Macat.com has narrated 25 audiobooks on Listento.it by 15 authors, with an average listener rating of 3.9★ across 12 ratings. The most-rated is A Macat Analysis of Charles P. Kindleberger's Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises.
A Macat Analysis of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Summary
How do those in power exercise that power over a state's citizens? French thinker Michel Foucault's 1975 work Discipline and Punish looks to answer this question by investigating the prison system. Foucault does not believe that the modern-day system developed out of reformers' humanitarian concerns. He argues that prison both created and then became part of a bigger system of surveillance that extends throughout society. Power is no longer exerted directly through violence. Prisoners who were once executed are now far more likely to be monitored and controlled. And the fear of being constantly watched leads prisoners to self-regulate; to behave in ways those in power approve of. This insidious method has moved way beyond the bounds of the prison walls. It is now a part of many aspects of our lives, inflicted on us in many places. Surveillance - or systematic monitoring - by government institutions produces "docile bodies," which Foucault defines as bodies that can be monitored and psychologically controlled, and that are then trained to self-govern. We have become the sum of what we abstain from doing for fear of being seen, judged, or punished.
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A Macat Analysis of Charles P. Kindleberger's Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
Summary
When Charles P. Kindleberger's Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises was first published in 1978, the world was entering a new period of global economic turbulence. Established economists based their analyses on the assumption that investors act rationally, and these economists often communicated their ideas with dry, technical language. Kindleberger rebelled against convention. Using a more literary and descriptive style, he came up with a new view. He argued that markets are unstable precisely because investors act irrationally when they get swept along on a tide of optimism or despair. This makes the financial markets susceptible to crises, and at times they are in need of radical intervention. Kindleberger's historical examples of financial crashes worldwide show a distinct pattern, leading him to the conclusion that the world needs a single, central body to stabilize global markets at their most fragile moments. The fact that Kindleberger's book is now in its seventh edition shows just how popular his ideas have become, and how they are still relevant today. Manias, Panics, and Crashes is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the market cycle of boom and bust.
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A Macat Analysis of Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation
Summary
Politics as a Vocation examines what makes good political leaders and explores the effects of political action on modern societies. On one level it summarizes the political scholarship of one of the founding fathers of social science. On another it reflects a leading German academic and political activist's practical concerns about the future at a time of great volatility following defeat in World War I. Weber investigates the bases of modern politics, touching on the role of bureaucracy in government and the rise of organized political parties. He advocates strong, ethical leadership, although some have claimed this inadvertently laid the intellectual groundwork for the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Originally delivered as a lecture before being published as an essay, Politics as a Vocation is still an important work for understanding political processes. And over a century after its publication, Max Weber remains a seminal figure in the social sciences.
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A Macat Analysis of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
Summary
A Macat Analysis of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Reflections on the Revolution in France may read like an exercise in political theory. But when it was first published in 1790, Edmund Burke was fighting a real political battle. Burke saw that the Enlightenment ideas that had inspired radical political change in France the year before were beginning to take root in England. He wanted to discredit these dangerous thoughts before they sparked a revolution in his own country. By publishing his pamphlet in the form of a "letter to a friend," Burke could use a fiery, rhetorical style to discredit revolutionary developments in France and attack the idea that England should follow its neighbor into democracy. Burke argued for a conservative society, in which institutions that have stood the test of time are to be cherished and change introduced slowly - and only after proper consideration. Burke's pragmatic analysis and cautious views act as the foundation for much modern conservative thinking. His powerful imagery and appeals to emotion have captured readers' imaginations for centuries and swayed opinions in ways that remain relevant today. You can find out more about how Burke's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library.
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A Macat Analysis of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth
Summary
Published in 1961, the year of Frantz Fanon's death, The Wretched of the Earth is both a powerful analysis of the psychological effects of colonization and a rallying cry for violent uprising and independence. The book rejects colonial assumptions that the people of colonized countries need to be guided by their European colonizers because they are somehow less evolved or civilized. Fanon argues that violence is justified to purge colonialism not just from the countries themselves, but from the very souls of their inhabitants, who have been so damaged by its abuses. According to Fanon, it is the poor above all who need to rebel if real change is to come, because the indigenous middle classes will just produce a society very similar to the old one. And after revolution, the new country should aspire to make real improvements in the lives of the worst off through education and investment. The Wretched of the Earth became an inspiration for many liberation struggles around the world after Fanon's death, and continues to be a key text in postcolonial studies.
