Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperilled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialise on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection - a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being co-opted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science - from the Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley - Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They're monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.

A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end extreme global poverty, now a Signal paperback. "The poor you will always have with you," according to Matthew 26:11. But Jeffrey Sachs, economics superstar, special advisor to the Secretary General of the UN and the author of The End of Poverty , vehemently disagrees. In his view, poverty -- especially the extreme deprivation of sub-Saharan Africa -- can easily be eradicated. The vast sums spent in foreign aid over the decades has not come close to alleviating the dire subsistence problems of Africans. Sachs believed he knew the reason: the developed world simply hadn't spent enough. In 2006, Sachs, backed by tens of millions of donor dollars, launched the five-year Millennium Villages Project. Sachs would test his theories in villages in different African countries, then, with each success, scale up until until the program was continent-wide. His first village "make-over" was a small community in Sauri, Kenya, and the immediate effect was encouraging. With that first inkling of success achieved, Sachs rolled out a dozen model Millennium villages in ten countries. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Project, following Sachs on official trips and listening in on conversations with heads of states, rival organisations and potential donors. And she has immersed herself in the lives of people in two of the remote villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting hospitality from these camel herders and smallhold farmers, and sharing in their struggles, Munk came to understand the on-the-ground issues challenging Sachs' one-size-fits-all approach to global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happened when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man met messy human reality.

The CIA chief, Leon Panetta, calls drones the ‘only game in town’. The figures bear him out. Between 2004 and 2012, the US reportedly conducted over 350 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing between 2,600 and 3,400 people. Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen. In 2000, the Americans had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone ‘pilots’ than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $ 5 billion business in the US alone. American activist Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange, provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned places, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. Benjamin also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons.

The 1990s promised prosperity for the world: a new era of unprecedented economic growth, with capitalism American-style reigning supreme. So why did it all go wrong? As chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz was uniquely placed to watch first-hand as the '90s unfolded. This revealing book rewrites the history of the 1990s to show how a misplaced faith in free market ideology created problems that could cost us all dearly. But more than that, it lays out a blueprint for the future. The '90s, Stiglitz concludes, witnessed a misguided attempt to achieve growth on the cheap - and we must learn from our mistakes or pay the price for years to come.

The inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars who changed the way the Pentagon does business and the American military fights wars, against fierce resistance from within their own ranks

â Today, Mr. Minsky's view [of economics] is more relevant than ever.â - The New York Times â Indeed, the Minsky moment has become a fashionable catch phrase on Wall Street.â -The Wall Street Journal John Maynard Keynes offers a timely reconsideration of the work of the revered economics icon. Hyman Minsky argues that what most economists consider Keynesian economics is at odds with the major points of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes and Minsky refuse to ignore pervasive uncertainty. Once uncertainty is given center stage, recurring episodes of financial system crises are all but inescapable. As Robert Barbera notes in a new preface, â Benign economic circumstancesâ ¦invite increasingly aggressive financial market wagers. Innovation in finance is a signature development in a capitalist economy. Once leveraged wagers are in place, small disappointments can have exaggerated consequences.â Thus for Minsky economic calm on Main Street engenders financial system fragility which, in turn, ensures a perpetuation of boom and bust cycles. Minsky colleagues Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and L. Randall Wray write in a new introduction, â We offer this new edition, in the hope that it will contribute to the reformation of economic theory so that it can address the world in which we actually live-the world that was always the topic of Minsky's analysis.â

Bloomingdale's has been the most celebrated store in the world--and its style has been copied throughout the world. As Bloomingdale's chairman for nearly 20 years, Traub played an essential role in this success. Here he tells the story of how the art of selling moved into the modern world--and how Bloomingdale's became a mecca of high style. 16 pages of photos.

