In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germany’s finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake. Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However, “quantitative easing,” that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a country’s deficit necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.

    It was the government, led by the Social Democratic Party, which took power, albeit with some trepidation, after Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated the German throne. Socialists saw this as the opportunity they had been waiting for, the day when workers would be the ones in power. For the conservatives who could not accept the German defeat in World War I, however, the Weimar Republic was a feeble entity which had capitulated to Germany’s enemies.The German Revolution of 1918-1919 told the story of a bruised nation attempting to overcome its military defeat at the hands of enemies who wanted to punish Germany for starting the war. Because Germany was caught in the vise of such irreconcilable political philosophies between the left and the right, the Weimar Republic, although it was the ruling power following the German Revolution, was destined to have a doomed, short life in Germany’s tragic twentieth-century history.

    But the heart of the matter is that, as the crisis unfolds, the basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin's strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating.How did this happen? The anticipation of the European catastrophe has already fundamentally changed the European landscape of power. It is giving birth to a political monster: a German Europe. Germany did not seek this leadership position - rather, it is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The invention and implementation of the euro was the price demanded by France in order to pin Germany down to a European Monetary Union in the context of German unification. It was a quid pro quo for binding a united Germany into a more integrated Europe in which France would continue to play the leading role. But the precise opposite has happened. Economically the euro turned out to be very good for Germany, and with the euro crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel became the informal Queen of Europe.The new grammar of power reflects the difference between creditor and debtor countries; it is not a military but an economic logic. Its ideological foundation is 'German euro nationalism' - that is, an extended European version of the Deutschmark nationalism that underpinned German identity after the Second World War. In this way the German model of stability is being surreptitiously elevated into the guiding idea for Europe. The Europe we have now will not be able to survive in the risk-laden storms of the globalized world. The EU has to be more than a grim marriage sustained by the fear of the chaos that would be caused by its breakdown. It has to be built on something more positive: a vision of rebuilding Europe bottom-up, creating a Europe of the citizen. There is no better way to reinvigorate Europe than through the coming together of ordinary Europeans acting on their own behalf.

    There, one man and his five brilliant sons made their fortune as court agents to a royal prince. It would take Napoleon’s earth-shattering quest to conquer Europe to scatter the five brothers to the four winds, but when the dust of war settled, there was a Rothschild brother and a Rothschild bank in five cities: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples, and Vienna. The era of haute finance had begun, and the legend of a banking dynasty more powerful than any royal family in history was established. In this book, you will follow the progress of the Rothschild family through the centuries. Their ranks included not only bankers and financiers but doctors, scientists, bomb experts, and collectors who amassed not only some of the finest art collections in Europe, but also one of the finest bug collections. Find out for yourself how the Rothschilds prevented wars, crowned and uncrowned kings, helped win the battle of Waterloo, looked down their noses at Nazis, and established a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

    Read a succinct history of the Gunpowder Plot in just one hour.‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November’. The gunpowder plot is a famed tale of treachery that continues to fascinate and capture the imagination four hundred years on.The Gunpowder Plot in an Hour reveals the elaborate background to the infamous plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and James I, the ultimate act of treason. This compelling and engaging account of one of the most famous historical events in English history follows the Catholic protagonists hatching their plan through to their inevitable, gruesome deaths.Learn who the Catholic traitors were, what drove them to such desperate measures, and how the plot was discovered. The Gunpowder Plot in an Hour gives a concise overview of this enduring event and is a must for all history lovers.Love your history? Find out about the world with History in an Hour…

    But what if this was not the case? What if the war had its roots in Germany's weakness, not its strength? This is the radical argument in this pathbreaking book, the first account of the Nazi era for the twenty-first century and our globalized world.There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics, yet Adam Tooze is the first to place economics alongside race and politics at the heart of the story of the Third Reich. And America, in Tooze's view, is the true pivot for Hitler's epic challenge to a shift in the world order. Hitler intuitively understood how Germany's relative poverty in the 1930s was the result not just of global depression, but also of Germany's limited resources. He predicted the dawning of a globalized world in which Europe would be crushed by America's overwhelming power, against which he saw only one last chance: a German super-state dominating Europe. Doing what Europeans had done for three centuries, he sought to carve out an imperial hinterland through one last land grab to the east, to give him the self-sufficiency to prevail in the coming superpower competition. With the odds stacked against him, he launched his underresourced armies on their unprecedented and ultimately futile rampage across Europe.Hitler knew by the summer of 1939 that his efforts to prepare for a long war with the West were doomed to failure. Ideology drove him forward. Hitler became convinced that Jewish elements in Washington, London, and Paris were circling round him, and from 1938, the international "Jewish question: was synonymous with America in his mind. Even in the summer of 1940, at the moment of Germany's greatest triumphs, Hitler was still haunted by the looming threat of Anglo-American air and sea power, orchestrated by, he believed, the world Jewish conspiracy.Tooze also casts a stark new light on Albert Speer's role in sustaining the Third Reich to its bloody end, after the catastrophe of the Soviet invasion. Speer, Tooze proposes, was no apolitical agent of technocratic efficiency but a Hitler loyalist who would stop at nothing to continue a hopeless battle of attrition, at the cost of tens of millions of lives.The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that will fundamentally change the way in which we view Nazi Germany and the Second World War.