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A Macat Analysis of Plato's Republic
Summary
What is justice? How should an individual and a society behave justly? And how do they learn how to do so? These are just some of the core questions that Plato's The Republic considers. An extraordinarily ambitious work, Republic has made important contributions to many branches of modern philosophy. The work unfolds as a series of conversations in which participants set out a number of different theories of justice, and then imagine how these theories might become reality within the political structure of a city. In examining justice, Plato investigates an enormous range of questions in the areas of ethics, politics, and even the nature of existence itself. Although written nearly 2,500 years ago, the influence of Republic is still felt today. Many consider it to be Plato's most important work, and it has played a key role in the birth and development of political philosophy, influencing the work of many important thinkers, from Niccolò Machiavelli to John Rawls.
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A Macat Analysis of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind
Summary
What we think of as the "mind" is little more than an illusion. That's the provocative thesis of British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's 1949 work The Concept of Mind. Seventeenth-century French writer René Descartes, one of the fathers of philosophy, imagined the mind and body as two separate entities that combine to form a human being. This concept came to be called "mind-body dualism." Ryle set about ridiculing Descartes's idea of, as he put it, a "ghost in the machine" stating that it was "entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle...not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind." Ryle argues that our distinction between concepts pertaining to the mind and others pertaining to matter arise from a problematic use of language (and particularly through what he calls "category mistakes"). In The Concept of Mind, his best-known and most important book, Ryle establishes a new branch of philosophy, "the philosophy of mind." The work remains an important statement in mid-20th-century philosophy. You can find out more about how Ryle's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library. Macat's analyses cover 14 different subjects in the humanities and social sciences. To browse our whole multi media library and get a lot more, visit www.macat.com today. Macat. Learn better. Think smarter. Aim higher.
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A Macat Analysis of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks
Summary
Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks offers a radical analysis of the psychological effects of colonization on the colonized. Born in 1925 on the island of Martinique - at the time a French colony - Fanon witnessed firsthand the abuses of white colonizers and the system's effects on his country. His revulsion was only confirmed later in life when he worked as a psychiatrist in Algeria, another French colony. Black Skin, White Masks was written in 1952 when Fanon was just 27 years old. The text of his first book is uncompromising, both in form and in argument. It dissects the dehumanizing effects of colonialism by linking socio-economic and psychological analysis of the predicament of colonized people, and demonstrating the important role of the literary imagination in describing and challenging its effects. Fanon's work played a pivotal role in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and was later taken up by scholars of postcolonialist studies, a discipline that examines the cultural, political, and psychological legacies of colonialism.
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A Macat Analysis of Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Summary
Environmental factors shape our history just as much as - and sometimes more than - human factors. That's the premise of Alfred W. Crosby's 1972 work The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, a key text in environmental history. While earlier scholars emphasized cultural and technological factors as defining the way our world developed, Crosby argues that nonhuman factors, such as the exchange of plants, animals, and microbes between the Old and New Worlds had more overall impact. "The most important changes brought on by the Columbian voyages were biological in nature," he says. Crosby was one of the first historians to look at the importance of the spread of certain food crops and diseases in relation to the development of history, to show it was not simply political and social issues that counted. The Columbian Exchange introduces the idea that current human societies are also the product of a wider set of biological relationships, and need to be understood in these contexts.
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A Macat Analysis of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex
Summary
The Second Sex caused an uproar when it appeared in 1949, as French writer and existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir set out her groundbreaking ideas on what it meant to be a woman. De Beauvoir's book charted the oppression of "the second sex" in terms never before seen in the academic world. Her most startling theory became a rallying cry for the feminist movement: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She argued that gender identity was shaped by upbringing in a world ruled by men. A leading light in the existentialist movement, de Beauvoir applied the radical philosophy of personal choice and freedom to argue that women were subjugated in every area of life. She claimed that powerful cultural myths, the rules of society, and ideas about acceptable sexual behavior combined to rob women of both their individuality and their voice. Decades on, de Beauvoir's work is still the subject of intense debate - provoking anger and admiration in equal measure. It is impossible to consider the women's rights movement since World War II without talking about this landmark text.
