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Whilst other introductory books on the subject are often bogged down with too much technical detail or too many 'show-off' shots, Studio Photography: Essential Skills offers a practical and accessible guide to the fundamental techniques for successful studio photography. Whether photographing a person or a product, you need control over the light, mood and look to arrive at the perfect result for a particular assignment. This book takes a commercial and creative approach and considers the important elements of lighting, exposure, capture, art direction and the studio setting to ensure a successful shoot.
With a clearly structured learning approach and a wide variety of activities and assignments to inspire and engage you, this is an informative, stimulating guide to the basics. Broaden your skills and increase your earning potential with Studio Photography: Essential Skills!
Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practices, Second Edition is the completely updated and revised landmark guide to "macro" organization theory and design, fully grounded in current international practice. International management expert John Child explores the conditions facilitating the development of new organizational forms and provides up-to-date coverage of the key developments driving new organization structure and practice. This revised Second Edition includes a new introductory section on Organization Theory as well as a complete Instructor Manual updated with new material on the basic principles of organizational design.
With detailed case studies and examples from throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and North America, Organization provides a truly international overview for advanced students and business executives who want to be at the forefront of the evolution in Organization Theory. 21st Century organizations will be faced with entirely new challenges and opportunities than those faced by previous generations, and emerging business leaders must understand the new "macro" realities in order to succeed. Organization will help readers:
Understand the "macro" organization, which is distinct from organizational behaviour Explore the way organizations fit into the international business environment and global economy Analyze the way organizational structure and design affect management performance Apply advanced organization theory and principles to day to day management activitiesWritten by one of the foremost scholars, the fully updated Second Edition of this successful text provides executives and advanced business students with a wide-ranging and trustworthy guide to organizations as the conditions for their survival in our global business environment change.
It looks at economic and other pressures as well as demands for new kinds of community justice and changing ideas about public and voluntary service. Its sheer breadth, expertise and diversity of views means it will be in demand across the criminal justice system as the best word on the subject. What is the modern-day role of the magistracy and how might it better serve the citizens to whom it ultimately belongs? From an age-old institution as a bastion of democracy to the idea that there should be fresh avenues of engagement and a greater sense of a fairness and transparency, each of the distinguished contributors chapters adds to the considerable value of a highly innovative and readable work.
‘Raises crucial questions about … the proper roles of civil servants and politicians’: Professor Rob Canton.
‘Enriches our understanding’: Professor David Downes.
‘Anyone interested in the state and its relationship to citizens should read [this book]’: Professor Graham Towl.
‘A uniquely rewarding book’: John Chilcot.
"This superb study of a Brazilian state company's transition to private ownership is marvellously comprehensive in its coverage of the firm's entire life span and the full spectrum of its interactions with all aspects of its environment. The outstanding quality of this volume's contribution to co-evolutionary thinking and institutional and political theory has invaluable implications for culture, politics, identity, learning, and adaptation, making it an absolute 'must read' for all organization, management and strategy scholars."
—Christine Oliver, Professor and Henry J. Knowles Chair in Organizational Strategy, Schulich School of Business, York University
"This book by Suzanna B. Rodrigues and John Child is destined to become a classic study for several reasons. It is an exemplary study of co-evolutionary case study research, it is one of a very few longitudinal studies that focus on the interdependencies between firm evolution and the macro political and institutional environment and it provides a comprehensive and integrated state of the art framiing of current co-evolutionary theories and empirical research, It is a must read for scholars in Organization Science."
—Arei Y. Lewin, Duke University, Fuqua School of Business, Durham NC
"Corporate Co-evolution is a valuable contribution to the small but precious collection of studies of long-term change in business organizations. Tracking the evolution of a telecommunications company in Brazil over a 27 year period, Rodrigues and Child perform a delicate balancing act, according equal attention to the constraining/empowering effects of a changing institutional environment and to the strategic decisions and actions of the company's leaders."
