By staging human-animal encounters, Romantic literature and art repeatedly questioned how "human" animals could be and how "animal" humans in fact are. Romantic-era authors and artists often depicted perplexing animal intrusions upon humans. Sometimes the intruders were mystifying or terrifying, like Coleridge’s albatross or Poe’s raven; sometimes they were mundane, as in “The Swallow” by Smith or “To a Mouse” by Burns—regardless, encounters with animal-others occasioned Romantic musings. ...

How the Clinton Administration and Fed regulators manipulated the stock market to make the economy appear healthy, when it was not. Multitudes were transfixed by the mirage of a continuing cornucopia, while in the background, internationalist financial interests were helping Red China direct its cheap labor and educated elite first against other Asia countries and, eventually, against the United States. As a result, America is definitely on the road to another Great Depression. Other facto...

For most of the eighteenth century, automata were deemed a celebration of human ingenuity, feats of science and reason. Among the Romantics, however, they prompted a contradictory apprehension about mechanization and contrivance: such science and engineering threatened the spiritual nature of life, the source of compassion in human society. A deep dread of puppets and the machinery that propels them consequently surfaced in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century literature. Roman...

A call-to-arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman.The Great Recession is more than four years old—and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—remain in a state of intense pain."How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how...

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the ...

Praise for Endgame"This is an extremely powerful, sobering, well-written and highly accessible book. It will demonstrate to you why there are no painless solutions to the mounting debt problems around the world-something that too many people are yet to realize. It will take you on a well-documented journey through the debt supercycle, making stops around the world and at critical junctures. And it is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the global debt dynamics and...

**The New York Times bestseller"Blinder's book deserves its likely place near the top of reading lists about the crisis. It is the best comprehensive history of the episode... A riveting tale." - Financial Times**One of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons.Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history—books written to fill the nee...

THE BOOK WASHINGTON DOES NOT WANT YOU TO READHow is it that politicians often enter office with relatively modest assets, but then, as investors, regularly beat the stock market and sometimes beat the most rapacious hedge funds? How did some members of Congress know to dump their stock holdings just in time to escape the effects of the 2008 financial meltdown? And how is it that billionaires and hedge fund managers often make well-timed investment decisions that anticipate events i...

The definitive big picture on the financial crisis, from the man behind the Oscar-winning documentary that exposed the workings of the new economic eliteBased on explosive interviews, court documents and corporate archives, Inside Job traces in gripping detail how decades of deregulation gave birth to a predator nation, with power players cycling through positions in government, academia and Wall Street – and continuing to do so even in the wake of the glo...

One positive side-effect of the recent financial market meltdown that toppled giant, century-old institutions and cost millions their jobs is that it created a strong desire among many Americans to better understand how the U.S. economy functions. In The Little Book of Economics, Greg, Ip, one of the country’s most recognized and respected economics journalists, walks readers through how the economy really works.Written for the inquisitive layman who doesn’t want ...

Why the global recession is in danger of becoming another Great Depression, and how we can stop itWhen the United States stopped backing dollars with gold in 1968, the nature of money changed. All previous constraints on money and credit creation were removed and a new economic paradigm took shape. Economic growth ceased to be driven by capital accumulation and investment as it had been since before the Industrial Revolution. Instead, credit creation and consumptio...

**A vivid history of the recent economics of greed in the United States. This book explores how the pursuit of immense personal wealth has led to economic inequity and instability in the country.“A fascinating and deeply disturbing tale of hypocrisy, corruption, and insatiable greed. . . . A much-needed reminder of just how we got into the mess we’re in.”—The New York Review of Books**Age of Greed shows how the single-minded and selfish pursuit of immense ...