Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization. Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years. In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries--the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed ""the fourth stage of human society,"" will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.
Dr. Hoff’s 1938 book and Professor Vaughn’s important introduction establish the theoretical impossibility of socialism: a system empirically in ruins but still advocated by many.
A bold and eye-opening exposé on how power and propaganda distort the news, now more relevant than ever • With an updated introduction “[A] compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy.”—The New York Times Book Review Renowned scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky reveal how U.S. news media, far from being independent watchdogs, often function as tools of elite influence. With probing analysis, they present their Propaganda Model, a framework that explains how systemic bias shapes the stories we’re told, the voices we hear, and the truths that remain hidden. Through deeply researched case studies, from the Vietnam War to coverage of “worthy” vs. “unworthy” victims, Manufacturing Consent exposes the structural forces that drive news organizations to reinforce power rather than question it. It’s a sobering portrait of a media system more interested in maintaining order than informing the public. This edition includes an introduction updating key examples and expanding the Propaganda Model’s relevance to issues like the coverage of NAFTA, the media’s treatment of global protests, and environmental regulation. Manufacturing Consent is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way. Whether you’re a student, activist, or citizen looking to see beyond the headlines, this book will transform how you understand the media—and the world around you.
Un monde engagé dans le difficile passage de la féodalité à la Renaissance, de la théocratie à la science. Un monde ravagé par des guerres et par des ambitions. Mais qui n'est pas notre Terre. Cette planète connaît une autre histoire. Tout aussi barbare. Et sur ce monde étranger, éloigné dans le temps et dans l'espace, qui ne sait rien d'autres civilisations essaimées dans l'espace, deux étrangers se croisent, s'effleurent à peine. Un médecin, Vossll, qui est aussi une femme, et un guerrier, Dewar. Ils n'ont apparemment rien en commun, sauf de surprenants savoirs. Au jeu de la compassion et de la cruauté, ils vont échanger leurs rôles. Avant peut-être de retourner vers leur véritable univers. Inversions est le cinquième volet du cycle de la Culture. Les quatre précédents, Une forme de guerre, L'Homme des jeux, L'Usage des armes et Excession ont été publiés dans la même collection.
This is the first genuine etymological dictionary of Old Chinese written in any language. As such, it constitutes a milestone in research on the evolution of the Sinitic language group. Whereas previous studies have emphasized the structure of the Chinese characters, this pathbreaking dictionary places primary emphasis on the sounds and meanings of Sinitic roots. Based on more than three decades of intensive investigation in primary and secondary sources, this completely new dictionary places Old Chinese squarely within the Sino-Tibetan language family (including close consideration of numerous Tiberto-Burman languages), while paying due regard to other language families such as Austroasiatic, Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien), and Kam-Tai. Designed for use by nonspecialists and specialists alike, the dictionary is highly accessible, being arranged in alphabetical order and possessed of numerous innovative lexicographical features. Each entry offers one or more possible etymologies as well as reconstructed pronunciations and other relevant data. Words that are morphologically related are grouped together into "word families" that attempt to make explicit the derivational or other etymological processes that relate them. The dictionary is preceded by a substantive and significant introduction that outlines the author’s views on the linguistic position of Chinese within Asia and details the phonological and morphological properties, to the degree they are known, of the earliest stages of the Chinese language and its ancestor. This introduction, because it both summarizes and synthesizes earlier work and makes several original contributions, functions as a useful reference work all on its own.
