San Antonio College Library

From the perspective of Great Britain in the mid-1970s, the author looks at what is meant by democracy and how it relates to liberty and a 'liberal society'. He examines the experience of societies where democracy has broken down in the 20th century, such as Portugal, Chile, Czechoslovakia, and Weimar Germany. He discusses how far tolerance can be extended to those who seek to destroy a 'tolerant society', distinguishes between authoritarian and totalitarian...

We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping,...

"In A Demon of Our Own Design, Richard Bookstaber paints a vivid picture of a financial world that is ever edging toward disaster. As a hedge fund 'rocket scientist, ' Bookstaber provides an insider's perspective to the tumultuous management decisions made by some of the worlds most powerful financial figures from Warren Buffett to Sandy Weill to John Meriwether, as well as recounting his own contribution to market calamities. He designed some of...

Kurlantzick proposes that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, reflects a new and disturbing trend: democracy in worldwide decline.

"Ever since the landmark publication of Susan Sontag's On Photography, it has been impossible to look at photographs, particularly those of violence and suffering, without questioning our role as photographic voyeur. Are we desensitized by the proliferation of these images? Or do the images stir our own sense of justice and act as a call to arms? Are we consuming the suffering of others? What should our responses to these images be? To answer these...

"In 1966, Samuel S. Hill's Southern Churches in Crisis argued that southern Protestantism, a cornerstone of white southern society and culture, was shirking its moral duty by refusing to join in the fight for racial justice."--BOOK JACKET. "In Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited, which includes the 1966 text in full, Hill reexamines his earlier predictions in a new introductory essay that also describes how the study of religion in the South has...

"The author places the emerging crisis of the Episcopal Church in context: historical, moral, theological, cultural, and ecclesiological. He explores how the rift between Episcopalians in the United States originated, how it is being played out now in the rift between the official representatives of ECUSA and the Anglican Communion, what the arguments are for and against all sides, and what the prospects are for either reconciliation at some level...

"In the heart of Europe's current crisis, one of the continent's foremost statesmen urges for a radical remaking of the European Union in the model of the United States The diseases that plague Europe respect no borders. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium and a leader in the European Parliament, shows that wherever we look-from the debt crisis in Greece to the rise of political Islam across Europe, the Syrian refugee crisis to Putin's...

In the summer of 2007, the subprime empire that Wall Street had built all came crashing down. Banks like Countrywide and non-banks such as New Century Financial--all financed by Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and others--were in danger of closing, or actually failing. On average, 50 lenders a month were going bust. Chain of Blame will chronicle the disaster, focusing on the players - the executives on Wall Street but also...