In the film, Johnson – now a Liberian senator – calmly sips a Budweiser as the naked Doe’s ears are hacked off. Unsurprisingly, Dalrymple forms the professional opinion that Johnson is a psychopath.Monrovia was once a peaceful and reasonably ordered city; now, it has been almost completely sacked. Burnt-out cars are everywhere; doors have been chopped up for firewood; rubble lines the streets, with the vandalism forming a systematic attempt to destroy every vestige of the old regime (and, the author speculates, of civilisation itself). The destruction of the university and library, for instance, seems to be little more that the revenge of the ignorant upon the educated. In a local hospital (once the pride of West Africa, now long ruined and abandoned), the professor of surgery’s office has been ransacked, and medical books and papers have been ripped up; in another, infant welfare records have been smeared with faeces. In the wrecked Centennial Hall, the body of a beautiful Steinway grand piano lies on the floor, its legs senselessly sawn off. In a Lutheran church, Dalrymple finds the floor covered in the blood silhouettes of 600 Liberians massacred by Doe’s soldiers.Dalrymple – who achieves the near-impossible by making a book about such barbarism at times amusing – lays much of the blame for what happened at the feet of Western intellectuals and their African counterparts.Monrovia Mon Amour is a profoundly moving and interesting book about a country which is little-understood and less visited.

    It has the apparatus of a great scholarly work but the drama of a classic novel. Ludwig von Mises’s colleagues in Europe called him the “last knight of liberalism” because he was the champion of an ideal of liberty they consider dead and gone in an age of central planning and socialism of all varieties. During his lifetime, they were largely correct. And thus the subtitle of this book. But he was not deterred in any respect: not in his scientific work, not in his writing or publishing, and not in his relentless fight against every form of statism. Born in 1881, he taught in Europe and the Americas during his century, and died in 1973 before the dawn of a new epoch that would validate his life and ideals in the minds of millions of people around the world. The last knight of liberalism triumphed.

    But Vidal was also a terrific conversationalist; indeed Dick Cavett once described him as “the best talker since Oscar Wilde.” Vidal was never more eloquent, or caustic, than when let loose on his favorite topic: the history and politics of the United States.This book is made up from four interviews conducted with his long-time interlocutor, the writer and radio host Jon Wiener, in which Vidal grapples with matters evidently close to his heart: the history of the American Empire, the rise of the National Security State, and his own life in politics, both as a commentator and candidate.The interviews cover a twenty-year span, from 1988 to 2008, when Vidal was at the height of his powers. His extraordinary facility for developing an argument, tracing connections between past and present, and drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of America’s place in the world, are all on full display. And, of course, it being Gore Vidal, an ample sprinkling of gloriously acerbic one-liners is also provided.

    Starting in the early 1980s the top one percent (1%) broke away from the rest of us to become the most unstable force in the economy. An elite that had once been the flat line on the American income charts - models of financial propriety - suddenly set off on a wild ride of economic binges.              Not only do they control more than a third of the country’s wealth, their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts of the stock market wreak havoc on our consumer economy, financial markets, communities, employment opportunities, and government finances.        Robert Frank’s insightful analysis provides the disturbing big picture of high-beta wealth. His vivid storytelling brings you inside the mortgaged mansions, blown-up balance sheets, repossessed Bentleys and Gulfstreams, and wrecked lives and relationships: • How one couple frittered away a fortune trying to build America’s biggest house —90,000 square feet with 23 full bathrooms, a 6,000 square foot master suite with a bed on a rotating platform—only to be forced to put it on the market because “we really need the money”.    • Repo men who are now the scavengers of the wealthy, picking up private jets, helicopters, yachts and racehorses – the shiny remains of a decade of conspicuous consumption financed with debt, asset bubbles, “liquidity events,” and soaring stock prices.  • How “big money ruins everything” for communities such as Aspen, Colorado whose over-reliance on the rich created a stratified social scene of velvet ropes and A-lists and crises in employment opportunities, housing, and tax revenues.  • Why California’s worst budget crisis in history is due in large part to reliance on the volatile incomes of the state’s tech tycoons.  • The bitter divorce of a couple who just a few years ago made the Forbes 400 list of the richest people, the firing of their enormous household staff of 110, and how one former spouse learned  the marvels of shopping at Marshalls,  filling your own gas tank, and flying commercial.  Robert Frank’s stories and analysis brilliantly show that the emergence of the high-beta rich is not just a high-class problem for the rich. High-beta wealth has national consequences: America’s dependence on the rich + great volatility among the rich = a more volatile America.   Cycles of wealth are now much faster and more extreme. The rich are a new “Potemkin Plutocracy” and the important lessons and consequences are brought to light of day in this engrossing book.  high-beta rich (hi be’ta rich) 1. a newly discovered personality type of the America upper class prone to wild swings in wealth. 2. the winners (and occasional losers) in an economy that creates wealth from financial markets, asset bubbles and deals. 3. derived from the Wall Street term “high-beta,” meaning highly volatile or prone to booms and busts. 4. an elite that’s capable of wreaking havoc on communities, jobs, government finances, and the consumer economy. 5. a new Potemkin plutocracy that hides a mountain of debt behind the image of success, and is one crisis away from losing their mansions, private jets and yachts.From the Hardcover edition.

    Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning author Derrick Jensen and activist Aric McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind us that life--human and nonhuman--will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of sustainability: one being's waste must always become another being's food.

