In the aftermath of the Financial Crisis, many commonly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down payments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldn't afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spending too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administration...

The scourge of America’s economy isn't the success of the 1 percent—quite the opposite. The real problem is the government’s well-meaning but misguided attempt to reduce the payoffs for success.Four years ago, Edward Conard wrote a controversial bestseller, Unintended Consequences, which set the record straight on the financial crisis of 2008 and explained why U.S. growth was accelerating relative to other high-wage economies. He warned that loose monetary...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many commonly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down payments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldn't afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spending too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administration...

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Unintended Consequences comes another bold and contrarian book by the man who famously defended capitalism and the one percent at the height of the Occupy movement.Conventional wisdom says income inequality is rising and harmful to nearly everyone, and the rich are to blame. But as Ed Conard shows, anyone who can produce a product valued by the entire economy will find his or her income growing faster ...

**“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes . . .” —Wall Street Journal“It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape . . . [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. The Quest is . . . the definitive guide to how we got here.” —The Financial TimesThis long-awaited successor to...

One of the nation's most acclaimed journalists, the New York Times' Mark Leibovich, presents a blistering, penetrating, controversial--and often hysterical--look at Washington's incestuous "media industrial complex."

“The next financial collapse will resemble nothing in history. . . . Deciding upon the best course to follow will require comprehending a minefield of risks, while poised at a crossroads, pondering the death of the dollar.”The international monetary system has collapsed three times in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971. Each collapse was followed by a period of tumult: war, civil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of the global economy. Now James Rickards, ...

What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world's most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.This Will Make You Smarter features Daniel Kahneman on the "focusi...

The Great Recession that began in 2007 is now more than four years old—and counting. Some 24 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and at recent rates of job creation we won’t be back to normal levels of employment until late this decade. This is a tragedy. Do we have to accept it?“No!” is the resounding answer given by Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman in this call to arms. We have seen this situation before and we know how to fix it; all we lack is the polit...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNERA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKAN NPR BEST BOOKSelected by New York Times' critic Dwight Garner as a Favorite BookA Washington Post Best Political BookA New Republic Best BookA riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking exploration of probability and uncertainty that explains how to make better predictions in a world drowning in data, from the nation’s foremost political forecaster—updated with insights into the pandemic, journalism today, and pollingOne of The Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Works of Nonfiction of the Year“Could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the de...

"All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew...