After careful research and extensive interiviews, the authors have prepared this compelling and controversial portrait of the Mormon's organizational structure and economic empire-and the men who control both. Index.

As the global economic crisis continues to cause damage, some policy makers have called for a more Keynesian approach to current economic problems. In this book, the economists Peter Temin and David Vines provide an accessible introduction to Keynesian ideas that connects Keynes's insights to today's global economy and offers readers a way to understand current policy debates. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) created the branch of economics now known as macroeconomics. He played a major role in the reconstruction of Europe and the world economy after the Second World War. Keynesian economics came to be identified with efforts to mitigate the Great Depression and with postwar economic policies that helped power a golden age of economic growth. Temin and Vines argue that Keynes also provided a way to understand the interactions among nations, and therein lies his relevance for today's global crisis. Temin and Vines survey economic thinking before Keynes and explain how difficult it was for Keynes to escape from conventional wisdom. They set out the Keynesian analysis of a closed economy and expand the analysis to the international economy, using a few simple graphs to present Keynes's formal analyses in an accessible way. They discuss problems of today's world economy, showcasing the usefulness of a simple Keynesian approach to current economic policy choices. Keynesian ideas, they argue, can lay the basis for a return to economic growth.

As Turtledove's brilliant series The Great War came to its end, the United States of America, in alliance with Germany, had defeated Great Britain, France and the Confederate States of America in a bloody conflict known as the first World War. As the 1920s begin, though, the seeds of a new conflict have alredy been sown. The United States, led by Theodore Roosevelt, swings wildly towards socialism. In Canada - now a US colony - nationalist s strike against the new American oppressors. But it is in the Confederacy, trapped in a ruinous economic depression, where fascism begins to spread, and the fires are fanned by a charismatic leader who may again plunge the world into war. 'The wizard of If.' Chicago Sun-Times 'The standard-bearer for alternate history.' USA Today

Touted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society. Devin E. Naar traveled the globe, from New York to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Moscow, to excavate archives once confiscated by the Nazis. Written in Ladino, Greek, French, and Hebrew, these archives, combined with local newspapers, reveal how Salonica's Jews fashioned a new hybrid identity as Hellenic Jews during a period marked by rising nationalism and economic crisis as well as unprecedented Jewish cultural and political vibrancy. Salonica's Jews—Zionists, assimilationists, and socialists—reinvigorated their connection to the city and claimed it as their own until the Holocaust. Through the case of Salonica's Jews, Naar recovers the diverse experiences of a lost religious, linguistic, and national minority at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.

Rothbard opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed's policies of the 1920s, demonstrating that it was quite inflationary even if the effects did not show up in the price of goods and services. He showed that the stock market correction was merely one symptom of the investment boom that led inevitably to a bust. The Great Depression was not a crisis for capitalism but merely an example of the downturn part of the business cycle, which in turn was generated by government intervention in the economy. Had the book appeared in the 1940s, it might have spared the world much grief. Even so, its appearance in 1963 meant that free-market advocates had their first full-scale treatment of this crucial subject. The damage to the intellectual world inflicted by Keynesian- and socialist-style treatments would be limited from that day forward.--Amazon.com

"Here is the definitive history of contemporary Europe, a controversial but authoritative and lively narrative that is destined to become the standard account of the period from 1914 to the present. In this important new book, University of Chicago historian Bernard Wasserstein offers the first serious, full-length history of a century of convulsive change. It is a history of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tenderness, of technological achievement and environmental blight, of imperial expansion and withdrawal, of authoritarian repression and of individualism resurgent. Wasserstein provides both a narrative of the main contours of the political, diplomatic, and military history and an analysis of the underpinnings of demographic, economic, and social developments. Most notably, the book explores the evolution of values and sensibilities in a period when, for the first time, God disappeared as a living presence in the minds of most Europeans. Wasserstein argues that barbarism and civilization were not polar opposites: rather they marched hand in hand. Twentieth-century Europe saw incontestable improvements in living conditions for most inhabitants of the continent: average life span was extended by more than half; real incomes increased dramatically; illiteracy was all but eliminated; women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals advanced closer to equality of respect and opportunity. Yet the century also witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in the recorded history of our species. Hence Wasserstein's conclusion that "greed, selfishness, lies, and cruelty are the stuff of the history of Europe in our time." Drawing on the latest scholarly findings,including recent disclosures of intelligence materials and archival revelations that followed the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Wasserstein captures the essence of contemporary European history in an engaging narrative that is by turns grim, humorous, surprising, and enlightening." -- Publisher.

