Best Science & Technology Law
The fourth edition of The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Warren’s 50th anniversary retrospective, in what Bill Gates called Warren’s best letter ever, on conglomerates and Berkshire’s future without Buffett; Charlie Munger’s 50th anniversary essay on “The Berkshire System”; Warren’s definitive defense of Berkshire’s no-dividend practice; and Warren’s best advice on investing, whether in apartments, farms, or businesses. “Cunningham has done a truly commendable job distilling and organizing the essence of Buffett's letter to Berkshire shareholders...While the essays reviewed in the latest edition of this volume range across a broad assortment of topics, for most readers the most valuable part of this book will be Buffett's lessons and insights on investing. He's great at homespun metaphor, but behind those catchy phrases is a reservoir of financial acumen that's generally considered the best of his generation. For example, in an essay on CEO stock options, he writes, "Negotiating with one's self seldom produces a barroom brawl." There are uncountable gems of financial wisdom to be harvested from these essays, taken from the annual reports he writes for Berkshire Hathaway, his holding company. Just to pick one more, here's a now-famous line about those he competes with when making stock-market investments: "What could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest--whether it be chess, bridge, or stock selection--than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?"
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Hearing about his common-sense views of capital allocation and valuation is very useful as is the evaluation of egos in the C Suite (mostly the CEO)."
"Warren Buffet writes very clearly and entertaining."
"Very rarely one come across a book full of so much financial/business wisdom."
"Well this book is not for you. This book describes what a successful business looks like."
"I enjoyed reading this book so much!"
"Just great."
"As expected, Buffett's writing is insightful, Interesting and inspiring."
"As you read this book, you gain insight into who Warren Buffet is."
One of the world’s leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes readers deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you—and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late. When your C.V. includes titles like "futurist-in-residence with the FBI," you've seen who's creeping through those internet pipes, and it's harrowing; his litany of cyber criminals and their multitudinous misdeeds are often shocking in their inventiveness and audacity, and Goodman brings the nightmares one after another at an almost breathless pace. NEW YORK TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLERAMAZON'S BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF 2015 “Addictive....Introduces readers to this brave new world of technology, where robbers have been replaced by hackers, and victims include nearly anyone on the Web...He presents his myriad hard-to-imagine cybercrime examples in the kind of matter-of-fact voice he probably perfected as an investigator. He rightly urges the private and public sectors to work more closely together, ‘crowdsourcing’ ideas and know-how…The best time to start tackling future crimes is now.” — The Economist. — Science Magazine "By the middle of the first chapter you’ll be afraid to turn on your e-reader or laptop, and you’ll be looking with deep suspicion at your smartphone...[Goodman's] style is breezy but his approach is relentless, as he leads you from the guts of the Target data breach to the security vulnerabilities in social media...Mr. Goodman argues convincingly that we are addressing exponential growth in risky technologies with thinking that is, at best, incremental. Even better, Goodman offers practical solutions so that we not only survive progress, but thrive to an extent never previously imagined.” — Peter H. Diamandis, New York Times bestselling author of Abundance ; CEO, XPRIZE Foundation; Exec. " Future Crimes reads like a collection of unusually inventive, terrifying plots conjured up by the world's most ingenious science fiction writer...except that almost every story in this goosebump-raising book is happening all around us right now. — Jane McGonigal, New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken “As Marc Goodman shows in this highly readable book, what is going on in the background of your computer has turned the internet into a fertile ground for massive crime… Future Crimes has the pace of a sci-fi film, but it’s happening now.” — Express UK “As new loopholes open up in cyberspace, people inevitably find ways to flow through them. No one has a better vantage point than Goodman, and you won't want to touch another keyboard until you know what's in these pages.” —David Eagleman, New York Times bestselling author of Incognito " Future