Best Selling Books by Francis Fukuyama

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 Francis Fukuyama''s prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

The bestselling author of "Trust" examines the social upheavals of the last few decades, and in a bold, thought-provoking book shows why America is poised for a revival. 24 charts & graphs.

Francis Fukuyama famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states. The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world''s most serious problems," he believes. He traces what we know—and more often don''t know—about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of "stateness." He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.

Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins. Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of Political Order is a magisterial study on the emergence of mankind as a political animal, by one of the most eminent political thinkers writing today.

The bestselling author of The End of History explains the social principles of economic life and tells readers what they need to know to win the coming struggle for global economic dominance.

In ''The Origins of Political Order'', Francis Fukuyama took us from the dawn of mankind to the French and American Revolutions. Here, he picks up the thread again in the second instalment of his definitive account of mankind''s emergence as a political animal. This is the story of how state, law, and democracy developed after these cataclysmic events, how the modern landscape - with its uneasy tension between dictatorships and liberal democracies - evolved and, finally, how in the United States and in other developed democracies, unmistakable signs of decay have emerged

"Focuses on developing analytical tools to anticipate and manage low-probability events. Addresses psychological and institutional obstacles preventing planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating necessary resources. Pinpoints failures---institutional and personal---that allowed events to surprise leaders and examines philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. Discusses low-probability, high-impact contingencies in various sectors"--Provided by publisher.

A social philosopher examines how the foundation of liberal democracy, which is the belief that all human beings are equal by nature, could be shattered by the biotechnology revolution.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.

A short book about the challenges to liberalism from the right and the left by the bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order. Classical liberalism is in a state of crisis. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, liberalism is a system for governing diverse societies, which is grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law. It emphasizes the rights of individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness free from encroachment by government. It''s no secret that liberalism didn''t always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision. The result, Fukuyama argues, has been a fracturing of our civil society and an increasing peril to our democracy. In this short, clear account of our current political discontents, Fukuyama offers an essential defense of a revitalized liberalism for the twenty-first century.

A prominent former neoconservative and author of "The End of History and the Last Man" explains why the Iraqi war was a mistake and outlines new directions for American foreign policy.

A critique and reformulation of US foreign policy from one of the world''s leading thinkers - who formerly regarded himself as a neocon.

O mais recente livro de Fukuyama é uma viagem à história da humanidade, analisando as primeiras formas de Estado e as suas interpretações mais recentes. Reportando um vasto leque de conhecimentos - desde a história até à biologia evolutiva, passando pela arqueologia e a economia - este autor americano escreveu um livro brilhante e provocador, que propõe novas interpretações para a origem das sociedades democráticas, colocando questões essenciais sobre a natureza da política e o descontentamento que tem provocado.

"Recent developments in countries such as the Soviet Union and the People''s Republic of China seem to suggest that the 20th century may end where it started--not with an "end of ideology" or a convergence between capitalism and socialism, but with the victory of economic and political liberalism. This paper suggests that we may be witnessing not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period in postwar history, but the end of history--that is, the end point of mankind''s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. The victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world, but the author suggests that there are reasons to believe that the ideal will govern the material world in the long run. To explain this, he considers some theoretical issues about the nature of historical change, including the philosophy of Hegel, who originated the idea of the end of history."--Rand abstracts

This report, part of a study of the types of threats that Army planners might encounter in the Third World, evaluates the impact that Mikhail Gorbachev has had thus far on Soviet Third World policy, as well as prospects for future evolution. The study evaluates new Soviet thinking on foreign policy and measures the changes in rhetoric against actual Soviet behavior. It analyzes the new Soviet emphasis on the large states of the Third World. As an example of this new Soviet diplomacy, it presents a detailed case study of Soviet policy toward the Persian gulf in 1986-1987.

Social capital is important to the efficient functioning of modern economies and is the sine qua non of stable liberal democracy. It constitutes the cultural component of modern societies, which in other respects have been organized since the Enlightenment on the basis of formal institutions, the rule of law, and rationality. Building social capital has typically been seen as a task for second generation economic reform; but unlike economic policies or even economic institutions, social capital cannot be so easily created or shaped by public policy. This paper will define social capital, explore its economic and political functions, as well as its origins, and make some suggestions for how it can be cultivated.

