City of lies

love, sex, death, and the search for truth in Tehran

Rich, absorbing, and exotic—City of Lies travels up and down Vali Asr Street, Tehran’s pulsing thoroughfare, from the lavish shopping malls of Tajrish through the smog that lingers over the alleyways and bazaars of the city’s southern districts. Ramita Navai gives voice ...

Left brain, right stuff

how leaders make winning decisions

'Left Brain, Right Stuff' takes up where other books about decision making leave off. For many routine choices, from shopping to investing, we can make good decisions simply by avoiding common errors, such as searching only for confirming information or avoiding the hindsight bias. But ...

The why axis

hidden motives and the undiscovered conomics of everyday life

Can economics be passionate?… Can it center on people and what really matters to them day-in and day-out.… And help us understand their hidden motives for why they do what they do in everyday life? Uri Gneezy and John List are revolutionaries. Their ideas and ...

Tower of Basel

the shadowy history of the secret bank that runs the world

The inside story of the central bankers' secret bank is an 80 year history of an institution that was designed to escape public scrutiny and to emphasize discretion, even as it became a leading architect of the global financial system. It's the engine at ...

Treasurys war

the unleashing of a new era of financial warfare

Juan Zarate created "Treasury's War", as it became apparent that the war against terrorist networks and other national foes would need to have a financial dimension. Zarate and his colleagues invented financial warfare. The book goes behind the scenes in unprecedented detail to explain ...

The great convergence

Asia, The West, and the logic of one World

Since the 1990s, the world's economies have become ever more globalized and interdependent, but political power has not readjusted. Mahbubani shows why power must shift, reflecting the new global realities, to avoid disunity and conflict in our future. Globalization began in earnest in the ...

The great deformation

the corruption of capitalism in America

The controversial businessman and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan condemns the corruption of capitalism, especially over the last 30 years, sparing no one in his feisty and brilliant depiction of how government and finance has all but ruined ...

The birth of the West

Rome, Germany, France, and the creation of Europe in the Tenth Century

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne's empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ...

Spies and commissars

the early years of the Russian Revolution

The early years of Bolshevik rule were marked by dynamic interaction between Russia and the West. These years of civil war in Russia were years when the West strove to understand the new communist regime while also seeking to undermine it. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks tried ...

The Dictator's handbook

why bad behaviour is almost always good politics

In this book, two renowned political scientists show how the rules of politics almost always favour leaders who ignore the national interest and focus on serving their own supporters. For eighteen years, political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of ...

Who gets what

fair compensation after tragedy and financial upheaval

Agent Orange, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the Virginia Tech massacre, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Deep Horizon gulf oil spill: each was a disaster in its own right. What they had in common was their aftermath--each required compensation for lives lost, bodies ...

Wait

the art and science od delay

What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval officer assessing a threat to his ship, and a comedian about to reveal a punch line? In this counterintuitive and ...

Poor economics

a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty

Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two practical visionaries working toward ending world poverty, answer these questions from the ground. In ...

Financial turmoil in Europe and the United States

essays

In a natural follow-up to his international bestseller "The Crash of 2008: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets", George Soros reflects on what went wrong with the global economy, and how to get it back on track. The dire economic situation we find ourselves in ...

Money well spent?

the truth behind the trillion-dollar stimulus, the biggest economic recovery plan in History

The 2012 presidential campaign will, above all else, be a referendum on the Obama administration's handling of the financial crisis, recalling the period when Obama's "audacity of hope" met the austerity of reality. Central to this is the ''American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ...

Lisbon

war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939-1945

A brilliantly researched narrative history of "the real Casablanca"--the city which during World War Two saw no fighting but was cluttered with spies from all nations, displaced European royalty and furtive bankers and businessmen seeking to protect their wealth from the destruction all around ...

The anatomy of Israel's survival

The question "Can Israel survive?" has echoed loud for Israelis--and Jews, their supporters and adversaries worldwide--since the Holocaust. The recent upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia and beyond have raised it anew. Israeli journalist and security analyst Hirsh Goodman set out to answer it, through rigorous factual ...

Unnatural selection

choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men

Lianyungang, a booming port city, has Chinas most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers dont seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children ...

The dictator's handbook

why bad behaviour is almost always good politics

In this title, two renowned political scientists make the contrarian, research-based case that - regardless of any other factors political scientists or historians may find relevant - the calculations and actions of rulers are the driving force of all politics, and the primary goal of rulers is ...

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

final report of the National Comission on the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the United States

The most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression has cost the jobs, homes and savings of millions of people. In 2008 the US government stepped in to rescue a faltering financial system, propping up some of the largest and most powerful financial firms on ...