Crimes is the Must Read Book of the Year. His philosophy matches my own: apply the promise of exponentially growing information technologies to overcome age old challenges of humankind while at the same time understand and contain the perils. Mr. Marc Goodman’s book Future Crimes brings our global dialogue on safety and security to the next level by exploring how potential criminals are exploiting new and emerging technologies for their nefarious purposes. Never before has somebody so masterfully researched and presented the frightening extent to which current and emerging technologies are harming national security, putting people’s lives at risk, eroding privacy, and even altering our perceptions of reality. Future Crimes paints a sobering picture of how rapidly evolving threats to technology can lead to disasters that replicate around the world at machine speed. The question I am most often asked in my lectures is, ‘What’s the next big crime?’ The answer is in this book.” — Frank Abagnale, New York Times bestselling author of Catch Me If You Can and Stealing Your Life. Marc Goodman, one of the world’s leading experts on the field, takes the reader on a scary, but eye-opening tour of the next generation nexus of crime, technology, and security." "In this highly readable and exhaustive debut, [Marc Goodman] details the many ways in which hackers, organized criminals, terrorists and rogue governments are exploiting the vulnerability of our increasingly connected society...Goodman suggests solid actions to limit the impact of cybercrimes, ranging from increased technical literacy of the public to a massive government 'Manhattan Project' for cybersecurity to develop strategies against online threats. — Kirkus starred review "[A] hair-raising exposé of cybercrime...Goodman’s breathless but lucid account is good at conveying the potential perils of emerging technologies in layman’s terms, and he sprinkles in deft narratives of the heists already enabled by them...A timely wake-up call." Goodman goes beyond lurid headlines to explore the implications of technologies that are transforming every industry and society on Earth—in the process creating an ocean of real-time personal data plied by businesses, governments, and criminals alike. Far from a screed against tech, Marc Goodman's Future Crimes is an eye-opening and urgent call to action to preserve the benefits of our high-tech revolution." — Daniel Suarez, New York Times bestselling author of Daemon "In the wake of North Korea's cyber-terrorist attack on Sony as well as numerous hacker break-ins throughout the corporate world, it's become increasingly obvious that neither governments nor corporations are prepared for the onslaught of problems...Goodman nails the issue and provides useful input on the changes needed to make our systems and infrastructure more secure."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Goodman delivers a fantastic look at the underbelly of the Internet and the exposure we all face."
"Future Crimes does a great job of describing the dangers of our headlong rush to create an connected world in spite of the daily reports of lack of security and invasions of personal information."
"I recommend this book to all who consider themselves to be merely users of the surface net.......like Google and Facebook."
"Two major points I take from this book are that few are transforming the world for the good of humankind, but for profit, and perhaps more importantly and disturbingly, these same people are not building or even thinking of creating high level security systems to protect against hacking by any number of intruders."
"Worse we give it to people who may not be able to secure the data, or write code securely, meaning there is a constant risk that someone will lose the data, and expose people to crimes."
"Even though this felt like a long read, it was well worth wading through for the revealing information. I so agree with Marc that our federal government needs to pull out all the stops and create a separate division to fight cyber crime and protect our citizens from crime threats from all over the world."
"Future Crimes is a comprehensively researched piece of work and is a must read for anyone in law enforcement, policy making, and in private enterprise, developing corporate strategy with this emerging context in mind."
"A well written, important book."
The most trusted name in law school outlines, Emanuel Law Outlines support your class preparation, provide reference for your outline creation, and supply a comprehensive breakdown of topic matter for your entire study process.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I just love emanuels to write outlines, this is not an exception."
"awesome."
"I'm really satisfied with Emanuel."
"I can't comment on the quality of the supplement itself, but the text on the left-hand side of the Kindle edition is cut off and makes the product unusable."
Best Commercial Law
Reclaim Privacy Author, actor, or performer Personal life separate from your professional life Alternate identity precaution against future disaster Escape from abusive person, insane person, criminal, scam artist, rapist, stalker, or other terrible person Protect children Start over after Identity Theft Avoid abusive creditors or any form of harassment New credit Public figure, famous, or wealthy person Sidestep bankruptcy or foreclosure Economic crisis Overwhelming medical bills Deficiency judgment or other judgment Frivolous lawsuit you can’t afford to fight Press is stalking you. Regardless of your reasons for wanting a New Name, New Identity, and privacy, this book can help you to do it legally and legitimately. Tags: how to disappear, how to be invisible, how to be invisible online, disappear without a trace, big brother is watching, invisible prepper, how to vanish, privacy and security, NSA books, new name, incognito toolkit, hidden assets, survival kit, how to survive natural disaster, survival book, survival guide, prepper survival, prepper guide, prepper book, Prepping For Survival, Prepping For SHTF, survival tactics, civil rights and liberties, firearms and weapons, banks and banking, civil rights, terrorism, ISIS, political freedom, disaster relief, consumer guides, small business, startups, intelligence and espionage, motivation and self improvement, self help, J J Luna, SHTF, 9/11 prepping, prepper, prepping for SHTF, prepping for survival, anonymous, vanish, identity theft, assets, protect life ,family, home, victim, stalker, stalking, hide, hiding, take back your life, legal protection.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"At first, I thought this book would be about covering your tracks (such as getting rid of troublesome social media) and not putting yourself "out there" as much and being careful about what you are using in your day-to-day life and so on."
"Do yourself a favor and get this book before you are under attack yourself - it is more than a fair trade-off as far as value is concerned!"
"I've gotten many useful tibit's pertaining to the subject of the Title of this book...."
"I have an ugly ex I need to vanish from my life and now I know how to do it."
"Great Book. I learned a lot and you will too."
"Good solid information – considerable out of the box type thinking – highly recommend for anyone Who is tired of big brother poking their nose in your personal affairs."
"This is the best book for anyone who needs to disappear from a bad person or a bad situation, Highly recommended!"
"HOW TO DISAPPEAR FROM BIG BROTHER. I learned so much about reclaiming my privacy in this crazy world where we are constantly tracked by our cars, computers, cell phones, plastic, etc."
Best Tax Law
The nation's most trusted tax guide, updated for your 2017 returns J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2018 is the nation's most trusted tax guide, updated to help you prepare your 2017 return. Learn how the latest changes from the IRS affect your return Get trusted advice for maximizing deductions and sheltering income Navigate the many IRS forms with step-by-step guidance Start planning now to streamline next year's filing. For over 75 years, more than 39 million Americans have trusted J.K. Lasser to help them save money at tax time. J.K. Lasser can save you MORE money!Visit www.jklasser.com today for: 365-day-a-year tax news, advice, and guidance Ask J.K. Lasser! Easy-to-Use Format Explains Complex Tax Laws. FILING TIPS and FILING INSTRUCTIONS help you prepare your 2017 return PLANNING REMINDERS highlight year-end tax strategies for 2017 and planning opportunities for 2018 and later years CAUTIONS point out potential pitfalls to avoid and areas where you might expect IRS opposition LAW ALERTS indicate recent changes in the tax law and pending legislation before Congress COURT DECISIONS highlight key rulings from the Tax Court and other federal courts IRS ALERTS highlight key rulings and announcements from the IRS. 5 Traditional & Roth IRAs Chap. 24 Personal tax credits Chap. Strategies to Save You Taxes (Chaps. 30 Tax credits for education Chap. 33 Armed forces rules Chap. Planning Ideas for Your Business (Chaps. Home office deduction Chap.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I don't read it cover to cover, but I do review areas that affect me as my life and finances change."
"i do not like it on kindle, had to order the book."
"I buy this book and Turbo Tax every year."
"Just a super guide for the do-it-yourself-tax preparer!"
"...Easy to find what you need... >That said: remember, it's trying to make the tax code simple and that is impossible."
Best Gender & the Law
New to the Fourth Edition: Fully revised and updated Incorporates ACA guidelines on health care and domestic violence Includes data from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study Addresses findings regarding battered women and cross-cultural and cross-national issues
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Great addition to our library collection - a classic."
