In December 2010, Julian Assange signed a contract with Canongate Books to write a book - part memoir, part manifesto - for publication the following year. At the time, Julian said: 'I hope this book will become one of the unifying documents of our generation. In this highly personal work, I explain our global struggle to force a new relationship between the people and their governments.' In the end, the work was to prove too personal. Despite sitting for more than fifty hours of taped interviews and spending many late nights at Ellingham Hall (where he was living under house arrest) discussing his life and the work of WikiLeaks with the writer he had enlisted to help him, Julian became increasingly troubled by the thought of publishing an autobiography. After reading the first draft of the book at the end of March, Julian declared: 'All memoir is prostitution.' In June 2011, with thirty-eight publishing houses around the world committed to releasing the book, Julian told us he wanted to cancel his contract. We disagree with Julian's assessment of the book. We believe it explains both the man and his work, underlining his commitment to the truth. Julian always claimed the book was well written; we agree, and this also encouraged us to make the book available to readers. And the contract? By the time Julian wanted to cancel the deal he had already used the advance money to settle his legal bills. So the contract still stands. We have decided to honour it - and to publish. This book is the unauthorised first draft. It is passionate, provocative and opinionated - like its author. It fulfils the promise of the original proposal and we are proud to publish it.
Join the technological revolution that’s taking the financial world by storm. Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the knowledge you need to participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this revised and expanded second edition provides essential detail to get you started. Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its early stages and yet it’s already spawned a multi-billion-dollar global economy open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides the knowledge. You simply supply the passion. The second edition includes: * A broad introduction of bitcoin and its underlying blockchain—ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives * An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects * Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles * New developments such as Segregated Witness, Payment Channels, and Lightning Network * A deep dive into blockchain applications, including how to combine the building blocks offered by this platform into higher-level applications * User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts
THE BEST BOOK THAT DESCRIBES THE WORLD OF 2020's Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modeled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power. Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory ho
Edwin Lefèvre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a fictionalized autobiography based on the life of Jesse Livermore (1877–1940) who was a pioneer of day trading and one of the greatest investors of all time. At his peak in 1929, Livermore was worth $100 million, which in today’s dollars roughly equates to $1.5 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world at that time. The book, which began as a series of articles published during 1922 and 1923 in The Saturday Evening Post, tells the story of Livermore’s progression from day trading in the then so-called “bucket shops” to market speculator, market maker, and market manipulator to Wall Street “Boy Plunger” where he won and lost tens of millions of dollars. This classic of American business writing continues to offer sharp insights into the art and psychology of trading and speculation. It is one of the most widely read, highly recommended investment books of all time. This Warbler Classics edition includes an illustrated life of Jesse Livermore. Edwin Lefèvre (1871–1943) was an American journalist, writer, and diplomat who is most noted for his writings about Wall Street, most notably Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923). He began his career as a journalist and eventually became a stockbroker as well. Edwin Lefèvre’s first short stories were published under the title, Wall Street Stories (1901), which were followed by several novels about money and finance. Lefèvre was appointed an Ambassador of the United States by President Howard Taft in 1909, serving in posts in Italy, France, and Spain. In 1913, Lefévre returned to his home in Vermont where he resumed writing novels and contributing short stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and McClure’s. “A must-read classic for all investors, whether brand-new or experienced.” —Investor’s Business Daily “Although...first published some seventy years ago, its take on crowd psychology and market timing is as timely as last summer’s frenzy on the foreign exchange markets.” —Worth magazine
The Mises Institute is pleased to present this very beautiful hardbound edition of Rothbard's most famous monetary essay--the one that has influenced two generations of economists, investors, and business professionals. The Mises Institute has united this book with its natural complement: a detailed reform proposal for a 100 percent gold dollar. The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar was written a decade before the last vestiges of the gold standard were abolished. His unique plan for making the dollar sound again still holds up. Some people have said: Rothbard tells us what is wrong with money but not what to do about it. Well, by adding this essay, the problem and the answer are united in a comprehensive whole. After presenting the basics of money and banking theory, he traces the decline of the dollar from the 18th century to the present, and provides lucid critiques of central banking, New Deal monetary policy, Nixonian fiat money, and fixed exchange rates. He also provides a blueprint for a return to a 100 percent reserve gold standard. The book made huge theoretical advances. He was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much. The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it. Rothbard shows precisely how banks create money out of thin air and how the central bank, backed by government power, allows them to get away with it. He shows how exchange rates and interest rates would work in a true free market. When it comes to describing the end of the gold standard, he is not content to describe the big trends. He names names and ferrets out all the interest groups involved. Since Rothbard's death, scholars have worked to assess his legacy, and many of them agree that this little book is one of his most important. Though it has sometimes been inauspiciously packaged and is surprisingly short, its argument took huge strides toward explaining that it is impossible to understand public affairs in our time without understanding money and its destruction.
