"A lively, enlightening introduction to monetary history…from monetarism's most articulate apostle."—Kirkus Reviews"The Oliver Stone of economics" (Chicago Tribune), Nobel Prize laureate Milton Friedman makes clear once and for all that no one, from the local corner merchant to the Wall Street banker to the president of the United States, is immune from monetary economics. In Money Mischief, Friedman discusses the creation of value: from stones to feathers to gold. He outlines the central role of monetary theory and shows how it can act to ignite or deepen inflation. Through colorful historical episodes, he demonstrates the mischief that can result from a misunderstanding of monetary economics — how, for example, the work of two obscure Scottish chemists destroyed the presidential prospects of William Jennings Bryan and how Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to appease a few senators from the American West helped communism triumph in China. And he explains, in plain English, what the present monetary system in the United States means for your paycheck and your savings as well as for the global economy.

The cohost of NPR's "On the Media" narrates, in cartoon form, two millennia of history of the influence of the media on the populace, from newspapers in Caesar's Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution to today.

When U.S. presidents clash with corporate titans, what tips the balance of power? In The Power and the Money, acclaimed presidential historian Tevi Troy takes readers on a riveting journey through the biggest battles between CEOs and the nation's commander in chief. He unearths the untold stories - both political and personal - that have shaped America. Troy shows how the vast reach of the federal government become a critical fact of life for every business, entrepreneur, and innovator. Today, companies find themselves navigating a competitive landscape defined by stringent regulations, so top CEOs and key business leaders must influence the legislative and regulatory system. As public affairs teams and government relations experts put forward strategies to survive Washington, CEOs have become the most important warrior on the frontlines. The Power and the Money shows how some of the nation's most important CEOs forged (and fumbled) relationships with the president. Troy also shows how the most powerful man in the world depends on CEOs. CEOs provide assistance in the form of personnel, policy insights, and campaign cash, but they also become essential foils for presidents, serving as both allies and convenient enemies. The Power and the Money reveals an intricate web of power, where CEOs need presidents, and presidents need CEOs. Troy shows how each must step carefully - or risk unpredictable costs and collateral damage. From heavyweights John D. Rockefeller and Mark Zuckerberg to Katherine Graham, Elon Musk, and more, Troy takes readers inside the friendships and the conflicts that shook the American economy and re-shaped America. Drawing on his experiences as bestselling historian and former senior White House aide, Troy offers unique insights and details that shed light on the growing, intertwining behemoths of government and big business - and what it means for the future of our nation.--from publisher

The past fifty years have seen significant shifts in attitudes toward LGBTQ people and wider acceptance of them in the United States and the West. Yet the extent of this progress, argues Martin Duberman, has been more broad and conservative than deep and transformative. One of the most renowned historians of the American left and LGBTQ movement, as well as a pioneering social-justice activist, Duberman reviews the fifty years since Stonewall with an immediacy and rigor that informs and energizes. He revisits the early gay movement and its progressive vision for society, and puts the left on notice as failing time and again to embrace the queer potential for social transformation. Acknowledging the elimination of some of the most discriminatory policies that plagued earlier generations, he takes note of the cost--the sidelining of radical goals on the way to achieving more normative inclusion. Illuminating the fault lines both within and beyond the movements of the past and today, this critical book is also hopeful: Duberman urges us to learn from this history to fight for a truly inclusive and expansive society. --back cover.