Best Customary Law
How to create a vision with purpose The twin forces that determine your destiny How to set magnetic goals that PULL you towards them Everything you need to know about VISUALIZATION Wealth Attraction Finding Your Purpose Empowering Self-Talk And Much, Much More... GRAB YOUR COPY NOW & CREATE THE GREAT LIFE YOU DESERVE!
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A wonderful little book that gets right to the point."
"I love the fact the book provided keys tips on using the law of attraction in a short and convenient way."
"This book proves a point that I have been trying to get across to people that we are Spirit having a human experience."
"Just got done reading this, so I will find out if this work .. thank you!"
"I enjoyed this book thoroughly."
"Sweet."
"The content was easy to read and apply to my love."
"I’m in a part of my life where I am being more positive by saying affirmations."
Best Conflict of Laws
In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals. This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia's ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. He applies this principle to constitutional law, arguing that we should concentrate on the Constitution's original meaning. To reduce a complex and subtle argument to a sentence, he believes that judges should discern a law's import from the words in which it is stated, not from divining the legislative intent behind its passage or interpreting the text through analysis of its historical context; he finds the application of common-law adjudicature to constitutional issues a threat to democracy. Glendon's Harvard Law School colleague Laurence Tribe lauds Scalia's insistence on a close reading of statutory texts but contends that specific constitutional language must be studied ``in light of the Constitution as a whole and the history of its interpretation''; he doubts that any set of ``rules'' for constitutional exegesis is possible. Ronald Dworkin, of New York University Law School, finds textualism inadequate for constitutional analysis because ``key constitutional provisions, as a matter of their original meaning, set out abstract principles rather than concrete or dated rules.''.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I agree with most of Justice Scalia's opinions, so I thoroughly enjoyed his essay."
"Too much and too involved for my tastes although my regard for Justice Scalia has not diminished."
"This is not really a book - it is a series of brief essays that address the most important issue in American law."
"Short but very interesting chapter written by Scalia."
"Scalia argues that the fact that some texts bear multiple interpretations does not sink the enterprise of textualism. Scalia argues it is precisely the threat of abolishing cherished rights that makes original meaning important - it is a protection against those, (say Nazis) who would seek to impose a new order or new interpretation of acceptable governance. Dworkin seeks to root constitutional interpretation in broad principles of understanding and rights; Tribe concedes he has no theory of jurisprudence, other than he finds it difficult to accept the certitude of either Dworkin or Scalia that they have the right interpretation. Scalia never says the Constitution does not bear multiple interpretations, but he does argue for a more disciplined approach, in which rights are not found willy nilly in the minds of judges and then imposed on the original document by which we are governed."
"Scalia also makes the argument that a written constitution is purposed specifically to prevent change, to embed certain rights so firmly that future generations cannot take them away. One wonders if Scalia himself recognized the hypocrisy of this stance, or if he was too lost in the conservative impulse to moralize and tear their beards when a new right is “smuggled” in. In fact, Scalia shows his true colors with a brief list of things that society (meaning the majority population of a state) used to allow, but cannot now: presenting illegally obtained evidence at a criminal trial, prayer in public schools, electing a state legislature on criteria other than numerically equal representation, terminating welfare, and imposing property requirements as a condition of voting. Scalia caps off his criticism of the idea of a “Living Constitution” by insisting that the concept does not seek to provoke social change but to prevent it. This doublespeak requires a doubletake, and makes one wonder who Scalia thought his audience would be, judges, lawyers, and academics who would scratch their heads at that comment, or conservatives who would applaud it without a moment’s reflection. It truth, they do not start with a blank slate and rub their hands together eagerly ready to add new law based on their personal biases. In the end, Scalia manages to undermine his entire argument by admitting that even with Constitutional originalists, there are words or phrases open to ambiguity and reinterpretation. So ultimately this book is a polemic written for the consumption of conservatives who lack the capability of independent thought and who require their political opinions to be delivered from on high."
