"The Threshold of the Visible World" advances a new political aesthetic - Kaja Silverman explores the possibilities for looking beyond the restrictive mandates of the self, and the normative aspects of the cultural image-repertoire. She provides a detailed account of the social and psychic forces which constrain us to look and identify in normative ways, and the violence which that normativity implies. Accounting for these phenomena on both a conscious and an unconscious level, Silverman analyzes the psychic and textual conditions under which our "field of vision" can be expanded. The title of this book is taken from Lacan's essay on the mirror stage. In that text, Lacan writes that "the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world." He thereby suggests that the visible world has no existence as such until the infant subject has access to an image of self. Lacan intimates that the mirror provides the frame through which one relates to others within the domain of vision, stressing the priority of narcissism and the ego over all other libidinal transactions. The Threshold of the Visible World provides a psychic, social and political specification of Lacan's claim, and most particularly of its implications for the subject's relations to the social other. This is accomplished through examination of the ego, as well as two other categories at the center of Lacan's account of the mirror stage: ideality and identification. This book is an ethical-political project which leads to the re-elaboration of a number of crucial theoretical categories--Silverman offers an account of the bodily ego, of identification, of idealization, of the gaze, of the look, and of the "photographic." The Threshold of the Visible World leads as well to the formulation of a fresh model for conceptualizing sexual, racial and class "difference," and the terms under which it might be dismantled. This book thus seeks to apprehend the field of vision through the frame of a different kind of bodily ego, and discover the pleasures to be derived from corporeal transport.

The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign--victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line--to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph--we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered "over the top" ventured into No Man's Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.--

In 2002, Einhorn spoke publicly about Allied Capital--a leader in the private finance industry--presenting it as an excellent short opportunity. Einhorn describes the incredible events that followed his speech and how Allied and the investment community attacked him to protect the company--and its stock price. Informative and intriguing, "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" details how the current environment on Wall Street--and the world of hedge funds in particular-- not only allows for such behavior, but how it protects the companies and attacks those who attempt to uncover them.--From publisher's description.

Economists generally accept as a given the old adage that there's no accounting for tastes. Gary Becker disagrees, and in this new collection he confronts the problem of preferences and values: how they are formed and how they affect our behavior. He observes, for example, that adjacent restaurants, which have roughly the same quality of food and similar prices, may differ greatly in the number of customers they are able to attract. Why is one invariably full, while the other has seats to spare? And why is it that the profits of tobacco companies may rise when consumption falls? The answers to these and many other questions about people's consumption patterns, Becker argues, have to do with the way preferences and values are shaped. Although these are central topics of social behavior, they have never been addressed in a systematic and analytical way. Becker applies the tools of modern economic analysis to just this topic, one that economists have traditionally left out of their models for rational choice. As Becker observes, once people's basic needs for food, shelter, and rest are met, their consumption depends very much on how their tastes are formed - on childhood experiences and on social and cultural influences. For many kinds of behavior, there is a strong positive effect of past behavior on current behavior, and there are strong peer effects. Thus, whether a person currently smokes or uses drugs depends significantly on whether he has smoked or taken drugs in the past. And his choice of music, movies, and books depends to a large extent on what his friends and associates have to say about them. Becker argues that, for a large class of behavior, decisions on what to consume arenot independent of one another but are interdependent. He incorporates past experiences and social influences into preferences or tastes through two basic capital stocks, which he calls personal capital and social capital. At any moment in time, what a person wants depends not only on the menu of goods he can choose from and their prices but also on his current stock of personal and social capital. Behaviors that raise or lower these stocks (trying out the popular new drug, joining on upscale health club) will change his future desires and choices.

