5 Politics, Sociology English eBooks

Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy by Trevor Garrison Smith
The Indigo Book by Christopher Jon Sprigman
The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives (Open Book Classics) by Catriona Seth
Letters to a Serious Education President (2nd Edition) by Seymour B. Sarason
Age of Louis XIV: The Rise of Modern Diplomacy by William James Roosen

*Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy by Trevor Garrison Smith

English | July 14, 2017 | ISBN: 1911534408 | 155 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these terrains can be configured in a more or less political manner, though the contemporary status quo heavily skews them towards anti-political configuration.
Using this understanding of what exactly politics entails, this book considers how the internet can both help and hinder efforts to move each area in a more political direction. By explicitly interpreting contemporary theories of the political in terms of the internet, this analysis avoids the twin traps of both technological determinism and technological cynicism.
Raising awareness of what the word ‘politics’ means, the author develops theoretical work by Arendt, Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe to present a clear and coherent view of how in theory, politics can be digitized and alternatively how the internet can be deployed in the service of truly democratic politics.

*The Indigo Book by Christopher Jon Sprigman

English | July 11, 2017 | ISBN: 1892628023 | 201 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
An open and compatible implementation of the Uniform System of Citation for legal research, this volume is in the public domain and may be used as you will. We are not connected in any way with the Harvard Law Review Association and The Bluebook®. "Burn all copies of the Bluebook"-Judge Richard Posner
In 2011, Frank Bennett, a law professor at Nagoya University in Japan, wrote to me about open source software he was developing that he now maintains under the name of Juris-M. Professor Bennett’s work is an extended variant of an amazingly useful tool called Zotero that is created by developers around the world who want to support scholars in their efforts to “organize, cite, and share research sources.” Frank added features to Zotero that support legal writing.

*The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives (Open Book Classics) by Catriona Seth

English | June 23, 2017 | ISBN: 1783743786 | 180 Pages | PDF | 3 MB
In view of the challenges—many of which are political—that different European countries are currently facing, scholars who work on the eighteenth century have compiled this anthology which includes earlier recognitions of common values and past considerations of questions which often remain pertinent nowadays. During the Enlightenment, many men and women of letters envisaged the continent’s future in particular when stressing their hope that peace could be secured in Europe. The texts gathered here, and signed by major thinkers of the time (Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, Hume or Staël for instance), as well as by writers history has forgotten, present the reflections, with a couple of chronological extensions (from Sully to Victor Hugo) of authors from the long eighteenth century—the French Empire and the fall of Napoleon generated numerous upheavals—on Europe, its history, its diversity, but also on what the nations, which, in all their diversity, make up a geographical unit, have in common. They show the historical origins of the project of a European union, the desire to consolidate the continent’s ties to the Maghreb or to Turkey, the importance granted to commerce and the worries engendered by history’s convulsions, but also the hope vested in future generations.

*Letters to a Serious Education President (2nd Edition) by Seymour B. Sarason

English | 2005 | ISBN: 1412926505 | 176 Pages | PDF | 1.3 MB
In this second edition of his original insightful collection of letters to the first president of the 21st century, Seymour B. Sarason details how to rethink school reform.

*Age of Louis XIV: The Rise of Modern Diplomacy by William James Roosen

English | 2017 | ISBN: 1138534129 | 208 Pages | PDF | 13.9 MB
William James Roosen has written the first general study of European diplomacy in the age of Louis XIV which is based on the actual practices and institutions of that era, rather than on the writing of early theoreticians.
Though the seventeenth century may not have been a period of great innovations in international diplomacy, it provides us with an important illustration of the "workings of a system which was well suited to the gradually changing needs of its time" and which has been called "the best form of diplomacy ever developed."
Dr. Roosen demonstrates both the obvious differences and the many similarities between diplomatic procedures and practices of the seventeenth century and the twentieth. Any student of diplomacy and international relations will gain valuable insight and understanding from this study of the early modern diplomatic personalities, institutions, and practices.
One of Dr. Roosen's goals in writing this book has been to discover the relationships between the ideological and socioeconomic structures and the diplomatic personalities who have influenced modern diplomacy. Further, he supplies the only available study of the realities of diplomatic practices in seventeenth century Europe, and provides an excellent basis for comparison with twentieth century international relations, in the hope that "studying early modern diplomatic personalities, institutions and practices should increase our understanding of international relations today."