Half fable, half manifesto, this brilliant new take on the ancient concept of cash lays bare its unparalleled capacity to empower and enthrall us.Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from M...

A prominent food journalist follows the trail from Big Pizza to square tomatoes to exploding food prices to Wall Street, trying figure out why we can't all have healthy, delicious, affordable foodIn 2008, farmers grew enough to feed twice the world's population, yet more people starved than ever before?and most of them were farmers. In Bet the Farm, food writer Kaufman sets out to discover the connection between the global food system and why the food on o...

Half fable, half manifesto, this brilliant new take on the ancient concept of cash lays bare its unparalleled capacity to empower and enthrall us.Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from M...

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

The selected correspondence of the great American abolitionist and reformer dating from the immediate post–Civil War yearsThis third volume of Frederick Douglass’s Correspondence Series exhibits Douglass at the peak of his political influence. It chronicles his struggle to persuade the nation to fulfill its promises to the former slaves and all African Americans in the tempestuous years of Reconstruction.Douglass’s career changed dramatically with the end o...

Douglass’s letters from the 1880s reveal both his unrelenting efforts to protect African American rights and little-known details about his personal lifeThe fourth volume of the Correspondence Series presents Frederick Douglass as a still-influential public figure but also as a man aware that the gains African Americans made during the Civil War and Reconstruction were not as well secured as he had hoped.For this volume, the editors selected 247 of the 914 ...

Commodities permeate virtually every aspect of modern daily living, but for all their importance -- their breadth, their depth, their intricacies, and their central role in daily life -- few people who are not economists or traders know how commodity markets work. Almost every day, newspaper headlines and media commentators scream warnings of impending doom -- shortages of arable land, clashes over water, and political conflict as global demand for fossil fuels outstrips supply. The pictur...

A "frightening and important" look at our unsustainable future ( Time Out Chicago).A controversial hit that has sparked debate among business leaders, environmentalists, and others, The Long Emergency is an eye-opening look at the unprecedented challenges we face in the years ahead, as oil runs out and the global systems built on it are forced to change radically.From the author of The Geography of Nowhere, it is a book that "shou...

The next bull market is here. It’s not in stocks. It’s not in bonds. It’s in commodities –and some smart investors will be riding that bull to record returns in the next decade.Before Jim Rogers hit the road to write his bestselling books Investment Biker and Adventure Capitalist, he was one of the world’s most successful investors. He cofounded the Quantum Fund and made so much money that he never needed to work again. Yet despite his success, Ro...

The host of the eponymous MSNBC show, Dylan Ratigan offers a bold and original post-partisan program to resuscitate the American Dream.At a time of deep concern with the state of America’s economy and government, it seems that all the media can give us is talking (or screaming) heads who revel in partisan brinkmanship. Then there’s Dylan Ratigan—an award-winning journalist respected and admired across the political spectrum. In Greedy Bastards, he rips the lid off of our d...

The government is not a neutral arbiter of truth. It never has been. It never will be. Doubt everything. John Stossel does. A self-described skeptic, he has dismantled society’s sacred cows with unerring common sense. Now he debunks the most sacred of them all: our intuition and belief that government can solve our problems. In No, They Can’t, the New York Times bestselling author and Fox News commentator insists that we discard that idea of the “perfect” government—left o...