Search results for ""Author James Bartholomew""

Welfare states have spread across the globe, transforming modern civilization. But the take-over is often going badly. In Marseilles, armed drug gangs dominate the social housing estates. In America, an outstandingly wealthy country, 45 million people are dependent on food stamps. In Britain, the NHS has one of the worst records for cancer care in the advanced world. Many countries are collecting more than ever in taxes but managing to get deeper into debt because of their burgeoning welfare states. All around the world, culture is being damaged by welfare state dependency while governments become more and more like Big Brother, telling us what we must do. The twentieth century experienced an epochal war between capitalism and communism. Bartholomew argues that, out of the ashes of that conflict, the real winner has been neither communism nor capitalism. It has been welfare statism-the new, defining form of government of our age that has swept across the advanced world. Without any revolution or great theorist, welfare states are changing the nature of modern civilization. But in what ways? And what lessons can be learned before it is too late? James Bartholomew traveled around the world seeing how cultures and lives are being changed-seeing what is going wrong but also looking for countries where they are making better policy decisions. His book is an unparalleled investigation in which he tells the story of the people and places he visited. He takes the reader on a journey, which includes burnt-out cars in France, a tough-minded benefits office in Singapore and innovative hospitals in Spain.

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Listed by the Sunday Times as one of the five best political books of 2015. Welfare states have spread across the globe, transforming modern civilisation. But the take-over is often going badly. In Marseilles, armed drug gangs dominate the social housing estates. In America, an outstandingly rich country, 45 million people are dependent on food stamps. In Britain, the NHS has one of the worst records for cancer care in the advanced world. Many countries are raising more in taxes but nevertheless getting deeper into debt because of their burgeoning welfare states. All around the world, behaviour is being damaged by welfare state dependency while governments become more and more like Big Brother, telling us what we must do. James Bartholomew travelled around the world seeing how cultures and lives are being changed - seeing what is going wrong but also looking for countries where they are making a better job of it. His book is an unparalleled investigation in which he tells the story of the people and places he visited. He takes the reader on a journey, which includes burnt-out cars in France, a tough-minded benefits office in Singapore and innovative hospitals in Spain.The narrative is supplemented with many photos and graphs that demonstrate and explain. The book is like a window on the modern world.

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The founding of the welfare state in the 1940s was one of the crowning achievements of modern British history - or was it? In this robustly argued book James Bartholomew advances the hitherto sacrilegious argument that however well-meaning its founders, the welfare state has in reality done more harm than good: Do welfare benefits cause unemployment? How the NHS fails to deliver? Can state education ever be properly reformed? Does broken parenting matter? Is a low state pension better than none, and who pays for it? 'The welfare state has caused tens of thousands of people to live deprived and even depraved lives, and has undermined the very decency and kindness which first inspired it. Evidence will be brought forward to show that it has resulted in a generation of badly educated people...The thesis of this book is that Britain would have been better off without the welfare state.'

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The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, rich in architectural and horticultural treasures, are among the most beloved of the world's gardens. Each year more than a million visitors explore the grounds and the greenhouses, seeking the beauty, the peace, the knowledge that this living laboratory and pleasure garden can give. One of the great attractions of Kew is the air of permanence that comes in large part from those architectural features that have survived the centuries, creating an oasis in a sea of change. James Bartholomew, a young Scottish-American, is perhaps the ideal photographer for Kew. At once self-taught and classic in his approach, he has spent three years compiling this timeless portrait. His photographs are carefully composed still-lifes, perceptive studies of historic buildings: the 1848 Palm House (now dismantled for restoration), the Temperate House, the splendid Pagoda. And of great trees: the whorled branches of a Norfolk Island pine, the roots of the beech at Rock Walk in Kew's Wakehurst Place gardens. Bartholomew uses Ansel Adams' Zone System for analyzing tonal range, and his photographs partake of the clarity and faithfulness of Adams' own. The Magic of Kew is an extraordinary folio of 100 beautifully realized images, bringing to us the famous and the little known in Kew, revealing a wealth of architectural detail as well as the nobility of trees and landscapes that have delighted generations of visitors. And now many of these images serve as memorials to great and ancient trees that are no more, trees destroyed by the terrible hurricane that so ravaged Kew in October of 1987. James Bartholomew was born in New York in 1960. He studied at the Parsons School of Design and at the New School for Social Research, and settled in England in 1984. His photographs have been exhibited in both the United States and in England.

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