—W. Richard Scott, Stanford University
Corporate Co-Evolution is a work of major scholarship that develops broad macro-economic principles of corporate strategy by examining and analyzing the history and growth of Telemig, a major Brazilian telecommunications company.
Analyzes the different domains of the corporate environment - economic, social, cultural and political - that impact on the evolution of companies Traces the multi-level changes in a major Brazilian telecommunications company, uncovering the dynamics of change over the course of 30 years Develops a broader contextual and historical perspective that enriches our understanding of today’s international corporate environment Includes a general introduction to the complex political factors in the corporate environment that impact the growth of companies Co-authored by internationally-renowned author and business consultant, John Child
Utilizing detailed documentary evidence, Dr. Child traces and assesses the emergence and development of management thinking in Britain over the last hundred years. He considers the organizational and social problems faced by managers, and how management thinkers have attempted to provide solutions. The book demonstrates how social science research has today brought to light many deficiencies in management thought. By applying the perspectives of the sociology of knowledge, Dr Child examines how and why ideological considerations seriously weakened the practical utility of many management writings. He also discusses the important problems raised for management education by these findings, illustrating this with some of his own research into management teaching.
This text assumes little academic knowledge, and some familiarity with work in organizations. It is of real use to decision makers, and to those in management education, both teachers and students.
Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practices, Second Edition is the completely updated and revised landmark guide to "macro" organization theory and design, fully grounded in current international practice. International management expert John Child explores the conditions facilitating the development of new organizational forms and provides up-to-date coverage of the key developments driving new organization structure and practice. This revised Second Edition includes a new introductory section on Organization Theory as well as a complete Instructor Manual updated with new material on the basic principles of organizational design.
With detailed case studies and examples from throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and North America, Organization provides a truly international overview for advanced students and business executives who want to be at the forefront of the evolution in Organization Theory. 21st Century organizations will be faced with entirely new challenges and opportunities than those faced by previous generations, and emerging business leaders must understand the new "macro" realities in order to succeed. Organization will help readers:
Understand the "macro" organization, which is distinct from organizational behaviour Explore the way organizations fit into the international business environment and global economy Analyze the way organizational structure and design affect management performance Apply advanced organization theory and principles to day to day management activitiesWritten by one of the foremost scholars, the fully updated Second Edition of this successful text provides executives and advanced business students with a wide-ranging and trustworthy guide to organizations as the conditions for their survival in our global business environment change.
In the constantly evolving world of finance, a solid technical foundation is an essential tool for success. Until the welcomed arrival of authors Josh Rosenbaum and Josh Pearl, no one had taken the time to properly codify the lifeblood of the corporate financier's work-namely, valuation, through all of the essential lenses of an investment banker. With the release of Investment Banking, Second Edition: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, and Mergers & Acquisitions, Rosenbaum and Pearl once again have written the definitive book that they wish had existed when they were trying to break into Wall Street. The Second Edition includes both the technical valuation fundamentals as well as practical judgment skills and perspective to help guide the science. This book focuses on the primary valuation methodologies currently used on Wall Street: comparable companies analysis, precedent transactions analysis, discounted cash flow analysis, and leveraged buyout analysis. With the new fully revised edition, they have added the most comprehensive, rigorous set of intuition-building and problem-solving ancillaries anywhere all of which promised to become essential, knowledge enhancing tools for professionals, and professors and students.
For those who purchase this edition of the book, there are options to purchase the Valuation Models separately (9781118586167), and to also consider purchase of the Investing Banking Workbook (9781118456118) and Investment Banking Focus Notes (9781118586082) for further self-study.
Why do so many M&A transactions fail? And what drives the success of those deals that are consummated? Robert Bruner explains that M&A can be understood as a response by managers to forces of turbulence in their environment. Despite the material failure rates of mergers and acquisitions, those pulling the trigger on key strategic decisions can make them work if they spend great care and rigor in the development of their M&A deals. By addressing the key factors of M&A success and failure, Applied Mergers and Acquisitions can help readers do this. Written by one of the foremost thinkers and educators in the field, this invaluable resource teaches readers the art and science of M&A valuation, deal negotiation, and bargaining, and provides a framework for considering tradeoffs in an effort to optimize the value of any M&A deal.
