544 products in Books, Music, Movies & TV

The collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009 after years of rampant money printing is a frightening example of what lies in store for countries that resort to printing money to pay national debts, bail out banks and oligarchs, and enrich political elites. When Money Destroys Nations tells the gripping story of the disintegration of the once thriving Zimbabwean economy and the inspiring and tragic accounts of how ordinary people survived in turbulent circumstances. Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti give a straightforward and revealing account of the causes and consequences of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation. Countries around the world are resorting to money printing with their stimulus packages and quantitative easing.  Zimbabwe's economic collapse is not an isolated tragedy. It holds lessons for all countries and for all political leaders tempted to take illusory and perilous shortcuts to prosperity. Zimbabwe's lessons must not be ignored. This is the story of When Money Destroys Nations. "Haslam and Lamberti have produced a fascinating, accessible account of how Zimbabweans actually lived (and died) during the world's second-highest hyperinflation..." - Professor Steve H. Hanke, Johns Hopkins University

Social media is changing the community. Several may speak up, but under such apparent freedom of expression, an undercurrent of conformity, obedience, self-censorship, and fear dominates. This is how tolerance turns into intolerance and political freedom into totalitarianism. Distinctive attitudes and individuality are replaced by group affiliation, where those who think differently are ostracized. We sense something disturbing: A community moving toward greater control. And a growing risk of politics with totalitarian features that, instead of fighting for freedom, wants to curtail it.

A renowned economist argues for the importance of property rights in "the most intelligent book yet written about the current challenge of establishing capitalism in the developing world" (Economist) "The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up one of the most pressing questions the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly extralegal property arrangements, such as squatting on large estates, to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionized our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and how that affects us all—from influential technology entrepreneur and startup investor Chris Dixon “A must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3.”—Robert Iger, CEO, Disney “A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.”—Sam Altman, co-founder, OpenAI The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection, and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die and can, in fact, be saved with blockchain networks. He separates this movement, which aims to provide a solid foundation for everything from social networks to artificial intelligence to virtual worlds, from cryptocurrency speculation—a distinction he calls “the computer vs. the casino.”   With lucid and compelling prose—drawing from a twenty-five-year career in the software industry—Dixon shows how the internet has undergone three distinct eras, bringing us to the critical moment we’re in today. The first was the “read” era, in which early networks democratized information. In the “read-write” era, corporate networks democratized publishing. We are now in the midst of the “read-write-own” era, sometimes called web3, in which blockchain networks are granting power and economic benefits to communities of users, not just corporations.   Read Write Own is a must-read for anyone—internet users, business leaders, creators, entrepreneurs—who wants to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. It provides a vision for a better internet and a playbook to navigate and build the future.

Bitcoin is one of the most transformative technologies in history, but at the same time it's dismissed as useless or only seen as a speculative vehicle. Why Cryptocurrencies? will dispel that myth by exploring real use-cases and show how cryptocurrencies are uniquely positioned to revolutionize the way we use money today. Can you afford to miss out? What makes this book special? * Gives you the important conceptual ideas. It's all too easy to get bogged down with technical details; the high-level concepts are what's truly important. * Easy to read. The book is beginner-friendly and doesn't require any prior knowledge. * Focused on utility. The focus is on concrete use-cases, instead of the more seductive speculative approach. * It's bigger than Bitcoin. There are many more cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. The focus is on the general cryptocurrency concept and it's potential, instead of on a single implementation. * Visits a wide variety of topics. This isn't only about cryptocurrencies. It's also about money, censorship, our financial system, and the dark secrets that Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden revealed. * The order doesn't matter. Chapters are self-contained, so you can jump around and read the sections you're interested in.

This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever. The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to: * Respond when someone initiates aCrucial Conversationwith you * Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it * Communicate more effectively across digital mediums When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.

In Ethereum for Business, Paul Brody provides a plain English guide to doing business on the world's largest blockchain. The book covers an overview of Ethereum, business applications on Ethereum, and various advanced topics. Including case studies and examples from the world of Ethereum, Ethereum for Business is readable both linearly and by dipping in and out of chapters. The book is aimed at business executives who want to understand the potential of blockchain for solving real-world business problems, and readers with technical knowledge who want to understand the business use cases. Ethereum for Business covers topics such as: • Basics of blockchain technology and key components on wallets, tokens, and keys. • Decentralization in digital marketplaces, smart contracts, privacy, scalability, supply chain management, trade finance, payments and asset transfers, and tokenomics. • Transforming the world of enterprise computing by enabling companies to model and manage assets, real or digital, that exist off-chain. • A guide for implementation that contains key success metrics for enterprises considering blockchain-based solutions.

This little book was written to accomplish something big: economic literacy. It is intentionally kept very short to be inviting rather than intimidating. You will gain life-changing understanding of how the economy works in practically no time. Per Bylund will make you excited about what economics has to offer. Because economic literacy is mind-opening. Sound economic reasoning is an enormously powerful tool for understanding both the economy and society. Economic literacy uncovers what is going on under the surface and why things work out as they do. There is no magic to it. In fact, economic literacy is necessary to properly understand the world. Short, direct, axiomatically unassailable, and devastating to the mythology of modern economics. This book not only promote Mises' views, but refutes and attacks the tragicomic orthodoxy of today’s economics mainstream.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

Unlike what usually passes for economics in many classrooms, government, the media and elsewhere, Choice is an engaging and intriguing book that provides something quite unique: a genuine treatise on economics that instructs and entertains both economists and general readers. Drawing on the seminal volume by the “Austrian School” economist Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, and comparing classical and neoclassical approaches, Choice is a creative, comprehensive, and unusually lucid book on economic science and market processes. The book illuminates free economies as underpinning civilization, the folly of government central planning, the primacy of entrepreneurship and innovation, the nature of money and banking, the causes of the business cycle, the failures of government intervention, and more. As a result, Choice teaches economic principles and exposes economic fallacies, and any reader will learn both the important truths about economics and the crucial value of individual choice, entrepreneurship, and free markets.

The New 2018  ebook best selling series has begun!  William D. Danko's True Prosperity ~ Takes More Than Money.~~~ Enter the new title and get your copy today!~~~~~~~~~The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door. This new edition, the first since 1998, includes a new foreword for the twenty-first century by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD “A provocative read...There are few tomes that coherently map such broad economic histories as well as Mr. Dalio’s. Perhaps more unusually, Mr. Dalio has managed to identify metrics from that history that can be applied to understand today.” —Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes—and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well. A few years ago, Ray Dalio noticed a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before. They included huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political, and values disparities in more than 100 years; and the rising of a world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (US) and the existing world order. The last time that this confluence occurred was between 1930 and 1945. This realization sent Dalio on a search for the repeating patterns and cause/effect relationships underlying all major changes in wealth and power over the last 500 years. In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings readers along for his study of the major empires—including the Dutch, the British, and the American—putting into perspective the “Big Cycle” that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. He reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.