Against the World
Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
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Narrated by:
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Natasha Soudek
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By:
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Tara Zahra
About this listen
Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath.
In this sweeping work of history, Tara Zahra examines how nationalism, rather than internationalism, came to ensnare world politics in the early twentieth century. The air went out of the globalist balloon with the First World War as quotas were put on immigration and tariffs on trade, not only in the United States but across Europe. The impact of the 1929 economic crash and the Great Depression amplified a quest for food security in Europe and economic autonomy worldwide. Immigration restrictions, anti-Semitism, and violent outbursts of hatred of the "other" became the norm-coming to genocidal fruition in the Second World War.
Millions sought refuge from the imagined and real threats of the global economy; new movements emerged focused on homegrown and local foods, domestically produced clothing, and back-to-the-land communities. Rich with astonishing detail, Against the World is a poignant and thorough exhumation of the popular sources of resistance to globalization.
©2023 Tara Zahra (P)2023 KaloramaListeners also enjoyed...
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Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement - the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the 20th century attempt to knit together the world's impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.
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So informative!
- By krishna chaitanya on 01-03-22
By: Vijay Prashad, and others
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Central Asia
- A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present
- By: Adeeb Khalid
- Narrated by: Aaqil Ahmed
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events. Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-18th century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule.
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Great History of a Forgotten Region
- By Than on 07-07-21
By: Adeeb Khalid
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Revolt
- The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization
- By: Nadav Eyal
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Revolt is an eloquent and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is not sustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs.
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Good observations, very politically biased.
- By P. Bradley on 11-29-23
By: Nadav Eyal
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Born in Blood and Fire: Fourth Edition
- A Concise History of Latin America
- By: John Charles Chasteen
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The most highly regarded and affordable history of Latin America for our times. Born in Blood and Fire, Fourth Edition has been extensively revised to heighten emphasis on current cultural analyses of Latin American society and facilitate meaningful connections between the Encounter and the present.
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Excellent synopsis of a very broad history.
- By Carina Rahn on 01-11-21
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The Age of Acquiescence
- The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
- By: Steve Fraser
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.
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Excellent
- By Brad on 05-03-15
By: Steve Fraser
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The Balkans [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Mark Mazower
- Narrated by: Robert O'Keefe
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fascinating work, winner of the Wolfson Prize for History Mark Mazower uncovers the history of the Balkans with detail and clarity. He explores the reasons for current conflicts and examines the Balkans as a religious, cultural, and economic melting pot for Europe and Asia. Through Robert O'Keefe's articulate narration, listeners will be absorbed by this rich world.
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Thorough History...
- By David on 09-30-05
By: Mark Mazower
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Colonialism
- A Moral Reckoning
- By: Nigel Biggar
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’—that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now, however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats. These threats are not only external. Especially in the Anglosphere, the ‘decolonisation’ movement corrodes the West’s self-confidence by retelling the history of European and American colonial dominance.
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Outstanding Report on one of the greatest empires ever.
- By mcasteli on 02-22-23
By: Nigel Biggar
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A People’s History of the World
- From the Stone Age to the New Millennium
- By: Chris Harman
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 29 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild-from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the 20th century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism.
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Oh God avoid
- By Robert on 03-28-18
By: Chris Harman
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Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
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Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
- Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
- By: David S. Landes
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes' acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance.
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A detailed explanation
- By Kaarlis on 12-07-21
By: David S. Landes
What listeners say about Against the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- M
- 12-23-23
Outstanding book! Marvellous author!
Captivating storylines based on deep historical research. One can tell Zahra has undergone fascinatingly massive archive work to complete it.
The audio performance was cringy. Could not understand why the narrator kept on mimicking foreign accents. I am sure non-English speaking historic figures communicated amongst themselves in their own languages and hence did not have accents while speaking. Accent making was so notorious that i switched to the paper based book
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- marc
- 04-03-24
Reactionary sovereign-i-ty
The book’s argument is great and quite original: that the 19th C dreams of internationalism (on the left and right) underwent a backlash in the interwar years. But, the narrator reads quotes in weird ‘European’ accents and consistently mispronounces the word ‘sovereignty’ (seemingly using the French pronunciation for the many occurrence of this word in the English text), which I found quite irritating after the umpteenth time.
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