These essays explore what happens when a skilful economist makes unconventional assumptions. Economic theory has traditionally relied upon a tacit and 'classical' set of assumptions that have gradually acquired a life of their own in defining how economists write and how they justify economic models. Similarly, these assumptions have acquired an autonomous character: they guide the way economists think about the world. In consequence, consideration of alternative assumptions has become taboo. These essays are substantively and stylistically novel because they break these taboos and bring new assumptions into economic theory. The papers apply this adventurous approach to a wide range of issues - from insurance markets and trade in underdeveloped countries to unemployment and discrimination. Some of the essays derive the implications for economic markets of costly asymmetric information. Others explore the findings of other social sciences such as anthropology, psychology and sociology.

A fast-paced contemporary thriller in the vein of James Patterson and Anthony Horowitz set against the bustling backdrop of Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the border of China. This heart-pounding adventure takes place as two teens, an American teenage boy and his friend, a Chinese girl from his Washington, DC-area high school, must find her father who has been kidnapped—and they only have nine days. Although the characters in the novel are fictionalized, they are based on a real Chinese family who were part of the Chinese Democracy Movement and inspired this story. "Few mysteries combine cultural diversity, politics and physical danger with a lighthearted friendship. This engaging mix will have great appeal."— Kirkus Reviews "A captivating thriller grounded in real-world problems."— Publishers Weekly "A rollicking and fast-paced young adult adventure novel."— South China Morning Post "Hiatt...offers middle-school-aged readers an appealing mix of action and friendship, with lessons about world events and human rights woven throughout."— Washington Post Book World “A compelling, teen-centric political thriller . . . inspired by actual events.”— BooklistOnline.com A NCSS/CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

The ordinary seaman is Esteban, a 19-year-old veteran of the war in Nicaragua who has come to America with fourteen other men to crew the boat 'Urus'. Docked on a desolate Brooklyn pier, the 'Urus' turns out to be a wreck, sitting idle without plumbing or electricity. Lacking the means to return to their native country or the ability to find other work, the fifteen men become prisoners on a ship that never moves. As Esteban works up the courage to escape into the city and create a new life, the novel reveals the stories he and the other men share: each man's past is shrouded in the residue of broken hopes, hearts and dreams, betrayal and defiance, and of haunting loves, ghostly and actual. Evoking the work of Joseph Conrad, The Ordinary Seaman traces the very real conflicts between native and foreign, traditional and modern, with a voice all of its own.

A Time Out New York Best Book of the Year Named one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35 by the National Book Foundation Includes an Author Interview and Discussion Questions A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic--and the world thinks Lucy Clark's father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy's problems. There's her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hatwear who's also a crackhead; her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy's lover, Stanley, who's hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife's frozen eggs. Finally, there's Lucy herself, who tries to surmount her drug addiction and keep her family intact in this brilliant novel about survival and recovery, opportunity and apocalypse, and, finally, love and faith in an age of anxiety.

The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television.About Childers: Robert Erskine Childers DSC (25 June 1870 - 24 November 1922), universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist, who was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. He was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers; the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton; and the father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers

Product Description Prize-winning poetry collection by the author of The Speed of Light. About the Author Elizabeth Rosner's poetry has appeared in literary journals that include Poetry, Poetry East, The Cream City Review, and Southern Poetry Review, among others. Her first novel, The Speed of Light, was published by Ballantine Books in 2001.

