It sounds crazy, but it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico--all are talking about UBI.In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey looks at the global UBI movement. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI's intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor.Lowrey examines the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. She shows how this arcane policy offers not only a potential answer for our most intractable economic and social problems, but also a better foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.

    According to Myreah Moore -- "America's Dating Coach" -- women need to start dating to have fun, which is what men have been doing for ages! In fact, Moore says, dating is a lot like a science. And with any scientific experiment, it's trial and error. In Date Like a Man, she steals dating secrets from men (the masters of dating) and transforms them into a personal training program that will boost your dating prospects -- and increase your chances of finding a soul mate.Clear, candid, and empowering, Date Like a Man makes the manhunt fun -- the way it should be. Even if you think you're a dating expert, you'll devour this manual -- the new bible for surviving and thriving in today's world.

    Good to Great Summarized for Busy People

    I urge everyone to read How the Poor Can Save Capitalism and discover for themselves John’s great ideas for creating an America with more shared opportunity and shared responsibility.” —Former US President Bill Clinton"John and I want the same things. And the goals of this book are the same goals of my Rebuild The Dream campaign. He has provided the roadmap to economic recovery for this country at a time when economic inequality is at its peak. I for one will be following the steps laid out in the HOPE plan." —Van Jones, Former Advisor to President Obama and host of CNN's CrossfireHow the Poor Can Save Capitalism reveals Operation HOPE founder and successful businessman John Hope Bryant’s strategy for restoring the American middle class and eradicating poverty. “For capitalism to thrive, the poor and middle class must thrive,” Bryant writes. “We must make financial literacy – teaching each and every one of our children the language of money – the new civil rights issue for the twenty-first century America.” According to Bryant, capitalism isn’t to blame for a struggling economy; we’re just doing it wrong. Important statistics Bryant shares in the book: • 76% of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, while 60% of American GDP is consumer-driven. • 1 in 4 of the Americans who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit never ask for it – that’s $9 to $10 billion in unclaimed funds that could be put towards mortgages, car payments, education, etc.• 47% of U.S. employers require a credit report as part of the hiring process.In the book, Bryant exposes the historical roots of poverty, explains why the solutions tried so far have proved insufficient, and offers a way forward. He lays out what he calls a Marshall Plan for our times, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.Praised by Dr. Bernice A. King of the King Center as “a practical idealist who dreams big and then moves with precision to action,” John Hope Bryant aspires to create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1% or even the 99%, but for the 100%.

    The Great Recession has thrown huge economic chal­lenges at almost all Americans save the super-affluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up Escalator is an urgent dispatch from the front lines of our vast collective struggle to keep our heads above water and maybe even—someday—get ahead. Garson has interviewed an economically and geographically wide variety of Americans to show the pain­ful waste in all this loss and insecurity, and describe how individuals are coping. Her broader historical focus, though, is on the causes and consequences of the long stag­nation of wages and how it has resulted in an increasingly desperate reliance on credit and a series of ever-larger bubbles—stocks, technology, real estate. This is no way to run an economy, or a democracy. From the members of the Pink Slip Club in New York, to a California home health-care aide on the eve of eviction, to a subprime mortgage broker who still thinks it could have worked, Down the Up Escalator presents a sobering picture of what happens to a society when it becomes economically organized to benefit only the very rich and the quick-buck speculators. But it also demonstrates the wit and resilience of ordinary Americans—and why they deserve so much bet­ter than the hand they’ve been dealt.From the Hardcover edition.

    So how can they continue down the same road? The simple answer, that no in charge one wants to publicly acknowledge: because things are still pretty great for the people who run America. It was an accident of history, Jeff Faux explains, that after World War II the U.S. could afford a prosperous middle class, a dominant military, and a booming economic elite at the same time. For the past three decades, all three have been competing, with the middle class always losing. Soon the military will decline as well.The most plausible projections Faux explores foresee a future economy nearly devoid of production and exports, with the most profitable industries existing to solely to serve the wealthiest 1%The author's last book, The Global Class War, sold over 20,000 copies by correctly predicting the permanent decline of our debt-burdened middle class at the hands of our off-shoring executives, out of control financiers, and their friends in WashingtonSince his last book, Faux is repeatedly asked what either party will do to face these mounting crises. After looking over actual policies, proposed plans, non-partisan reports, and think tank papers, his astonishing conclusion: more of the same.

    A peasant himself, Guillaumin was unique in that, after a few years of schooling, he continued to work his small farm in central France to the end of his life, reserving nights for study and writing. Guillaumin felt that the French peasant had been misrepresented in contemporary literature--either romanticized as in George Sand or depicted as a dumb victim of the forces of nature as in Zola--and wanted to correct the picture. The result is a moving first-person story that can be read as a fictional account, as well as the best kind of material for historians seeking to understand how nineteenth-century French peasants really lived.

    In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.Owen Jones may have the face of a baby and the voice of George Formby but he is our generation's Orwell and we must cherish him (Russell Brand)This is the most important book on the real politics of the UK in my lifetime, and the only one you will ever need to read. You will be enlightened and angry (Irvine Welsh)Owen Jones displays a powerful combination of cool analysis and fiery anger in this dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book (Philip Pullman)

    Captivated by the secrets, the scandal and the servant-master divide of an Edwardian household, viewers religiously watched in their millions. In Life Below Stairs, bestselling author Alison Maloney responds to the public's desire to know more, going behind the scenes to reveal a detailed picture of what really went on 'downstairs', describing the true-life trials and tribulations of the servants in a gripping non-fiction account. Thoroughly researched and reliably informed, it also contains first-hand stories from the staff of the time. This charming and beautifully presented volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the lifestyle and conduct of a bygone era.

