Books by Michael Mann

Incoherent Empire

by Michael Mann

In this book, noted sociologist Michael Mann argues that the “new American imperialism” is actually a new militarism. Dissecting the economic, political, military and ideological resources available to the US, Mann concludes that they are so uneven as to generate only an ‘incoherent empire’ and increasing world disorder.

The US is a military giant, though it is better at devastating than pacifying countries. It is a political schizophrenic, its personality split between multilateralism, unilateralism and an actual inability to rule over foreign lands or to control its own supposed client states. It is only a backseat driver of the global economy. It cannot steer it, but it prods poorer countries toward an unproductive and unpopular neo-liberalism.

Heat 2: A Novel

by Michael Mann, Meg Gardiner

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!
Michael Mann, four-time-Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice, Collateral, and Heat teams up with Edgar Award–winning author Meg Gardiner to deliver Mann’s first novel, an explosive return to the universe and characters of his classic crime film—with an all-new story unfolding in the years before and after the iconic movie
“A hard-boiled, cinematic read that moves as fast as a well-planned heist.” —Esquire
One day after the end of Heat, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is holed up in Koreatown, wounded, half delirious, and desperately trying to escape LA. Hunting him is LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Hours earlier, Hanna killed Shiherlis’s brother in arms Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a gunfight under the strobe lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna’s determined to capture or kill Shiherlis, the last survivor of McCauley’s crew, before he ghosts out of the city.
In 1988, seven years earlier, McCauley, Shiherlis, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. Driven, daring, they’re pulling in money and living vivid lives. And Chicago homicide detective Vincent Hanna—a man unreconciled with his history—is following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places, hunting an ultraviolent gang of home invaders.
Meanwhile, the fallout from McCauley’s scores and Hanna’s pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative, driving through the years following Heat.
Heat 2 projects its dimensional and richly drawn men and women into whole new worlds—from the inner sanctums of rival crime syndicates in a South American free-trade zone to transnational criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia. The novel brings you intimately into these lives. In Michael Mann’s Heat universe, they will confront new adversaries in lethal circumstances beyond all boundaries.
Heat 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic—a masterpiece of crime fiction with the same extraordinary ambitions, scope, and rich characterizations as the epic film.

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

by Michael Mann, Tom Toles

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant, colorful escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars.

The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books―and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

by Michael Mann, Tom Toles

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant, colorful escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars.

The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books―and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.

Fascists

by Michael Mann

Focusing on the six countries in which fascism became most dominant (Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Spain), this study analyzes the beliefs and actions of people who became fascists in an attempt to view fascism through its own eyes. The result is an original depiction of fascism as "violent, transcendent nation-statism", and a unique perspective differing from other previous theories of fascism.

Fragments of Los Angeles, 1969-1989

by Michael Mann, Jeffrey Deitch

Self-taught Italian photographer Gusmano Cesaretti (born 1944) was one of the very first photographers to document the street culture of East Los Angeles, and The Thrill Is Gone is a retrospective history of his celebrated photographic work of the 1970s. Chapters include "Bikers," "East L.A. Diary," "Folsom Prison," "Maria Sabina," "Muscle Beach" and "Street Writers," along with selected other iconic images from this important time in the photographer's creative history. As a boy growing up in Italy, Cesaretti listened to jazz and rock 'n' roll on the radio, and was drawn to the worlds of Marlon Brando and James Dean in Hollywood movies. But when he arrived in the U.S.--Cesaretti has lived in Los Angeles since 1970--it was the raw energy, graffiti, culture and people of East L.A. that seduced him. His early work--featured here in the chapter "East L.A. Diary"--documents his immersion in the low-rider subculture of the Klique car club. Cesaretti credits his poor English with allowing him to earn the trust of local residents--he found it hard to understand their graffiti on his own and had to ask for help. Independent curator Aaron Rose describes him as "one of the few true artists documenting outlaw cultures in the tradition of Robert Frank."

An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann

by Michael Mann, John A. Hall, Ralph Schroeder

Michael Mann is one of the most influential sociologists of recent decades. His work has had a major impact in sociology, history, political science, international relations and other social science disciplines. In this volume, his work has been systematically and critically assessed by distinguished scholars who take stock of Mann's overall method and of his account of particular periods and historical cases. This timely volume also contains Mann's reply where he answers his critics and forcefully restates his position. It will appeal to scholars across the social sciences.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

by Michael Mann

The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph―a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat to major corporate energy interests and those who do their political bidding. The stakes were simply too high to ignore the Hockey Stick―and so began a relentless attack on a body of science and on the investigators whose work formed its scientific basis.

The Hockey Stick achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the "climate wars." The real issue has never been the graph's data but rather its implied threat to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect the environment and planet. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He reveals key figures in the oil and energy industries and the media frontgroups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, sometimes bare-knuckled ways. Mann concludes with the real story of the 2009 "Climategate" scandal, in which climate scientists' emails were hacked. This is essential reading for all who care about our planet's health and our own well-being.