    His writings and theories on everything from capitalism and freedom to deregulation and welfare have inspired movements, influenced government policies, and changed the course of America’s economic history.Now, acclaimed Friedman biographer Dr. Lanny Ebenstein brings together twenty of Friedman’s greatest essays in his new book, The Indispensable Milton Friedman: Essays on Politics and Economics. The only collection of Friedman’s writings to span his entire career, The Indispensable Milton Friedman: Essays on Politics and Economics features some of Friedman’s never-before-republished writings as well as the best and most timeless of his works.These exceptional essays not only illuminate the progression of Friedman’s thought, but explain how America might overcome some of its most difficult challenges. Broken into two sections, politics and economics, The Indispensable Milton Friedman shows how we can ultimately turn America around, and is more necessary than ever during this critical election year and time of economic uncertainty.

    In developing an account of the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, this study challenges the view that capitalism's source lies in financial deregulation, and highlights the emergence of new patterns of world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these have produced. This original account of the “financialization” of the world economy during this period explores the intricate connections between international financial markets and new forms of debt and dispossession. Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave off another Great Depression, this study shows that while averting a complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring crises for poor and working class people: job loss, increased poverty and inequality, and cuts in social programs. Taking a global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism and attacks on migrant workers, this book also traces new patterns of social and political resistance—from housing activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in Martinique, Guadeloupe, France, and Puerto Rico—as indicators of the potential for building anticapitalist opposition to the damage that neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.

    With a focus on labor, property, and the life of commodities, Making a Killing contains key insights into the broad nature of domination, power, and hierarchy. It explores the intersections between human and animal oppressions in relation to the exploitative dynamics of capitalism. Combining nuts-and-bolts Marxist political economy, a pluralistic anarchist critique, as well as a searing assessment of the animal rights movement, Bob Torres challenges conventional anti-capitalist thinking and convincingly advocates for the abolition of animals in industry—and on the dinner plate.

    Every day, millions of hard-working people struggle to find affordable medical treatment for themselves and their families—unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Some of these people end up losing money. Others end up losing something even more valuable: their health or even their lives. In this powerful work of original reportage, Jonathan Cohn travels across the United States—the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee access to medical care as a right of citizenship—to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans.The stories he brings back are tragic and infuriating. In Boston, a heart attack victim becomes a casualty of emergency room overcrowding when she is turned away from the one hospital that could treat her. In South Central L.A., a security guard loses part of his vision when he can't find affordable treatment for his diabetes. In the middle of the prairie heartland, a retired meatpacker sells his house to pay for the medications that keep him and his aging wife alive. And, in a tiny village tucked into the Catskill mountains, a mother of three young children decides against a costly doctor's visit—and lets a deadly cancer go undetected—because her husband's high-tech job no longer provides health insurance.Passionate, illuminating, and often devastating, Sick interweaves these stories with clear-eyed reporting from Washington and takes us inside the medical industry to chronicle the decline of America's health care system—and lays bare the consequences any one of us could suffer if we don't replace it.

    From the richest country to the poorest, every aspect of life is affected by global economics and communications. We all benefit...or do we?This No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization distills the arguments into a clear, concise commentary. It examines the debt trap, the acceleration of neo-liberalism and the “free trade” model, competition for energy resources, and the links between the war on terror, the arms trade, and privatization. It looks at civil society alternatives to corporate globalization and the latest trade justice initiatives.

    Unfairly tarred by liberal critics as a state comprised of racist rednecks, Arizona is on the front lines in the battle against illegal immigration—and the courageous stand of its leader, a national hero who’s been called so tough that she “eats scorpions for breakfast,” will educate and inspire Americans from coast to coast.

    This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author Howard Bloom argues that there’s a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It’s struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things—passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined. The author explains why the secret to capitalism’s next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways—that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society. This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    

    Perhaps the best brief primer on economics ever penned, Ballve's little classic explains such basics as what economics is -- and is not -- all about, the role of the entrepreneur, the factors of production, money and credit, international trade, monopoly and unemployment, socialism and interventionism -- all from an "Austrian School" perspective, and all in 100 pages!

    Frank I. Luntz. From Bill O'Reilly to Bill Maher, America's leading pundits, prognosticators, and CEOs turn to Luntz to explain the present and to predict the future. With all the upheavals of recent events, the plans and priorities of the American people have undergone a seismic shift. Businesses everywhere are trying to market products and services during this turbulent time, but only one man really understands the needs and desires of the New America. From restaurant booths to voting booths, Luntz has watched and assessed our private habits, our public interests, and our hopes and fears. What are the five things Americans want the most? What do they really want in their daily lives? In their jobs? From their government? For their families? And how does understanding what Americans want allow businesses to thrive? Luntz disassembles the preconceived notions we have about one another and lays all the pieces of the American condition out in front of us, openly and honestly, then puts the pieces back together in a way that reflects the society in which we live. What Americans Really Want...Really is a real, if sometimes scary, discussion of Americans' secret hopes, fears, wants, and needs. The research in this book represents a decade of face-to-face interviews with twenty-five thousand people and telephone polls with one million more, as well as the exclusive, first-ever "What Americans Really Want" survey. What Luntz offers is a glimpse into the American psyche, along with analysis that will rock assumptions and right business judgment. He proves that success in virtually any profession demands that we either understand what Americans really want, or suffer the consequences. Praise for Frank Luntz: "When Frank Luntz invites you to talk to his focus group, you talk to his focus group."--President Barack Obama, spoken on June 28, 2007, to a PBS-sponsored focus group following the Democratic presidential debate at Howard University "Frank Luntz understands the American people better than anyone I know." --Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House "The Nostradamus of pollsters."--Sir David Frost "America's top companies listen to Frank Luntz because he understands what customers want and what employees think. He has a keen sense of the American psyche and an outstanding command of language that empowers and persuades." --Thomas J. Donohue, President & CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce