famed scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. With a new introduction. In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
Book
The Prince
by Niccolo Machiavelli
Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.
Book
The Future of Freedom
by Fareed Zakaria
The Future of Freedom is a groundbreaking work in which Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria presents a penetrating and provocative analysis of the most powerful force sweeping the world - democracy. Tracing the rise of democracy through history, Zakaria reveals why, although democracy has broken down hierarchies, opened up closed systems, and given rise to freedom in some places, it has also fostered chaos, ethnic warfare, and destroyed the very liberties and freedoms it is meant to produce. In The Future of Freedom, Zakaria calls for a re-evaluation of our beliefs in democratic ideals and, in particular, the widely held notion that more democracy means more freedom and a guarantee of greater civil and economic liberties. This book is a call for self-control, for a restoration of the balance between democracy and liberty, Zakaria writes. It is not an argument against democracy. But it is a claim that there can be such a thing as too much democracy; too much of an emphatically good thing.
Book
The Mystery of Capital
by Hernando De Soto
In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is also what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth.
