Today's Hours:
Material World by
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. * Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information--what Ed Conway calls "the ethereal world"--our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material. In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth--traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates. Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.
Fifteen Cents on the Dollar by
A sweeping, narrative history of Black wealth and the economic discrimination embedded in America's financial system. The early 2020s will long be known as a period of racial reflection. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans of all backgrounds joined together in historic demonstrations in the streets, discussions in the workplace, and conversations at home about the financial gaps that remain between white and Black Americans. This deeply investigated book shows the scores of setbacks that have held the Black-white wealth gap in place--from enslavement to redlining to banking discrimination--and, ultimately, the reversals that occurred in the mid-2020s as the push for racial equity became a polarized political debate. Fifteen Cents on the Dollar follows the lives of four Black Millennial professionals and a banking company founded with the stated mission of closing the Black-white wealth gap. That company, known as Greenwood, a reference to the historic Black Wall Street district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, generated immense excitement and hope among people looking for new ways of business that might lead to greater equity. But the twists and turns of Greenwood's journey also raise tough questions about what equality really means. Seasoned journalist-academics Louise Story and Ebony Reed present a nuanced portrait of Greenwood's founders--the entertainment executive Ryan Glover; the Grammy-winning rapper Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike; and the Civil Rights leader and two-term Atlanta mayor, Andrew Young--along with new revelations about their lives, careers, and families going back to the Civil War. Equally engaging are the stories of the lesser-known individuals--a female tech employee from rural North Carolina trying to make it in a big city; a rising leader at the NAACP whose father is in prison; an owner of a BBQ stand in Atlanta fighting to keep his home; and a Black man in a biracial marriage grappling with his roots when his father is shot by the police. In chronicling these staggering injustices, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar shows why so little progress has been made on the wealth gap and provides insights Americans should consider if they want lasting change.
How to Think Like an Economist by
Capturing the essence of history's most influential economists in enjoyable and illuminating biographical sketches, this book shows how the great economic thinkers are still relevant today. We live in the economy - and we are part of it. Living through a pandemic, governments had to work out how to put economies into a deep freeze without destroying them. Avoiding climate catastrophe means changing economies so that they don't bake the world. In explaining how economic thinking is indispensable to tackling these huge problems, this book is a sure-footed guide, spanning Aristotle's ideas about restraining consumption, Adam Smith's thinking about the importance of moral character for sustained economic development, and Esther Duflo's ongoing work to help the world's poorest communities lift themselves out of poverty. It shows how the greatest economic thinkers - Karl Marx, Maynard Keynes, and Friedrich Hayek, among many others - have enabled us to see the world differently, and how we can make it better. It shows that economic thinking emerged, long before there were economists - and that good economics is about much more than the economy, so everyone should understand these vital ideas. Along the way, the book quietly subverts what you think you know about economics, especially by showing how women found a place in the development of ideas even when discrimination denied them any formal role.
Labor in America by
The gold standard of American labor history references, updated to include the latest political, social, and economic developments of the 2020s Labor in America: A History, Tenth Edition, is a comprehensive and authoritative discussion of the U.S. labor movement from the colonial era to the 2020s. Authors Melvyn Dubofsky and Joseph A. McCartin have expanded and updated their landmark text, incorporating significant recent events and their implications for American labor. The book addresses the continuing and evolving challenges faced by American workers, critical developments in U.S. labor history, the impact of economic and political changes, and more. Dubofsky and McCartin offer nuanced analyses of workers' collective actions, the formation of unions, and the role of labor in shaping American society. They provide a rich historical context and a detailed narrative of labor history for students, scholars, and laypersons alike. The authors also explain the likely impact of major contemporary trends on workers, including the rise of the gig economy, and discuss the most critical influences on modern U.S. labor. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history and future of labor in the United States, Labor in America: A History will undoubtedly remain the gold standard in the field for years to come.