From the Foreword: For the past two decades Canadian politicans of all stripes have told us that it's time to stop "mortgaging our future." They've talked about the unfairness of saddling future generations with a massive public debt, and they've talked about the need to correct the deep flaws inherent in our welfare state entitlements.... While many of Levant's peers have a general sense of the fiscal disaster which they are set to inherit, few have a deep understanding of the fiscal and political causes and consequences of it. "Youthquake" probes those questions with humour and passion, making it a compelling introduction to issues that are too often the preserve of policy specialists. Simply put, those who want to know the bottom line won't have to pour through actuarial tables or academic jargon to learn that a Canadian born in the 1970s will end up paying $200,000 more in taxes than he receives in services, or that the CPP premiums are set to triple over the next 20 years.

From the author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder , Calamities of Exile combines three gripping narratives that afford a sort of double CAT scan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile. "Beautiful but harrowing chronicles of three exiles that probe the moral and personal risks of their encounters with totalitarianism. . . . Piercing and timely."— Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Weschler . . . combines a novelist's gift for drama with the objectivity and research skills of a journalist. . . . The result is three gripping profiles of very human but also extraordinary men."— Publishers Weekly "[Weschler's] thorough accounting of the men's covert operations, assumed identities and strained relationships with fathers, wives, and colleagues creates a disturbing triptych of the perils of totalitarianism."—Lance Gould, New York Times Book Review "Weschler tells these three tragic tales with an admirable combination of psychological penetration, intellectual thrust, concision and compassion."—Francis King, Spectator "Endlessly absorbing. . . . Breathtaking."—Jeri Laber, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"From one of the leading historians of the Jewish past comes a stunning look into a previously unexamined dimension of Jewish life and culture: the calendar. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a momentous reform of Western timekeeping, and with it a period of great instability. Jews, like all minority cultures in Europe, had to realign their time-keeping to accord with the new Christian calendar. Elisheva Carlebach shows that the calendar is a complex and living system, constantly modified as new preoccupations emerge and old priorities fade. Calendars serve to structure time and activities and thus become mirrors of experience. Through this seemingly mundane and all-but-overlooked document, we can reimagine the quotidian world of early modern Jewry, of market days and sacred days, of times to avoid Christian gatherings and times to secure communal treasures. In calendars, we see one of the central paradoxes of Jewish existence: the need to encompass the culture of the other while retaining one#x19;s own unique culture. Carlebach reveals that Jews have always lived in multiple time scales, and demonstrates how their accounting for time, as much as any cultural monument, has shaped Jewish life. After a decade exploring Judaica collections around the world, Carlebach brings to light these textually rich and beautifully designed repositories of Jewish life. With color illustrations throughout, this is an evocative illumination of how early modern Jewry marked the rhythms and realities of time and filled it with anxieties and achievements."--Jacket.

Shaping Race Policy investigates one of the most serious policy challenges facing the United States today: the stubborn persistence of racial inequality in the post-civil rights era. Unlike other books on the topic, it is comparative, examining American developments alongside parallel histories of race policy in Great Britain and France. Focusing on on two key policy areas, welfare and employment, the book asks why America has had such uneven success at incorporating African Americans and other minorities into the full benefits of citizenship. Robert Lieberman explores the historical roots of racial incorporation in these policy areas over the course of the twentieth century and explains both the relative success of antidiscrimination policy and the failure of the American welfare state to address racial inequality. He chronicles the rise and resilience of affirmative action, including commentary on the recent University of Michigan affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court. He also shows how nominally color-blind policies can have racially biased effects, and challenges the common wisdom that color-blind policies are morally and politically superior and that race-conscious policies are merely second best. Shaping Race Policy has two innovative features that distinguish it from other works in the area. First, it is comparative, examining American developments alongside parallel histories of race policy in Great Britain and France. Second, its argument merges ideas and institutions, which are usually considered separate and competing factors, into a comprehensive and integrated explanatory approach. The book highlights the importance of two factors--America's distinctive political institutions and the characteristic American tension between race consciousness and color blindness--in accounting for the curious pattern of success and failure in American race policy.