From the depression of the 1890s through World War I, construction tradesman held an important place in San Francisco's economic, political, and social life. Michael Kazin's award-winning study delves into how the city’s Building Trades Council (BTC) created, accumulated, used, and lost their power. He traces the rise of the BTC into a force that helped govern San Francisco, controlled its potential progress, and articulated an ideology that made sense of the changes sweeping the West and the country. Believing themselves the equals of officeholders and corporate managers, these working and retired craftsmen pursued and protected their own power while challenging conservatives and urban elites for the right to govern. What emerges is a long-overdue look at building trades as a force in labor history within the dramatic story of how the city's 25,000 building workers exercised power on the job site and within the halls of government, until the forces of reaction all but destroyed the BTC.

"A great yarn . . . [Lustgarten] also accomplishes something more valuable: He provides insight into the seat-of-the-pants nature of many of China's massive schemes."— The Washington Post Book World When the "sky train" to Tibet opened in 2006, the Chinese government fulfilled a fifty-year plan first envisioned by Mao Zedong. As China grew into an economic power, the railway had become an imperative, a critical component of China's breakneck expansion and the final maneuver in strengthening the country's grip over this last frontier. In China's Great Train , Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative reporter with ProPublica, explores the lives of the Chinese and Tibetans swept up in the project. He follows Chinese engineer Zhang Luxin as he makes the train's route over the treacherous mountains and permafrost possible (for now), and struggling Tibetan shopkeeper Renzin, who is caught in a boomtown that favors the Han Chinese. As the railway—the highest and steepest in the world—extends to Lhasa, their lives and communities fundamentally change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Lustgarten offers an absorbing and provocative firsthand account of the promise and costs of the Chinese boom.

"This study is the first attempt to compare six major race riots that occurred in the three largest American urban areas during the course of the twentieth century: in Chicago in 1919 and 1968; in New York in 1935/1943 and 1964; and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles weaves together detailed narratives of each riot, placing them in their changing historical contexts and showing how urban space, political regimes, and economic conditions - not simply an abstract "race conflict"--Have structured the nature and extent of urban rebellions. Building on her previous comparative history of these three cities, Janet Abu-Lughod draws upon archival research, primary sources, case studies, and personal observations to reconstruct events - especially for the 1964 Harlem-Bedford Stuyvesant uprising and Chicago's 1968 riots where no documented studies are available. By focusing on the similarities and differences in each city, identifying the unique and persisting issues, and evaluating the ways political leaders, law enforcement, and the local political culture have either defused or exacerbated urban violence, this book points the way toward alleviating long-standing ethnic and racial tensions." "Race, Space, and Riots In Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles offers a deeper understanding of past - and future - urban race relations while emphasizing that until persistent racial and economic inequalities are meaningfully resolved, the tensions leading to racial violence will continue to exist in America's cities and betray our professed democratic values"--OCLC

"The emergence of the state of Israel has fundamentally changed the conditions of Jewish existence. The issues now facing Jews everywhere are totally different to those that confronted them only fifty years ago.This book provides the only thoroughly worldwide modern history of the Jews of the Diaspora. Robert Wistrich has drawn together an outstanding collection of authors from the United States, Europe and Israel in order to analyse the immense changes that have taken place since 1945 in a comprehensive, yet original, manner.Cultural, religious, domestic, political, economic and occupational transformations in Jewry are addressed in up-to-date studies.Terms of Survival reframes the nature of the debate by highlighting continuity and change in the position of the Jews throughout the world." --

The fullest account to date of German Jews' struggle for economic survival under the Third Reich.

Tradition in an Untraditional Age, first published in 1990, explores the challenges of secularisation, assimilation and antisemitism, through analyses of thinkers including R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, R. Moses Sofer, R. Abraham Isaac Kook, R. Joseph Soloveitchik, Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, as well as studies of topics including the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian dialogue, Jewish economic ethics and religious alienation and return. It also sets out an agenda for future Jewish thought.

Newton Minow’s long engagement with the world of television began nearly fifty years ago when President Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. As its head, Minow would famously dub TV a “vast wasteland,” thus inaugurating a career dedicated to reforming television to better serve the public interest. Since then, he has been chairman of PBS and on the board of CBS and elsewhere, but his most lasting contribution remains his leadership on televised presidential debates. He was assistant counsel to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the idea of the debates in 1960; he served as cochair of the presidential debates in 1976 and 1980; and he helped create and is currently vice chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized the debates for the last two decades. Written with longtime collaborator Craig LaMay, this fascinating history offers readers for the first time a genuinely inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles—both legal and personal—that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors do not dismiss the criticism of the presidential debates in recent years but do come down solidly in favor of them, arguing that they are one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics. As they remind us, the debates were once unique in the democratic world, are now emulated across the globe, and they offer the public the only real chance to see the candidates speak in direct response to one another in a discussion of major social, economic, and foreign policy issues. Looking to the challenges posed by third-party candidates and the emergence of new media such as YouTube, Minow and LaMay ultimately make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal, with candidates allowed to question each other and citizens allowed to question candidates directly. They also explore the many ways in which the Internet might serve to broaden the debates’ appeal and informative power. Whether it’s Clinton or Obama vs. McCain, Inside the Presidential Debates will be welcomed in 2008 by anyone interested in where this crucial part of our democracy is headed—and how it got there.

