Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries


Arend Lijphart - 1999
    It demonstrates that consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits.

God’s Chaos Code: The Shocking Blueprint that Reveals 5 Keys to the Destiny of Nations


Lance Wallnau - 2020
    As the chaos intensifies and the world shakes, God is Speaking! Could a code from the ancient middle east reveal a global pandemic, pending economic crash, and rise in gun sales? Are these signs that America is under judgement? What if God hid an ancient prophetic code in Scripture that predicts this exact moment in history and what is coming next? Could heaven be unlocking the books of Haggai, Nehemiah, Esther, and Ezra to reveal a pattern for us today? Is it possible that this code is being illuminated now so that you and I can have peace and clarity in the midst of shaking? Prepare to be astonished, shocked, startled, and enlightened. God's Chaos Code unlocks the 2,600-year-old code that predicts the exact crisis we are in and our only way out! Lance Wallnau burst onto the scene in 2016 with his national bestselling book, God's Chaos Candidate where he correctly predicted the election of Donald Trump and that Trump would be compared to the biblical King Cyrus. Lance forecast the economic unraveling of 2020 and America's Fourth Turning. As you read his latest book, God's Chaos Code, you will discover Lance's newest prediction: the five keys to the Chaos Code. After you read this, you may never see the world the same.

Downsizing Your Life for Freedom Flexibility and Financial Peace


Claire Middleton - 2014
     In Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace , you’ll learn about the joys of the downsized life: Lower personal expenses, Flexibility to move to wherever your career takes you, Clutter-free living, and More time to do what you love to do! Thanks to the economic downturn, Claire Middleton and her family lost their business and had to sell their spacious home. They sold or gave away more than half of their possessions to comfortably fit into the little house where they now live (quite happily). And they learned that downsizing, even forced downsizing, can be a blessing in disguise. In Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace , Claire shares her story as well as those of others who learned the truth about possessions and freedom after downsizing their lives (voluntarily or not). Is your lifetime’s worth of stuff holding you back? Are you missing out on dreams and opportunities because the burden of your possessions weighs you down? It’s never too late to free yourself! Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace will show you how: just click the “Buy” button at the top of this page to get started.

Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East


Rashid Khalidi - 2009
    Their motives, long held by historians to have had an ideological thrust, were, in fact, to gain control over access to oil and claim geographic and strategic advantage. In his new book, Rashid Khalidi, considered the foremost U.S. historian of the Middle East, makes the compelling case that the dynamics that played out during the Cold War continue to exert a profound influence even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.The pattern of superpower intervention during the Cold War deeply affected and exacerbated regional and civil wars throughout the Middle East, and the carefully calculated maneuvers fueled by the fierce competition between the United States and the USSR actually provoked breakdowns in fragile democracies. To understand the momentous events that have occurred in the region over the last two decades-including two Gulf wars, the occupation of Iraq, and the rise of terrorism-we must, Khalidi argues, understand the crucial interplay of Cold War powers there from 1945 to 1990.Today, the legacy of the Cold War continues in American policies and approaches to the Middle East that have shifted from a deadly struggle against communism to a War on Terror, and from opposing the Evil Empire to targeting the Axis of Evil. The current U.S. deadlock with Iran and the upsurge of American-Russian tensions in the wake of the conflict in Georgia point to the continued centrality of the Middle East in American strategic attention. Today, with a new administration in Washington, understanding and managing the full impact of this dangerous legacy in order to move America toward a more constructive and peaceful engagement in this critical arena is of the utmost importance.

A Bike Ride: 12,000 Miles Around the World


Anne Mustoe - 1991
    12,000 miles and 15 months later, she was home.Her epic solo journey took her around the world, through Europe, India, the Far East and the United States. From Thessaloniki to Uttar Pradesh, from Chumphon to Singapore, she faced downpours, blizzards and blistering deserts, political turmoil and amorous waiters - alternated with great kindness from strangers along the way.A Bike Ride is the first in the series of Anne Mustoe's successful and inspiring travelogues.

In the Name of Friendship


Marilyn French - 1997
    Now the acclaimed author updates that classic with a new exploration of the truths and realities behind women’s lives. In the Name of Friendship dares to investigate how the women’s movement changed the lives of those it touched and what hurdles it left to cross.Set in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, this wise novel is a group portrait of four disparate women who forge life-altering friendships despite personalities that vary as greatly as their vocations and ages. The novel weaves together a series of family crises with the friendships that help the four women refashion their lives. Maddy, the seventy-six-year-old real estate agent and matriarch of the group, struggles with the gradual death of her angry and rebellious Vietnam-marked son; fifty-year-old Alicia fights to reconnect her gay son with her newly retired husband; seventy-year-old musician Emily strives to bridge the gap with her estranged niece right at the moment her composition career starts to finally bloom; and Jenny, the thirty-year-old painter and baby of the group, questions the life she has created with her successful painter husband and tries to decide if she wants more from life.With this unusual group of multi-generational ladies, French tells a truly rare tale about four women who accidentally come into each other’s lives and in the process form an enduring friendship. It is a story of supporting one another, of looking at the grim conflicts created by cultural expectations of women, and realizing you are not alone—truly a tale of continuing hope.

