Will there ever be another investing book like this? It's unlikely. University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies handed down personally from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. From this front row seat, you'll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year. If you're looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you're looking for an investing book that's as personal as it is revelatory, look no further. Packed with Buffett and Munger's timeless, generous, and often hilarious wisdom, University of Berkshire Hathaway will keep serious investors turning pages late into the night: * Get unique insight into the thinking, strategies, and decisions--both good and bad--that made Buffett and Munger two of the world's greatest investors. * Understand the critical reasoning that leads Buffett and Munger to purchase a particular company, including their methods for assigning value. * Learn the central tenets of Buffett's value-investing philosophy "straight from the horse's mouth." * Enjoy Munger's biting wit as he goes after any topic that offends him. * Discover Buffett's distaste for "commonly accepted strategies" like modern portfolio theory. * See why these annual meetings are often called "an MBA in a weekend."
“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —Time Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. “The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times.” —George F. Kennan “It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century.” —David Remnick, The New Yorker “Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece. . . . The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today.” —Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, from the foreword
On the heels of George Carlin's #1 New York Times bestseller Napalm & Silly Putty comes When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? -- infused with Carlin's trademark irreverent humor and biting cultural observations. Here we go again . . . George Carlin's hilarious When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? offers his cutting-edge opinions and observational humor on everything from evasive euphemistic language to politicians to the media to dead people. Nothing and no one is safe! Despite the current climate of political correctness, Carlin is not afraid to take on controversial topics: * Carlin on the media: The media comprises equal parts business, politics, advertising, public relations, and show business. Nice combination. Enough bull for Texas to open a chain of branch offices. * Carlin on the battle of the sexes: Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. * Carlin on hygiene: When did they pass a law that says the people who make my sandwich have to be wearing gloves? I'm not comfortable with this. I don't want glove residue all over my food; it's not sanitary. Who knows where these gloves have been? * Carlin on evasive language: Just to demonstrate how far using euphemisms in language has gone, some psychologists are now actually referring to ugly people as those with "severe appearance deficits." Hey, Doctor. How's that for "denial"? * Carlin on politics: No self-respecting politician would ever admit to working in the government. They prefer to think of themselves "serving the nation." To help visualize the service they provide the country, you may wish to picture the things that take place on a stud farm. The thinking person's comic who uses words as weapons, Carlin puts voice to issues that capture the modern imagination. For instance, why are there Ten Commandments? Are UFOs real? What will the future really be like? This brand-new collection tackles all that and more. In When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Carlin's razor-sharp observations demolish everyday values and leave you laughing out loud--delivering exactly what his countless fans have been waiting for.
Since the inception of Bitcoin in 2008, thousands of cryptocurrencies or decentralised blockchains have been launched. Most ventures into the cryptocurrency sphere have not gone according to plan as their founders would have hoped. Nevertheless, there are currently hundreds of crypto related projects which are succeeding. This book covers the history of Peercoin, a decentralised, globally accessible and secure ecosystem for transferring value across the world. Since August 2012, a growing committed and visionary team of developers has been driving the project forward.
Over a million copies sold! A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, this classic guide to the basics of economic theory defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. “A magnificent job of theoretical exposition.”—Ayn Rand Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than fifty years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong—and strongly reasoned—anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right: * Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts. * Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low. * Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the 1 degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows thanks to fossil-fueled development. What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential. Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
THE BEST BOOK THAT DESCRIBES THE WORLD OF 2020's Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modeled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power. Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory ho
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'A critical contribution to Chinese history' Wall Street Journal Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the West in less than fifteen years. It led to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.
Now featuring a new preface by Peter Thiel Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization. Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years. In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.
The shocking story of the legal persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the dangerous implications for the whistleblowers of the future. In July 2010, Wikileaks published Cablegate, one of the biggest leaks in the history of the US military, including evidence for war crimes and torture. In the aftermath Julian Assange, the founder and spokesman of Wikileaks, found himself at the center of a media storm, accused of hacking and later sexual assault. He spent the next seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearful that he would be extradited to Sweden to face the accusations of assault and then sent to US. In 2019, Assange was handed over to the British police and, on the same day, the U.S. demanded his extradition. They threatened him with up to 175 years in prison for alleged espionage and computer fraud. At this point, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, started his investigation into how the US and UK governments were working together to ensure a conviction. His findings are explosive, revealing that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that Assange has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer’s compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow. The Trial of Julian Assange is told in three parts: the first explores Nils Melzer’s own story about how he became involved in the case and why Assange’s case falls under his mandate as the Special Rapporteur on Torture. The second section returns to 2010 when Wikileaks released the largest leak in the history of the U.S. military, exposing war crimes and corruption, and Nils makes the case that Swedish authorities manipulated charges against Assange to force his extradition to the US and publicly discredit him. In the third section, the author returns to 2019 and picks up the case as Ecuador kicks Assange out of the embassy and lays out the case as it currently stands, as well as the stakes involved for other potential whistleblowers trying to serve the public interest.