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A Macat Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
Summary
American author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 1996 work, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is one of the most controversial history books of modern times. While most historians have sought to explain the horror of the Holocaust by focusing on Nazi leaders and their ideologies, Goldhagen set out to investigate whether ordinary Germans enthusiastically embraced their goals. His conclusion: "eliminationist anti-Semitism" - a genocidal hatred of Jews unique to Germany - caused the Holocaust. Hitler's Willing Executioners topped best-seller lists in Britain, Germany, and America and won prestigious awards. But historians almost universally disagreed with Goldhagen's arguments, which ran counter to those of Christopher Browning in his 1992 book, Ordinary Men. Browning examined members of a police unit who carried out acts of genocide and found that regular people acted out of fear and as a result of peer pressure. A ferocious historical dispute raged between partisans of the two authors. This Goldhagen Controversy, as it became known, proved to be one of the most significant debates of the 1990s.
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A Macat Analysis of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Summary
Before Bernard Bailyn published The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in 1967, it was generally believed that the Revolution was driven both by social conflict between colonial settlers and the ruling British government, and by differences between classes in American society. Bailyn had a different view. He said that it was radical ideas that fired the American Revolution, and that the Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, and political struggle. Bailyn showed how American colonists were moved by a strain of radical anti-authoritarian thought that cherished individual liberty and distrusted centralized power. In Bailyn's view, revolutionaries in the colonies felt their own oppression was part of a greater whole, part of "a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world - a conspiracy believed to have been nourished in corruption." Considered one of the most influential 20th-century works on the American Revolution, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution won Bailyn the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. He was also awarded the Bancroft Prize for the work - the highest honor an American history book can receive.
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A Macat Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
Summary
Most likely written between 170 and 180 CE, Meditations is a remarkable work, a unique insight into the thinking of one of the most conscientious and able Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who ruled at the apex of Roman might in the late second century CE. It was never intended to be widely circulated. Indeed, it was almost unknown until the 16th century. The work is like a series of jottings, written for its author's own improvement; it has no formal structure and its arguments follow no obvious pattern. Yet it has an immediacy that makes it one of the best and most accessible accounts of what is known as Stoic philosophy. Its distinctive approach, and its belief that philosophy can serve as a practical way of living a more balanced life, chime perfectly with our modern-day concerns. Meditations has won many admirers, including former US president Bill Clinton and Wen Jiabao, premier of China from 2003 to 2013.
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A Macat Analysis of Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population
Summary
A Macat analysis of Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 One of the most influential books on economics ever written, Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population remains one of the most controversial too. This 1798 work inspired naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to develop the theory of natural selection. But it has also sparked criticism - Karl Marx famously called Malthus a "lackey of the bourgeoisie." Yet this hasn't stopped leading present-day environmentalists from taking up Malthus's ideas. Malthus foresees a time when available resources will not sustain the growing population. To save society, he concludes, population growth must be reined in. Malthus advocates minimizing government support for the poor, which he believes leads to more births and ultimately more hardship. He also insists that individual sexual restraint is a vital way to control population growth. The adjective "Malthusian" still pops up today, describing a group of thinkers and writers who share a particular concern about overpopulation - and a common approach to its analysis. You can find out more about how Malthus's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library. Macat's analyses cover 14 different subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Macat. Learn better. Think smarter. Aim higher.
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A Macat Analysis of David Hume's An Enquiry of Human Understanding
Summary
Excited by the possibilities hinted at by the major scientific breakthroughs of the day, Scottish philosopher David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers including celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant, An Enquiry is Hume's examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs. He argues that we mainly gain knowledge through our senses, a theory known as empiricism. But while the impressions from our senses are key to our beliefs about the world, Hume argues that reason and facts play only a limited part. His thinking here led him to dangerous places. His conclusion that many religious beliefs of the time could therefore not be justified was viewed with great suspicion during his lifetime. Yet An Enquiry is now widely considered one of the greatest works of Western philosophy, and Hume one of its key thinkers. You can find out more about how David Hume's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library.