War Games: The Story Of Aid And War In Modern Times


Linda Polman - 2010
    From Rwanda to Afghanistan, from Sudan to Iraq, this brilliantly written and at times blackly funny work of reportage shows how the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support.

Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present


Anthony Pagden - 2001
    It’s the history of how conquerors justified conquest, and how colonists and the colonized changed each other beyond all recognition.

When the Moon Has No More Silver (Jamestown Sky Series)


Connie Lapallo - 2011
    

Krazy and Ignatz, 1937-1938: Shifting Sands Dusts Its Cheeks in Powdered Beauty


George Herriman - 2006
    The gorgeous evolution continues in the second color volume, which includes the Sunday strips from all of 1937 and 1938. The color format opens the floodgates for a massive amount of spectacular rare color art from series editor Bill Blackbeard and designer Chris Ware's files. Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters. Each of the characters was ignorant of the others' true motivations, and this simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth and sweeping his readers up by the looping verbal rhythms of Krazy Co.'s unique dialogue.Most of these strips in this volume have not seen print since originally running in Hearst newspapers over 70 years ago. With a full 104 Sunday pages this time around, this particular book is jam packed with little room for extras, but we did squeeze in a half-dozen or so pages' worth of never-before-seen Herriman memorabilia (all in color), including a spectacular full-color New Year's card illustration done for a friend.

Things Snowball


Rich Hall - 2002
    He describes his idyllic childhood in Eastern Tennessee, helping to operate his grandfolks' backyard nuclear plant. He explains how he sold his soul to the Devil to make him a better bluesman, and how the Devil tried to sell it back. And he reveals what happened when Neil Diamond invited him to dinner, and more importantly, why he had to wear a hardhat. Along the way he tackles the questions we've all asked ourselves from time to time, such as, which element did people breath before oxygen was discovered in 1774? (neon.) What's the difference between iron and lead? (There isn't one: ask anyone who has ever been hit in the head by a length of pipe.) And, if Jesus was a carpenter, "How come not a single example of his craftsmanship exists, not even a crude chest of drawers?" In the tradition of Woody Allen's "Without Feathers", "Things Snowball" is a comic, inventive book: subversive and entertaining.

The Causes of War


Geoffrey Blainey - 1973
    Proving that war and peace are alternating phases of a relationship between rival nations, this widely quoted work offers a crucial, new understanding of international armed conflict.

A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis


David Rieff - 2002
    Drawing on firsthand reporting from war zones around the world, David Rieff shows us what aid workers do in the field and the growing gap between their noble ambitions and their actual capabilities for alleviating suffering. He describes how many humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of neutrality, which gave them access to victims, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing. By calling for intervention, humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do what they do best -- alleviate suffering -- they must reclaim their independence.

Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System


Barry Eichengreen - 2010
    dollar has been not just America's currency but the world's. It is used globally by importers, exporters, investors, governments and central banks alike. Nearly three-quarters of all $100 bills circulate outside the United States. The dollar holdings of the Chinese government alone come to more than $1,000 per Chinese resident. This dependence on dollars, by banks, corporations and governments around the world, is a source of strength for the United States. It is, as a critic of U.S. policies once put it, America's "exorbitant privilege." However, recent events have raised concerns that this soon may be a privilege lost. Among these have been the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession: high unemployment, record federal deficits, and financial distress. In addition there is the rise of challengers like the euro and China's renminbi. Some say that the dollar may soon cease to be the world's standard currency--which would depress American living standards and weaken the country's international influence.In Exorbitant Privilege, one of our foremost economists, Barry Eichengreen, traces the rise of the dollar to international prominence over the course of the 20th century. He shows how the greenback dominated internationally in the second half of the century for the same reasons--and in the same way--that the United States dominated the global economy. But now, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies, America no longer towers over the global economy. It follows, Eichengreen argues, that the dollar will not be as dominant. But this does not mean that the coming changes will necessarily be sudden and dire--or that the dollar is doomed to lose its international status. Challenging the presumption that there is room for only one true global currency--either the dollar or something else--Eichengreen shows that several currencies have shared this international role over long periods. What was true in the distant past will be true, once again, in the not-too-distant future.The dollar will lose its international currency status, Eichengreen warns, only if the United States repeats the mistakes that led to the financial crisis and only if it fails to put its fiscal and financial house in order. The greenback's fate hinges, in other words, not on the actions of the Chinese government but on economic policy decisions here in the United States.Incisive, challenging and iconoclastic, Exorbitant Privilege is a fascinating analysis of the changes that lie ahead. It is a challenge, equally, to those who warn that the dollar is doomed and to those who regard its continuing dominance as inevitable.

Bullet Points


Mark Watson - 2004
    By arranging their histories like the index entries in a biography, the sequences of cause and effect that have led to their particular neuroses are cunningly revealed. His technique gains him a modicum of success: a thriving practice in Chicago with a client list of thriving stars.But by concentrating on his rival Richard he is blind to the other factors which put both his life and the lives of others at risk...