This book describes in detail how to effectively treat severely ill but not psychotic patients, by careful psychotherapeutic work on the defenses and the superego. Diverging widely from Kernberg's and Kohut's work with the same broad spectrum of patients, Léon Wurmser demonstrates his flexible and individualized method with clinical material taken directly from actual patient–therapist interaction. The core of the therapeutic work focuses on trauma; forms of defense; conflicts within the superego; and the related affects of guilt, shame, depression, and resentment. Appreciating the complex and individual nature of each case, the author uses the familiar concepts of masochism, aggression, narcissism, and repetition compulsion as descriptions, not explanations, of clinical observations. There are no shortcuts; a genuine understanding that results in real change for the patient requires an in-depth exploration of the material in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. Observing that categories, while necessary, tend to be slowly transformed into words of devaluation, Dr. Wurmser addresses the implicit, and often quite explicit, judgmental spirit directed toward severely ill patients, and cautions clinicians to avoid falling into the role of a judging authority. This is an eloquent accounting of a master therapist's successes and failures, valuable especially for offering effective and decisive interventions in treating traditionally untreatable patients.

DANNY SCHECHTER, "The News Dissector" has spent decades as a truth teller in the media, with leading media companies and as an independent filmmaker with the award-winning independent company Globalvision. A graduate of Cornell and the London School of Economics, Schechter was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a multiple Emmy Award winner at ABC News, where he was among the first to cover the S&L crisis. In 2007, his film IN DEBT WE TRUST was the first to expose Wall Street's connection to subprime loans, predicting the economic crisis that this book investigates. Schechter is a blogger, editor of Mediachannel.org, and author of nine books. He has reported from 53 countries, and lives in Gotham. He owns no derivatives or tranches.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Foreword Introduction 3 Note on Coinage, Weights, and Other Technical Terms 10Pt. 1 At the Origins of the Commercial Revolution I Commerce in the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim East, and the Catholic West 19Pt. 2 Markets, Merchants, Merchandise, and Means of Exchange Durgaing the Commercial Revolution II The Development of Markets 51III The Growth of the Merchant Class 87IV The Diversification of Merchandise 108V The Evolution of the Means of Exchange 143Pt. 3 Commercial Contracts and Commercial Investments VI Loans and the Problem of Interest 157VII The Contract of Exchange and Its Double Function 162VIII The Sea Loan and the Sea Exchange 168IX The Commenda Contract 174X Partnerships and Other Contracts Used in Land Trade 185XI Depositors, Factors, and Commission Agents 212XII Some Other Forms of Agreement 221XIII Informal Commercial Papers 229Pt. 4 The Route and the Thorns Along it XIV Transportation by Sea 239XV Transportation by Land 248XVI The Development of Insurance Contracts 255XVII Commercial Litigation and Sharp Business Practices 266XVIII Business Failures and their Settlement 290XIX International Disputes over Trade 303XX Legal Restrictions of Trade 327Pt. 5 Tools and Ideas XXI Manuals 341XXII The Progress of Accounting Methods 359XXIII Commercial Correspondence 378XXIV Moral Standards and Practical Advice 408 List of Works Cited 427 Bibliography 447 Index 461.

The realities of mounting government debt, tax burdens, and an aging population raise serious concerns about the financial legacy confronting future generations. How great a fiscal burden will current policies leave to subsequent generations, and how might changes in those policies alter the intergenerational distribution of public welfare? Generational accounting has recently emerged as a robust new method of fiscal analysis and planning designed to assess the long-term sustainability of fiscal policy and to measure the extent of the financial load ultimately borne by present and future generations. A seminal contribution to public economics, generational accounting has already been adopted by 23 nations around the world. Combining the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology, these papers are a consummate resource for economists, political scientists, and policy makers concerned with fiscal health and responsibility.