"Revealing! An encyclopedia of what our celebrated betters do between the sheets."-- TIME "More astonishing and outrageous than most of us would even imagine."-- Forecast "Entirely fascinating. . . . Hugely entertaining."--Auberon Waugh, Inquiry "Something for everyone . . . eminent flashers, fetishists, flagellants, plain old down home fornicators, and goings-on galore."-- Cosmopolitan From the indefatigable Wallace family, authors of The Book of Lists and The People's Almanac series ( New York Times bestsellers that sold over eight million copies internationally), came 1981's The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People . This compelling bestseller that kept many a reader up at night with its two hundred revealing profiles and three hundred rare photos just got better with a dozen new entries on the nocturnal fascinations of the iconic Tupac Shakur, Carlos Casteneda, Jim Morrison, Nico, Wilt Chamberlain, Ayn Rand, Kurt Cobain, Princess Diana, Aleister Crowley, Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Hutchence, and Malcolm X. Irving Wallace was the famous novelist and screenwriting author of The Chapman Report and The Word . His wife, Sylvia Wallace , wrote the best-selling novel The Fountains . The Wallace family's publishing magic lives on with Amy Wallace , author of The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda , and David Wallechinsky , author of The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics and Tyrants: The World's Worst Dictators .

Set in the early 1900s, Viennese Romance tells the story of Michael Rost, an eighteen-year-old Jewish youth who travels to Vienna, hungry for experience. There, he forms passing relationships with everyone who crosses his path - prostitutes, revolutionaries, paupers, army officers, and rich men alike. With a foreword that explains how this lost novel came to light, Viennese Romance is a seminal work that explores the conflicts faced by many Jewish intellectuals in early-twentieth-century Europe. A compelling portrait of a decadent society, it also lays bare the obsessive-destructive nature of love.

This wide-ranging book is an intellectual history of how informed readers read their Bibles over the past four hundred years, from the first translations in the sixteenth century to the emergence of fundamentalism in the twentieth century. In an astonishing display of erudition, David Katz recreates the response of readers from different eras by examining the 'horizon of expectations' that provided the lens through which they read. In the Renaissance, says Katz, learned men rushed to apply the tools of textual analysis to the Testaments, fully confident that God's Word would open up and reveal shades of further truth. During the English Civil War, there was a symbiotic relationship between politics and religion, as the practical application of the biblical message was hammered out. Science - Newtonian and Darwinian, as well as the emerging disciplines of anthropology, archaeology and geology - also had great impact on how the Bible was received. The rise of the novel and the development of a concept of authorial copyright were other factors that alerted readers' experience. Katz discusses all of these and more, concluding with the growth of fundamentalism in America, which brought biblical interpretation back to the Lutheran certainty of a demonstrable authority. 'This is a wonderfully learned, very clever, artfully constructed and engagingly written book.' Peter Lake, Princeton University David S. Katz holds the Abraham Horodisch Chair for the History of Books at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of 'The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850' and, with Richard H. Popkin, 'Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium'.

What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau—and Daniel Levin Becker, a young American obsessed with language play? Only the Oulipo, the Paris-based experimental collective founded in 1960 and fated to become one of literature’s quirkiest movements. An international organization of writers, artists, and scientists who embrace formal and procedural constraints to achieve literature’s possibilities, the Oulipo (the French acronym stands for “workshop for potential literature”) is perhaps best known as the cradle of Georges Perec’s novel A Void, which does not contain the letter e. Drawn to the Oulipo’s mystique, Levin Becker secured a Fulbright grant to study the organization and traveled to Paris. He was eventually offered membership, becoming only the second American to be admitted to the group. From the perspective of a young initiate, the Oulipians and their projects are at once bizarre and utterly compelling. Levin Becker’s love for games, puzzles, and language play is infectious, calling to mind Elif Batuman’s delight in Russian literature in The Possessed. In recent years, the Oulipo has inspired the creation of numerous other collectives: the OuMuPo (a collective of DJs), the OuMaPo (marionette players), the OuBaPo (comic strip artists), the OuFlarfPo (poets who generate poetry with the aid of search engines), and a menagerie of other Ou-X-Pos (workshops for potential something ). Levin Becker discusses these and other intriguing developments in this history and personal appreciation of an iconic—and iconoclastic—group.