Swarmwise (2013) is a tactical guide to changing the world using cost-efficient swarm methodology. It is a leadership handbook that outlines how the Swedish Pirate Party was able to beat the political competition on less than one percent of their budget, and shows how any cash- and time-strapped executive or manager can use swarm methodologies, whether the goal is business, social, or political. That organization, founded by one man without resources, has now spread to over 70 countries using the same cost-efficient swarm methods. Swarmwise will tell you what it takes to found a swarm of volunteers, to organize and energize it, and to lead it to success. The book doesn’t go into theoretical detail, psychology, or deep research papers. Rather, it is very hands-on leadership advice from pure experience – it covers everything from how you give instructions to new marketing assistants or activists about handing out flyers in the street, up to and including how you communicate with TV stations and organize hundreds of thousands of people in a coherent swarm. Above all, it focuses on the cost-efficiency of the swarm structure, and is a tactical instruction manual for anybody who wants to dropkick their competition completely – no matter whether their game is business, social, or political. A chapter overview of Swarmwise: Chapter 1 - Understanding the Swarm deals with the basic concepts of a swarm organization, and explains why the swarm is open and transparent. It introduces the concept of a cost-efficiency advantage of two orders of magnitude. In Chapter 2 - Launching Your Swarm, we learn that the published project plan must be tangible, credible, inclusive, and epic, and what that means in practice. Chapter 3 - Getting Your Swarm Organized gives tangible advice on how to organize a volunteer organization and why. We look at the dynamics of different group sizes and how to build a culture of trust. One of the more counterintuitive lessons is detailed in Chapter 4 - Control the Vision, but Never the Message. It explains how you need to use volunteers to translate your vision into messages that fit a specific social context, rather than using an one-size-fits-all slogan. A healthy dose of classic project management is found in Chapter 5 - Keep People's Eyes On Target, And Paint It Red Daily. We talk about metrics, choosing the right metrics, and causing self-organization to happen when you publish the right metrics to optimize. In Chapter 6 - Screw Democracy, We're on a Mission from God, we talk about conflict resolution mechanisms and how to optimize the swarm for speed, trust, and scalability. Chapter 7 - Surviving Growth Unlike Anything the MBAs Have Seen details how the swarm can grow by 200% in a week when some events play out, and how to handle such situations. One of the more advanced chapters, Chapter 8 - Using Social Dynamics To Their Potential goes into how we can tap into the long tail of people and effectively cross-use online and offline friendships to grow organically. Seeing how most organizations need to deal with TV, newspapers, and radio, there is also Chapter 9 - Managing Oldmedia that details everything from press release processes to TV crews. Finally, Chapter 10 - Beyond Success shares a bit of experience of what happens when you feel at the top of the world, and what to do then. "Your most valuable asset isn't your employees," I told the executive. "Your most valuable asset is the thousands of people who want to work for you for free, and you don't let them." The book can also be downloaded as a PDF from the author's website at http://falkvinge.net/books/.
The highly anticipated 2nd edition of the best-selling gold and silver investing book of the century. Completely revised, with over 100 entirely new pages of content. "Throughout the ages, many things have been used as currency: livestock, grains, spices, shells, beads, and now paper. But only two things have ever been money: gold and silver. When paper money becomes too abundant, and thus loses its value, man always turns back to precious metals. During these times there is always an enormous wealth transfer, and it is within your power to transfer that wealth away from you or toward you." - Michael Maloney, precious metals investment expert and historian; founder and principal, GoldSilver.com. Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver tells readers: * The essential history of economic cycles that make gold and silver the ultimate monetary standard. * How the U.S. government is driving inflation by diluting our money supply and weakening our purchasing power * Why precious metals are one of the most profitable, easiest, and safest investments you can make * Where, when, and how to invest your money and realize maximum returns, no matter what the economy's state * Essential advice on avoiding the middleman and taking control of your financial destiny by making your investments directly.