This encyclopedia provides the first standard reference work on the lives, history and activities of Jewish women in the United States. Covering a period which extends from the arrival of the first Jewish women in North America in 1654 to the present, this two-volume set presents the most comprehensive and detailed portrait of American Jewish women ever published, and brings together for the first time the wealth of recent scholarship on this subject. Includes: * Biographical entries on over 800 individual women. * 128 topical articles on organizations such as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, and the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. * Major essays on Jewish women's participation in the movement for women's suffrage, social reform, civil rights, and the recent women's movement. * The activities of Jewish women in politics, business, education, the arts, and religion. * A readable, inviting format with over 500 large photographs. * Bibliographies at the end of each entry which include overviews of major scholarship in the field, complete citations of more general works and citations of additional bibliographical and reference sources. * The comprehensive index includes citations to every substantive discussion in the entries as well as all proper names appearing in the text, such as organizations, book, song and film titles, schools, and individuals. The "Encyclopedia" provides information on American Jewish women in all fields of endeavor, and pays special attention to the work of women in the arts, academics, law, the labor movement, education, science, medicine, journalism and publishing, and on the lives of ordinary Jewish women during all time periods and in all regions of the United States.

A New York Times bestseller! The real-life "Jerry Maguire," superagent Leigh Steinberg shares his personal stories on the rise, fall, and redemption of his game-changing career in the high-stakes world of professional sports Leigh Steinberg is renowned as one of the greatest sports agents in history, representing such All-Pro clients as Troy Aikman, Bruce Smith, and Ben Roethlisberger. Over one particular seven-year stretch, Steinberg represented the top NFL Draft pick an unheard of six times. Director Cameron Crowe credits Steinberg as a primary inspiration for the titular character in Jerry Maguire , even hiring Steinberg as a consultant on the film. Lightyears ahead of his contemporaries, he expanded his players' reach into entertainment. Already the bestselling author of a business book on negotiation, the original superagent is now taking readers behind the closed doors of professional sports, recounting priceless stories, like how he negotiated a $26.5 million package for Steve Young—the biggest ever at the time—and how he passed on the chance to represent Peyton Manning. Beginning with his early days as a student leader at Berkeley, Steinberg details his illustrious rise into pro sports fame, his decades of industry dominance, and how he overcame a series of high-profile struggles to regain his sobriety and launch his comeback. This riveting story takes readers inside the inner circle of top-notch agents and players through the visionary career of Leigh Steinberg, the pre-eminent superagent of our time.

This classic set of essays by Nobel Laureate and leading monetary theorist Milton Friedman presents a coherent view of the role of money, focusing on specific topics related to the empirical analysis of monetary phenomena and policy. The early chapters cover factors determining the real quantity of money held in a community and the welfare implications of policies that affect the quantity held. The following chapters formally restate why quantity analysis has become central to the science of economics. Friedman's presidential address to the American Economic Association, included here, provides a general summary of his views on the role of monetary policy, with an emphasis on its limitations and its possibilities. This theoretical framework is used in examining a number of empirical problems: the demand for money, the explanation of price changes in wartime periods, and the role of money in business cycles. These essays summarize some of the most important results of Friedman's extensive research over the course of his lifetime. The chapters on policy that follow survey the positions of earlier economists and deal with the importance of lags and the implications of destabilizing speculation in foreign markets. Taken as a whole, The Optimum Quantity of Money provides a comprehensive view of the body of monetary theory developed in leading centers of monetary analysis. This work is essential reading for economists and graduate students in the field. The volume will be no less important for practicing business and banking personnel as well. The new statement by Michael Bordo, a student of Friedman's and an expert in the field, provides a sense of where the field now stands in the economy and academy. Milton Friedman is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Before that, he was Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota, and Cambridge University. Among his many books are Essays in Positive Economics , A Program for Monetary Stability , Capitalism and Freedom , and A Monetary History of the United States . Michael D. Bordo is professor of economics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and author, with Lars Jonung, of, among other works, Demand for Money .

"What has changed in the workplace? Everything. The traditional office was probably doomed anyway. Then a global shutdown changed everything we thought we knew about work, including where and when it needed to take place. Automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have accelerated, and perhaps as much as one third of the world's permanent workforce will soon become remote. In The Nowhere Office, Julia Hobsbawm offers a strategic and practical guide to navigating this pivotal moment in the history of work and provides lessons for how both employees and employers can adapt. Hobsbawm draws on her extensive networks in business, academia, and entrepreneurship across generations to offer new ideas about how to handle hybrid working, as well as provides deep insight into how the way we work is being transformed by larger issues such as community, hierarchy, bias, identity, and security. The Nowhere Office describes a unique moment in the history of work which, if understood and handled correctly, can provide a springboard for the biggest transformational change in the workplace for a century: something better, more meaningful, and more workable for everyone"--

Scores of books have been published about business, but rarely has a CEO as prominent as Michael Eisner of The Walt Disney Company written so intimately about his life and work. In Work in Progress, Eisner describes the daily challenge of a rapidly changing marketplace, countless creative choices, painful setbacks, and dramatic triumphs. For more than thirty years, Michael Eisner has lived and worked at the center of American popular culture. At ABC, as a young executive, he helped bring to life shows such as Happy Days and the miniseries Roots. As president of Paramount Pictures, he was responsible for films ranging from Beverly Hills Cop and Raiders of the Lost Ark to Terms of Endearment and The Elephant Man. As chairman of The Walt Disney Company for the past fourteen years, he has orchestrated the transformation of a beloved but struggling company into a multimedia giant in movies, television, radio, theme parks, theater, and even cyberspace. Having spent his life helping other people to tell stories, Eisner now tells his own-with humor, insight, and unstinting honesty. He recounts such significant events as the extraordinary revival of Disney's animation business and the negotiations for one of the largest acquisitions in corporate history-Cap Cities/ABC-which began in an Idaho parking lot. He is just as forthcoming about the early struggles of Disneyland Paris and the fierce opposition that finally helped to derail Disney's America. Blending the personal and the professional, he tells the stories of the tragic death of his partner and closest confidant, Frank Wells; his own emergency quadruple bypass surgery; the high-level personnel changes that followed; and the emergence of a new generation of young leaders at Disney. Throughout Work in Progress, we watch Eisner grappling with the often paradoxical choices that he faces each day in managing a creative company. What is the proper balance between art and commerce, tradition and innovation, short-term profit and long-term growth, pragmatism and excellence -- the company's good and the greater good? Like no other business memoir, Work in Progress is a riveting tale of high-pressure life at the top--an ongoing drama about risking failure and surviving success. Michael Eisner... - On Disney - At a certain level, what we do at Disney is very simple. We set our goals, aim for perfection, inevitably fall short, try to learn from our mistakes, and hope that our successes will continue to outnumber our failures. Above all, we tell stories, in the hope that they will entertain, inform and engage. These are mine. - On a Gurney - I felt unsettled, close to panic. Moments later, I experienced intense pain, not just in my arms, but also in my neck and chest. My anxiety was making the pain worse. The next thing I knew, I was being wheeled into the emergency room. All I could think of was ER, the pilot I'd just watched. Suddenly, I was living it. - On Ideas - When an idea can't be articulated simply, crisply, and accessibly, there is usually something wrong with it. When I hear a good idea, it has an effect on my mind and body. Sometimes, I feel it in my stomach, other times in my throat, still others on my skin-a kind of instant truth detector test. - On Diet - I grew up thinking vegetarians were weird and that special diets were for old people, like my Aunt Mannie and Cousin Ida. I began my special, nonfat vegetarian diet at half their age. Now I wish my kids would follow suit-just say no to drugs, unsafe friends, and unprotected saturated fat. - On an Acquisition - There was something extraordinary about the whole scene. I had run into Tisch, Buffett, and now Tom Murphy literally as I was prepared to leave Herb Allen's Sun Valley gathering. Murphy was about to head off with Buffett and Gates, two of the wealthiest businessmen in America, to play golf. In the meantime, here we were, standing together in a parking lot in the middle of Idaho, talking about a $20 billion t

From the bestselling author of The Dovekeeperscomes a love story about one of history's most captivating 'invisible' women: Rachel, the mother of Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. Growing up on the idyllic island of St Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their tight-knit refugee community of Jews who escaped the European Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for refusing to live by the rules. But Rachel's fate is not in her own hands: in order to secure the future of her father's business, she is married off to a widower with three children. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome nephew Frédéric arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes control of her life, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal affecting her entire family, including her favourite son, Camille Pissarro, who will one day become a founder member of the Impressionists and one of history's greatest artists. Set in a world of lush, exquisite beauty, The Marriage of Oppositesshows Alice Hoffman at the height of her considerable powers. The marriage of Rachel and Frédéric is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary woman and her forbidden love.

"In public discourse in the United States, small businesses are lauded as drivers of the economy and keys to economic growth, while "big business" is often vilified. Even in the face of evidence that larger firms are proven to be more likely to stimulate economic growth, American public policy favors small businesses through measures such as lowering taxes or regulatory requirements for firms under a certain number of employees. The authors trace the anti-big business sentiment back to its roots in the early founding of our nation. While the Jeffersonian ideal of every citizen being self-employed made sense for a pre-industrial agrarian society, changes in technology have led to significant economies of scale for big businesses. Now, we see that countries with more self-employed workers are also more likely to be in poverty (think of emerging economies where everyone is an entrepreneur, and compare it to the compensation and benefits packages available to employees of large firms in more advanced economies). Rather than simply taking the opposite view that "bigger is better," the authors argue that a modern capitalist society has room for businesses of all sizes and that we should not be privileging one type of business over another due to size alone, especially when our perception of who creates jobs and grows the economy does not track with reality"--

Publisher's description: Robert Rubin was sworn in as the seventieth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in January 1995 in a brisk ceremony attended only by his wife and a few colleagues. As soon as the ceremony was over, he began an emergency meeting with President Bill Clinton on the financial crisis in Mexico. This was not only a harbinger of things to come during what would prove to be a rocky period in the global economy; it also captured the essence of Rubin himself--short on formality, quick to get into the nitty-gritty. From his early years in the storied arbitrage department at Goldman Sachs to his current position as chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup, Robert Rubin has been a major figure at the center of the American financial system. He was a key player in the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

"In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability. Before three years were up, AIG had fully repaid its staggering debt to the U.S. government - with interest.Good for the Money is an unyielding leader's memoir of a career spent fixing companies through thoughtful, unconventional strategy. With his brash, no-holds-barred approach to the job, Benmosche restored AIG's employee morale and good name. His is a story of perseverance, told with refreshing irreverence in unpretentious terms.Called "an American hero" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail, Benmosche was a self-made man who never forgot what life is like for the nation's 99-percent; again and again, he pushed back against obstinate colleagues to salvage American jobs and industry. Good for the Money affords you a front-row seat for Benmosche's heated battles with major players from Geithner to Obama to Cuomo, and offers incomparable lessons in leadership from the legendary CEO who changed the way Wall Street does business"--

Never Leave Well Enough Alone, first published in 1951, is the classic introduction to modern industrial design by the 'father' of the movement - Raymond Loewy. Loewy (1893-1986) was responsible for transforming thousands of everyday objects into streamlined masterpieces, many of which are still popular and in-use in daily life today. Examples include corporate logos; packaging for Lucky Strike cigarettes and Pepsodent toothpaste; Studebaker and Greyhound automotive and bus design; buildings and household furnishings; and appliances such as toasters and refrigerators. This new reprint edition is formatted to Loewy's original design of 6 inches by 7 inches - his first foray into book design; and is illustrated throughout with drawings and photographic examples of his work.

Renowned investigative journalist Richard Behar delivers the definitive account of history’s largest—and longest-running—financial fraud, “the scale of the deception…beggars belief” ( New York Post ). Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar’s relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the conman. By the time Madoff died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of handwritten letters, participated in some fifty phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews—a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established relationships with hundreds of regulators, prosecutors, FBI agents, investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff’s, family members, school classmates, and others. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history’s most enduring fraud—and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar illuminates not only the fraud’s origins—decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession—but also the complicity of investors, Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity’s most consistent weakness: greed.

Today, the tragedy of the Great Depression looks gratuitous and unnecessary: Our economists and policy makers simply have gained too much experience since then. It could never happen again. Or could it? Over the course of the last two years, six Asian economies have experienced an economic slump that bears an eerie resemblance to the Great Depression. Russia defaulted on its debt in 1998--an event that, halfway around the world, drove Brazilian interest rates through the roof and terrified the U.S. bond market. Some of the brightest financiers in the world, working for the Long-Term Capital Corporation, thought they had the market licked only to find themselves in a jam that had all the makings of the overleveraged positions that caused the 1929 stock market crash. Paul Krugman, one of the world's top economists, recounts these events and more: He points out that they raise significant questions for which policy makers may not have answers. This paperback edition features a brand-new preface by Krugman on the financial realities of the past year.

Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Harriman, Gould, Frick...this is the story of the giant american capitalists who seized economic power after the Civil War and altered the shape of american life forever. Index.