     Many of the prices we pay seem to make little sense. We shell out $2.29 for a coffee at Starbucks when a nearly identical brew can be had at the corner deli for less than a dollar. We may be less willing to give blood for $25 than to donate it for free. Americans hire cheap illegal immigrants to fix the roof or mow the lawn, and vote for politicians who promise to spend billions to keep them out of the country. And citizens of the industrialized West pay hundreds of dollars a year in taxes or cash for someone to cart away trash that would be a valuable commodity in poorer parts of the world. The Price of Everything starts with a simple premise: there is a price behind each choice that we make, whether we're deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as a motivating force shaping our lives. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way. Eduardo Porter uncovers the true story behind the prices we pay and reveals what those prices are actually telling us. He takes us on a global economic adventure, from comparing the relative price of a vote in corrupt São Tomé and in the ostensibly uncorrupt United States, to assessing the cost of happiness in Bhutan, to deducing the dollar value we assign to human life. His unique approach helps explain: * Why polygamous societies actually place a higher value on women than monogamous ones. * Why someone may find more value in a $14 million license plate than the standard issue, $95 one. * Why some government agencies believe one year of life for a senior citizen is four times more valuable than that of a younger person. Porter weaves together the constant-and often unconscious-cost and value assessments we all make every day. While exploring the fascinating story behind the price of everything from marriage and death to mattresses and horsemeat, Porter draws unexpected connections that bridge a wide range of disciplines and cultures. The result is a cogent and insightful narrative about how the world really works.Watch a Video

    Nobody appeared. Across all departments the stories were the same: Trump appointees were few and far between; those who did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace.Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives, from ensuring the safety of our food and medications and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black- market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences of what happens when the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.

    In its journey from coalition politics to single-party hegemony, it has emerged as a very different entity from the one that first came to power in 1998. Veteran journalist Saba Naqvi—who has spent two decades covering the BJP—tells the story from the party’s founding in 1980 to its two stints in power. Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi is both a first-person account of racy events as they unfolded in the nation’s history, and a work that raises larger analytical points about the BJP’s growth. It examines the role of the RSS cadre and its equations with elected leaders, the calibration of ideology, the issue of political finance and the social expansion of the party, as also the cults of personality that would emerge around, first, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then, more forcefully, around Narendra Modi. The book provides a riveting account of the party’s difficult journey from ‘untouchability’ (when allies were unwilling to join) to its presumed ‘invincibility’ today. Naqvi’s long-standing equations with members of the party, developed over two decades of consistently fair reporting, delivers a narrative full of insights that are both fresh and deep, and anecdotes that are as lively as they are telling. In revealing hitherto unknown aspects, and reminding readers of the bigger picture, Shades of Saffron is a deep dive into the contemporary history of a party that keeps reinventing itself.

    But how did this come about? And what does it mean for the future?Populism and ultra-nationalism brought about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. Now, as Trump sits in the White House, Britain negotiates its way out of the EU, and countries across Europe see substantial gains in support for the extreme Right, award-winning journalist, author, and historian Gwynne Dyer asks how we got here, and where we go next. Dyer examines the global challenges facing us all today and explains how they have contributed to a world of inequality, poverty, and joblessness, conditions which he argues inevitably lead to the rise of populism. The greatest threat to social and political stability lies in the rise of automation, which will continue to eliminate jobs, whether politicians admit that it is happening or not. To avoid a social and political catastrophe, we will have to find ways of putting real money into the pockets of those who have no work. But this is not a book without hope. Our capacity for overcoming the worst has been tested again and again throughout history, and we have always survived. To do so now, Dyer argues, we must embrace radical solutions to the real difficulties facing individuals, or find ourselves back in the 1930s with no way out.

    District Judge Stanley Sporkin. Teamed with the daughter of one of Bill Gates's closest associates, thirteen-year Microsoft veteran Marlin Eller shows us what it was like at every step along Gates's route to world domination, making all that's been written before seem like a rough guess. If the Justice Department had Eller and Edstrom investigating the current-headline-making antitrust case, they would have on the record many of Microsoft's most respected developers directly contradicting the "authorized" version of events being presented in court. They would know the real scoop on how Windows was developed in the first place, shedding new light on the 1988 Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit over the alleged copying of the Mac. They would even know the real story of how Microsoft killed off Go Corporation, told for the first time by the man who did the deed, Marlin Eller himself. Revealing the smoke-and-mirror deals, the palms greased to help launch a product that didn't exist, and the boneyard of once-thriving competitors targeted by the Gates juggernaut, this book demonstrates with often hilariously damning detail the Microsoft muddle that passes for strategic direction, offset by Gates's uncanny ability to come from behind to crush whoever's on top.

    The costs of this overwork are enormous, both personally and societally. This bracing collection of essays is both a wide-ranging analysis of the phenomenon and a blueprint for change. With contributions by such notable names as Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life, and David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, this book shows what ordinary citizens can do to restore balance to themselves and their communities. Take Back Your Time is the official handbook for Take Back Your Time Day, a national event rallying support for reclaiming a proper work-life balance.