Government Money

When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization.

A national best-seller, Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined - and millions continue to suffer. Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing the development of the world's poorest countries.

In Straight Talk on Trade, Dani Rodrik, an early and outspoken critic of economic globalization taken too far, goes beyond the populist backlash and offers a more reasoned explanation for why our elites' and technocrats' obsession with hyper-globalization made it more difficult for nations to achieve legitimate economic and social objectives at home: economic prosperity, financial stability, and equity.

Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts - austerity - to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system.

The definitive biography of the most important economic statesman of our time, from the best-selling author of The Power Law and More Money Than God. Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of our time in a whole new light.

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite - journalists, managers, and establishment politicians - are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor" - but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich.

In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped to inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor, and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes needed to jumpstart the next wave of socially driven innovations.

Joel Bakan's book is a brilliantly argued account of the corporation's pathological pursuit of profit and power. An eminent law professor and legal theorist, Bakan contends that the corporation is created by law to function much like a psychopathic personality whose destructive behavior, if left unchecked, leads to scandal and ruin. Despite the structural failings found in the corporation, Bakan believes change is possible and outlines a far-reaching program of concrete, pragmatic, and realistic reforms through legal regulation and democratic control.

Capitalism has blessed the world with wealth and technological miracles. It has also cursed it with urban slums, powerless workers, and the vicious boom-and-bust economy. If only there were some way to fix the problems of capitalism and keep all its benefits. In 1897, Henry George published his solution to this puzzle, Progress and Poverty. He suggested that, unlike all other taxes, a tax on land doesn't discourage entrepreneurship. A single tax on land can raise the revenues we need to help the poor without destroying the incentive to create wealth.

The United States has two separate banking systems today - one serving the well-to-do and another exploiting everyone else. How the Other Half Banks contributes to the growing conversation on American inequality by highlighting one of its prime causes: unequal credit. Mehrsa Baradaran examines how a significant portion of the population, deserted by banks, is forced to wander through a Wild West of payday lenders and check-cashing services to cover emergency expenses and pay for necessities - all thanks to deregulation that began in the 1970s.

A groundbreaking volume from the president and CEO of the Appalachian Mountain Club makes the profound argument that to preserve the environment, a revolution must take place in which every person becomes a champion for nature and the outdoors. In The Outdoor Citizen, John Judge coins the term "the outdoor citizen" delivering his remarkably persuasive argument that we must all become citizens of the natural world, owning and instilling in the next generation a keen interest in the outdoors and reconnecting with life's most essential foundation: nature.

El capital de Karl Marx (1818-1883) es una obra clave para entender el desarrollo del comunismo en el siglo XX, la naturaleza del capitalismo, y también la situación geopolítica en la que se encuentra el mundo moderno.

Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture. Mike benefited from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation's rural towns and local businesses.

In Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich reveals the entrenched cycles of power and influence that have damaged American capitalism, perpetuating a new oligarchy in which the 1 percent get ever richer and the rest - middle and working class alike - lose ever more economic agency, making for the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity since World War II.

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself.

In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naím explains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.

Cybersecurity incidents make the news with startling regularity. Each breach makes headlines, inspires panic, instigates lawsuits, and is then forgotten. The cycle of alarm and amnesia continues with the next attack, and the one after that. Cybersecurity expert Josephine Wolff argues that we shouldn't forget about these incidents, we should investigate their trajectory, from technology flaws to reparations for harm done to their impact on future security measures. We can learn valuable lessons in the aftermath of cybersecurity breaches.

Best-selling author Chris Turner brings listeners onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the myriad ways the oil sands of Alberta impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: To both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? This is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the life cycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.

Alan S. Blinder - esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan - is one of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers. In After the Music Stopped, he delivers a masterful narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we must do to recover from it.

A deeply informed and unflinching look at the way corporations have slyly rebranded themselves as socially conscious entities ready to tackle society's problems, while CEO compensation soars, income inequality is at all-time highs, and democracy sits in a precarious situation.