The definitive work on the extraordinary phenomenon of out-of-body experiences, by the founder of the internationally known Monroe Institute. Robert Monroe, a Virginia businessman, began to have experiences that drastically altered his life. Unpredictably, and without his willing it, Monroe found himself leaving his physical body to travel via a "second body" to locales far removed from the physical and spiritual realities of his life. He was inhabiting a place unbound by time or death. Praise for Journeys Out of the Body "Monroe's account of his travels, Journeys Out of the Body, jam-packed with parasitic goblins and dead humans, astral sex, scary trips into mind-boggling other dimensions, and practical tips on how to get out of your body, all told with wry humor, quickly became a cult sensation with its publication in 1971, and has been through many printings. Whatever their 'real' explanation, Monroe's trips made for splendid reading." —Michael Hutchinson, author of Megabrain "Robert Monroe's experiences are probably the most intriguing of any person's of our time, with the possible exception of Carlos Castaneda's." —Joseph Chilton Pierce, author of Magical Child "This book is by a person who's clearly a sensible man and who's trying to tell it like it is. No ego trips. Just a solid citizen who's been 'out' a thousand times now and wants to pass his experiences to others." —The Last Whole Earth Catalog
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'A critical contribution to Chinese history' Wall Street Journal Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the West in less than fifteen years. It led to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.
Since the inception of Bitcoin in 2008, thousands of cryptocurrencies or decentralised blockchains have been launched. Most ventures into the cryptocurrency sphere have not gone according to plan as their founders would have hoped. Nevertheless, there are currently hundreds of crypto related projects which are succeeding. This book covers the history of Peercoin, a decentralised, globally accessible and secure ecosystem for transferring value across the world. Since August 2012, a growing committed and visionary team of developers has been driving the project forward.
“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —Time Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, this foundational work of Soviet history is Solzhenitsyn’s chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police and political repression that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. “The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times.” —George F. Kennan “It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century.” —David Remnick, The New Yorker “Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece. . . . The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today.” —Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, from the foreword Solzhenitsyn’s “experiment in literary investigation” stands as a towering monument in 20th-century history, offering: * A First-Hand Gulag Memoir: Follow Solzhenitsyn’s own story, from his shocking arrest as a decorated Red Army captain to his brutal interrogation at the hands of the Soviet secret police. * Definitive Soviet History: Based on the testimony of 227 witnesses, this work uncovers the true origins of the concentration camp system, arguing it was essential to the state not just under Stalin, but from the first days of Lenin. * The Bureaucracy of Terror: Journey into the “almost invisible country” of the Gulag, a continent of prisons and camps woven into the fabric of Soviet society and administered by an ever-present secret police. * An Enduring Literary Masterpiece: Discover the book hailed as the “greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times,” a work that forever altered the world’s moral consciousness.
Over a million copies sold! A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, this classic guide to the basics of economic theory defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. “A magnificent job of theoretical exposition.”—Ayn Rand Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than fifty years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong—and strongly reasoned—anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right: * Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts. * Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low. * Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the 1 degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows thanks to fossil-fueled development. What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential. Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
Will there ever be another investing book like this? It's unlikely. University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies handed down personally from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. From this front row seat, you'll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year. If you're looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you're looking for an investing book that's as personal as it is revelatory, look no further. Packed with Buffett and Munger's timeless, generous, and often hilarious wisdom, University of Berkshire Hathaway will keep serious investors turning pages late into the night: * Get unique insight into the thinking, strategies, and decisions--both good and bad--that made Buffett and Munger two of the world's greatest investors. * Understand the critical reasoning that leads Buffett and Munger to purchase a particular company, including their methods for assigning value. * Learn the central tenets of Buffett's value-investing philosophy "straight from the horse's mouth." * Enjoy Munger's biting wit as he goes after any topic that offends him. * Discover Buffett's distaste for "commonly accepted strategies" like modern portfolio theory. * See why these annual meetings are often called "an MBA in a weekend."