THE BOOK THAT EXPLAINS WHY RUSSIANS WANTED TO MEET WITH THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN
“Part John Grisham-like thriller, part business and political memoir.” —The New York Times
“[Red Notice] does for investing in Russia and the former Soviet Union what Liar’s Poker did for our understanding of Salomon Brothers, Wall Street, and the mortgage-backed securities business in the 1980s. Browder’s business saga meshes well with the story of corruption and murder in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, making Red Notice an early candidate for any list of the year’s best books” (Fortune).
This is a story about an accidental activist. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune.
Along the way he exposed corruption, and when he did, he barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of that, he became Putin’s number one enemy, especially after Browder succeeded in having a law passed in the United States—The Magnitsky Act—that punishes a list of Russians implicated in the lawyer’s murder. Putin famously retaliated with a law that bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans.
A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world, and also the story of how, without intending to, he found meaning in his life.
Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?
Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities.
The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.
Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:
- China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West?
- Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
- What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?
Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
While working at the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Ellison won praise for covering the $5 billion acquisition that transformed the pride of Dow Jones and the estimable but eccentric Bancroft family into the jewel of Rupert Murdoch’s kingdom. Here she expands that story, using her knowledge of the paper and its people to go deep inside the landmark transaction, as no outsider has or can, and also far beyond it, into the rocky transition when Murdoch’s crew tussled with old Journal hands and geared up for battle with the New York Times. With access to all the players, Ellison moves from newsrooms to estates and shows Murdoch, finally, for who he is—maneuvering, firing, undoing all that the Bancrofts had protected. Her superlative account transforms news of the deal into a timeless chronicle of American life and power.
This book fills a noticeable gap in contemporary finance literature, which tends to focus on theory rather than practical application. It focuses on the primary valuation methodologies currently used on Wall Street—comparable companies, precedent transactions, DCF, and LBO analysis—as well as M&A analysis. The ability to perform these methodologies is especially critical for those students aspiring to gain full-time positions at investment banks, private equity firms, or hedge funds. This is the book Rosenbaum and Pearl wish had existed when we were trying to break into Wall Street.
Written to reflect today’s dynamic market conditions, Investment Banking, UNIVERSITY EDITION skillfully:
Introduces students to the primary valuation methodologies currently used on Wall Street Uses a step-by-step how-to approach for each methodology and builds a chronological knowledge base Defines key terms, financial concepts, and processes throughout Provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of LBOs and an organized M&A sale process Presents new coverage of M&A buy-side analytical tools—which includes both qualitative aspects, such as buyer motivations and strategies, along with technical financial and valuation assessment tools Includes a comprehensive merger consequences analysis, including accretion/(dilution) and balance sheet effects Contains challenging end-of-chapter questions to reinforce concepts coveredA perfect guide for those seeking to learn the fundamentals of valuation, M&A , and corporate finance used in investment banking and professional investing, this UNIVERSITY EDITION—which includes an instructor’s companion site—is an essential asset. It provides students with an invaluable education as well as a much-needed edge for gaining entry to the ultra-competitive world of professional finance.
In Business, strategy is king. Leadership and hard work are all very well and luck is mighty useful, but it is strategy that makes or breaks a business, organisation or team. Of course, it is easier to talk a good strategic game than it is to execute one. This book will help you turn your words into effective and successful actions.
As part of Deloitte Consulting, one of the largest mergers and acquisitions (M&A) consulting practice in the world, author Janice Roehl-Anderson reveals in M&A Information Technology Best Practices how companies can effectively and efficiently address the IT aspects of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Filled with best practices for implementing and maintaining systems, this book helps financial and technology executives in every field to add value to their mergers, acquisitions, and/or divestitures via the IT function.
Features a companion website containing checklists and templates Includes chapters written by Deloitte Consulting senior personnel Outlines best practices with pragmatic insights and proactive strategiesMany M&As fail to meet their expectations. Be prepared to succeed with the thorough and proven guidance found in M&A Information Technology Best Practices. This one-stop resource allows participants in these deals to better understand the implications of what they need to do and how
M&A Titans provides insight into the culture of the different investment banks and how each of the bankers influenced the firms they worked in as they became more powerful. Some such as Gleacher, Harris, Wasserstein, Perella and Greenhill clashed with the men running their firms and left. Others such as Friedman and Boisi stayed and profoundly influenced how the firm did business. The career of Michael Milken, perhaps the notorious name on Wall Street in the 1980s, is also examined as well as the actions and tactics of his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. Milken and Drexel paved the way for the growth of private equity and helped popularize attacks on management by investors such as Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn.
His Winning at Entrepreneurship: Insider’s Tips on Building, Buying, and Selling Your Own Business holds original tips gleaned from scores of his small to medium-size business acquisitions. Case studies and personal interactions give key insights to:
• Raising cash
• Starting a business
• Buying a business
• Creating quick growth
• Avoiding the pitfalls
• Preparing to sell
• Enjoying the rewards of your labors
Winning at Entrepreneurship will assist all in monetizing their dreams. The novice reader will discover a pragmatic guide for the road to riches. And those looking to start or buy a business or prepare their company for sale will find a roadmap to success.
The American economy is in peril. It has fallen hostage to a casino of financial speculation, creating instability as well as inequality. Tens of millions of workers are vulnerable to layoffs and outsourcing, health care and retirement burdens are increasingly being shifted from employers to individuals. Here Kuttner debunks alarmist claims about supposed economic hazards and exposes the genuine dangers: hedge funds and private equity run amok, sub-prime lenders, Wall Street middlemen, and America's dependence on foreign central banks. He then outlines a persuasive, bold alternative, a new model of managed capitalism that can deliver security and opportunity, and rekindle democracy as we know it.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Are you a business owner, investor, venture capitalist, or member of a private equity firm looking to grow your business by getting involved in a merger with, or acquisition of, another company? Are you looking for a plain-English guide to how mergers and acquisitions can affect your investments? Look no further.
Mergers & Acquisitions For Dummies explains the entire process step by step?from the different types of transactions and structures to raising funds and partnering. Plus, you'll get expert advice on identifying targets, business valuation, doing due diligence, closing the purchase agreement, and integrating new employees and new ways of doing business.
Step-by-step techniques and real-world advice for making successful mergers and acquisitions Covers international laws and regulations How to take advantage of high-value dealsGoing beyond the case studies of other books, Mergers & Acquisitions For Dummies is your one-stop reference for making business growth a success.
Paul Pignataro reveals the secrets behind growth through M&A in his new book, Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestitures, and Other Restructurings + Website. Through market shifts and regulatory changes, M&A has served as a solid approach to growth. Creating value through mergers and acquisitions is a highly coveted strategy, and Wall Street has long sought a clear technical understanding of the components of M&A as a key driver of growth. In this book, the author provides that understanding, covering all essential aspects of accounting and modeling for the M&A process.
With over a decade of experience aiding billion-dollar restructuring deals, Paul Pignataro is in an excellent position to break down M&A from a finance standpoint. Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestitures, and Other Restructurings covers the financial accounting and modeling behind several M&A structures. Using the merger of Office Depot and Office Max, Mr. Pignataro fully addresses the entire integration, explains EBITDA, and other crucial performance measures. This text is for finance practitioners who want to explore every corner of the M&A process.
Learn accounting for asset acquisitions, asset divestitures, and corporate mergers Explore modeling methods including mini-merger modeling and fully consolidated merger modeling Read case studies demonstrating the practical success of theoretical models Understand EBITDA, cash flow, capital structure, and their impact on M&A success and value creationThis new text from the CEO and founder of the New York School of Finance is key for understanding how restructuring leads to growth and value creation. The importance of M&A shows no signs of slowing, meaning that finance professionals need to be able to accurately analyze the prospects and impacts of restructuring moves. Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestitures, and Other Restructurings + Website is the authoritative resource for doing just that.
M&A activity is higher than ever with acquisitions becoming an important part of every company's growth strategy. The industries heavily engaging in this activity are high-tech, emerging technologies, and utilities.
The M&A Transition Guide is written for executives, managers, and HR professionals involved with any transaction that moves employees from one company to another. Poor workforce integration is a main cause for M&A failures and this book helps managers make the M&A transition a more positive one by providing a plan of action for the integration that focuses on ten critical steps. These steps encompass the entire M&A process from due diligence to employee retention strategies.
When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday's newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don't want and turn it into something you can't wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter-veteran journalist and son of an American junkyard owner-travels deeply into a vast, often hidden, 500-billion-dollar industry that's transforming our economy and environment.
Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to recycling factories capable of processing a jumbo jet's worth of trash every day. Along the way, we meet an international cast of characters who have figured out how to squeeze Silicon Valley-scale fortunes from what we all throw away. Junkyard Planet reveals how "going green†? usually means making money-and why that's often the most sustainable choice, even when the recycling methods aren't pretty.
With unmatched access to and insight on the waste industry, and the explanatory gifts and an eye for detail worthy of a John McPhee or William Langewiesche, Minter traces the export of America's garbage and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of how the way we consume and discard stuff brings home the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don't. Junkyard Planet reveals that Americans might need to learn a smarter way to take out the trash.
To most proglobalizers, globalization is a source of economic salvation for developing nations, and to fully benefit from it nations must follow a universal set of rules designed by organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization and enforced by international investors and capital markets. But to most antiglobalizers, such global rules spell nothing but trouble, and the more poor nations shield themselves from them, the better off they are. Rodrik rejects the simplifications of both sides, showing that poor countries get rich not by copying what Washington technocrats preach or what others have done, but by overcoming their own highly specific constraints. And, far from conflicting with economic science, this is exactly what good economics teaches.
One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 Books to Read Now • One of Kirkus Reviews's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Books of the Year
Shortlisted for the OWL Business Book Award and Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Version 2.0, Updated and Expanded, with a New Afterword
We all sense it—something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once—and it is dizzying.
In Thank You for Being Late, version 2.0, with a new afterword, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts. His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet’s three largest forces—Moore’s law (technology), the Market (globalization), and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)—are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. The year 2007 was the major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is providing vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world—or to destroy it.
With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations—if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is an essential guide to the present and the future.
Organizations announce changes every day and expect, or at least hope, that people will react positively to them. The success, however, has everything to do with how leaders manage the transition.
Trust in Transition breaks down the entire change process—from the initial idea to the execution phases—identifying leverage points along the way that have a profound impact on the outcomes. Bob Whipple simplifies the issues, explaining that at its core, successful transitions happen because of positive human interaction. The concepts and techniques in this book will help you successfully merge two groups into a single functional unit using successful creative solutions.
This book:
presents a two-sided model contrasting the mechanical and cultural sides of a change effort teaches you how to create and maintain trust during changegives a clear view of the pitfalls and what to avoiddiscusses antidotes for each issue presented and how to make reorganization efforts more effectivewalks through a recovery process to help your people recover equilibrium.
The economic profiles and investment climates of key countries are discussed and many issues are examined from the perspectives of US-based and UK-based investors because they play significant roles in Mergers and Acquisitions activities in all regions of the world.
The practices and management strategies in Asia are also compared with those observed in the United States and the United Kingdom where appropriate.
The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas.
One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In FACTORY MAN, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.
