It’s not only the currency of America but much of the world as well, the fuel of global prosperity. As the superengine of the world’s only superpower, it’s accepted everywhere. When an Asian company trades with South America, those transactions are done in dollars, the currency of international business. But for how much longer? Economists fear America is digging a hole with an economy based on massive borrowing and huge deficits that cloud the dollar’s future. Will the buck be eclipsed by the euro or even China’s renminbi? Should Americans worry when the value of the mighty U.S. dollar sinks to par with the Canadian “loonie”? Craig Karmin’s in-depth “biography” of the dollar explores these issues. It also examines the green-back’s history, allure, and unique role as a catalyst for globalization, and how the American buck became so almighty that $ became perhaps the most powerful symbol on earth. Biography of the Dollar explores every aspect of its subject: the power of the Federal Reserve, the inner sanctums of foreign central banks that stockpile the currency, and the little-known circles of foreign exchange traders that determine a currency’s worth. It traces the dollar’s ascendancy, including one incredibly important duck-hunting trip and the world-changing Bretton Woods Conference. With its watermark, color-shifting inks, and a presidential portrait that glows under ultraviolet light, the dollar has obsessed foreign governments, some of which have tried to counterfeit it. Even Saddam Hussein, who insisted on being paid in euros for oil, had $750,000 in hundred-dollar bills when captured. Yet if a worldwide currency has enabled a global economy to flourish, it’s also allowed the United States to owe unbelievable, shocking amounts of money—paying hundreds of millions of dollars every single day just in interest on foreign debt; that’s raised concerns that the dollar standard may not be sustainable. Any threat to the dollar’s privileged status would do much more than hurt American pride. It would mean U.S. companies and citizens would not be able to borrow at the low rates they have become accustomed to. The dollar’s demise would impact the rest of the world, too, boosting the costs of trade and investment if no other currency was able to play the same crucial role. Ultimately the dollar system may weaken, but it should endure—a while longer, at least; it’s in few people’s interest to see it fail, and there is still no credible alternative.Biography of the Dollar is must reading for anyone who wants to understand what truly makes the world go ’round—and whether it will continue to spin the way we want it to.From the Hardcover edition.

    The picture he creates in The Cocaine Kids is the story behind the headlines. The lives of these young dealers in the fast lane of the underground economy emerge in depth and color on the pages of this book.

    With an easy command of history, philosophy and current affairs, 'The Future of Freedom' calls for a restoration of the balance between liberty and democracy, and shows how liberal democracy has to be made effective and relevant for our time.

    There was a time when the stock market was a mechanism for growing businesses to raise money, playing a large role in the industrial revolution-boosting America to a global superpower. Today the stock market has morphed into a high-tech system of fluctuating arbitrary numbers which are used by individuals and industries alike to find profit opportunities by placing bets, masqueraded as sophisticated financial maneuvers with fancy labels and acronyms. Nowhere is this more evident than with the tendencies observed today. There is a shocking trend by today's Millennial generation to shamelessly and unapologetically find ways to use the stock market to place very high-risk bets. And unlike formal Wall Street investment institutions, these gamblers, of sorts, don't attempt to disguise the game: they are proud to call Wall Street a casino. Jaime Rogozinski combs through various elements of how reckless investors play Wall Street similar to a casino. He illustrates these often in playful ways, using entertaining and compelling real-world anecdotes. His stories are taken straight from Reddit's r/wallstreetbets community which Jaime founded in 2012, and currently has more than 800,000 followers in addition to 3 million unique visitors a month. WallStreetBets is a forum based gathering where people are notoriously known for taking a brazen and public approach at gambling with the stock market.

    In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.

    George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. American Slavery, American Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, "the marriage of slavery and freedom," in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.

    in 1982 at the age of 12, she was asked to "self-report" her race. Never identifying with a race previously, she rejects her new "not quite white" designation, and spends much of her life attempting to become "white" in the American sense. After her teen years trying to adapt to American culture, including watching General Hospital and The Jeffersons and perfecting recipes with Campbell's soup or Jell-O, Sen is forced to reckon with hard questions: what does it mean to be "white," who is allowed to be white, why does whiteness retain the power of invisibility while other colors are made hypervisible, and how much does whiteness figure into Americanness? Exploring hot-button topics such as passing, cultural appropriation, class inequality, bias within Indian immigrant communities, and code-switching, Sen offers new angles to the debate on race and immigration with emotional honesty, humor, and thoughtful criticism. Sen discovers her eventual acceptance of her "not whiteness" is actually what makes her American, and as a mother of three not white American children, looking at their own possible future, Sen brings the reader of Not Quite Not White to imagine how America might, by the end of the century, end up being defined outside its borders, in a new diaspora.

    Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries, and, even, racists. Most Americans, the story goes, just watched the political movements of the sixties go by. James Tracy and Amy Sonnie, who have been interviewing activists from the era for nearly ten years, reject this old narrative. They show that poor and working-class radicals, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, and progressive populism, started to organize significant political struggles against racism and inequality during the 1960s and 1970s. Among these groups: +  JOIN Community Union brought together southern migrants, student radicals, and welfare recipients in Chicago to fight for housing, health, and welfare . . .  +  The Young Patriots Organization and Rising Up Angry organized self-identified hillbillies, Chicago greasers, Vietnam vets, and young feminists into a legendary “Rainbow Coalition” with Black and Puerto Rican activists . . .   +  In Philadelphia, the October 4th Organization united residents of industrial Kensington against big business, war, and a repressive police force . . .  + In the Bronx, White Lightning occupied hospitals and built coalitions with doctors to fight for the rights of drug addicts and the poor. Exploring an untold history of the New Left, the book shows how these groups helped to redefine community organizing—and transforms the way we think about a pivotal moment in U.S. history.

    All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dust cover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels.Some of our books may have slightly worn corners, and minor creases to the covers. Please note the cover may sometimes be different to the one shown.

    Old paradigms are being eclipsed by global forces of privatization and markets and new articulations of race, class, and urban space. These factors and more set the stage for Pauline Lipman's insightful analysis of the relationship between education policy and the neoliberal economic, political, and ideological processes that are reshaping cities in the United States and around the globe.Using Chicago as a case study of the interconnectedness of neoliberal urban policies on housing, economic development, race, and education, Lipman explores larger implications for equity, justice, and "the right to the city". She draws on scholarship in critical geography, urban sociology and anthropology, education policy, and critical analyses of race. Her synthesis of these lenses gives added weight to her critical appraisal and hope for the future, offering a significant contribution to current arguments about urban schooling and how we think about relations between neoliberal education reforms and the transformation of cities. By examining the cultural politics of why and how these relationships resonate with people's lived experience, Lipman pushes the analysis one step further toward a new educational and social paradigm rooted in radical political and economic democracy.

    Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South L.A., an impoverished black community under siege by the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for fifteen years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction. On her own, she eventually found a private drug rehabilitation facility.Once clean, Susan dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. She began by greeting women as they took their first steps of freedom, welcoming them into her home, providing a space of safety and community. Her organization, A New Way of Life, now operates five safe homes in Los Angeles that supply a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and their children—setting them on the track to education and employment rather than returns to prison. Susan is now nationally known as an advocate for restoring basic civil and human rights to those who have served time. Ms. Burton not only humanizes the deleterious impact of mass incarceration, it also points the way to the kind of structural and policy changes that will offer formerly incarcerated people the possibility of a life of meaning and dignity.

    But no book until this one has managed to penetrate its wall of silence or go beyond the usual polemics to analyze its actual effects on its customers, workers, and suppliers. Drawing on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives and a wealth of staggering data (e.g., Americans spend $36 million an hour at Wal-Mart stores, and in 2004 its growth alone was bigger than the total revenue of 469 of the Fortune 500), The Wal-Mart Effect is an intimate look at a business that is dramatically reshaping our lives.

    Ninan addresses a range of contemporary questions as only he can—looking at why the economy lost steam, the emerging trends in politics, the Chinese shadow over India, and the relationship between the state and the citizen. He asks whether manufacturing can be made a success story, what is the size of the neo-middle class, who really is the aam aadmi, and if it is possible to put an end to extreme poverty now. And, finally—what are the fears that should keep us awake at night?This wide-ranging book is an attempt to understand, through data and analyses, where India stands today, why it has emerged the way it has, and what the next ten years might bring. For anyone interested in India and its future, this is essential and enlightening reading.

    Controlling a class isn't something that comes naturally to everyone - but it can be learned.This no-nonsense guide tells teachers what the teacher training didn't, and offers instant strategies for dealing with the most common, and extreme, classroom scenarios.Using his experiences of teaching in inner-city schools, as Behaviour Guru on the TES advice forum and working as a nightclub bouncer, Tom Bennett helps teachers, old and new, to assert their authority in the classroom.

    The recent experience of the Democratic primaries and the re-emergence of social movements from Occupy to Black Lives Matter has generated a new context for identity politics to become an active force, and new ground to relitigate the frustrating debates between the partisans of "race" and "class" ad infinitum. In Mistaken Identity, Asad Haider reaches for a different approach - one rooted in the rich legacies of the black freedom struggle. Drawing from the words and deeds of black revolutionary theorists, he argues that identity politics is not synonymous with anti-racism, but instead amounts to the neutralization of its movements, a retreat from the crucial passage from identity to solidarity, and from individual recognition to collective struggle against an oppressive social structure. Mistaken Identity is an urgent call for alternative visions, languages, and practices against the white identity politics of right-wing populism. Responding with a contrary, pluralist identity politics has proven successful. The idea of universal emancipation now seems old-fashioned and outmoded. But if we are attentive to the lines of struggle which lie outside the boundaries of the state, we will see that it has been placed on the agenda once again.