Best Comparative Law
In Hitler's American Model , James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world. [Whitman] illustrates how German propagandists sought to normalize the Nazi agenda domestically by putting forth the United States as a model." His short book raises important questions about law, about political decisions that affect the scope of civic membership, and about the malleability of Enlightenment values. Whitman's history does not expose the liberal tradition in the United States as merely a sham, as many of the Third Reich’s legal theorists intimated when they highlighted patterns of black and American Indian subordination. Rather, he implicitly challenges readers to consider when and how, under what conditions and in which domains, the ugly features of racism have come most saliently to the fore in America’s liberal democracy." Carefully written and tightly reasoned, backed up every step of the way with considered evidence and logic, Whitman reminds us that today is yesterday’s child, and that certain strains of DNA persist from one generation to another." The book, in effect, is a portrait of the United States assembled from the admiring notes of Nazi lawmakers, who routinely referenced American policies in the design of their own racist regime. " Hitler's American Model delivers a powerful and timely reminder that it is not only liberal legal orders that look abroad for normative instruction. This book is a profound testament to what the past can teach us about the present and is more timely than Whitman could possibly have imagined when he began this remarkable excursion into our nation's original sin and its surprising European legacy. He offers a detailed and careful reading of how U.S. immigration laws and antimiscegenation legislation gave the Nazi legal establishment the sense of remaining within the boundaries of respectable jurisprudence. Whitman forces us to see America through Nazi eyes and to realize how profoundly white supremacy has shaped this country. Whitman offers a sustained, systematic, and thoughtful look at how Nazi legal theorists and conservative German lawyers drew on American examples when crafting the Nuremberg laws--Germany's contribution to racial madness in the twentieth century. "This spellbinding and haunting book shatters claims that American laws related to race and segregation had little to no impact on the shaping of Nazi policies. Whitman's readings of the Nuremberg laws and Nazi legal scholarship are astonishing--nimble, sophisticated, and nuanced. Speaking volumes, this book will change the way we think about Jim Crow, Nazis, and America's role in the world."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"James Q. Whitman's new book is called Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. We have known how the U.S. treated African Americans, Japanese Americans, and others at the time of World War II, how it experimented on Guatemalans even during the trials of Nazis for human experimentation, and continued to allow human experimentation in the U.S. for many years. What Whitman's book adds to the complex story is an understanding of U.S. influences on the drafting of Nazi race laws. But neither were the Nazis looking for such laws. Nazis lawyers were looking for models of functioning laws on race, laws that effectively defined race in some way despite the obvious scientific difficulties, laws that restricted immigration, citizenship rights, and inter-racial marriage. There is no doubt of the role that U.S. (state, not just federal) legal models played in the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Thirty U.S. states had systems of laws banning interracial marriage of various sorts -- something the Nazis could find nowhere else and studied in comprehensive detail, among other things for the examples of how the races were defined. The "one-drop" rule for defining a colored person was considered too harsh, for example, as opposed to defining a Jew as someone with three or more Jewish grandparents (how those grandparents were defined as Jewish is another matter; it was the willingness to ignore logic and science in all such laws that was most of the attraction). The Nazis also defined as Jewish someone with only two Jewish grandparents who met other criteria. One of many U.S. state laws that Nazis examined was this from Maryland: "All marriages between a white person and a Negro, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or between a white person and a member of the Malay race or between a Negro and a member of the Malay race, or between a person of Negro descent to the third generation, inclusive, and a member of the Malay race . The Nazis of course examined and admired the Jim Crow laws of segregation as well but determined that such a regime would only work against an impoverished oppressed group. Some of the Nazi lawyers in the 1930s, before Nazi policy had become mass murder, also found the extent of the U.S. segregation laws too extreme. In 1935, a week after Hitler had proclaimed the Nuremberg Laws, a group of Nazi lawyers sailed to New York to study U.S. law. It's worth repeating the obvious: the United States was not and is not Nazi Germany."
