Even non-gardeners will find this book of essays a source of profound pleasure, for Raver is a writer who transcends her subject even as she illuminates it, writing with such passion, wisdom and stylishmess that her book will enchant anyone who reads it.

    But often, a company's published accounts offer clues to impending disaster, providing you know where to look. Through the forensic examination of more than 20 recent stock market disasters, Tim Steer reveals how companies hide or disguise worrying facts about the robustness of their business. In his lively style, he looks at the themes that underlie the ways companies hide the truth and he stresses that in an assessment of a company's accounts, investors should always bear in mind that the only fact is cash; everything else - profit, assets, etc - is a matter of opinion. Full of invaluable lessons for investors, the book concludes with some trenchant observations on what is wrong in the worlds of investment, audit and financial regulation, and what changes should be introduced.

    

    Geoghegan makes his argument for labor with stories, sometimes humorous but more often chilling, about the problems working people like his own clients—from cabdrivers to schoolteachers—now face, increasingly powerless in our union-free economy. He explains why a new kind of labor movement (and not just more higher education) is the real program the Democrats should push—not just to save the middle class from bankruptcy but to revive Keynes’s original and sometimes forgotten ideas for getting the rich to invest and reducing our balance of trade, and to promote John Dewey’s vision of a “democratic way of life,” one that would start in the schools and continue in our places of work.A “public policy” book that is compulsively readable, Only One Thing Can Save Us is vintage Geoghegan, blending acerbic, witty commentary with unparalleled insight into the real dynamics (and human experience) of working in America today.

    A New York Times Notable Book of 2017For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable--and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America's republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic?The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.

    American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

    Butler was a military hero of the first rank, the winner of two Medals of Honour, a true 'fighting marine' whose courage and patriotism could not be doubted. Yet he came to believe that the wars in which he and his men had fought and bled and died were all pre-planned conflicts, designed not so much to defend America as to bloat the balance sheets of US banks and corporations.War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, the "as told to" author of Butler's oral autobiographical adventures, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".

    From humorous fishing excursions and frightening bear encounters to snow blinding blizzards and quirky characters, they come face to face with the unpredictable Mother Nature and learn the value of friendship, survival, and solitude in a picturesque but harsh life by the sea. Packed with adventures, challenges, and true Alaskan lifestyle.

    Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, and writers, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand.

    ClairMass argues that another world—a socialist world—is possible, one in which people come before profit and working people control society democratically, putting the world’s resources to meeting human needs.

    But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy.As historian Edward Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Until the Civil War, Baptist explains, the most important American economic innovations were ways to make slavery ever more profitable. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from enslaved African Americans. Thus the United States seized control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and became a wealthy nation with global influence.Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. It forces readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy, but also with the survival and resistance that brought about slavery’s end—and created a culture that sustains America’s deepest dreams of freedom.

    With wit, self-deprecation, and the input of experts from around the world, he provides critical information on nutrition and hydration, selecting shoes, race strategy, pacing, proper form, motivation, and how to stave off injuries while continually crossing new finish lines. He shares running music recommendations provided personally by a variety of pop and rock stars, including Paul Simon, Justin Bieber, The Black Keys, Ghostface Killah, Willie Nelson, Feist, and Norah Jones. Kaplan's infectious enthusiasm about running — and music — inspires the most recalcitrant runners to lace up their shoes and hit the pavement.

    From that moment on, capitalism grew and expanded with a dynamism and adaptability that are now all too familiar, profiting from wars and even managing to rebound after a series of devastating economic crises. In this highly-anticipated revised edition of the 1981 classic, Beaud extends one of the major strengths of the original: the interweaving of social, political, and economic factors in the context of history. At the same time, Beaud's analysis provides a realistic and thorough examination of the developments of capitalism in the last twenty years, including globalization, the accelerating speed of capital transfer, and the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent absorption of its population into the world market. This new edition also offers a completely revised format that integrates diagrams and flow-charts not previously available in the English-language edition.

    Most are loathe to admit that the United States has any imperial pretensions. But history tells a different story as filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick reveal in this riveting account of the rise and decline of the American empire.Aided by the latest archival findings and recently declassified documents and building on the research of the world’s best scholars, Stone and Kuznick construct an often shocking but meticulously documented “People’s History of the American Empire” that offers startling context to the Bush-Cheney policies that put us at war in two Muslim countries and show us why the Obama administration has had such a difficult time cleaving a new path.Stone and Kuznick will introduce readers to a pantheon of heroes and villains as they show not only how far the United States has drifted from its democratic traditions, but the powerful forces that have struggled to get us back on track.The authors reveal that:· The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible.· The United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War.· The U.S. love affair with right-wing dictators has gone as far as overthrowing elected leaders, arming and training murderous military officers, and forcing millions of people into poverty.· U.S.-funded Islamist fundamentalists, who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, have blown back to threaten the interests of the U.S. and its allies.· U.S. presidents, especially in wartime, have frequently trampled on the constitution and international law.· The United States has brandished nuclear threats repeatedly and come terrifyingly close to nuclear war.American leaders often believe they are unbound by history, yet Stone and Kuznick argue that we must face our troubling history honestly and forthrightly in order to set a new course for the twenty-first century. Their conclusions will challenge even experts, but there is one question only readers can answer: Is it too late for America to change?

    It was not only extremely popular but also brought about pragmatic results, inspiring the movement for the eight-hour day and equal pay for men and women who perform equal work. It survives as one of the very few pieces of writing to come out of the international socialist movement of the nineteenth century that is not only readable-even enjoyable-but pertinent. This new translation by Len Bracken, fuller than previous versions in English, is supplemented by Lafargue's little-known talk on The Intellectuals.