From Hoodies to Suits by
Learn how digital asset technologies can be applied to the regulated, traditional finance industry for improved performance and returns In From Hoodies to Suits: Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance, leading finance innovator Annelise Osborne bridges the gap between the "hoodies" who invented the technology behind digital assets and the "suits" who run traditional financial markets, in an entertaining and insightful guide for implementing digital assets in an institutional environment. You'll discover the possibilities unlocked by new technological advancements, including alternative investments, new marketplaces, interoperability between counterparties, and even improved forms of diversification. You'll also find: Discussions of why the adoption of digital assets is so critical for the future of finance and the ways the industry's largest players are implementing its technologies and concepts now Explorations of what we can learn from some of the crypto industry's most infamous and well-known wins and losses, including the collapse of FTX Strategies for implementing institutional digital assets to realize opportunities in private markets, funds, debt, repo, alternative assets and back office transactions in this evolving and dynamic financial environment A fascinating new take on the future of finance, From Hoodies to Suits is a must-read guide for aspiring and practicing finance professionals, technology developers, fintech participants, and anyone else with an interest in the intersection of finance and technology.
Capitalism and Crises by
bThe world is encountering multiple crises - climate, droughts, floods, energy, food, and pandemics, to name a few. We have a problem, this is the solution./bCapitalism and Crises is about how capitalism can fix them - how it can solve not cause them. The reason why it has caused them is that we have misconceived the nature of our capitalist system. We have failed to understand the key institution at the heart of it - business - and as a result we have allowed it to cause as well as solve problems. This book describes why this has happened and what needs to change to address it: it will take you through how the capitalist system operates, where it fails and why, and it will demonstrate that at the core of the problem is the key driver of capitalism and that is profit - the way in which we resource and reward those who run the system. Currently, profit comes from causing as well as solving problems. It must not, if we are to prevent the problems. Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology, and biology as well economics, law, and finance, Mayer describes what has gone wrong, what needs to change, and how to fix it. He sets out the big challenges that capitalism must address and how it should set about doing that, and discusses how financial institutions should be at the heart of this, and how the public sector can work with the private on a common purpose of solving problems and creating shared prosperity. Capitalism and Crises provides an inspiring and motivational roadmap of how we as practitioners, policymakers, consumers, employees, communities, students, and citizens of the world can together tackle the challenges of the 21st century - to flourish and survive.
Beyond Banks by
How new technology is rapidly changing the nature of money and the way we pay A diverse and growing range of financial institutions and platforms--from PayPal and Venmo to WeChat, Alipay, and the brave new world of stablecoins--has harnessed new technology to disrupt the system of money and payments as we know it. Beyond Banks explains why this disruption holds out the promise of faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more secure payments, but also how it increasingly risks exposing consumers, businesses, and governments to the problem of bad money. Dan Awrey traces the origins of our current bundled system of banking, money, and payments. He explains why the problem of bad money--the result of antiquated and inadequate laws and regulation that fail to establish credible commitments to hold, transfer, or return a customer's money on demand--requires that policymakers fundamentally rethink their approach toward the design of the laws and institutions at the heart of this system. He presents ways to effectively unbundle banking from money and payments, ensure the credibility of monetary commitments, and promote the stability of this system. Awrey also envisions a more forward-looking role for policymakers in encouraging greater technological experimentation, competition, and innovation in the realm of payments. Beyond Banks sheds critical light on the important but too often dysfunctional relationship among technology, regulation, and money, and lays the foundations for a safer, more nimble, and more inclusive system of money and payments.
The Black Reparations Project by
This groundbreaking resource moves us from theory to action with a practical plan for reparations. A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project gathers an accomplished interdisciplinary team of scholars--members of the Reparations Planning Committee--who have considered the issues pertinent to making reparations happen. This book will be an essential resource in the national conversation going forward. The first section of The Black Reparations Project crystallizes the rationale for reparations, cataloguing centuries of racial repression, discrimination, violence, mass incarceration, and the immense black-white wealth gap. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in economics, history, law, public policy, public health, and education, the second section unfurls direct guidance for building and implementing a reparations program, including draft legislation that addresses how the program should be financed and how claimants can be identified and compensated. Rigorous and comprehensive, The Black Reparations Project will motivate, guide, and speed the final leg of the journey for justice.