Real-world advice on how to be invisible online from "the FBI's most wanted hacker" (Wired). Be online without leaving a trace. Your every step online is being tracked and stored, and your identity literally stolen. Big companies and big governments want to know and exploit what you do, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand. In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick uses true-life stories to show exactly what is happening without your knowledge, teaching you "the art of invisibility" -- online and real-world tactics to protect you and your family, using easy step-by-step instructions. Reading this book, you will learn everything from password protection and smart Wi-Fi usage to advanced techniques designed to maximize your anonymity. Kevin Mitnick knows exactly how vulnerabilities can be exploited and just what to do to prevent that from happening. The world's most famous -- and formerly the US government's most wanted -- computer hacker, he has hacked into some of the country's most powerful and seemingly impenetrable agencies and companies, and at one point was on a three-year run from the FBI. Now Mitnick is reformed and widely regarded as the expert on the subject of computer security. Invisibility isn't just for superheroes; privacy is a power you deserve and need in the age of Big Brother and Big Data. "Who better than Mitnick -- internationally wanted hacker turned Fortune 500 security consultant -- to teach you how to keep your data safe?" --Esquire
One of Silicon Valley’s most successful angel investors shares his rules for investing in startups. There are two ways to make money in startups: create something valuable―or invest in the people that are creating valuable things. Over the past twenty-five years, Jason Calacanis has made a fortune investing in creators, spotting and helping build and fund a number of successful technology startups―investments that have earned him tens of millions of dollars. Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for twenty-first century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step-by-step through his proven method of creating wealth in venture capital: startups. As Calacanis makes clear, you can get rich―even if you came from humble beginnings (his dad was a bartender, his mom a nurse), didn’t go to the right schools, and weren’t a top student. The trick is learning how angel investors think. Calacanis takes you inside the minds of these successful moneymen, helping you understand how they prioritize and make the decisions that have resulted in phenomenal profits. He guides you step by step through the process, revealing how leading investors evaluate early-stage companies, calculating the risks and rewards, and explains how the best startups leverage relationships with angel investors for the best results. Whether you’re an aspiring investor or a budding entrepreneur, Angel will inspire and educate you on all the ins of outs. Buckle up for a wild ride into the world of angel investing! * Angel Investing 101: Learn the step-by-step process for evaluating new ventures, calculating risks and rewards, and spotting the technology startups that can generate massive wealth. * Silicon Valley Secrets: Get an insider’s guide to how the best angel investors think, prioritize, and make the decisions that result in phenomenal, life-changing profits. * Mastering Deal Flow: Discover how to get access to the best deals and how the top founders leverage relationships with their investors for the best results, even if you didn’t go to the right schools. * Startup Valuation: Understand the difference between pre-traction and post-traction companies, what determines a seed round valuation, and when to double down on your winners.
Murray Rothbard was known as the state's greatest living enemy, and this book is his most powerful statement on the topic. He explains what a state is and what it is not. He shows how it is an institution that violates all that we hold as honest and moral, and how it operates under a false cover. He shows how the state wrecks freedom, destroys civilization, and threatens all lives and property and social well being, all under the veneer of "good intentions."
Unlike what usually passes for economics in many classrooms, government, the media and elsewhere, Choice is an engaging and intriguing book that provides something quite unique: a genuine treatise on economics that instructs and entertains both economists and general readers. Drawing on the seminal volume by the “Austrian School” economist Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, and comparing classical and neoclassical approaches, Choice is a creative, comprehensive, and unusually lucid book on economic science and market processes. The book illuminates free economies as underpinning civilization, the folly of government central planning, the primacy of entrepreneurship and innovation, the nature of money and banking, the causes of the business cycle, the failures of government intervention, and more. As a result, Choice teaches economic principles and exposes economic fallacies, and any reader will learn both the important truths about economics and the crucial value of individual choice, entrepreneurship, and free markets.
Applied Austrian economics doesn't get better than this. Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a staple of modern economic literature and crucial for understanding a pivotal event in American and world history. Rothbard opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed's policies of the 1920s, demonstrating that it was quite inflationary even if the effects did not show up in the price of goods and services. The stock-market correction was merely one symptom of the investment boom that led inevitably to a bust. The Great Depression was not a crisis for capitalism but merely an example of the downturn part of the business cycle, which in turn was generated by government intervention in the economy. Had this book appeared in the 1940s, it might have spared the world much grief. Even so, its appearance in 1963 meant that free-market advocates had their first full-scale treatment of this crucial subject. The damage to the intellectual world inflicted by Keynesian- and socialist-style treatments would be limited from that day forward. Since the book's first edition, it has been the definitive treatment of the causes of the depression. It remains canonical today because the debate is still very alive.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
The bestselling citizen’s guide to economics “Thomas Sowell is the nation’s greatest living economist.” —American Spectator Basic Economics is a citizen’s guide to economics, written for those who want to understand how the economy works but have no interest in jargon or equations. Bestselling economist Thomas Sowell explains the general principles underlying different economic systems: capitalist, socialist, feudal, and so on. In readable language, he shows how to critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first book for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy functions. Drawing on lively examples from around the world and from centuries of history, Sowell explains basic economic principles for the general public in plain English.