If one were to survey the full range of Soviet clients in the Third World in the mid-1980s and contrast them with those of a generation earlier, say in the mid-1960s, perhaps the single most salient difference that emerges is the proliferation of regimes claiming Marxism-Leninism as their governing ideology. In the earlier period there were only three: North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. Moscow''s other major Third World clients at that time were a heterogeneous collection of left-leaning states like Egypt under Nasser, Syria, India, Indonesia, Mali, Ghana, and the like. Each one professed a vaguely socialist ideology tailored to the country''s specific national and cultural traditions, maintained an equally vague non-aligned and anti-imperialist foreign policy, and disavowed any adherence to orthodox Marxist-Leninist principles. Twenty years later, by contrast, the three Communist regimes had not only survived (and in case of Vietnam substantially expanded), but were joined by at least six others: Afghanistan, the People''s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. In this report we analyze the similarities of the six new Marxist-Leninist regimes more closely in terms of four categories--internal structure, foreign policy, military policy, and internal opposition, and conclude with some observations about their place in the Third World more broadly.

"This report analyzes the reassessment of policy toward the Third World that has been taking place in high Soviet leadership circles since the end of the Brezhnev era. It is divided into two main parts: (1) a survey of the theoretical discussion that has been taking place in speeches by Soviet leaders, official statements, articles in journals specializing in Third World issues, and elsewhere; and (2) a comparison of what the Soviets have been saying about the Third World with their actual behavior over the same time period, and a discussion of the potential consequences of the current reassessment for future Soviet policy. The report identifies three primary themes running through recent Soviet discussions of the Third World, all of which imply the need for a retrenchment from the activist policies of the mid- to late 1970s: (1) the pressure of economic constraints and the need to attend to the Soviet Union''s own economic development; (2) an awareness of the damaging effect of past Soviet Third World activities on U.S.-Soviet relations, and the fact that increased superpower tension inhibits Moscow''s ability to support progressive forces in the Third World; and (3) a critique of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party as a solution to the problem of securing long-term influence in the Third World."--Rand Abstracts.

"While it is comforting for the superpowers to think that they can have influence abroad merely on the strength of the positive example they set at home, this is only true in the long run. In the short run, Third World states, regimes, and individual leaders need to survive long enough to build their domestic institutions, and therefore need security in the form of external military aid, weapons, advisers, training, and, in the last extreme, direct superpower military intervention. Because military matters are important not only to an understanding of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Third World, but to the larger U.S.-Soviet relationship as well, this paper reviews the superpowers'' military objectives, the history of their use of military power as a means to an end, and the likely role of military power in future U.S.-Soviet interactions. The author suggests that the United States must address the problem of military security in the short run if it is to exert its influence in the social and economic spheres in the long run."--Rand abstracts.

In many ways the Middle East/Persian Gulf region is one of the most likely places in which a U.S.-Soviet conflict could ultimately escalate into nuclear war. The combination of high mutual superpower stakes in the region, endemic political instability among its states, and the presence of strong military forces in close proximity guarantees that crises in the Middle East/Persian Gulf will continue to have the potential to trigger direct U.S.-Soviet military conflict and consequently the use of nuclear weapons. Within the region, which stretches from Morocco to Pakistan, there is a wide variety of local conflicts and corresponding many ways in which the superpowers could conceivably be drawn into war. Of these regional conflicts, two stand out as serious enough to raise the possibility of nuclear war between the superpowers: a possible Soviet invasion of Iran and other parts of the Persian Gulf, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Preface to the paperback edition.

Livre brillant qui montre que deux forces puissantes sont au coeur de l''histoire humaine: la "logique de la science moderne" et la "lutte pour la reconnaissance". La premir̈e conduit les humains ̉satisfaire des dširs incessants ̉travers un processus čonomique rationnel. La seconde est le vřitable moteur de l''histoire. [SDM].