This comprehensive yet accessible text critically traces the complex trajectory of African society, culture, economy, and politics across more than two centures. Appearing nearly two decades after the previous edition was published, the third edition of The Making of Contemporary Africa has not only been revised throughout, but also includes two entirely new chapters: one specifically on the twenty-first century and one on postindependence cultural and social history

For more than a half-century, Israel has been forced to defend its existence against international political disapproval, racist calumny, and violence visited upon its citizens by terrorists of many stripes. While nations have always been made to defend their moral, political, economic, or social actions, Israel has the unique plight of having to defend its very right to exist. Covering Israel’s struggle for existence from the British occupation and the UN’s partition of Palestine, to the dashed hopes of the Oslo Accords and the second intifada, Yaacov Lozowick trains an enlightening, forthright eye on Israel’s strengths and failures. A lifelong liberal and peace activist, he explores Israel’s national and regional political, social, and moral obligations as well as its right to secure its borders and repel attacks both philosophical and military. Combining rich historical perspective and passionate conviction, Right to Exist sets forth the agenda of a people and a nation, and elegantly articulates Israel’s entitlement to a peaceful coexistence with its surrounding Arab neighbors and a future of security and pride.

"Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler shaped economics as we know it today - their Chicago School laid the groundwork for much of the neoclassical tradition in economic analysis. This book brings together a collection of letters from these two Noble laureates from the post-war years, containing new information about their personal and professional relationships, and also illuminating the development of ideas which are now fundamental to economic theory. The book, edited by Dan and Claire Hammond, contains an introductory chapter, chronologies for Friedman and Stigler, and transcripts of 71 letters written from 1945 to 1957 along with enclosures."--BOOK JACKET

The wide-ranging portrayal of modern Jewishness in artistic terms invites scrutiny into the relationship between creativity and the formation of Jewish identity and into the complex issue of what makes a work of art uniquely Jewish. Whether it is the provenance of the artist, as in the case of popular Israeli singer Zehava Ben, the intention of the iconography, as in Ben Shahn's antifascist paintings, or the utopian ideals of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, clearly no single formula for defining Jewish art in the diaspora will suffice. The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times is the first work to analyze modern Jewry's engagement with the arts as a whole, including music, theater, dance, film, museums, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more. Working with a broad conception of what counts as art, the book asks the following questions: What roles have commerce and politics played in shaping Jewish artistic agendas? Who determines the Jewishness of art and for what purposes? What role has aesthetics played in reshaping religious traditions and rituals? This richly illustrated volume illuminates how the arts have helped Jews confront the various challenges of modernity, including cultural adaptation and self-preservation, economic diversification, and ritual transformation. There truly is an art to being Jewish in the modern world--or, alternatively, an art to being modern in the Jewish world--and this collection fully captures its range, diversity, and historical significance.

After Barack Obama's solid win in the 2012 election, it's easy to forget that there was a time, not long ago, when the Democrats were shut out of power for over a decade. But Al From remembers. In 1984, he led a small band of governors, US senators, and members of Congress to organize the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Their mission: to rescue the party from the political wilderness, redefine its message, and, most importantly, win presidential elections. In April 1989, From traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, to recruit the state's young governor, Bill Clinton, to be chairman of the DLC. Here, Al From explores the founding philosophy of the New Democrats, which not only achieved stunning validation during Clinton's two terms, but also became the model for resurgent center-left parties in Europe and throughout the democratic world. Here, he outlines for the first time the principles at the heart of the movement, including economic centrism, national security, and entitlement reform, and why they are vital to the success of the Democratic Party in the years ahead.

The history of Jews in interwar Germany and Austria is often viewed either as the culmination of tremendous success in the economic and cultural realms and of individual assimilation and acculturation, or as the beginning of the road that led to Auschwitz. By contrast, this volume demonstrates a reemerging sense of community within the German-speaking Jewish population of these two countries in the two decades after World War I. The fresh research presented here shows that although Jews may have experiences a deepening sence of impending crisis and economic decline, a renewal of Jewish communal life was taking place, as new groupings sprang up, including organizations for youth, for rural Jews, and for political groups such as Zionists and Bundists. Several chapters consider the impact of economis and political crises on German Jewish family life. Together, these engrossing essays form a complex mosaic of German Jewry on the eve of its demise.