Standardization is one of the defining aspects of modern life, its presence so pervasive that it is usually taken for granted. However cumbersome, onerous, or simply puzzling certain standards may be, their fundamental purpose in streamlining procedures, regulating behaviors, and predicting results is rarely questioned. Indeed, the invisibility of infrastructure and the imperative of standardizing processes signify their absolute necessity. Increasingly, however, social scientists are beginning to examine the origins and effects of the standards that underpin the technology and practices of everyday life. Standards and Their Stories explores how we interact with the network of standards that shape our lives in ways both obvious and invisible. The main chapters analyze standardization in biomedical research, government bureaucracies, the insurance industry, labor markets, and computer technology, providing detailed accounts of the invention of "standard humans" for medical testing and life insurance actuarial tables, the imposition of chronological age as a biographical determinant, the accepted means of determining labor productivity, the creation of international standards for the preservation and access of metadata, and the global consequences of "ASCII imperialism" and the use of English as the lingua franca of the Internet. Accompanying these in-depth critiques are a series of examples that depict an almost infinite variety of standards, from the controversies surrounding the European Union's supposed regulation of banana curvature to the minimum health requirements for immigrants at Ellis Island, conflicting (and ever-increasing) food portion sizes, and the impact of standardized punishment metrics like "Three Strikes" laws. The volume begins with a pioneering essay from Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland on the nature of standards in everyday life that brings together strands from the several fields represented in the book. In an appendix, the editors provide a guide for teaching courses in this emerging interdisciplinary field, which they term "infrastructure studies," making Standards and Their Stories ideal for scholars, students, and those curious about why coffins are becoming wider, for instance, or why the Financial Accounting Standards Board refused to classify September 11 as an "extraordinary" event.

" Americans and Europeans are divided by more than an ocean when it comes to designing and carrying out policies toward countries that repress human rights, develop weapons of mass destruction, and/or support terrorism and subversion. Accounting for this divide are distinct interests, domestic politics, and above all profound disagreements between Americans and their counterparts in European capitals and Brussels over what tools of foreign policy--sanctions, engagement, military force--to empty to change the behavior of problem countries. The result is that Americans and Europeans often work at cross purposes--and that disagreements over policy toward problem countries threaten both to undermine efforts that promote desired change and transatlantic cooperation in other areas, be it within Europe or in building an open world trading system. This book examines the ""problem"" countries of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Nigeria. The authors explain sources of American and European differences, consequences for policies designed to influence problem states, and prospects for bridging transatlantic policy rifts. A conclusion by Richard N. Haass places these differences in perspective and suggests what Europe and the United States need to do to ameliorate this tension--and what could transpire if they do not. "

This book examines the much-debated question of whether John Maynard Keynes' greatest work— The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money —was an instance of Mertonian simultaneous scientific discovery. In part I of this study, Don Patinkin argues for Keynes' originality, rejecting the claims of the Stockholm school and the Polish economist Michal Kalecki. Patinkin shows that the theoretical problems to which the Stockholm school and Kalecki devoted their attention largely differed from those of the General Theory and that, even when the problem addressed was similar, the treatment they accorded it was not part of their central messages. In the remaining parts of the book Patinkin presents a critique of Keynes' theory of effective demand and discusses Keynes' monetary theory and policy thinking, as well as the relationship between the respective developments of Keynesian theory and national income accounting in the 1930s.

Labor is the most important of the three traditional factors of production (land, labor and capital), accounting for some 75% of the GDP. It is therefore important to focus on issues of labor economics. In this book the approach taken will be that of the free market philosophy of libertarianism, the perspective that allows the maximum of freedom, consistent with the responsibility of all to respect the equal rights of all others.The position of this book on unions is unique outside of the libertarian movement, and this is indicative of its analysis of several other issues, such as minimum wages. For scholars on the left, it is almost true that unions can do no wrong (for Marxists, they do not do enough, but that is another story). Their role is to raise wages for the workingman, and this task is almost unstintingly applauded. Conservatives, on the other hand, oppose unions root and branch (except for their support of foreign wars, which is also another story). To this end they support a welter of regulations, designed to reduce their power: limitations of check offs, forced secret ballots, etc.For libertarians, the analysis depends, intimately, on whether or not these are voluntary organizations. If they are, there is no more justification for imposing secret ballots on them than to do so for the chess or garden club. If they are not, they should not be weakened by restrictions, but, rather, banned, and their leaders imprisoned.

