When the World Trade Towers in New York City were erected at the Hudson's edge, they led the way to a real estate boom that was truly astonishing. Divided We Stand reveals the coming together and eruption of four volatile elements: super-tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. The Trade Center serves as a potent symbol of the disastrous consequences of undemocratic planning and development. This book is a history of that skyscraping ambition and the im...

First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton’s Free City is the fictional journal of L., a seventeenth-century inventor caught in a precarious love triangle, even as his beloved northern European port town teeters on the brink of catastrophe.In a tale laced with bawdy humor and elements of the fantastical, L. must balance the demands of his patron—a rapacious entrepreneur—against those of his sorceress lover. As L. attempts to avert calamity, he finds hims...

Friedman discusses a government system that is no longer controlled by "we, the people." Instead of Lincoln's government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," we now have a government "of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats," including the elected representatives who have become bureaucrats.

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American su...

Carolyn Nordstrom explores the pathways of global crime in this stunning work of anthropology that has the power to change the way we think about the world. To write this book, she spent three years traveling to hot spots in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States investigating the dynamics of illegal trade around the world—from blood diamonds and arms to pharmaceuticals, exotica, and staples like food and oil. Global Outlaws peels away the layers of a vast economy that extend...

Born into one of the wealthiest families in America—he was the youngest son of Standard Oil scion John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the celebrated patron of modern art Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—David Rockefeller has carried his birthright into a distinguished life of his own. His dealings with world leaders from Zhou Enlai and Mikhail Gorbachev to Anwar Sadat and Ariel Sharon, his service to every American president since Eisenhower, his remarkable world travels and personal dedication to his h...

THE ENTHRALLING TRUE STORY OF THE US-JAPANESE FINANCIAL CLASH - FROM THE GLOBAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE BIG SHORT, LIAR'S POKER AND FAST BOYS'In the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible.' - Sunday TimesIn Pacific Rift, Michael Lewis follows the fortunes of two cultural transplants: Bob Collins, a forthright American insurance executive who lives and works in Tokyo, and Shuji Tomikawa, a...

A Vintage Shorts SelectionFrom the founder of modern radical activism in America, Saul Alinsky, whose the bestselling classic Rules for Radicals has reinvigorated the political left in America. “Organizational genius” Alinsky lays out the thirteen rules that all have-nots must follow to wage a successful campaign against the haves. Wielding tremendous influence to this day, and used as a bible by leading organizers since it was first published almost fifty years ago, these...

In Up from Zero, Paul Goldberger, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the inside story of the quest to rebuild one of the most important symbolic sites in the world, the sixteen acres where the towers of the former World Trade Center stood. A story of power, politics, architecture, community, and culture, Up from Zero takes us inside the controversial struggle to create and build one of the most challenging urban-design projects in history.What should replace the ...

Since Ronald Reagan left office -- and particularly after his death -- his shadow has loomed large over American politics: Republicans and many Democrats have waxed nostalgic, extolling the Republican tradition he embodied, the optimism he espoused, and his abilities as a communicator.This carefully calibrated image is complete fiction, argues award-winning journalist William Kleinknecht. The Reagan presidency was epoch shattering, but not -- as his propagandists would have it -- b...

More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens for a reason. As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat where hardworking ...

First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.