An inspiring memoir about love, race, identity, and contested narratives told with unflinching mettle. Through her childhood spent in 1940s New York being raised by two mothers, her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement, and raising her own children in the coalfields of West Virginia, Faith S. Holsaert has been defined by the intertwined forces of race, activism, and family. As a young woman on the front line of the Civil Rights Movement, she learned the power of contested narratives and came to understand her whiteness, her queer identity, and her stakes in overturning racism. Later in life, she confronted sexual abuse and mental illness across three generations of women in her family to find that these painful histories have played a significant role in the development of her identity as a woman, activist, and mother. Through a lifetime laid bare in prose and poetry, Holsaert beautifully quilts memoir, social history, and historic events into a gripping and inspirational narrative. This powerful and structurally innovative work lends new categories of meaning to those who would strive to find their place, hope, and sense of belonging in efforts to fight against systemic racism and lead lives characterized by openness and love.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's 60 Fotos published in 1930 as the first book in the planned Fototek series on 'New Photography', 60 Fotos is a complex and multi-layered dialogue using some of Moholy-Nagy's finest examples of 'straight' photographs, negative prints, photograms, and photomontage. Books on Books #12 reproduces every page spread from this classic treatise on photography along with a contemporary essay from the noted photo-historian David Evans.

At a refugee camp following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which buried Pompeii, Flavia and her friends discover that children are disappearing and a very powerful citizen might be involved.

From the beginning of history to the present, a sweep of the world's oceans and seas and how they have shaped the course of civilization

"This is a dazzling performance. It supplies conceptual links between phenomena where historians have often sensed a connection without being able to describe it adequately. . . [Bercovitch] has written intellectual history at the highest level."—Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books

"Joshua Jay, one of the world's most accomplished magicians, not only opens that door but brings us inside to reveal the artistry and obsessiveness, esoteric history, and long-whispered-about traditions of a subject shrouded in mystery. In 52 short, compulsively readable essays, Jay describes how he does it, whether it's through the making of illusions, the psychology behind them, or the way technology influences the world of magic. He considers the aesthetics of performance, discusses contemporary masters, including David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine, and details how magicians hone their craft. And answers questions like: Can a magic trick be too good? How do you saw a person in half? Is there real magic in the universe? The answers, like so much in magic and life, depend on you."--Amazon.com.

"In these informative interviews, conducted for Truthout by C.J. Polychroniou, Noam Chomsky addresses the rapid deterioration of democracy in the United States and rising tensions globally. He examines the crumbling social fabric and fractures of the Biden era, including the halting steps toward a Green New Deal; the illegitimate authority of the Supreme Court, in particular its decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade; and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19. Chomsky also untangles the roots of the War in Ukraine, the diplomatic tensions among the United States, China, and Russia, and considers the need for climate action on an international scale."--Provided by publisher.

In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the French and German in the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition (published in 1966) and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century.

The story of global cooperation is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanity’s worst problems. But international institutions are also tools for the powers that be to advance their own interests. Mark Mazower’s Governing the World tells the epic, two-hundred-year story of that inevitable tension—the unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power. From the rubble of the Napoleonic empire in the nineteenth century through the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations in the twentieth century to the dominance of global finance at the turn of the millennium, Mazower masterfully explores the current era of international life as Western dominance wanes and a new global balance of powers emerges.

"In this wide-ranging and acclaimed book, Stephen F. Cohen challenges conventional wisdom about the course of Soviet and post-Soviet history. Reexamining leaders from Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin's preeminent opponent, and Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev and his rival Yegor Ligachev, Cohen shows that their defeated policies were viable alternatives and that their tragic personal fates shaped the Soviet Union and Russia today. Cohen's ramifying arguments include that Stalinism was not the predetermined outcome of the Communist Revolution; that the Soviet Union was reformable and its breakup avoidable; and that the opportunity for a real post-Cold War relationship with Russia was squandered in Washington, not in Moscow. This is revisionist history at its best, compelling readers to rethink fateful events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the possibilities ahead."--Publisher description

