In this powerful and gripping book, Peter Chapman shows how the pioneering example of the banana importer United Fruit set the precedent for the institutionalized greed of today's multinational companies. From the business's 19th Century beginnings in the jungles of Costa Rica, via the mass-marketing of the banana as the original fast food, United Fruit's involvement in bloody coups in Guatemala and El Salvador, the mid-1970s and the spectacular suicide on Park Avenue of the company's chairman, from its bullying business practices to its covert links to the US government, United Fruit blazed the trail of global capitalism through the 20th Century. Chapman weaves a dramatic tale of big business, lies and power to show how one company pioneered the growth of globalization and - in doing so - has helped farm the banana to the point of extinction.

In this compelling history, Peter Chapman shows how the United Fruit Company took bananas from the jungles of Costa Rica to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., with not just clever marketing, but covert CIA operations, bloody coups and brutalised workforces. And how along the way they turned the banana into a blueprint for a new model of unfettered global capitalism: one that serves corporate power at any cost.

Marxism and Smart Life is a compelling and thought-provoking examination of different aspects of human society. Comprised of two impressive volumes of philosophical, political, and economic thought—“Is Karl Marx Right?” and “Modern Human Smart Life”—author Nima Mazhari begins by exploring Marx’s theory of capital and analyzing its validity, especially in terms of modern society. Although once a Marxist himself, Mazhari does not shy away from examining some fatal flaws in Marx’s theory. These include Marx’s denial of the use-value of commodity for the capitalist, his insistence that a capitalist society is made up of only two classes, and most importantly, his assertion that a capitalist society cannot be made to work. In his second volume, “Modern Human Smart Life,” Mazhari assesses the components of modern society and the importance of having a realistic and genuine philosophical school of thought to guide human evolution. Even more importantly, Mazhari puts forward some implementable ideas on changes that can be made to executive, legislative, judicial, and treasurial structures and powers that will vastly improve modern society.b No matter what your philosophical background or political beliefs are, Marxism and Smart Life will challenge you to see Marxism in a new light, and leave you feeling invigorated about the possibilities for improving our modern capitalist society.

From the depths of the oceans to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, the human impact on the environment is significant and undeniable. These forms of global and local environmental change collectively appear to signal the arrival of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. This is a geological era defined not by natural environmental fluctuations or meteorite impacts, but by collective actions of humanity. Environmental Transformations offers a concise and accessible introduction to the human practices and systems that sustain the Anthropocene. It combines accounts of the carbon cycle, global heat balances, entropy, hydrology, forest ecology and pedology, with theories of demography, war, industrial capitalism, urban development, state theory and behavioural psychology. This book charts the particular role of geography and geographers in studying environmental change and its human drivers. It provides a review of critical theories that can help to uncover the socio-economic and political factors that influence environmental change. It also explores key issues in contemporary environmental studies, such as resource use, water scarcity, climate change, industrial pollution and deforestation. These issues are ‘mapped’ through a series of geographical case studies to illustrate the particular value of geographical notions of space, place and scale, in uncovering the complex nature of environmental change in different socio-economic, political and cultural contexts. Finally, the book considers the different ways in which nations, communities and individuals around the world are adapting to environmental change in the twenty-first century. Particular attention is given throughout to the uneven geographical opportunities that different communities have to adapt to environmental change and to the questions of social justice this situation raises. This book encourages students to engage in the scientific uncertainties that surround the study of environmental change, while also discussing both pessimistic and more optimistic views on the ability of humanity to address the environmental challenges of our current era.

Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.

Tropicality is a centuries-old Western discourse that treats otherness and the exotic in binary – ‘us’ and ‘them’ – terms. It has long been implicated in empire and its anxieties over difference. However, little attention has been paid to its twentieth-century genealogy. This book explores this neglected history through the work of Pierre Gourou, one of the century’s foremost purveyors of what anti-colonial writer Aimé Césaire dubbed tropicalité. It explores how Gourou’s interpretations of ‘the nature’ of the tropical world, and its innate difference from the temperate world, were built on the shifting sands of twentieth-century history – empire and freedom, modernity and disenchantment, war and revolution, culture and civilisation, and race and development. The book addresses key questions about the location and power of knowledge by focusing on Gourou’s cultivation of the tropics as a romanticised, networked and affective domain. The book probes what Césaire described as Gourou’s ‘impure and worldly geography’ as a way of opening up interdisciplinary questions of geography, ontology, epistemology, experience and materiality. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students within historical geography, history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies and international relations.

The spectre of 'Communism' was used to justify the expansion of American global leadership throughout the twentieth century. Nowhere was this more evident than in their 'backyard' of Latin America. The fear and hysteria created by the perceived communist menace justified the demonization of democratic reformers, the mischaracterization of political unrest, the overthrow of democratic regimes, the prolonged support of military dictatorships and the continued political and economic subservience of much of Latin America to the USA throughout the era of the Cold War and beyond. 'Pretext: Anti-Communism in Latin America' examines the origins of this hysteria from 1930-1965. It suggests that the academic focus on the rise and fall of communism has distracted analysis from the non-communist reformers who fought for democracy, social justice, and independent economic development. This timely reinterpretation of the origins of the Cold War in Latin America seeks to explain the continuing power imbalance between the US and the Latin American republics.

Using material from history, economics, sociology, and political science, Professor George Alan Hickrod weaves a structure that might be called 'Applied Liberalism" in An Embattled and Unapologetic Liberal. This groundbreaking work comprises unpublished material and editorials previously published in two McLean County, Illinois, newspapers, The Pantagraph and The Normalite. Professor Hickrod addresses a wide range of public policy issues from a liberal point of view. Hickrod addresses the following public policy questions: What do Liberals believe, and what might be the future of the Democratic Party? Why is the increasing inequality of wealth and income so dangerous to the Republic? What is wrong with the school funding system in Illinois, and how can we correct it? What is wrong with the way we formulate foreign policy in this nation, and what specifically went wrong in the Iraq War? What is the proper relationship of religion to governance? Not intended only for academia, An Embattled and Unapologetic Liberal is for the general public, progressive Republicans, and liberal Democrats.

Costa-Gavras is a seminal figure in French and international cinema. A master of the political thriller, he explores historical events through individual human stories, thereby involving his audience in past and contemporary traumas, from the horrors of the Holocaust through mid-century international state terrorism and totalitarianism to the current global financial crisis. With a career spanning half a century, he remains one of cinema’s most intriguing and enduring storytellers, theorists and political commentators. This collection of original essays charts and re-examines Costa-Gavras’s career from Un homme de trop (1967) to Le capital (2012). Readable and carefully researched, it will appeal to students and scholars of film, as well as fans of the director’s work.