"Press received from some of its referees "suitably bilious responses", validating his decision to bypass commercial publishers. The topic could be embedded in the larger history of the American eugenics movement, so carefully illuminated by Christine Rosen (Preaching Eugenics (Oxford, 2004) who cites this opinion of the great Oliver Wendell Holmes, abbreviated in our book: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."
"This is nuts!"
"Very informative."
"Heard about from Bill Moyer."
"Stefan Küehl has attributed a larger part to eugenics than anyone I can think of in his 2002 book The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford University Press). They were strongly influenced by the racial theories of Arthur Comte de Gobineau published in the early 1850s (well before Darwin's books, or the even later Eugenics movement)."
Best Jurisprudence
The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. The word social , in fact, is redundant here: "All justice is inherently social. He holds no quarter for those who pursue "cosmic justice," the dangerous notion that people can right all wrongs, and favors "traditional justice," which emphasizes rules and procedures. It is this "unbridled government power" that prolific political theorist Sowell (Affirmative Action Reconsidered) fears most as something that follows necessarily when societies try to achieve "cosmic justice" (as opposed to "social justice"). "Cosmic justice," he asserts, "is not about the rules of the game" but rather about "putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is a wide range and detailed study and analysis of the fallacies of supplanting rights of individuals as prescribed in our Constitution with the perceived visions of Justice due to groups by powerful elites in government , whether through the courts , bureaucracies, or media advocacy."
"If you are a fan of Sowell, you should enjoy this book."
"There is no justice but simple justice."
"This book demonstrates why Sowell is one of the very brightest intellectuals in modern society."
"Great book in understanding government overreach and why that is dangerous to our society.. writing is simple and easy to understand."
"Dr. Sowell has had the patience to speak out about these growing issues for decades."
"This should be a required read for school its so good."
Best Non-US Legal Systems
Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? A few years ago, while I was researching a book on the history of globalization, I suddenly realized that I was seeing the same two names on a lot of the smartest stuff I was reading. “For economics and political-science students, surely, but also for the general reader who will appreciate how gracefully the authors wear their erudition.” — Kirkus Reviews “Provocative stuff; backed by lots of brain power.” — Library Journal “This is an intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve. large and ambitious new book.” — The Daily “ Why Nations Fail is a splendid piece of scholarship and a showcase of economic rigor.” —The Wall Street Journal "Ranging from imperial Rome to modern Botswana, this book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations...as ambitious as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel ." “The main strength of this book is beyond the power of summary: it is packed, from beginning to end, with historical vignettes that are both erudite and fascinating. But it will also make you think.” —The Observer (UK) "A brilliant book.” — Bloomberg ( Jonathan Alter) “ Why Nations Fail is a wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.” — The New York Times (Chrystia Freeland). Acemoglu and Robinson tackle one of the most important problems in the social sciences—a question that has bedeviled leading thinkers for centuries—and offer an answer that is brilliant in its simplicity and power. —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse "A compelling and highly readable book. And [the] conclusion is a cheering one: the authoritarian ‘extractive’ institutions like the ones that drive growth in China today are bound to run out of steam. Without the inclusive institutions that first evolved in the West, sustainable growth is impossible, because only a truly free society can foster genuine innovation and the creative destruction that is its corollary." “Imagine sitting around a table listening to Jared Diamond, Joseph Schumpeter, and James Madison reflect on over two thousand years of political and economic history. Imagine that they weave their ideas into a coherent theoretical framework based on limiting extraction, promoting creative destruction, and creating strong political institutions that share power and you begin to see the contribution of this brilliant and engagingly written book.” —Scott E. Page, University of Michigan and Santa Fre Institute. “This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at ‘critical junctures.'