Welcome to TNBC Beacon Book Shelf

 “A provocative read...There are few tomes that coherently map such broad economic histories as well as Mr. Dalio’s. Perhaps more unusually, Mr. Dalio has managed to identify metrics from that history that can be applied to understand today.” —Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times

From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes—and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well. 

The visionary behind the bestselling phenomenon The Fourth Turning looks once again to America’s past to predict our future in this startling and hopeful prophecy for how our present era of civil unrest will resolve over the next ten years—and what our lives will look like once it has.

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution.

 Dive into the gripping world of international ecocomics through American lawyer, investment banker, media commentator, and author, James G. Rickards's expertise and thought-provoking insights.

From collapsed paper currencies and hidden agendas of soveriegn wealth funds to the very real threats of national security, James G. Rickards scrutinizes the history and disastrous outcomes of currency wars, shedding light on the potential crisis that looms over the United States and the world. Rickards dissects failed paradigms and conventional theories while offering a course of action to steer away from impending disaster. 

 Cogent, well-written . . . critiques unalloyed globalization enthusiasts, taking aim at their desire to fully liberalize foreign trade ad capital movements." —Foreign Affairs 

In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik reminds us of the importance of the nation-state, arguing forcefully that when the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik’s case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today’s global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets. 

 Do big government debts threaten our collective well-being? Are there limits to debt growth? Can a big, important reserve currency country like the United States really go broke—and what would that look like? 

For decades, politicians, policymakers, and investors have debated these questions, but the answers have eluded them. In this groundbreaking book, Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors of our time, shares for the first time his detailed explanation of what he calls the “Big Debt Cycle.” Understanding this cycle is critical for helping policymakers, investors, and the general public grasp where we are and where we are headed with the debt issue. Dalio’s model points toward surprisingly straightforward solutions for dealing with the debt problems that the US, Europe, Japan, and China face today.

James Rickards, the author of the prescient books Currency Wars, The Death of Money, and The Road to Ruin, lays out the true risks to our financial system, and offers invaluable advice on how best to weather the storm. 

As any student of financial history knows, the dizzying heights of the stock market can't continue indefinitely--especially since asset prices have been artificially inflated by investor optimism around the Trump administration, ruinously low interest rates, and the infiltration of behavioral economics into our financial lives. The elites are prepared, but what's the average investor to do?

Provocative, stirring, and full of counterintuitive advice, Aftermath is the book every smart investor will want to get their hands on--as soon as possible.

 The bestselling author of The Death of Money and Currency Wars reveals the global elites' dark effort to hide a coming catastrophe from investors in The Road to Ruin, now a National Bestseller.
 

A drumbeat is sounding among the global elites. The signs of a worldwide financial meltdown are unmistakable. This time, the elites have an audacious plan to protect themselves from the fallout: hoarding cash now and locking down the global financial system when a crisis hits.
 

 "If you are curious about what the financial Götterdämmerung might look like you’ve certainly come to the right place... Rickards believes -- and provides tantalizing snippets of private conversations with those who dwell in the very eye-in-the-pyramid -- that the current world monetary and financial system is on the verge of insolvency and that the world financial elites already have a successor system for which they are laying the groundwork."
--Ralph Benko, Forbes 

 Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." —The Washington Post Book World 

In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik reminds us of the importance of the nation-state, arguing forcefully that when the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik’s case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today’s global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.

 A renowned scholar argues that liberal hegemony—the policy America has pursued since the Cold War ended—is doomed to fail 

 “Idealists as well as realists need to read this systematic tour de force.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World 

 It is widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build international institutions. The policy of remaking the world in America’s image is supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not what has happened. Instead, the United States has become a highly militarized state fighting wars that undermine peace, harm human rights, and threaten liberal values at home. In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony—the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended—is doomed to fail.

 Bestselling author and eminent foreign policy scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski's classic book on American's strategic mission in the modern world. 

 In The Grand Chessboard, renowned geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski delivers a brutally honest and provocative vision for American preeminence in the twenty-first century. The task facing the United States, he argues, is to become the sole political arbiter in Eurasian lands and to prevent the emergence of any rival power threatening our material and diplomatic interests. The Eurasian landmass, home to the greatest part of the globe's population, natural resources, and economic activity, is the “grand chessboard” on which America's supremacy will be ratified and challenged in the years to come. In this landmark work of public policy and political science, Brzezinski outlines a groundbreaking and powerful blueprint for America's vital interests in the modern world.
In this revised edition, Brzezinski addresses recent global developments including the war in Ukraine, the re-emergence of Russia, and the rise of China. 

 Three political movements replaced older republican governance with an administrative state. 

Teddy Roosevelt’s progressives targeted corporate power and immigration; FDR and LBJ built government-business alliances and promoted civil rights; 1960s radicals rejected both, attacking liberal hypocrisy and U.S. militarism. Despite their differences, all aimed to dismantle previous systems and expand state control.

Post-1960s, elites on both left and right abandoned the middle class to promote globalization and form an oligarchy. Radicals advanced identity politics through institutions, while neoliberals favored monopolies, open borders, and outsourcing. Economic and military failures led to a crisis of legitimacy. Elites embraced identity politics and suppressed dissent, leading to today’s faltering kleptocracy.

 An urgent exploration of a world in constant crisis, where every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict, with lessons from history that can stop the spiral—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography

 We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.  Waste Land is a bracing glimpse into a future defined by the connections afforded by technology but with remarkable parallels to the past. Just as it did in Weimar, Kaplan fears the situation may be spiraling out of our control—unless our leaders act first.

 Glenn Diesen’s book explores the end of Western liberal hegemony and the emerging shift toward a multipolar world grounded in sovereign equality. He argues that NATO expansion, meant to secure peace, instead destabilized Europe and turned Ukraine into a focal point of great power rivalry between the West and Russia.

The war in Ukraine, according to Diesen, highlights the collapse of the liberal world order and has accelerated a global move toward a Eurasian-led system. As Western dominance fades, the lack of compromise between powers raises the risk of escalation, with the outcome likely determining whether the future is unipolar or multipolar.

Over and over, U.S. government officials and their mainstream media allies called Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine an “unprovoked attack.” The slogan became so overused that people began to ask the obvious question: Why do they protest so much?

In Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton explains how since the end of the last Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, successive U.S. administrations pressed their advantage against the new Russian Federation to the point that it finally blew up into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.

This open access book provides a comprehensive analysis of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. It uses a theoretical framework of rational choice, moral hazard, state- repression backfire, and Weberian ideas about rational action to explore the massacre.

The book draws on publicly available videos, photos and audio recordings of the massacre in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages, along with several hundred individual testimonies and revelations from the Ukrainian investigation and a trial and its verdict. Examining which parties were responsible , the book analyses its implications for not only Russia’s war on Ukraine and political developments across the globe.

 A unique account of its kind, precise, sensitive, and personal, seen from the inside of an international mission at the heart of the Donbass war.

The reality on the ground, from the front lines. New revelations, notably concerning civilian casualties, human rights violations, conflict-related trials, and the manipulation of facts.
And then, how the US-sponsored Ukrainian ultra-nationalist project provoked Moscow's reaction.
This book is primarily intended for those who prioritize facts over partisanship and who want to understand how the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II came about.