    On that dark day in October 1929, fortunes were lost and fear of financial insecurity rose throughout the United States and the world. In 1932, the low point of the Depression, as much as a third of Americans were out of work and even more people were unemployed in other countries. The stock market reached its lowest point ever and wouldn’t rise to its pre-Depression levels for almost twenty years. The scale of the crisis demanded new ways of coping and new ideas about the role of government. The ideas that had dominated American thought about the relationship between the economy and government were now viewed to be outdated at best, dangerous at worst. This captivating history book aims to give you a better understanding of a period that contains many tragic stories yet powerful lessons. In The Great Depression: A Captivating Guide to the Worldwide Economic Depression that Began in the United States, Including the Wall Street Crash, FDR's New deal, Hitler’s Rise and More, you will discover topics such as Causes of the Great Depression 1918-1929 Herbert Hoover and the Early Years of the Depression The Election of 1932 The 100 Days and FDR’s First Term, 1933-1937 FDR’s Second Term—Challenges and Critics The Culture of the Depression Sports and the Great Depression The Outlaw Celebrity in the Great Depression Population Shifts and the Culture of the Great Depression International Issues and Concerns During the Depression The Coming Storm and the End of the Depression And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about the Great Depression, click "buy now"!

    Maybe your teacher took the controversial stand that the Civil War was all about states’ rights… or maybe you learned all about the horrors slavery, but never quite figured out why things didn’t get better after the war ended. If you didn’t go to school in the United States, things are even more confusing. When the media is full of references to the Confederate flag, the legacy of slavery, and poverty in the American South, you might have a vague sense that things are bad because of the Civil War… but why? Why does a war that happened over a hundred and fifty years ago still cast a shadow over the United States? This book will tell you why. It will lead you, step-by-step, through the causes of the Civil War, and the effects. But unlike your high school history teacher, it won’t put you to sleep with long-winded biographies and lists of dates. The names you’ll learn are the big players, the ones with big personalities, who made big differences. In just a few minutes a day, you can read bite-sized stories from the Civil War – quick, easy explanations to guide you through the main points, with just enough scary, surprising, or just plain strange facts to keep you coming back for more. Each chapter ends with a bonus helping of trivia and some quick questions to test your knowledge. By the time you’re finished, you’ll know all the facts your history teacher never taught you – from who said slavery was a “positive good” (and why they thought that), to who dressed up in women’s clothing to escape from Union soldiers.

    Book by Connolly, Bernard

    I shall give it in the exact words of that thoughtful historian from whom I have already quoted: "Before the end of the year 1795 the paper money was almost exclusively in the hands of the working classes, employees and men of small means, whose property was not large enough to invest in stores of goods or national lands.

    But the left and right can usually agree on one thing: that the Nordic system is impossible to replicate here at home. The US is too big, or too individualistic, or too puritan, or too . . . something. Whatever the reason, it's impossible, and we shouldn't bother to try.Enter George Lakey. A longtime activist and academic, Lakey has spent decades studying the economies of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, and in Viking Economics, he reveals that Scandinavia's deep commitment to the welfare state is much more recent than we think. Not long ago, Scandinavia was a far more unequal place, with a much weaker commitment to the social welfare of its citizens. There's nothing inherently Scandinavian about greater equality . . . so why not try it here?Viking Economics is more fun and entertaining than any economics book you've ever read. And, very possibly, more convincing! As he ranges from twentieth-century Norwegian history to the details of Swedish childcare policies, Lakey never loses his sense of humor or his expansive, generous vision of a better, more equal future. By explaining that even Scandinavia's grandest experiments in social equality are rooted in recent political struggles, Lakey explains shows how we can do it, too—conventional wisdom be damned.From the Hardcover edition.

    

    Why are experts so bad at making predictions? Why do rich people take outsized risks to reach for money they don't need? Is America's manufacturing base really dwindling? What did we learn about risk after 9/11? Those questions and many more are tackled in these 21 irreverent and contrarian essays, which will have readers thinking differently about the conventional wisdom.

    From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy, The German Genius is a lively and accessible review of over 250 years of German intellectual history. In the process, it explains the devastating effects of World War II, which transformed a vibrant and brilliantly artistic culture into a vehicle of warfare and destruction, and it shows how the German culture advanced in the war’s aftermath.

    They regale readers with riveting vignettes of how AIG grew from a modest group of insurance enterprises in 1970 to the largest insurance company in world history. They help us understand AIG's distinctive entrepreneurial culture and how its outstanding employees worldwide helped pave the road to globalization.Corrects numerous common misconceptions about AIG that arose due to its role at the center of the financial crisis of 2008. A unique account of AIG by one of the iconic business leaders of the twentieth century who developed close relationships with many of the most important world leaders of the period and helped to open markets everywhere Offers new critical perspective on battles with N. Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the 2008 U.S. government seizure of AIG amid the financial crisis Shares considerable information not previously made public The AIG Story captures an impressive saga in business history--one of innovation, vision and leadership at a company that was nearly--destroyed with a few strokes of governmental pens. The AIG Story carries important lessons and implications for the U.S., especially its role in international affairs, its approach to business, its legal system and its handling of financial crises.