During the 1990s, Emerging Europe and Central Asia (ECA) chose a model of rapid financial development emphasizing bank credit expansion often funded by foreign capital. Although boosting financial inclusion of firms and households, the model was accompanied by lower efficiency and increased financial vulnerability. After two waves of crises, in the late 1990s and after 2008, ECA's banking systems again face major stress. The crises and stresses have eroded trust in banks and job creation i...

Critical Connections examines how trade, investment, migration, and other linkages among countries drive economic growth in the Europe and Central Asia region. The study breaks new ground by using a multidimensional approach that recognizes how each connectivity channel for growth is likely to be affected by the strength of other channels. This multidimensional view makes it easier to see that diversity in country connections and balance in all channels of connectivity are critical for ach...

Wealth is not built by chance. It is built through behaviour, discipline, and decisions repeated over time. Yet most people move through life without ever truly understanding money, how financial systems work, or why building wealth feels increasingly difficult in the modern world.In The Wealth Shift, Michael Gould breaks down the foundations of wealth creation in a way that is practical, clear, and grounded in real human behaviour. From understanding money and inflation t...

**NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!A razor-sharp, exquisitely paced, madly fun debut thriller that gleefully lampoons Hollywood culture and introduces the highly eccentric yet brilliant ex-detective gone rogue: Charlie Waldo**There are run-of-the-mill eccentric Californians, and then there's former detective Charlie Waldo.Waldo, a onetime LAPD superstar, now lives in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than one hundred possessions. He ha...

Critical Connections examines how trade, investment, migration, and other linkages among countries drive economic growth in the Europe and Central Asia region. The study breaks new ground by using a multidimensional approach that recognizes how each connectivity channel for growth is likely to be affected by the strength of other channels. This multidimensional view makes it easier to see that diversity in country connections and balance in all channels of connectivity are critical for ach...

During the 1990s, Emerging Europe and Central Asia (ECA) opted for a model of rapid financial development focused on bank credit expansion often funded by foreign capital. This model helped boost the financial inclusion of firms and households, but was also accompanied by lower financial efficiency and increased vulnerability to banking crises. The need for financial sector reforms has become more urgent as stagnating income growth, particularly of middle- to lower-income earners, is leadi...

International media coverage in the 1960s and early 1970s represented the Biafran War, in which the state of Biafra attempted to secede from the Nigerian Federation, as a grand humanitarian disaster, characterised by sustained conflict, starvation and genocide. Using interviews and newly-released archival material, Michael Gould questions this depiction, examining the role of foreign parties in the conflict and the impact of propaganda upon its international reception both during and after...

Eccentric private eye Charlie Waldo is back in another wildly fun and fast-paced thriller lampooning Southern California.Former LAPD detective Charlie Waldo was living in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than one hundred possessions, until his PI ex-girlfriend Lorena dragged him back to civilization to solve a high-profile Hollywood murder. Now Waldo and Lorena have their hands full with a new client, a wild and privileged L.A....

Available again after years out of print. Surrealism and the Cinema (1976), was an iconoclastic work of both film theory and art criticism, with its insightful readings of the films of Bunuel, Hitchcock, von Sternberg and Samuel Fuller and references to popular culture (comic book art), alongside discussions of major surrealist artists like Magritte, Dali and Max Ernst. It broke from academic conventions with its use of&nbsp...

A new biography of Karl Marx, tracing the life of this titanic figure and the legacy of his workKarl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. He died quietly in 1883 and a mere eleven mourners attended his funeral, but a year later he was being hailed as "the Prophet himself" whose name and writings would "endure through the ages." He has been viewed as a philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, ev...

For a century Bram Stoker’s Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up under the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal and erotic creature of the night. In 1897 Bram Stoker wrote a story expressing the most persistent nightmare of the human condition. Take this opportunity to dream again…

**NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!A razor-sharp, exquisitely paced, madly fun debut thriller that gleefully lampoons Hollywood culture and introduces the highly eccentric yet brilliant ex-detective gone rogue: Charlie Waldo**There are run-of-the-mill eccentric Californians, and then there's former detective Charlie Waldo.Waldo, a onetime LAPD superstar, now lives in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than one hundred possessions. He ha...