. From the absolutism of the Stuarts to the antebellum South, from Sierra Leone to Colombia, this magisterial work shows how powerful elites rig the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of the many. But they also document how sensible economic ideas and policies often achieve little in the absence of fundamental political change.” —Dani Rodrik, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Powerful people always and everywhere seek to grab complete control over government, undermining broader social progress for their own greed. Through a broad multiplicity of historical examples, they show how institutional developments, sometimes based on very accidental circumstances, have had enormous consequences. The openness of a society, its willingness to permit creative destruction, and the rule of appear to be decisive for economic development.” —Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1972 “Acemoglu and Robinson—two of the world's leading experts on development—reveal why it is not geography, disease, or culture which explains why some nations are rich and some poor, but rather a matter of institutions and politics. This highly accessible book provides welcome insight to specialists and general readers alike.” —Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man and The Origins of Political Order. This book is a must read at a moment where governments right across the western world must come up with the political will to deal with a debt crisis of unusual proportions.” —Steve Pincus, Bradford Durfee Professor of History and International and Area Studies, Yale University “The authors convincingly show that countries escape poverty only when they have appropriate economic institutions, especially private property and competition. The highly original research that Professors Acemoglu and Robinson have done, and continue to do, on how economic forces, politics and policy choices evolve together and constrain each other, and how institutions affect that evolution, is essential to understanding the successes and failures of societies and nations. "In this delightfully readable romp through 400 years of history, two of the giants of contemporary social science bring us an inspiring and important message: it is freedom that makes the world rich.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"They commence, like medical researchers do when they hope to minimize the number of variables, by examining “twins.” In the author’s case the “twins” are the cities of Nogales, immediately adjacent, in Arizona, and in Sonora. His outlook was rigid: if he was “sharing” the profits with the workers, he was a loser, and the thought that he might have a slightly smaller percentage of a much bigger pie never entered his mind. I also found the authors description of how Venice turned into a “museum” to be one of their most concrete examples, in terms of identifying the steps taken by the elites to protect their interests, and eliminate the “profit sharing” with the masses. But the authors seem to have taken this concept to the extreme, juxtaposing wildly disparate situations, and providing no “connective tissue.” For example, chapter 6 contained 10th-12th Century Venice, the Roman Empire, and Axum, in Ethiopia, without any meaningful comparisons. Thus, we are treated to a catalog of Napoleon’s military successes, the number of tons of gunpowder the British sold between 1750 and 1807, and Roosevelt’s efforts to pack the Supreme Court. There was Kapuscinski’s classic account of the fall of Haile Selassie, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat but I was astonished to find missing Gunnar Myrdal’s equally classic inquiry into the poverty of nations Asian Drama, An Inquiry Into The Poverty OF Nations Volumes I, II and III (Volumes I, II and III)It is a rich book, which covers a vast swath of human history."
"I don’t think that the key argument about the book should be whether it is right or wrong, but rather, is their concept is a useful tool in understanding wealth and poverty? (A slightly sharper question might be, “how good is it as a predictive tool?”) As a non-specialist I must simply accept critical arguments that some of the history is a bit inaccurate, that some of the examples are oversimplifications and that some of their comparisons of countries are a bit skewed one way or another or ignore counter-examples."
"I would also question whether a government that is one party cannot be pluralistic if that one party encompasses many of the rules of what we deem democracy (anyone can join the party, the leaders are chosen by party members not previous leaders. internal scandals can move a group from power within the party, within the party disagreement is allowed on policy, the leader are criticized for enriching themselves at public expense, anti corruption has true support, ...). Those who rant against the 1% elite in america can see things to support and also disagree with on how to cope with this unequal wealth problem."
