Richard Cobden (1804-65) rose from humble beginnings to become the leading advocate of nineteenth-century free-trade and liberalism. As a fierce opponent of the Corn Laws and promoter of international trade he rapidly became an influential figure on the national stage, whose name became a byword for political and economic reform. Yet despite the familiarity with which contemporaries and historians refer to 'Cobdenism' his ideals and beliefs are not always easy to identify and classify in a...

Title first published in 2003. 'Weber is probably the only person in his generation who is equally at home in and directly informed about contemporary literary theory and its antecedents in Germany, France, and the US. His theoretical interest in psychoanalysis serves as a viewpoint from which a powerful combination of philosophical, linguistic, and political concerns are brought together in an uncommonly productive dialectical interplay' Paul de Man This book presents the first introducto...

A leading investment professional explains the world of impact investing -- investing in businesses and projects with a social and financial return--and shows what it takes to make sustainable, transformative change.Impact investment -- the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return -- has become a hot topic on the global stage; poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times in the next decade. But the field is at a tipping point: Will imp...

This simple 5-session French course is designed for absolute beginners with no prior experience, offering a seamless journey into the French language. It's focused on swiftly enabling you to speak and comprehend key words and phrases, all while refining your French accent. By circumventing unnecessary complexities and grammar rules, this course ensures easy progress. You will grasp basic greetings, numbers, colors, and begin to acquire other vital vocabulary for constructing sentences. Thi...

Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise.America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is no...

A New York Times 2016 Notable BookRobert Tombs’s momentous The English and Their History is both a startlingly fresh and a uniquely inclusive account of the people who have a claim to be the oldest nation in the world. The English first came into existence as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. They have lasted as a recognizable entity ever since, and their defining national institutions ca...

The language of self-fulfilment, self-realization, and self-actualization (in short, ‘authenticity’) has become common in contemporary culture. The desire to be authentic is implicitly a desire to shape one’s self in accordance with an ideal, and the concern for what it means to be authentic is, in many ways, the modern form of the ancient question what is the life of excellence? However, this notion of authenticity has its critics: Christopher Lasch, for instance, who equates it with a fo...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A roadmap to what lies ahead and the decisions we must make now to stave off the next global economic and financial crisis, from one of the world’s most influential economic thinkers and the author of When Markets Collide • Updated, with a new chapter and author’s note“The one economic book you must read now . . . If you want to understand [our] bifurcated world and where it’s headed, there is no better interpreter than Mohamed El-Eri...

The United Kingdom; Great Britain; the British Isles; the Home Nations: such a wealth of different names implies uncertainty and contention - and an ability to invent and adjust. In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past.She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and their limitations,...

Clear, insightful, and nondogmatic, this book gives us a new appreciation for one of our most ubiquitous institutions.From the wild swings of the stock market to the online auctions of eBay to the unexpected twists of the world's post-Communist economies, markets have suddenly become quite visible. We now have occasion to ask, "What makes these institutions work? How important are they? How can we improve them?"Taking us on a lively tour of a world we once ...