A gripping tale of guilty secrets, betrayal, and racial tension, of isolation and revenge in modern-day South Africa, from the Man Booker Prize—shortlisted author of The Good Doctor When Adam moves into the abandoned house on the dusty edge of town, he is hoping to recover from the loss of his job and his home in the city. But when he meets Canning — a shadowy figure from his childhood — and Canning’s enigmatic and beautiful wife, a sinister new chapter in his life begins. Canning has inherited a vast fortune and a giant folly in the veld, a magical place of fantasy and dreams that seduces Adam and transforms him absolutely, violently — and perhaps forever. The Impostor evokes a hot and cruel and claustrophobic world, in which sex and death are never far from the surface. Skilfully interweaving the story of one man’s struggle to regain his moral centre with the disorienting, often tragic effects of massive social and political change, it is Galgut’s most powerful and unforgettable novel yet. From the Hardcover edition.

A gripping tale of guilty secrets, betrayal, and racial tension, of isolation and revenge in modern-day South Africa, from the Man Booker Prize—shortlisted author of The Good Doctor When Adam moves into the abandoned house on the dusty edge of town, he is hoping to recover from the loss of his job and his home in the city. But when he meets Canning — a shadowy figure from his childhood — and Canning’s enigmatic and beautiful wife, a sinister new chapter in his life begins. Canning has inherited a vast fortune and a giant folly in the veld, a magical place of fantasy and dreams that seduces Adam and transforms him absolutely, violently — and perhaps forever. The Impostor evokes a hot and cruel and claustrophobic world, in which sex and death are never far from the surface. Skilfully interweaving the story of one man’s struggle to regain his moral centre with the disorienting, often tragic effects of massive social and political change, it is Galgut’s most powerful and unforgettable novel yet.

""Fridays at ten of four is when we listen to our favorite person ever, Cliff Mass. If you don't know who Cliff Mass is, well, he's this thing me and Mom have, this awesome weather geek who loves weather so much you have no choice but to love him in return." - from Maria Semple's novel, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? This is a lavishly illustrated guide to making sense of the region's unique atmospheric and geographic forces. For the new edition of this contemporary classic, Cliff Mass has extensively revised and updated, as well as expanding his coverage of British Columbia as well as considering the impact of wildfires on the region's meteorology. A fascinating read, the book is indispensable to anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of the region's is weather"--

Fans of crime noir and pulp fiction will love the sensational spin-off of the acclaimed Gun Honey comics featuring a brand new fiery heroine, Dahlia Racers. This graphic novel is written by award-winning co-founder of Hard Case Crime Charles Ardai teaming with brand new series artist Ace Continuado. Award-winning writer and co-founder of Hard Case Crime Charles Ardai returns to the Gun Honey universe in this action-packed spin-off featuring the sultry and explosive artwork of Ace Continuado! Dahlia Racers is a fiery redhead who, when someone’s gunning for you, will take the heat on herself – for a price. As a master of disguise and deception, she uses every trick to dupe those who want you captured or dead. But will a new job taking Gun Honey Joanna Tan’s place in the crosshairs turn out to be too hot to handle? Marked for death by a U.S. intelligence agency, Gun Honey Joanna Tan turns to Dahlia Racers to help her pull a vanishing act. But the killer hot on her trail, beautiful sociopath Sarah Claride, will leave bodies strewn from New York to Las Vegas to Tijuana, Mexico, if it means cornering Dahlia — and breaking her… If you’re a fan of classic pulp fiction and crime noir, and love a strong sexy heroine with flaming red hair, this is the book for you!

Romance novelist, Nat Noland, is suffering from writer's block when he makes up a silly email address sending a list to God of ideas for punishments. When God replies, Nat, a die hard atheist is shocked. Now, Nat keeps getting messages from God and he's having a very hard time concentrating on his new novel.

Thomas Penman is the acclaimed autobiographical debut novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Bruce Robinson, the author of "Withnail and I". This is the story of a dysfunctional family. It is about a boy and his grandpa, life and death, sex and hate, dog's meat and cancer. It is also about pornography, enemas, Morse codes, puberty, secrets, God and loathing. It is also about love.

