Those who believe Europe is weak, ineffectual and sclerotic are wrong. Europe might look frail and feeble against American military might, but that expression of power is shallow and narrow. Or so says Mark Leonard, one of Europe's brightest new policy thinkers, in a book sure to stir and provoke his American contemporaries. America's centralized, militarized supremacy, he argues, has become so overwhelming that it has defeated everything, including itself. It's capable of imposing itself anywhere — but when its back is turned its potency wanes. Europe's reach, by contrast, is broad and deep, spreading a value system from Albania to Zambia. It draws other countries into its orbit rather than seeking to define itself against them, and as they come under the influence of its laws and customs they are changed forever. Europe, quietly, has rediscovered within its foundations a revolutionary model for the future and an alternative to American hard power. With little fanfare, Europe has pooled the resources and the sovereignty of its nations into a radical new interface – and a power that is discreetly but insistently shaping the path forward. The revolution they have unleashed, Leonard argues, will transform the world. Whether you are a neocon or a transatlantic traditionalist, a businessmen or financier, his argument is one you cannot afford to ignore.

We know everything and nothing about China. We know that China is changing so fast that the maps in Shanghai need to be redrawn every two weeks. We know that China has brought 300 million people from agricultural backwardness into modernity in just thirty years, and that its impact on the global economy is growing at unprecedented speed. We have an image of China as a dictatorship; a nationalist empire that threatens its neighbors and global peace. But how many people know about the debates raging within China? What do we really know about the kind of society China wants to become? What ideas are motivating its citizens? We can name America's neo-cons and the religious right, but cannot name Chinese writers, thinkers, or journalists -- what is the future they dream of for their country, or for the world? Because China's rise -- like the fall of Rome or the British Raj -- will echo down generations to come, these are the questions we increasingly need to ask. Mark Leonard asks us to forget everything we thought we knew about China and start again. He introduces us to the thinkers who are shaping China's wide open future and opens up a hidden world of intellectual debate that is driving a new Chinese revolution and changing the face of the world.

Let There Be Light accompanies Bill Abrams on a time-traveling journey through history. Harnessing the energy of the suns ultraviolet light, his Light Assimilator enables him to travel on a voyage to discover the truth. His adventure takes him to the moments in time in which he discovers how the Ice Age fits into the Bible, the fate of the dinosaurs, the reasons why people lived to be hundreds of years old prior to the flood, and how, in fact, the flood itself could cover the whole earth. Mark Leonard, a veteran presenter at numerous youth conferences and church camps, weaves together the Bibles truth with this tale of a time-traveling explorer. He tells how, after several test runs, Bill decides to make a journey back to first-century Palestine to see the temple in Jerusalem. Taking off, Bill made three loops around the area and with the ship angled in a southerly direction towards the equator; the landing gear and the wings began retracting. In the blink of an eye, the craft disappeared into nothingness. And so his adventures begin. Written for young adults, Let There Be Light will appeal to adult readers as well. If you enjoy stories that mix together adventure, engaging characters, and the discovery of deep scientific truths, then Let There Be Light will offer you a chance to go on an adventure that will change your view of the world and its history.

A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and Her Portraitists brings together three engaging essays – by Robyn Asleson, Shelley Bennett and Mark Leonard, and Shearer West – that recreate the eventful life, both on and off the stage, of the great eighteenth-century actress Sarah Siddons. Siddons was renowned for her bravura performances in tragic roles, and her fame was enhanced by the many portraits of her painted by the leading artists of the day. The greatest of these was Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, a painting now in the Huntington Art Collections and recently studied at the Getty Center. A Passion for Performance places this magnificent portrait within the context of Siddons’s career as an actress and cultural icon. Includes a chronology of Siddons’s life by volume editor Robyn Asleson.

A FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Compulsively readable... An essential course in geopolitical self-help' - Adam Tooze 'Full of fresh - and often surprising - ideas' - Niall Ferguson 'Extraordinary... One of those rare books that defines the terms of our conversation about our times' - Michael Ignatieff We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart. In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been working to create a connected world. They've integrated the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of warfare. Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to full-blown war in eastern Europe. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US, Russia and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change and pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as the theatre of conflict expands to include sanctions, cyberwar and the pressures of large migrant flows. A leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard lays out the ways that globalization has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, and explores how we might wrest a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.

In a garden glade before a grand fountain, surrounded by a musical party, an elegant woman in a lustrous white gown dances as part of a foursome, raising her eyes to the viewer as if extending an invitation to the dance. This is the enticing scene in the J. Paul Getty Museum's painting "Dance before a Fountain" by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), an excellent example of the fete galante, a genre that was created and reached the peak of its popularity in France during the first half of the eighteenth century. This monograph seeks to familiarize American audiences with Lancret, a master of this genre, who was a revered painter in his own time, rivalling his contemporaries Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher, and a favourite of crowned heads across Europe. Mary Tavener Holmes's engrossing text uses this painting as a springboard to reveal a remarkable amount about the painter, his mode of painting, Paris at the time this work was made, eighteenth-century dance, and the world of art patronage and collecting in France and elsewhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lavishly illustrated with comparative paintings by artists such as Watteau, Boucher, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Francois De Troy, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Hubert Robert, this fascinating peek into a bygone Parisian era is a treat for the eyes and the intellect alike.

Kinds of jobs in management are discussed as well as educational requirements, job opportunities, and working conditions.