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A Macat Analysis of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Summary
A Macat analysis of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014 Does capitalism have a natural tendency to a just and reasonable distribution of wealth? The French economist Thomas Piketty thinks not. In his best-selling 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty takes issue with the idea that, despite the odd bump along the way (not least the 2007-08 global financial crisis), inequality tends to decline as capitalism matures. Piketty spent 15 years building an unparalleled database on wealth and income in France, the United States, and a number of other countries. He uses this data to argue that the opposite is true. Capitalism's natural tendency is, he says, to move toward ever-greater inequality. Piketty's solution? A global wealth tax - even if he admits it has little chance of becoming a reality. Capital has attracted impassioned responses, both positive and negative. But it has single-handedly shifted the goalposts of economic thinking and re-kindled discussion of the problem of inequality. You can find out more about how Piketty's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library. Macat's analyses cover 14 different subjects in the humanities and social sciences. To browse our whole multi media library and get a lot more, visit www.macat.com today. Macat. Learn better. Think smarter. Aim higher.
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A Macat Analysis of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Summary
Born in 1945, Paul Kennedy grew up in England, watching the new political realities of the time contribute to the dismantling of the British Empire. He pursued a lifetime of scholarship, predominantly in the US, trying to understand the social, economic, and military forces that shape great powers. While previous scholars of international history had focused on "great men" and their achievements, Kennedy focused on the interdependent relationship between military might and economic growth. In his 1987 work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he shows why countries that balance the economic and the military can become "great powers." Those that fail to do so, however, risk imperial overstretch and failure. Kennedy's ability not only to look back but also to look forward earned him great respect. His prediction that the United States would face a real challenge of precisely this nature in the near future was borne out by its increased military activity abroad in the wake of 9/11, and the Chinese threat to America's position as the global economic powerhouse.
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A Macat Analysis of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War
Summary
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is generally acknowledged as the first great work in the fields of both history and political theory. It uses a combination of narrative, debate, and analysis to document the war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC). But the importance of the work lies less in the story than in the way Thucydides tells it. History was the first major work of political inquiry that did not relate events to divine influences. It introduced instead a critical method of looking to the facts of human actions as the basis of our understanding - a method that continues to be used today, more than two millennia later. Many of the most important political thinkers in the Western tradition cite Thucydides as an influence, and major figures including Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and Friedrich Nietzsche have praised his writing.
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A Macat Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak?
Summary
Can the Subaltern Speak? is a classic of postcolonial studies, the discipline that examines the impact of colonial control on countries that gained their independence from European powers from the 1940s onwards. The essay, written in 1988 by Calcutta-born scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, argues that a core problem for the poorest and most marginalized in society (the subalterns) is that they have no platform to express their concerns, and no voice to affect policy debates or demand a fairer share of society's goods. The women among them, says Spivak, are doubly oppressed. Spivak first earned her academic reputation thanks to her English translation of French philosopher Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. This work, as well as feminism and Marxism, strongly influenced Can the Subaltern Speak? The essay has been widely praised for the insights it brings to postcolonial studies, but has also been criticized as dense and difficult to understand.
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A Macat Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men
Summary
Ordinary Men is one of the most influential works on the Holocaust. Before US historian Browning's 1992 book, most Holocaust scholarship focused either on the experience of the victims or on the Nazi political ideology driving the slaughter. Browning investigates the stories of some who carried out acts of extreme violence, those who literally had blood on their hands. Who were they? What were their backgrounds? And how could they end up committing such unspeakable acts? Browning focuses on one unexceptional regiment of German reservists, Police Battalion 101, carefully reconstructing the men's personalities. While their orders to kill appalled them at first, Browning shows how a combination of reluctance to challenge authority and peer pressure enabled them to face their gruesome task. These men were not driven by ideology. Rather than being moral monsters, Browning insists they were simply "ordinary men." While some have criticized Browning's relentless focus on the individual, Ordinary Men is nonetheless an essential work for anybody who wants to understand the Holocaust.
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