· 2023
#1 New York Times non-fiction bestseller #2 Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY APPLE, AMAZON, THE TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk offers the most intimate, complete and revelatory portrait of the most fascinating and controversial innovator in the world. For two years, Isaacson had unprecedented access to Musk, his workplaces, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries – nothing was off-limits. Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet is a thrilling, mind-bending story and nobody could tell it better. Filled with amazing tales of triumph and turmoil, and lessons about leadership and business, it ultimately addresses the question everyone wants to ask: why is Elon Musk so successful? This book includes over 100 integrated black and white images.
· 2014
A comprehensive film guide depicting films about the pirates that roamed the seven seas. Interesting facts on actors and other personal that made these films possible. A special look at these swashbucklers and their way of life throughout history. Included are other historical classic films.
Interest in China and Africa is growing exponentially. Taking a step back from the ‘events-driven’ reactions characterizing much coverage, this timely book reflects more deeply on questions concerning how this subject has been, is being and can be studied. It offers a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary and authoritative contribution to Africa–China studies. Its diverse chapters explore key current research themes and debates, such as agency, media, race, ivory, development or security, using a variety of case studies from Benin, Kenya and Tanzania, to Angola, Mozambique and Mauritius. Looking back, it explores the evolution of studies about Africa and China. Looking forward, it explores alternative, future possibilities for a complex and constantly evolving subject. Showcasing a range of perspectives by leading and emerging scholars, New Directions in Africa–China Studies is an essential resource for students and scholars of Africa and China relations.
· 2016
Judging from the debates taking place in both education and practice, it appears that architecture is deeply in crisis. New design and production techniques, together with the globalization of capital and even skilled-labour, have reduced architecture to a commodified object, its aesthetic qualities tapping into the current pervasive desire for the spectacular. These developments have changed the architect’s role in the design and production processes of architecture. Moreover, critical architectural theories, including those of Breton, Heidegger and Benjamin, which explored the concepts of technology, modernism, labour and capital and how technology informed the cultural, along with later theories from the 1960s, which focused more on the architect’s theorization of his/her own design strategies, seem increasingly irrelevant. In an age of digital reproduction and commodification, these theoretical approaches need to be reassessed. Bringing together essays and interviews from leading scholars such as Kenneth Frampton, Peggy Deamer, Bernard Tschumi, Donald Kunze and Marco Biraghi, this volume investigates and critically addresses various dimensions of the present crisis of architecture. It poses questions such as: Is architecture a conservative cultural product servicing a given producer/consumer system? Should architecture’s affiliative ties with capitalism be subjected to a measure of criticism that can be expanded to the entirety of the cultural realm? Is architecture’s infusion into the cultural the reason for the visibility of architecture today? What room does the city leave for architecture beyond the present delirium of spectacle? Should the thematic of various New Left criticisms of capitalism be taken as the premise of architectural criticism? Or alternatively, putting the notion of criticality aside is it enough to confine criticism to the production of insightful and pleasurable texts?
· 2013
"The first authorized biography of a great American novelist"--
· 2015
Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement offers the first, and as of 2018, only comprehensive account of the 1955 murder, the trial, and the 2004-2007 FBI investigation into the case and Mississippi grand jury decision. By all accounts, it is the definitive account of the case. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. Anderson utilizes documents that had never been available to previous researchers, such as the trial transcript, long-hidden depositions by key players in the case, and interviews given by Carolyn Bryant to the FBI in 2004 (her first in fifty years), as well as other recently revealed FBI documents. Anderson also interviewed family members of the accused killers, most of whom agreed to talk for the first time, as well as several journalists who covered the murder trial in 1955. Till's murder and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement. Like no other event in modern history, the death of Emmett Till provoked people all over the United States to seek social change. Anderson's exhaustively researched book was also the basis for the ABC miniseries Women of the Movement, which was written/executive-produced by Marissa Jo Cerar; directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, Tina Mabry, Julie Dash, and Kasi Lemmons; and executive-produced by Jay-Z, Jay Brown, Tyran “Ty Ty” Smith, Will Smith, James Lassiter, Aaron Kaplan, Dana Honor, Michael Lohmann, Rosanna Grace, Alex Foster, John Powers Middleton, and David Clark. For over six decades the Till story has continued to haunt the South as the lingering injustice of Till's murder and the aftermath altered many lives. Fifty years after the murder, renewed interest in the case led the Justice Department to open an investigation into identifying and possibly prosecuting accomplices of the two men originally tried. Between 2004 and 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the first real probe into the killing and turned up important information that had been lost for decades. Anderson covers the events that led up to this probe in great detail, as well as the investigation itself. This book will stand as the definitive work on Emmett Till for years to come. Incorporating much new information, the book demonstrates how the Emmett Till murder exemplifies the Jim Crow South at its nadir. The author accessed a wealth of new evidence. Anderson made a dozen trips to Mississippi and Chicago over a ten-year period to conduct research and interview witnesses and reporters who covered the trial. In Emmett Till, Anderson corrects the historical record and presents this critical saga in its entirety.
· 2020
A wide-ranging history of seventy years of change in political media, and how it transformed -- and fractured -- American politics With fake news on Facebook, trolls on Twitter, and viral outrage everywhere, it's easy to believe that the internet changed politics entirely. In Political Junkies, historian Claire Bond Potter shows otherwise, revealing the roots of today's dysfunction by situating online politics in a longer history of alternative political media. From independent newsletters in the 1950s to talk radio in the 1970s to cable television in the 1980s, pioneers on the left and right developed alternative media outlets that made politics more popular, and ultimately, more partisan. When campaign operatives took up e-mail, blogging, and social media, they only supercharged these trends. At a time when political engagement has never been greater and trust has never been lower, Political Junkies is essential reading for understanding how we got here.
· 2016
Analysing the politics of the 2012 London Olympics, Stephen Wagg examines the framing of London's bid to host the Games, arguments about the Games' likely impact and the establishment of 'Fortress London' to protect the Games. The book asks who won, and who lost out, in this important event as well as exploring its media coverage and legacy.
· 2019
During the Civil War, both the North and South were challenged by fiscal and monetary needs, but physical differences such as gold reserves, industrialization and the blockade largely predicted the war's outcome from the onset. To raise revenue for the war effort, every possible person, business, activity and property was assessed, but projections and collections were seldom up to expectations, and waste, fraud and ineffectiveness in the administration of the tax systems plagued both sides. This economic history uses forensic examination of actual documents to discover the various taxes that developed from the Civil War, including the direct and poll taxes, which were dropped; the income tax, which stands today; and the war tax, which was effective for only a short time.
· 2016
A close-up look at the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong in the Shadow of China is a reflection on the recent political turmoil in Hong Kong during which the Chinese government insisted on gradual movement toward electoral democracy and hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied major thoroughfares to push for full democracy now. Fueling this struggle is deep public resentment over growing inequality and how the political system—established by China and dominated by the local business community—reinforces the divide been those who have profited immensely and those who struggle for basics such as housing. Richard Bush, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on East Asia Policy Studies, takes us inside the demonstrations and the demands of the demonstrators and then pulls back to critically explore what Hong Kong and China must do to ensure both economic competitiveness and good governance and the implications of Hong Kong developments for United States policy.