The Skill Code by
From one of the world's top researchers on work and technology comes an insightful and surprising guide to protecting your skill in a world filling with AI and robots. Think of your most valuable skill, the thing you can reliably do under pressure to deliver results. How did you learn it Whatever your job - plumber, attorney, teacher, surgeon - decades of research show that you achieved mastery by working with someone who knew more than you did. Formal learning--school and books--gave you conceptual knowledge, but you developed your skill by working with an expert. Today, this essential bond is under threat. In our grail-like quest to optimize productivity with intelligent technologies like AI and robots, we are separating junior workers from experts in workplaces around the world. It's a looming multi-trillion-dollar problem that few are addressing, until now. In The Skill Code, researcher and technologist Matt Beane reveals the hidden code that underwrites every successful expert-novice relationship. Beane has spent the last decade examining this unique bond in a variety of settings, from warehouses to surgical suites. He's found that just as the four amino acids are the building blocks of DNA, the three C's--challenge, complexity, and connection--are the basic components of how we develop our most valuable skills. Whether you're an expert or a novice, this book will show you how to build skill more effectively - and how to make intelligent technologies part of the solution, not the problem. The Skill Code is an insightful must-read, with significant implications for how we will work and build skill in the twenty-first century--a guide to help you not only survive but thrive.
Soda Science by
Takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powerful companies and allied academic scientists mold research to meet industry needs. The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages--and threaten the revenues of the giant soda companies. Soda Science tells the story of how industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. Anthropologist and science studies specialist Susan Greenhalgh discovers a hidden world of science-making--with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims--dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and afterlife of the science they made, Greenhalgh shows how corporate science has managed to gain such a hold over our lives. Spanning twenty years, her investigation takes her from the US, where the science was made, to China, a key market for sugary soda. In the US, soda science was a critical force in the making of today's society of step-counting, fitness-tracking, weight-obsessed citizens. In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally. By following the scientists and their ambitious schemes to make the world safe for Coke, Greenhalgh offers an account that is more global--and yet more human--than the story that dominates public understanding today. Coke's research isn't fake science, Greenhalgh argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. Her gripping book raises crucial questions about conflicts of interest in scientific research, the funding behind familiar messages about health, and the cunning ways giant corporations come to shape our diets, lifestyles, and health to their own needs.
Economic Futures by
The life of our planet has reached a critical stage. Its survival depends on our ability to rethink our relationship with ecology, and create a new economy which does not rely on economic growth, and supports care and sustainability for our planet. This book examines histories of alternative economic theories to advocate for different ways of economic distribution that do not keep producing emissions. It calls into question our philosophy of time, our relationship with ecology, and the original creation of debt, interest, and ways of avoiding exponential economic growth. The author uses ideas from Maori philosophy, Mesopotamian finance and quantum mechanics to set out a new basis for economic theory which is no longer set up on greedy individualism, or a hierarchical trickle-down effect, or even overall economic growth. Instead, this new materialist philosophy emphasises the integration of humanity and the ecosystem, and sets out to create a philosophy of economics built on interconnection and care.
The North American Auto Industry since NAFTA by
The auto sector is North America's most iconic of industries. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement came into existence in 1994, the sector has undergone tremendous change: escalating concerns around climate change, advances in electric and automated vehicles, deindustrialization/reindustrialization, and the rise of low-cost locations as hubs for manufacturing. The North American Auto Industry since NAFTAexamines the issues that have preoccupied the development of policy associated with the manufacture of automobiles in North America. The collection addresses the punctuations that have afflicted the industry since NAFTA's implementation as well as the slower, incremental evolutions that have also occurred. Several aspects of automobility and the industry are explored, including but not limited to the Canadian, American, and Mexican automotive sectors and their evolution and interaction under evolving trade regimes. The book analyses issues surrounding labour, technology, trade policy, regional development, the environment, and broader societal impacts of the automobile. It also draws on the expertise of a wide cross-section of industry experts and scholars to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the automotive industry and its central role in North America's economic, business, and political landscape.