To predict likely policy developments around the world over the next thirty years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses game theoretic models as described in Predicting Politics. The tools used in this book have found wide application in business and in the development of significant American foreign policy initiatives over the years. The author uses data from 1948 to show the ability of models to predict the end of the Cold War. He then turns to data from 1980 for about one hundred countries and simulates future states of the world, especially with regard to further democratization. In the process he shows strong evidence that the burst of democratization that occurred at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was predictable based on replicable data known in 1980. While delving into rather gloomy predictions about likely developments in Russia and China's domestic affairs, he offers a novel explanation for the failure of Russia to attract more investment and to achieve the higher growth rates commonly associated with democratic government. Although Russia is certainly more democratic in an absolute sense today than it was in 1980, it has fallen farther behind the rest of the world in terms of democratization and so lacks the comparative advantages of property rights, rule of law, and transparent governance that are essential for attracting investment. Bueno de Mesquita shows how policy situations and game theoretical analyses can explain the past, illuminate the present, and forecast future events. At the same time he provides the tools necessary for others to create their own rigorous estimates of future foreign policies.

With a new introduction by Thomas Mallon "Dubin's Lives" (1979) is a compassionate and wry commedia, a book praised by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in "The New York Times" as Malamud's "best novel since "The Assistant," Possibly, it is the best he has written of all." Its protagonist is one of Malamud's finest characters; prize-winning biographer William Dubin, who learns from lives, or thinks he does: those he writes, those he shares, the life he lives. Now in his later middle age, he seeks his own secret self, and the obsession of biography is supplanted by the obsession of love--love for a woman half is age, who has sought an understanding of her life through his books. "Dubin's Lives" is a rich, subtle book, as well as a moving tale of love and marriage.

A novel of satanic decadence in the tradition of J-K Huysmans, FANTAZIUSe ^MALLARE is the tale of a deranged recluse who declares war on reality. In his world of hallucination and twisted eroticism, Mallare needs a woman to worship him as a god; aided by Goliath, his deformed dwarf servant he entices a submissive gypsy girl whom he strives to enthrall in chains of horror and ecstasy. First published in 1922, FANTAZIUSe ^MALLARE is the second novel by famous American playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht. The book was suppressed as obscene by the Federal Government on its initial publication, and artist Wallace Smith sent to jail. It is now published in an uncensored edition which includes all 10 original decadent/erotic illustrations by Smith. COUNTe ^FANNY'Se ^NUPTIALS, first published clandestinely in London in 1907, remains one of the most rare and elusive of all decadent texts. Its author "Simon Arrow" is sometimes identified as Ronald Firbank, although it seems more likely that the publisher, G. Hope Johnstone, also created it. This joint edition of FANTAZIUSe ^MALLARE and COUNTe ^FANNY'Se ^NUPTIALS constitutes a volume of rare and unadulterated erotic decadence which stands as the final flourish of the genre.

The Hidden Pattern presents a novel philosophy of mind, intended to form a coherent conceptual framework within which it is possible to understand the diverse aspects of mind and intelligence in a unified way. The central concept of the philosophy presented is the concept of "pattern" minds and the world they live in and co-create are viewed as patterned systems of patterns, evolving over time, and various aspects of subjective experience and individual and social intelligence are analyzed in detail in this light. Many of the ideas presented are motivated by recent research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and the author's own AI research is discussed in moderate detail in one chapter. However, the scope of the book is broader than this, incorporating insights from sources as diverse as Vedantic philosophy, psychedelic psychotherapy, Nietzschean and Peircean metaphysics and quantum theory. One of the unique aspects of the patternist approach is the way it seamlessly fuses the mechanistic, engineering-oriented approach to intelligence and the introspective, experiential approach to intelligence.