Does Capitalism Have a Future?

by Michael Mann, Craig Calhoun, Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Georgi Derluguian

In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, a global quintet of distinguished scholars cut their way through to the question of whether our capitalist system can survive in the medium run. Despite the current gloom, conventional wisdom still assumes that there is no real alternative to capitalism. The authors argue that this generalization is a mistaken outgrowth of the optimistic nineteenth-century claim that human history ascends through stages to an enlightened equilibrium of liberal capitalism. All major historical systems have broken down in the end, and in the modern epoch several cataclysmic events-notably the French revolution, World War I, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc-came to pass when contemporary political elites failed to calculate the consequences of the processes they presumed to govern. At present, none of our governing elites and very few intellectuals can fathom a systemic collapse in the coming decades. While the book's contributors arrive at different conclusions, they are in constant dialogue with one another, and they construct a relatively seamless-if open-ended-whole.

Written by five of world's most respected scholars of global historical trends, this ambitious book asks the most important of questions: are we on the cusp of a radical world historical shift?

The Sources of Social Power: Volume 4, Globalizations, 1945–2011

by Michael Mann

Distinguishing four sources of power – ideological, economic, military, and political – this series traces their interrelations throughout human history. This fourth volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power covers the period from 1945 to the present, focusing on the three major pillars of postwar global order: capitalism, the nation-state system, and the sole remaining empire of the world, the United States. In the course of this period, capitalism, nation-states, and empires interacted with one another and were transformed. Mann's key argument is that globalization is not just a single process, because there are globalizations of all four sources of social power, each of which has a different rhythm of development. Topics include the rise and beginnings of decline of the American Empire, the fall or transformation of communism (respectively, the Soviet Union and China), the shift from neo-Keynesianism to neoliberalism, and the three great crises emerging in this period – nuclear weapons, the great recession, and climate change.

The Sources of Social Power: Volume 3, Global Empires and Revolution, 1890–1945

by Michael Mann

Distinguishing four sources of power – ideological, economic, military, and political – this series traces their interrelations throughout human history. This third volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power begins with nineteenth century global empires and continues with a global history of the twentieth century up to 1945. Mann focuses on the interrelated development of capitalism, nation-states, and empires. Volume 3 discusses the “Great Divergence” between the fortunes of the West and the rest of the world; the self-destruction of European and Japanese power in two world wars; the Great Depression; the rise of American and Soviet power; the rivalry between capitalism, socialism, and fascism; and the triumph of a reformed and democratic capitalism.

The Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914

by Michael Mann

Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military, and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history. This second volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War, focusing on France, Great Britain, Hapsburg Austria, Prussia/Germany and the United States. Based on considerable empirical research, it provides original theories of the rise of nations and nationalism, of class conflict, of the modern state and of modern militarism. While not afraid to generalize, it also stresses social and historical complexity. Michael Mann sees human society as “a patterned mess” and attempts to provide a sociological theory appropriate to this. This theory culminates in the final chapter, an original explanation of the causes of the First World War. First published in 1993, this new edition of volume 2 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work.

The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760

by Michael Mann

Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military, and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history. In this first volume, Michael Mann examines inter-relations between these elements from neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilizations, the classical Mediterranean age, and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England. It offers explanations of the emergence of the state and social stratification; of city-states, militaristic empires, and the persistent interaction between them; of the world salvation religions; and of the particular dynamism of medieval and early modern Europe. It ends by generalizing about the nature of overall social development, the varying forms of social cohesion, and the role of classes and class struggle in history. First published in 1986, this new edition of volume 1 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work.

Heat 2 A Novel

by Michael Mann, Meg Gardiner

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!

Michael Mann, four-time-Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice, Collateral, and Heat teams up with Edgar Award-winning author Meg Gardiner to deliver Mann's first novel, an explosive return to the universe and characters of his classic crime film--with an all-new story unfolding in the years before and after the iconic movie

"A hard-boiled, cinematic read that moves as fast as a well-planned heist." --Esquire

One day after the end of Heat, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is holed up in Koreatown, wounded, half delirious, and desperately trying to escape LA. Hunting him is LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Hours earlier, Hanna killed Shiherlis's brother in arms Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a gunfight under the strobe lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna's determined to capture or kill Shiherlis, the last survivor of McCauley's crew, before he ghosts out of the city.

In 1988, seven years earlier, McCauley, Shiherlis, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. Driven, daring, they're pulling in money and living vivid lives. And Chicago homicide detective Vincent Hanna--a man unreconciled with his history--is following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places, hunting an ultraviolent gang of home invaders.

Meanwhile, the fallout from McCauley's scores and Hanna's pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative, driving through the years following Heat.

Heat 2 projects its dimensional and richly drawn men and women into whole new worlds--from the inner sanctums of rival crime syndicates in a South American free-trade zone to transnational criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia. The novel brings you intimately into these lives. In Michael Mann's Heat universe, they will confront new adversaries in lethal circumstances beyond all boundaries.

Heat 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic--a masterpiece of crime fiction with the same extraordinary ambitions, scope, and rich characterizations as the epic film.