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It is common knowledge that, in rich societies, the poor have worse health and suffer more from almost every social problem. This book explains why inequality is the most serious problem societies face today.
Groundbreaking analysis showing that greater economic equality-not greater wealth-is the mark of the most successful societies, and offering new ways to achieve it. "Get your hands on this book."-Bill Moyers This groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them-the well-off and the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a spirit level which we can hold up to compare different societies. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem-ill health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations-is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The book goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between material success and social failure in many modern national societies. The Spirit Level does not simply provide a diagnosis of our ills, but provides invaluable instruction in shifting the balance from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us, and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. It is, in its conclusion, an optimistic book, which should revitalize politics and provide a new way of thinking about how we organize human communities.
This eye-opening UK bestseller shows how one single factor--the gap between its richest and poorest members--can determine the health and well-being of a society. The authors also outline a new political outlook in which a shift from self-interested consu
'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane 'Gorgeous' Amy Liptrot 'Urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo – where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London. In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.
In a period when Western military engagement has unleashed violent sectarianism global terrorism, and become a catalyst for the biggest exodus of migrants since the Second World War, the 1999 Nato intervention in Kosovo remains a unique and shining example of a process that led to a peaceful transition from vicious ethnic war to modern democracy. Less than twenty years ago, a young ethnic Albanian student leader called Hashim Thaçi, led a revolution against Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian tyrant with the biggest military force in Europe, and convinced the West to bomb Belgrade out of Kosovo. The aerial bombardment beckoned a period of unrivalled peace in the Balkans which Western leaders who sought to subsequently overturn other tyrannies in foreign lands would view with envy as a rare successful model. Nato intervention in Kosovo, led by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, resulted in democracy and the rule of law. By contrast, however, attempts by George W. Bush to effect regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by America, Britain and France to do the same in Libya, have left lethal power vacuums filled by Islamist insurgents, and brought about the downfall of Western leaders themselves. This book is the story of the rare success of Western military intervention and the first biography of the new President of Kosovo, the youngest country in Europe.
For the rest of the decade deputy editors Mostyn Lloyd and G. D. H. Cole struggled to combine academic careers with re-establishing the discredited New Statesman as the voice of the left. Success was to come only under the leadership and inspiration of a new editor, Kingsley Martin, and a new chairman, John Maynard Keynes, following the paper's symbolic take-over in 1930 of the Liberal weekly, the Nation.
Born to Irish immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Al Smith was the earliest champion of immigrant Americans. In 1928, Smith became the first Catholic to run for the presidency but his candidacy was fiercely opposed by the KKK, and his campaign was wiped out by a tidal wave of anti-Catholic hatred. After years of hardship, Smith reconciled his soured relationships with political bigwigs and once again became a generous, heroic figure. Photos.
No British periodical or weekly magazine has a richer and more distinguished archive than The New Statesman, which has long been at the centre of British political and cultural life. Some astonishing things were first published in its pages: great poems such as W.B. Yeats' "Easter 1916"and Edward Thomas's "Adlestrop"; H.G. Wells' interview with Stalin in 1934; C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" essay; Christopher Hitchens' final interview, conducted by Richard Dawkins; and Hugh Grant's "The bugger bugged". Most of the great political and cultural writers of the recent past have written for The New Statesman. Many have been on its staff or were associates of it: George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, V.S. Pritchett, Paul Johnson and John Gray. The most significant intellectual and cultural currents of the age ripple through its pages. Many of the radical causes of our times were launched in association with or in the pages of The New Statesman. For example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Charter 88. There is, too, a rich history of illustration and cartoons to draw on, from Low's sketches of the great and the good to the gonzo art of Ralph Steadman and Will Self's early comic strips. The book is more than an anthology. It tells the story of the New Statesman, from the eve of the First World War to the long aftermath of 9/11 and the Great Recession through which we are still passing. It looks forward as well as back, offering a unique and unpredictable perspective on the world.
Over Britain’s first century of mass democracy, politics has lurched from crisis to crisis. How does this history of political agony illuminate our current age of upheaval? To find out, journalist Phil Tinline takes us back to two past eras when the ruling consensus broke down, and the future filled with ominous possibilities – until, finally, a new settlement was born. How did the Great Depression’s spectres of fascism, bombing and mass unemployment force politicians to think the unthinkable, and pave the way to post-war Britain? How was Thatcher’s road to victory made possible by a decade of nightmares: of hyperinflation, military coups and communist dictatorship? And why, since the Crash in 2008, have new political threats and divisions forced us to change course once again? Tinline brings to life those times, past and present, when the great compromise holding democracy together has come apart; when the political class has been forced to make a choice of nightmares. This lively, original account of panic and chaos reveals how apparent catastrophes can clear the path to a new era. The Death of Consensus will make you see British democracy differently.