In The Art of the Jewish Family, Laura Arnold Leibman examines five objects owned by a diverse group of Jewish women who all lived in New York in the years between 1750 and 1850: a letter from impoverished Hannah Louzada seeking assistance; a set of silver cups owned by Reyna Levy Moses; an ivory miniature owned by Sarah Brandon Moses, who was born enslaved and became one of the wealthiest Jewish women in New York; a book created by Sarah Ann Hays Mordecai; and a family silhouette owned by Rebbetzin Jane Symons Isaacs. These objects offer intimate and tangible views into the lives of Jewish American women from a range of statuses, beliefs, and lifestyles--both rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, slaves and slaveowners. Each chapter creates a biography of a single woman through an object, offering a new methodology that looks past texts alone to material culture in order to further understand early Jewish American women's lives and restore their agency as creators of Jewish identity. While much of the available history was written by men, the objects that Leibman studies were made for and by Jewish women. Speaking to American Jewish life, women's studies, and American history, The Art of the Jewish Family sheds new light on the lives and values of these women, while also revealing the social and religious structures that led to Jewish women being erased from historical archives.

"Encompassing autobiography, institutional history, and lively, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture surveys the world of architecture from the 1960s to the present and Robert A. M. Stern's critical role in it. The book chronicles Stern's formative years, architectural education, and half-century of architectural practice, touching on all the influences that shaped him. He details his Brooklyn upbringing, family excursions to look at key twentieth-century buildings, and relationships with prominent teachers--Paul Rudolph and the legendary Vincent Scully among them. Stern also recounts the origins of RAMSA and major projects in its history, including the new town of Celebration, Florida, the restoration of Times Square and 42nd Street, 15 Central Park West, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges at Yale, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, as well as references the many clients, fellow architects, and professional partners who have peopled his extraordinary career. By turns thoughtful, critical, and irreverent, this accessible, informative account of a life in architecture is replete with personal insights and humor. Stern's voice comes through clearly in the text--he details his youthful efforts to redraw house plans in real estate ads, his relationship to Philip Johnson, which began at Yale and was sustained through countless lunches at the Four Seasons, his love of Cole Porter and movies from the 1930s and 1940s, his struggle to launch an architecture practice in the 1970s in the midst of a recession, and his complex association with Disney and Michael Eisner. Unsurprisingly, New York City plays a big role in Between Memory and Invention. Stern has a deep commitment to the city and recording its past--he is the lead author of the monumental New York book series, the definitive history of architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present--and shaping its future. Though now a global practice, RAMSA residential towers rise throughout Manhattan to enrich the skyline in the tradition of the luxurious apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s"--

In this definitive, up-to-the-minute account of the Hells Angels in Canada, two veteran journalists investigate why the recent imprisonment of feared biker leader, Maurice "Mom" Boucher, is too little, too late. By the spring of 2002, Boucher was safely in prison but the Hells Angels had grown to 37 chapters with close to 600 members across the country. They had taken over the drug trade and continued their rapid expansion into Ontario with a recent, high-profile enlistment -- or patchover -- of 168 members from other gangs. In Winnipeg, gang warfare turned ugly as the Hells muscled out the competition and firebombed a policeman's home. In Vancouver, they secured a stranglehold on smuggling in the all-important West Coast port. The Road to Hell is the story of how the Hells have taken over the Canadian crime scene: how politicians dithered while overburdened prosecutors burned out and lost major cases; how police brass squabbled while a handful of dedicated cops worked years to amass their evidence; how a few citizens stood up the bikers and paid for that bravery with their lives. Murder plots, drug deals, money laundering and assassinations are brought to life through never-before-revealed police files, wiretaps and surveillance tapes. In gripping prose, the authors tell all about Boucher's war on the justice system; how he finally lost in Quebec, thanks in part to Danny Kane, a reluctant biker turned informer; but how across Canada the Hells have succeeded in building a national crime empire. "The RCMP and then the police in Montreal would run Danny Kane as one of the most successful -- and most secretive -- agents ever to infiltrate organized crime. Kane would climb allthe way to the top: from a lowly hangaround to a trusted confidante of the Quebec Nomads, the elite chapter led by the top Hells Angels lieutenants of Maurice "Mom" Boucher. And through his entire six-year-career as a spy, few people -- even inside the police -- would ever know about his dangerous double life. -- from" The Road to Hell "From the Hardcover edition."

