This forcefully argued book offers a provocative picture of the political, intellectual, and economic forces that have shaped the history of the United States, offering an extensive and in-depth critique of laissez-faire doctrine and a novel reformulation of the work of American System writers, Gibson traces America's rise to global supremacy.

By now everyone knows the basic facts of China's rise to pre-eminence over the past three decades. But how did this erstwhile sleeping giant finally manage to arrive at its current phase of dynamic growth? How did a century-long succession of failures to change somehow culminate in the extraordinary dynamism of China today? By examining the lives of eleven influential officials, writers, activists and leaders whose contributions helped create modern China, Wealth and Power addresses these questions. This fascinating survey moves from the lead-up to the first Opium War through to contemporary opposition to single-party rule. Along the way, we meet titans of Chinese history, intellectuals and political figures. By unwrapping the intellectual antecedents of today's resurgent China, Orville Schell and John Delury supply much-needed insight into the country's tortured progression from nineteenth-century decline to twenty-first-century boom. By looking backward into the past to understand forces at work for hundreds of years, they help us understand China today and the future that this singular country is helping shape for all of us.

What do you do with your money? What do you think of your boss? Do you like your work? Is it satisfying? Are you satisfied with your answers? Do you know that God, through Scripture, offers us answers? Two of the most fundamental challenges for all humankind are deciding how to live and, if we accumulate riches, deciding how to use them. Did you know that God expects all humankind to work? For the Christian, all work is part of your Christian calling, whether you collect garbage for a living or sit in Washington deciding affairs of state. And what does Scripture have to say about riches? Did you know that Jesus directed more attention to the question of how to deal with wealth than just about any other subject he addressed during his three-year ministry? Join me in this short journey as we explore work and wealth in Scripture and seek answers to the above questions and others. We travel from the first work recorded in the Bible to our own time, when leisure competes with work for our attention and wealth gives us a false sense of security that puts us in danger of replacing God with self.

A critical analysis of contemporary art collections and the value form, this book shows why the nonprofit system is unfit to administer our common collections, and offers solutions for diversity reform and redistributive restructuring. In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets. This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact. A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.

THE ANTICHRIST WHOM CHRIST DECLARED A Different Perspective Unlike other the antichrist is exposs this book uses the words, teachings, and actions of Jesus Christ to document whom He proclaimed the antichrist to be. The antichrist whom Jesus Christ actually actively opposed in word and deed. It confirms this reality using Biblical Scripture and the events of history, even as it focuses upon the present to reveal the antichrist and his wide-ranging scope of satanic actions in todays world here and now. TOPICS INCLUDE How Christianity and by inference, other religions too, unknowingly promote the vile evils seen in todays world. How Belief, Faith, and the Holy Bible, are cunningly used to justify and support evil, often utilizing the unwitting, and sometimes willing support of believers and the church. The satanic rationales behind terrorism, environmental destruction and toxic pollution, as well as the ongoing periodic economic crisis, and those who profit from these deliberate satanic deeds. How the media justifies and promotes evil, including by so-called religious values that brings evil into being, then perpetuates it. Non-Christian readers will find this book meaningful and useful. Like Christians, they can use it to identify and counter those who accidentally or deliberately use Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible to abuse religion and promote evils satanic agenda.

The most comprehensive account yet of the human past from prehistory to the present.