Banking on Growth Models contends that China's rapid economic rise from the late 1970s to today has been built on and shaped by a highly politicized and inefficient bank-centric financial system. Stephen Bell and Hui Feng argue that if the Chinese growth model drives how key economic sectors interact, no amount of incremental reform can have much impact on the financial system—meaningful reform can stem only from a revised growth model.For...

French naturalist and medical doctor Aimé Bonpland (1773–1858) was one of the most important scientific explorers of South America in the early nineteenth century. From 1799 to 1804, he worked alongside Alexander von Humboldt as the latter carried out his celebrated research in northern South America, but he later returned to conduct his own research farther south. A Life in Shadow accounts for the entire span of Bonpland's remarkable and diverse career in South America—in Argenti...

This account of the financial crisis of 2008–2009 compares banking systems in the United States and the United Kingdom to those of Canada and Australia and explains why the system imploded in the former but not the latter. Central to this analysis are differences in bankers’ beliefs and incentives in different banking markets.A boom mentality and fear of being left behind by competitors drove many U.S. and British bank executives to take extraordinary risks in creating new financia...

Why is it that our current twenty-first century A.D. is so similar to the twenty-first century B.C.?Is history destined to repeat itself? Will biblical prophecies come true, and if so, when?It has been more than three decades since Zecharia Sitchin's trailblazing book The 12th Planet brought to life the Sumerian civilization and its record of the Anunnaki—the extraterrestrials who fashioned man and gave mankind civilization and religion. In this new volume, Sitchin...

The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight, emotional maturity, and calm centeredness are critical for successful psychotherapy, rote knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a result, the therapist's personal growth is either marginalized or ignored. Th...

Many thousands of years ago, a group of extraterrestrials from another planet guided the evolution of life on Earth—determining the existence and nature of humankind as we know it today. How did the master builders from the stars construct the miracle called man? Is the DNA that is at the core of all life in the universe a "cosmic code" that links Earth to heaven and man to God?In this sixth volume of The Earth Chronicles, Zecharia Sitchin unveils writings from the past to...

Can destiny overcome distrust?Lily Harper needs protection—a lot of it. Just her rotten luck, some crazy human trafficking Lord wants her for himself. If that doesn't bite enough, Lily ends up with Birk, a dragon shifter, as her bodyguard. Her last boyfriend was a dragon and that was a total disaster. That puts Birk definitely off limits. Too bad his teal eyes, his glorious body, and his tender touch, really light her fire.The moment Birk sets eyes on the b...

Join Dale on his greatest journey yet. The world has grown so much bigger than he had ever realized, and he is doing everything he can to stay one step ahead of the rest of the game. But no matter what he does, can he truly get ahead of the curve, and earn the strength to govern his worlds?

In the middle of the American Second Civil War, born with a face that is half black and half white, Jetta belongs nowhere. In New Orleans, where she lives with her grandmother after her parents' death, she is believed to be a demon come to curse them all. Everywhere in the town, the blacks—or people of any color—are being persecuted and, one day, Jetta is moved by the white military and shipped outside of the city walls to live in a closed ghetto along with the rest of New Orleans' many bl...

Getting Gamers will show that rather than being a waste of time, video games can help us develop skills, make friends, succeed at work, form good habits, and be happy. Taking the time to learn what's happening in our heads as we play and shop allows us to approach games and gaming communities on our own terms and get more out of them.With sales in the tens of billions of dollars each year, just about everybody is playing some kind of video game whether it's on a console, a...

Step up, get tough, and commit to your decision to leadThe Leadership Contract provides the manual that leaders around the world need. With only seven percent of employees feeling confident in senior leadership, the problem is evident: disappointing, and often disgraceful leaders. Employees deserve better than that; organizations need better than that—and this book provides a robust framework for stepping up and making the decision to lea...

They came to Earth thousands of years ago to usher in mankind's first New Age of scientific growth and spiritual enlightenment. Under the guidance of these ancient visitors from the heavens, human civilisation flourished—as revolutionary advances in art, science and thought swept through the inhabited world. And they left behind magnificent monuments—baffling monoliths and awesome, towering structures that stand to this day as testaments to their greatness.In this extraordinarily d...