"Lester Grabbe here distills his wide body of work on the subject of prophecy. The volume considers prophecy in different cultural contexts across ancient Israel and surrounding areas. Beginning with a consideration of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, Grabbe then looks at it as phenomenon in the ancient near east, including Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. From this background in the immediate context of ancient Israel, Grabbe then widens the cultural lens to consider prophecy in more global environments, including Africa and the Americas, and recent examples of pseudo-biblical prophets such as Joseph Smith. In the final part of the book Grabbe then analyses these different prophetic types and forms, looking at the continuing traditions of prophecy alongside their ancient roots"--Publisher website.

The oral history of a renowned Czech writer, whose optimism and faith in people survived grueling experiences under authoritarian regimes. Heda Margolius Kovály (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street --based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression--was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovály and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestíková. In it, Kovály recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slánsky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovály, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestíková has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan.

Islamic antisemitism is as old as Islam itself, and is not a mere borrowing from non-Muslim sources, as has been claimed. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism provides comprehensive, meticulously documented evidence that a readily discernible, uniquely Islamic antisemitism—specific Muslim hatred of Jews—has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. Writing in 1971, S.D. Goitein, the pre-eminent scholar of Muslim-Jewish relations as revealed in the Geniza documentary record of the high Middle Ages (950-1250 C.E.), employed the term antisemitism, “…in order to differentiate animosity against Jews from the discrimination practiced by Islam against non-Muslims in general. Our scrutiny of the Geniza material has proved the existence of ‘antisemitism’ in the time and the area considered here…”. Goitein cited as concrete proof of his assertion that a unique strain of Islamic Jew hatred was extant at that time (i.e., up to a millennium ago)—exploding the common assumption of its absence—the fact that letters from the Geniza material, “…have a special word for it and, most significantly, one not found in the Bible or in Talmudic literature…but one much used and obviously coined in the Geniza period.” Important examples of antisemitic motifs in the foundational Muslim texts are presented: from the Koran and Koranic exegesis by the greatest classical and modern Muslim commentators; the hadith (words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), the sira (earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad), as well as the writings of influential Muslim jurists, theologians, and scholars, from the Middle Ages through the contemporary era. These primary sources, and seminal secondary analyses translated here for the first time into English such as Hartwig Hirschfeld’s mid 1880s essays on Muhammad’s subjugation of the Jews of Medina, and George Vajda’s elegant, comprehensive 1937 study of the hadith—detail the sacralized rationale for Islam’s anti-Jewish bigotry. Numerous complementary historical accounts illustrate the resulting the plight of Jewish communities in the Muslim world across space and time, culminating in the genocidal threat posed to the Jews of Israel today. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism debunks the conventional wisdom which continues to assert that Muslim Jew hatred is entirely a 20th century phenomenon, a loose amalgam of re-cycled medieval Christian Judeophobic motifs, calumnies from the Czarist Russia “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and standard Nazi propaganda, that only arose after the advent of the Zionist movement and the protracted Arab-Jewish conflict over all of the lands comprising the original 1922 Mandate for historical Palestine. Scholars, educators, and interested lay readers will find this collection an invaluable resource for understanding the phenomenon of Muslim antisemitism, past and present. An updated Author’s Preface for this new edition—which includes materials through January 3, 2020—elucidates the current global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism, and its resulting violent manifestations, in Israel, Western Europe, and the United States. Doctrinal drivers of this hatred, as espoused by iconic Muslim religious leaders representing the pinnacles of institutional Islamic religious education—both Sunni and Shiite—are introduced. This compendious, timely exposé rivets upon freshly translated samples of modern, seminal Koranic glosses—rife with Jew-hatred—which shape current understandings of Islam’s holy book, and Islam itself, by the Muslim masses. The new Preface concludes with a focused discussion about why non-Muslim religious leaders, especially Jews, must admonish institutional Islam to begin its own process, akin to Vatican II/Nostre Aetate, of expunging at least the most virulent Jew-hating motifs from Islam’s core theology.