Books about Industrialization from Amazon.com

""It is absolutely essential to be exposed to David C. Kortens work. . .on corporations and viable alternatives to corporate hegemony.""
--Educate! Volume 2, Issue 3
*An international best-seller
*Endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab
This second edition updates the reader on the deepening human crisis of the global economy. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, and people continue to exploit the planet. Korten writes of the new global citizens' movement of activism in response to corporate globalization, and of civil society groups' efforts to restructure global economic governance. He transitions from a critical analysis of the new world order to an optimistic focus on the role of spirit and culture in a "civil-ized" society..
Price: $6.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From reviews of the first edition:

"Brilliant, provocative . . . a great book."--New Statesman

"An important book . . . It is a new starting line from which all subsequent discussions of nationalism will have to begin."--New Society

"A better explanation than anyone has yet offered of why nationalism is such a prominent principle of political legitimacy today. This is a terse and forceful work . . . the product of great intellectual energy and an impressive range of knowledge."--Times Literary Supplement

"Periodically, an important book emerges that makes us, through the uniqueness of its theory, perceive history as we have not seen it before. Ernest Gellner has written such a volume. Students of nationalism will have to come to grips with his interpretation of the causes for the emergence of nationalism, since he has declared that most of the previous explanations are largely mythical."--American Historical Review

First published in 1983, Nations and Nationalism remains one of the most influential explanations of the emergence of nationalism ever written. This updated edition of Ernest Gellner's now-canonical work includes a new introductory essay from John Breuilly, tracing the way the field has evolved over the past two decades, and a bibliography of important work on nationalism since 1983..
Price: $13.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

China today is visible everywhere -- in the news, in the economic pressures battering the globe, in our workplaces, and in every trip to the store. Provocative, timely, and essential -- and updated with new statistics and information -- this dramatic account of China's growing dominance as an industrial superpower by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the world economic order has occurred -- and why it already affects us all.

How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism? What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States? Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies have large operations in China? What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world?

Meanwhile, what makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive? What will happen when China manufactures nearly everything -- computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals -- that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost? How do these developments reach around the world and straight into all of our lives?

These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.

Veteran journalist Ted C. Fishman shows how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents. The result is a richly engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will forever change how readers think about America's future..
Price: $1.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Once lauded as the wave of the African future, Zambia's economic boom in the 1960s and early 1970s was fueled by the export of copper and other primary materials. Since the mid-1970s, however, the urban economy has rapidly deteriorated, leaving workers scrambling to get by. Expectations of Modernity explores the social and cultural responses to this prolonged period of sharp economic decline. Focusing on the experiences of mineworkers in the Copperbelt region, James Ferguson traces the failure of standard narratives of urbanization and social change to make sense of the Copperbelt's recent history. He instead develops alternative analytic tools appropriate for an "ethnography of decline."
Ferguson shows how the Zambian copper workers understand their own experience of social, cultural, and economic "advance" and "decline." Ferguson's ethnographic study transports us into their lives--the dynamics of their relations with family and friends, as well as copper companies and government agencies.
Theoretically sophisticated and vividly written, Expectations of Modernity will appeal not only to those interested in Africa today, but to anyone contemplating the illusory successes of today's globalizing economy..
Price: $15.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Because it made possible rapid movement and shipping across large distances, joining far-off towns to economic and cultural capitals, many people who lived in the early 19th century regarded the railroad as an instrument of progress. Because anyone with the price of a ticket could board a train, regardless of social class, the railroad was also seen as a democratizing technology.

But, Wolfgang Schivelbusch notes in this vivid history of early rail travel, the promise of progress and democracy was swiftly compromised. The railroads became an agency for the concentration of wealth in a few hands, and they created a class of passive consumers who simply got aboard and waited to arrive at their destinations. The railroads, Schivelbusch writes, changed the 19th-century world for good and ill. They helped rewrite the industrializing world's sense of time, for now precise schedules had to be kept; they reinforced a sense of forward-plunging movement into the future; they even introduced the reality of mass disaster, for railroads were always crashing, sometimes taking hundreds of riders to their deaths.

Delving into urban planning, psychology, architecture, and economics, as well as the history of technology, Schivelbusch paints a revealing portrait of the role of the railroad in shaping the 19th-century mind. --Gregory McNamee.
Price: $15.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Why have some developing countries industrialized and become more prosperous rapidly while others have not? Focusing on South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria, this study compares the characteristics of fairly functioning states and explains why states in some parts of the developing world are more effective. It emphasizes the role of colonialism in leaving behind more or less effective states, and the relationship of these states with business and labor in helping explain comparative success in promoting economic progress..
Price: $23.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The story of the development of artificial light in the 19th century is not only a history of its technology but a revelation of how that technology helped forge modern consciousness. The range of subjects includes the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shop window, and the importance of the salon in the bourgeois culture. Very Highly Recommended..
Price: $10.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This extraordinary text offers a proven combination of scholarship from an insightful economist and a renowned American historian. It recounts the development of capitalism and the age of machines through the voices of business leaders, working people, inventors, and an unusual cast of presidents, generals, and patriots. Unlike other books in the field of economic history, this text tells a story. While not ignoring statistics and percentages, this narrative focuses on the fact that America's economic transformation is an extraordinary drama--a drama that continues today..
Price: $71.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. As the combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rarely found in world history, this book explains how economic development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization..
Price: $24.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force that is even challenging some Japanese industries. This timely book examines South Korean growth as an example of "late industrialization," a process in which a nation's industries learn from earlier innovator nations, rather than innovate themselves. Discussing state intervention, shop floor management, and big business groups, Amsden explores the reasons for South Korea's phenomenal growth, paying special attention to the principle of reciprocity in which the government imposes strict performance standards on those industries and companies that it aids. She thereby shows how South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were able to grow faster than other emerging nations such as Brazil, Turkey, India, and Mexico.
With its new insights, Asia's Next Giant is essential reading for anyone concerned with global competition and the world economy..
Price: $15.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]