World Finance

Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world - one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism, the leading source of the world's most popular drug, and perhaps the most widespread word on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee's 500-year transformation from a mysterious Muslim ritual into an everyday necessity.

Like Henry Ford, Sam Walton, or Steve Jobs in the early years of Ford, Walmart, and Apple, Jeff Bezos is the business story of the decade. Bezos, the richest man on the planet, has built one of the most efficient wealth-creation machines in history with 2% of US household income being spent on nearly 500 million products shipped from warehouses in 17 countries.

Fresh out of college, Erez Cohen set foot in an investment banking firm. Whether through luck or fortune, he was assigned a position with the real estate group. He was handed a book that soon birthed his love affair with real estate that continues to this day. In Real Estate Titans, Cohen draws on his personal experiences wherein he became a teacher and research assistant to his mentor, Dr. Linneman. During that time, he met, talked, and heard stories from distinguished real estate titans, such as Stephen Ross, Barry Sternlicht, Sam Zell, Steven Roth, et al.

Compiled for the first time, and with Buffett's permission, these letters spotlight his contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest, his preference for conservative rather than conventional decision making, and his goal and tactics for bettering market results by at least 10 percent annually. Demonstrating Buffett's intellectual rigor, they provide a framework to the craft of investing that had not existed before.

This is the story of a man caught in the middle of a huge American destabilising operation, illustrating the secret economic war that the United States is waging against developed nations across the world. In 2014, France lost part of the control of its nuclear power plants to the United States. Frédéric Pierucci, former senior executive of one of Alstom's subsidiaries, found himself at the heart of this state scandal. His story goes to the very heart of a $12 billion thriller that illustrates the secret economic war that the United States is waging in Europe.

George Friedman has forecasted the coming trends (politics, technology, population, and culture) of the next century in The Next 100 Years, and focused his predictions on the coming ten years in The Next Decade. Now, in Flashpoints, Friedman zooms in on the region that has, for 500 years, been the cultural hotbed of the world - Europe - and examines the most basic and fascinating building block of the region: culture.

In this exciting new audio, Peter L. Bernstein tells the story of history's most coveted, celebrated, and inglorious asset: gold.

The shocks of 2020 have been great and small, disrupting the world economy, international relations, and the daily lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Never before has the entire world economy contracted by 20 percent in a matter of weeks nor in the historic record of modern capitalism has there been a moment in which 95 percent of the world's economies were suffering all at the same time. Across the world, hundreds of millions have lost their jobs. And over it all looms the specter of pandemic, and death.

The media often suggest that Russia poses the greatest threat to America's national security, but the real danger lies farther east. While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America's economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure - and they're winning. It's almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese. In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China's motives and secret attacks on the West.

China's growing role in the global economy is showing no sign of retreat. Indeed, recent events have only increased China's influence - to the point where China is poised to edge out the United States and take the lead. For investors like you, this tectonic shift poses difficult challenges - along with tremendous opportunities. In China's Rise and the New Age of Gold, one of the 21st century's top economic experts, Stephen Leeb, lays out his compelling argument that explosive gains in gold lie ahead.

When most people think of the drama of global finance, they think of stocks and bonds, venture capital, high-tech IPOs, and complex mortgage backed securities. But commodities? What could be more boring? That’s exactly what the elite commodity traders want you to think. They don’t seek the media spotlight. Their astonishing wealth was created in near-total obscurity, because they dwelled either in closely held private companies or deep within large banks and corporations, where commodity profits and losses weren’t broken out.

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

The World’s Simplest Guide to the Stock Market is the ideal first audiobook for anyone new to stocks, but is also useful for someone looking for a refresher on the basics. If you want to understand stocks and the stock market, this is the place to start!

The Great Devaluation is the number one best-selling book that explains why the real crisis facing the world today is not the coronavirus. The real crisis facing the world is explosive government debt and deficits. Governments are now left with no choice but to spend more than they make, borrow more than they can ever repay, and devalue their currencies to cover it all up.

A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for

The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.

In language that is both colorful and accessible, Rogers explains why the world of commodity investing can be one of the simplest of all - and how commodities are the bases by which investors can value companies, markets, and whole economies. To be a truly great investor is to know something about commodities. For small investors and high rollers alike, Hot Commodities is as good as gold . . . or lead, or aluminum, which are some of the commodities Rogers says could be as rewarding for investors.

The ancient Babylonians were the first people to discover the universal laws of prosperity. In The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason reveals their secrets for creating, growing, and retaining wealth.

It was Adam Smith (1723-1790) who first established economics as a separate branch of knowledge, and many would say his work has never been surpassed. The Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776, is the definitive text for all who believe that economic decisions are best left to markets, not governments. At the heart of Smith's doctrine is an optimistic view of the effects of self-interest. Though each individual seeks only personal gain, the collective result is increased prosperity, which benefits society as a whole.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Thomas Friedman, in The World Is Flat, declared globalization the new economic order. But the reign of globalization as we’ve known it is over, argues Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst Rana Foroohar, and the rise of local, regional, and homegrown business is now at hand.

Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the 17th century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the age of Greenspan, bringing the listener into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are.