Best Natural Law Perspectives
Some may know and choose to ignore the fact, but every single thing you do online is being tracked and guess what? Whether you're simply browsing websites or you are accessing confidential information that you would rather no one know about there are ways to remain anonymous. Imagine this scenario, you create an account on a forum with your name and decide to do some political freedom fighting with it. This is a very simple scenario that just scratches the surface of reasons to stay anonymous but the point remains the same. Through a series of chapters that explain,define, and frighten you, James reveals all of the ins and outs of Internetvulnerability and how to alter as much as is possible. - HHOMedia" I've been using the tor, or "thedark net" as some may call it, for quite a long time. The capabilities ofthe NSA or even simple hackers to infiltrate your security and privacy is veryreal.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A lot of really useful strategies for maintaining privacy on the internet, some of them common sense, some of them fairly technical."
"Not only is this book very educational, but I love the fact that it contains real world examples, allowing us to see how past mistakes were made and how to avoid them."
"Great book and has many tips for surfing the net."
"Run thru this work just to get a sense of net complexity."
"Book arrived on time, in excellent condition!"
"Well written and researched, lots of good and interesting material about keeping your identity hidden and avoiding online surveillance."
"A great step by step instruction for beginners as well as advanced users."
Best Legal History
Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, it’s a book no American can afford to miss. Praise for The Innocent Man “Grisham has written both an American tragedy and his strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.” — Entertainment Weekly “Grisham has crafted a legal thriller every bit as suspenseful and fast-paced as his bestselling fiction.” — The. Boston Globe “A gritty, harrowing true-crime story.” — Time “A triumph.” —The Seattle Times. John Grisham tackles nonfiction for the first time with The Innocent Man , a true tale about murder and injustice in a small town (that reads like one of his own bestselling novels). When he left a small town in 1971 to pursue his dreams of major league glory, many thought he would be the next Mickey Mantle, the next great one from the state of Oklahoma. The story of Ron ending up on Death Row and almost being executed for a murder he did not commit was simply too good to pass up. Q: You take on some pretty controversial and heated topics in your book--the death penalty, prisoners rights, DNA analysis, police conduct, and more--were any of your own beliefs challenged by this story and its outcome? How do you think The Innocent Man will impact this community and other small rural towns as they struggle with the realities of the justice system? Grisham's first work of nonfiction focuses on the tragedy of Ron Williamson, a baseball hero from a small town in Oklahoma who winds up a dissolute, mentally unstable Major League washout railroaded onto death row for a hometown rape and murder he did not commit. Judging by this author-approved abridgment, Grisham has chosen to present Williamson's painful story (and that of his equally innocent "co-conspirator," Dennis Fritz) as straightforward journalism, eschewing the more familiar "nonfiction novel" approach with its reconstructed dialogues and other adjustments for dramatic purpose. This has resulted in a book that, while it includes such intriguing elements as murder, rape, detection and judicial injustice, consists primarily of objective reportage, albeit shaded by the now-proven fact of Williamson's innocence. Boutsikaris avoids that by reverting to what might be called old-fashioned round-the-campfire storytelling, treating the lengthy exposition to vocal interpretations, subtle and substantial. He narrates the events leading up to the 1982 rape and murder of a young cocktail waitress with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, moving on to astonishment at the prosecution's use of deceit and false testimony to convict Williamson and Fritz and, eventually, elation at the exoneration of the two innocent men.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"He tells the story of a man who tries to take advantage of his athletic ability, fails , then is diagnosed with mental illness."
"What I found devastating was the injustice of the legal system - just unbelievable in the way it operates, how it can be manipulated and how it doesn't protect the very citizens in the way its supposed to.I'm sure it is not peculiar to the US but I can say (from an inexperienced eye) that I have not come across this dreadful state of affairs in Europe - but I'm sure it must exist in one form or another."
"And Mr. Graham kept you on the edge of your seat the entire journey."
"When a defence can only find the truth by objecting the result of an investigation with a purposeful incrimination on a person, I feel innocence until proven guilty in court is more like an notion than a practical principle."
"I always enjoy reading about real life events."
"An excellent example of the results of society's never-ending rush to judgment based on emotion, not facts."
"Not an easy read but a read that makes you think and that is why I thank the author for making us question the system."
"Normally I love any book by Grisham, but not this time ."