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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A BRIEF HISTORY OF POWER. How Humans Learned to Rule, Obey, Resist, and Rebel: Power is a relationship, a system, hard to resist.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF POWER. How Humans Learned to Rule, Obey, Resist, and Rebel: Power is a relationship, a system, hard to resist.

Volpe, Isaac

Paperback

Series: Brief History Of..., Book 21

PhilosophyGeneral Political Science

ISBN13: 9798187359660
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 15 2026
Pages: 116
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.24 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Who really holds power, and why do the rest of us obey?

Power has shaped every civilization in human history. It built kingdoms and empires, created laws and institutions, inspired revolutions, and determined who would rule, who would serve, and who would dare to resist.

But power is not confined to presidents, generals, monarchs, or billionaires. It operates through governments, corporations, religions, social customs, economic systems, classrooms, workplaces, and even the ideas people accept as natural or inevitable.

In A Brief History of Power, Isaac Volpe traces humanity's struggle with authority from primate hierarchies and hunter-gatherer societies to ancient kings, colonial empires, democratic revolutions, totalitarian regimes, digital surveillance, and artificial intelligence.

Along the way, discover:

  • How early societies prevented powerful individuals from dominating the group
  • Why did agriculture make permanent hierarchy and inequality possible
  • How rulers transformed force into legitimate authority
  • What Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Weber, Arendt, Gramsci, and Foucault revealed about power
  • Why do people obey systems that may work against their own interests
  • How enslaved, colonized, and oppressed communities resisted domination
  • Why power can reduce empathy and distort judgment
  • How propaganda, bureaucracy, social media, and surveillance shape modern behavior
  • Whether artificial intelligence will distribute power or concentrate it as never before
Clear, compelling, and global in scope, this book reveals that power is not simply something possessed by rulers. It is a relationship, a system, and a continuous contest between authority and freedom.

Understanding power is the first step toward recognizing when it is legitimate, when it becomes dangerous, and when it must be challenged.

Key Learning Points

  1. Where power comes from, beginning with evolutionary dominance, coalition-building, and early human egalitarianism.
  2. How hierarchy became permanent through agriculture, property, cities, taxation, writing, religion, and organized government.
  3. Why people obey, including the roles of legitimacy, tradition, charisma, law, ideology, and social conditioning.
  4. How invisible power works by controlling agendas, shaping preferences, defining acceptable behavior, and limiting what people imagine possible.
  5. Why power can corrupt, including its effects on empathy, judgment, accountability, and access to accurate information.
  6. How resistance succeeds, from everyday noncompliance and civil disobedience to organized rebellion and democratic revolution.
  7. How power is changing today through corporations, algorithms, surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, climate politics, and weakening democratic institutions.
Discover how power is built, justified, challenged, and transformed. Buy and read A Brief History of Power and discover the hidden forces that have ruled humanity for thousands of years.


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