In 1920, Ludwig von Mises dropped a bombshell on the European economic world with his article called "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." It argued that socialism was impossible as an economic system. It set off two decades of debate, so by the time the essays appeared in English, in this very book here, in 1935, the debate was still raging. This volume edited by F.A. Hayek dug the knife into socialism's heart unlike any book to ever appear. It contains essays by Mises along with a foreword and afterword by Hayek. It also contains more commentary by N.G. Pierson, George Halm, and Enrico Barone. It is exceptionally well edited and beautifully argued, and has not been in print for many years. The contents are nothing short of prophetic. The so-called "Calculation Argument" has never been answered. It shows that without private property in capital goods, there can be no prices and hence no data available for cost accounting. Production becomes random at best, and completely irrational. Mises had convinced his generation and this book completely devastates the whole socialist apparatus from a theoretical point of view. No one interested in this debate can afford not to be well-versed in the contents of this book.

Aid for trade is a fixture in the development landscape, accounting for approximately 25 per cent of total ODA, and is being positioned as a building block in the future development agenda beyond the 2015 expiry of the Millennium Development Goals. In The Right to Trade , Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton argue that aid for trade has not delivered on its initial promise. To create a genuinely pro-development trade liberalisation agenda, the authors propose that a right to trade and a right to development be enshrined within the WTOs dispute settlement system; and that aid for trade funds be consolidated into a coherent and predictable framework, where dedicated funds are committed by rich countries to a Global Trade Facility and dispersed through a transparent and competitive process. Together these proposals would help ensure that international trade works for developing countries and will help preserve a development-friendly multilateral trading system.

"Lexicography is not just an exercise in linguistic accounting," writes preeminent English language scholar David Crystal in this exceptionally lively and erudite little book. "It is a voyage of lexical exploration and discovery." In Words, Words, Words, Crystal takes readers on a fascinating linguistic adventure, exploring the English language in all its oddity, complexity, and ever-changing beauty. Traveling from word origins and word evolution to wordgangs, wordrisks, wordplay, wordgames and beyond, Crystal shares his immense knowledge of, and equally immense delight in, language. He celebrates new words, old words, words that "snarl" and words that "purr," elegant words and taboo words, plain English words and convoluted gobbledegook, eponyms and antonyms, spoonerisms and malapropisms, and a host of other written and spoken forms and variations. Words, Words, Words offers invaluable insight on such subjects as BLhow to estimate the size of your vocabulary BLthe functions of jargon BLwhen clichés are necessary BLthe value of slang words ("the chief use of slang/is to show you're one of the gang") BLhow to create your own "semantic field" BLdialect humor BLhow to become a word detective BLhow to keep a record of your child's words BLand much more! With illuminating sidebars featuring everything from common word origins and sample definitions from the dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Ambrose Bierce to a passage from Finnegan's Wake and the winning entries of The Guardian Text Message Poetry Competition, Words, Words, Words will both satisfy and spark the curiosity of anyone who has ever been intrigued, befuddled, or awed by words and myriad ways we use them.

If you're ready for some fresh, new, money-saving ideas for your small business, and hard-hitting financial advice that actually works, then this book might be for you.It's called 'Business Economizer: How To Generate Big Money-Saving Ideas For Your Small Business', and it's all about how to knuckle down, economize, and save more money in your business without making sacrifices or the typical boneheaded mistakes (i.e. cheapskate errors) that would otherwise ruin your long-term financial security and independence. It includes more than 101 fresh and practical ways to save money in your business right now. But instead of just telling you specific strategies and tactics that you mindlessly follow and implement, this book also teaches you how to generate your own money-saving strategies and integrate them into your own business and life-something money gurus hope you'll never learn.Business Economizer will teach you:? How to have "creativity on demand", and invent your own money-saving ideas, by hacking your brain and boosting your creative intelligence;? How to make good financial decisions every single time with a simple, clear, 5-step process - get good at this, and you might not ever need a financial advisor ever again;? How to get like-new equipment and goods for your business on the cheap (and sometimes, for free);And so much more...