Pipe Dreams" traces Enron's astounding transformation from a small regional gas pipeline company into an energy Goliath--and then tracks step-by-step, business decision by business decision, extramarital affair by extramarital affair, how, when and why the culture of Enron began to go rotten, and who was responsible.

    This paperback edition has been fully revised and updated to include Vince Cable’s latest assessment of the recession.

    But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war. Now, covert action is incorporated seamlessly into government policy, and the Prime Minister is kept constantly updated by intelligence agencies.But how did intelligence come to influence our government so completely?‘The Black Door’ explores the murkier corridors of No. 10 Downing Street, chronicling the relationships between intelligence agencies and the Prime Ministers of the last century. From Churchill’s code-breakers feeding information to the Soviets to Eden’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, from Wilson’s paranoia of an MI5-led coup d’état to Thatcher’s covert wars in Central America, Aldrich and Cormac entertain and enlighten as they explain how our government came to rely on intelligence to the extent that it does today.

    

    As they see matters, wealth in the form of means of production and wealth in the form of consumers’ goods are essentially indistinguishable. For all practical purposes, they have no awareness of the existence of capital and of its importance. Thus, capitalists are generally depicted as fat men, whose girth allegedly signifies an excessive consumption of food and of wealth in general, while their alleged victims, the wage earners, are typically depicted as substantially underweight, allegedly signifying their inability to consume, thanks to the allegedly starvation wages paid by the capitalists.The truth is that in a capitalist economic system, the wealth of the capitalists is not only overwhelmingly in the form of means of production, such as factory buildings, machinery, farms, mines, stores, warehouses, and means of transportation and communication, but all of this wealth is employed in producing for the market, where its benefit is made available to everyone in the economic system who is able to afford to buy its products.Consider. Whoever can afford to buy an automobile benefits from the existence of the automobile factory and its equipment where that car was made. He also benefits from the existence of all the other automobile factories, whose existence and competition served to reduce the price he had to pay for his automobile. He benefits from the existence of the steel mill that provided the steel for his car, and from the iron mine that provided the iron ore needed for the production of that steel, and, of course, from the existence of all the other steel mills and iron mines whose existence and competition served to hold down the prices of the steel and iron ore that contributed to the production of his car.And, thanks to the great magnitude of wealth employed as capital, the demand for labor, of which capital is the foundation, is great enough and thus wages are high enough that virtually everyone is able to afford to a substantial degree most of the products of the economic system. For the capital of the capitalists is the foundation both of the supply of products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital—a greater amount of wealth in the possession of the capitalists—means a both a larger and better supply of products for wage earners to buy and a greater demand for the labor that wage earners sell. Everyone, wage earners and capitalists alike, benefits from the wealth of the capitalists, because, as I say, that wealth is the foundation of the supply of the products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital in the hands of the capitalists always means a more abundant, better quality of goods and services offered for sale and a larger demand for labor. The further effect is lower prices and higher wages, and thus a higher standard of living for wage earners.Furthermore, the combination of the profit motive and competition operates continually to improve the products offered in the market and the efficiency with which they are produced, thus steadily further improving the standard of living of everyone.In the alleged conflict between the so-called 99 percent and the so-called 1 percent, the program of the 99 percent is to seize as far as possible the wealth of the 1 percent and consume it. To the extent that it is enacted, the effect of this program can only be to impoverish everyone, and the 99 percent to a far greater extent than the 1 percent. To the extent that the 1 percent loses its mansions, luxury cars, and champagne and caviar, 99 times as many people lose their houses, run-of-the mill cars, and steak and hamburger.

    E.P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making & recreates the whole life experience of people who suffered loss of status & freedom, who underwent degradation & who yet created a culture & political consciousness of great vitality. "Thompson's book has been called controversial, but perhaps only because so many have forgotten how explosive England was during the Regency & the early reign of Victoria. Without any reservation, The Making of the English Working Class is the most important study of those days since the classic work of the Hammonds."--Commentary "Mr Thompson's deeply human imagination & controlled passion help us to recapture the agonies, heroisms & illusions of the working class as it made itself. No one interested in the history of the English people should fail to read his book."--Times Literary Supplement

    Dan Jackson sets out to recover this lost history, exploring the deep roots of Northumbrian culture-hard work and heavy drinking, sociability and sentimentality, militarism and masculinity-through centuries of border warfare and dangerous industry. He explains what we can learn about Northumbria's people from its landscape and architecture, and revisits the Northumbrian Enlightenment that gave the world the locomotive and the lightbulb. This story reaches right to the present day, as this extraordinary region finds itself caught between an indifferent south and an increasingly confident Scotland.From the Venerable Bede and the prince-bishops of Durham to Viz and Geordie Shore, this vital new history reveals a part of England with an uncertain future, but whose people remain as remarkable as ever.

    The American Dream champions individualism.  But at what price?  In this timely revision of The Wilding of America, Charles Derber chronicles the latest incidents of "wilding" - extreme acts of self-interested violence and greed - that signal an eroding of the moral landscape of American society.  Despite this ever-increasing emphasis on individualism in America, Derber offers a communitarian alternative that is as inspiring as it is instructive.

    Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but flourishing--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread, indigenous innovation. Most innovation wasn't driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs; rather, it was driven by millions of people empowered to think of, develop, and market innumerable new products and processes, and improvements to existing ones. Mass flourishing--a combination of material well-being and the good life in a broader sense--was created by this mass innovation.Yet indigenous innovation and flourishing weakened decades ago. In America, evidence indicates that innovation and job satisfaction have decreased since the late 1960s, while postwar Europe has never recaptured its former dynamism. The reason, Phelps argues, is that the modern values underlying the modern economy are under threat by a resurgence of traditional, corporatist values that put the community and state over the individual. The ultimate fate of modern values is now the most pressing question for the West: will Western nations recommit themselves to modernity, grassroots dynamism, indigenous innovation, and widespread personal fulfillment, or will we go on with a narrowed innovation that limits flourishing to a few?A book of immense practical and intellectual importance, Mass Flourishing is essential reading for anyone who cares about the sources of prosperity and the future of the West.

    Instead we remain poised and frozen, overwhelmed by an always-on, live-streamed reality that our human bodies and minds can never truly inhabit. And our failure to do so has had wide-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives.People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, compile knowledge, and connect with anyone, at anytime. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed.Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this now is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.Rushkoff weaves together seemingly disparate events and trends into a rich, nuanced portrait of how life in the eternal present has affected our biology, behavior, politics, and culture. He explains how the rise of zombie apocalypse fiction signals our intense desire for an ending; how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street form two sides of the same post-narrative coin; how corporate investing in the future has been replaced by futile efforts to game the stock market in real time; why social networks make people anxious and email can feel like an assault. He examines how the tragedy of 9/11 disconnected an entire generation from a sense of history, and delves into why conspiracy theories actually comfort us.As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.Absorbing and thought-provoking, Present Shock is a wide-ranging, deeply thought meditation on what it means to be human in real-time.

    But how will these be affected once we delegate much of the responsibility for them to technology? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifiying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior, we may also change the very nature of that behavior itself. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement—but only if we abandon the idea that it is necessarily revolutionary and instead genuinely interrogate what we are doing with it and what it is doing to us.From urging us to abandon monolithic ideas of “the Internet” to showing how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions, To Save Everything, Click Here is a dazzling tour of our technological future, and a searching investigation into the digital version of an enduring struggle: between man and his machines.

    This densely researched, compellingly argued book exposes how public-sector unions and their leaders--the "shadowbosses" of the title--are destroying the rule of law, stealing elections, degrading government services, paralyzing public education, and pushing the United States into a grim future of insolvency and decline. Authors Mallory and Elizabeth Factor disturbingly reveal the unions' plan to exert control over Social Security and disability recipients, veterans, and every other group that receives government money. A chilling exposé, SHADOWBOSSES is also a call to citizen action against those who really hold the power in America today.

    It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed us access to 24hr news and media and provided a thousand conversation starters. As shows come and go in popularity, the history of television shows us how our society has changed.Armchair Nation reveals the fascinating, lyrical and sometimes surprising history of telly, from the first demonstration of television by John Logie Baird (in Selfridges) to the fear and excitement that greeted its arrival in households (some viewers worried it might control their thoughts), the controversies of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign and what JG Ballard thought about Big Brother.Via trips down memory lane with Morecambe and Wise, Richard Dimbleby, David Frost, Blue Peter and Coronation Street, you can flick between fascinating nuggets from the strange side of TV: what happened after a chimpanzee called 'Fred J. Muggs' interrupted American footage of the Queen's wedding, and why aliens might be tuning in to The Benny Hill Show.As Alfred Hitchcock said: 'The invention of television can be compared to the introduction of indoor plumbing. Fundamentally it brought no change in the public's habits. It simply eliminated the necessity of leaving the house.

    Like the housing bubble, it is the product of cheap credit coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment, and as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuitions to vastly outpace inflation and family incomes. Now this bubble is bursting.In this Broadside, Glenn Harlan Reynolds explains the causes and effects of this bubble and the steps colleges and universities must take to ensure their survival. Many graduates are unable to secure employment sufficient to pay off their loans, which are usually not dischargeable in bankruptcy. As students become less willing to incur debt for education, colleges and universities will have to adapt to a new world of cost pressures and declining public support.

    From the Docklands boom to cities such as Manchester, gated apartment developments, gleaming business districts and plazas have sprung up over the country. Has this 'regeneration' really made our lives better? This passionate and vivid polemic shows us the face of Britain today, revealing the untested urban planning that is transforming not only our cities, but the nature of public space, of citizenship and of trust. Anna Minton meets those who live and work in the new private spaces, those who've fought against them and those who are excluded from them, providing forceful evidence that physical barriers are leading to a divided nation. Yet there is another way. Offering some surprising solutions, Anna Minton argues for an alternative, continental approach that celebrates shared space. Ultimately "Ground Control" presents a better, happier future for our communities, and our society.