Drawing on his experience consulting with top companies and NGOs worldwide, Hart shows how to craft your optimal sustainability strategy and overcome the limitations of traditional "greening" approaches. In this edition, he presents new and updated case studies from the United States and around the world, demonstrating what’s working and what isn’t. He also guides business leaders in building an organizational "infrastructure for sustainability"--one that can survive budgeting and boardrooms, recharging innovation and growth throughout your enterprise. Discover:
· The new business case for pursuing sustainable capitalism
· Sustainability strategies that go far beyond environmental sensitivity
· How to fully embed your enterprise in the local context--and why you should
· Tactics for making long-term sustainability work in a short-term world
Before you invest another dollar anywhere in the world (including the United States), read this book by the man Time magazine calls “the Indiana Jones of finance.”
Jim Rogers became a Wall Street legend when he co-founded the Quantum Fund. Investment Biker is the fascinating story of Rogers’s global motorcycle journey/investing trip, with hardheaded advice on the current state and future direction of international economies that will guide and inspire investors interested in foreign markets.
NOTE: This edition does not include a photo insert.
—New York Times
An international bestseller, The Miracle by business journalist Michael Schuman offers a fascinating exploration of the most meaningful and far-reaching global event since World War II: the economic ascent of the Asian continent. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer calls The Miracle, “An amazing story and it’s all true,” while the New York Times praises Schuman for being, “not just a skilled reporter [but] also a gifted journalistic storyteller.” The Miracle is essential reading for anyone who truly wants to understand today’s—and tomorrow’s—world.
“There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.” —The New York Times Magazine
With remarkable accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. In Flashpoints, Friedman focuses on Europe—the world’s cultural and power nexus for the past five hundred years . . . until now. Analyzing the most unstable, unexpected, and fascinating borderlands of Europe and Russia—and the fault lines that have existed for centuries and have been ground zero for multiple catastrophic wars—Friedman highlights, in an unprecedentedly personal way, the flashpoints that are smoldering once again.
The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize built-in geopolitical tensions that historically have torn it apart. As Friedman demonstrates, with a mix of rich history and cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints narrates a living history of Europe and explains, with great clarity, its most volatile regions: the turbulent and ever-shifting land dividing the West from Russia (a vast area that currently includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the ancient borderland between France and Germany; and the Mediterranean, which gave rise to Judaism and Christianity and became a center of Islamic life.
Through Friedman’s seamless narrative of townspeople and rivers and villages, a clear picture of regions and countries and history begins to emerge. Flashpoints is an engrossing analysis of modern-day Europe, its remarkable past, and the simmering fault lines that have awakened and will be pivotal in the near future. This is George Friedman’s most timely and, ultimately, riveting book.
From the Hardcover edition.
Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.
From the Hardcover edition.
Bok first describes the principal findings of happiness researchers. He considers how reliable the results appear to be and whether they deserve to be taken into account in devising government policies. Recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses of happiness research, Bok looks at the policy implications for economic growth, equality, retirement, unemployment, health care, mental health, family programs, education, and government quality, among other subjects. Timely and incisive, The Politics of Happiness sheds new light on what makes people happy and how government policy could foster greater satisfaction for all.
learn effective ways to deal with Chinese businesspeople and private and state-owned companies;
analyze whether certain products or services are viable for the Chinese market;
understand the psyche of the Mao Generation Chinese who are now Chinas business owners, executives, and government leaders; and
develop low-cost, market-entry strategies
Filled with clear, tangible steps and applicable personal anecdotes, Selling to China bridges the gap between Western and Chinese cultures, languages, and histories to help businesses enter the Chinese marketplace.
But as Ghetto at the Center of the World shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people. Gordon Mathews’s intimate portrayal of the building’s polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope.
Gordon Mathews’s compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet.
Drawing on her expertise in both comparative politics and international relations and on her experience as a former public official, Lancaster provides five in-depth case studies—the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark—that demonstrate how domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid. In doing so, she explores the impact on foreign aid of political institutions, interest groups, and the ways governments organize their giving. Her findings provide essential insight for scholars of international relations and comparative politics, as well as anyone involved with foreign aid or foreign policy.