Recommendations based on "Capital is Dead Is This Something Worse?"

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

A unique illustrated exploration of the development of finance that combines data from every part of the world and covers five thousand years of historyFrom the emergence of money in the ancient world to today’s interconnected landscape of high-frequency trading and cryptocurrency, the story of finance has always taken place on an international stage. Finance is one of the most globalized and networked of human activities, and one of the most important social technologies ever invented.This volume, the first visually based book dedicated to finance, uses graphics and maps to bring the complex and abstract world of finance down to earth, showing how geography is fundamental for understanding finance, and vice versa. It illuminates the people—including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes—who have shaped our thinking about global finance; brings to life the ways that place-specific histories, laws, regulations, and institutions influence finance; shows how finance relates to innovation, globalization, and environmental change; and details how finance plays a key part in drawing the landscape of uneven development, inequality, and instability.The Atlas of Finance, with word and image, will change the way you view both your money and your world.

'one Of The Most Original And Talented Young Writers We Have.' Sathnam Sanghera 'a Must-read.' Elizabeth Day 'a Beautiful, Searingly Personal Account Of A World Defined By Money, Full Of Courage And Truth Telling.' Owen Jones

New York Times Book Review Editor’s ChoiceSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEARA New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.Digital Gold is New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper’s brilliant and engrossing history of Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology that has spawned a global social movement.The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped it from growing into a technology worth billions of dollars, supported by the hordes of followers who have come to view it as the most important new idea since the creation of the Internet. Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments. More than just a tech industry fad, Bitcoin has threatened to decentralize some of society’s most basic institutions.An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold charts the rise of the Bitcoin technology through the eyes of the movement’s colorful central characters, including an Argentinian millionaire, a Chinese entrepreneur, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Already, Bitcoin has led to untold riches for some, and prison terms for others.

SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR The term “Libor” is obscure, but it determines a good deal of our financial lives-the interest rate on our credit card; our student loans; our mortgages; our car payments. How did a math genius, a handful of outrageous confederates, and a deeply corrupt banking system conspire to pickpocket you? They were in your wallet to already.  In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world’s largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor—the London interbank offered rate, which determines interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide—was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries.  Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a shadowy team that used hook and crook to take over the process and set rates that made them a fortune, no matter the cost to others. Among the motley crew was a French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose.” Eventually known as the “Spider Network,” Hayes’s circle generated untold riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion. Praised as reading “like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller” (New York Times), “compelling” (Washington Post) and “jaw-dropping” (Financial Times), The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but a provocative examination of a financial system that was warped and shady throughout.

Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet--but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping. We can't stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma. The economy says we must always consume more: even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure. The planet says we consume too much: in America, we burn the earth's resources at a rate five times faster than it can regenerate. And despite efforts to "green" our consumption--by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power--we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions. Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? At first this question took him around the world, seeking answers from America's big-box stores to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then the thought experiment came shockingly true: the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt, and MacKinnon's ideas were tested in real time. Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain: An investment in our physical and emotional wellness. The pleasure of caring for our possessions. Closer relationships with our natural world and one another. Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will embolden you to envision another way.

A sweeping history of the American invention of modern money. Economists endlessly debate the nature of legal tender monetary systems—coins and bills issued by a government or other authority. Yet the origins of these currencies have received little attention. Dror Goldberg tells the story of modern money in North America through the Massachusetts colony during the seventeenth century. As the young settlement transitioned to self-governance and its economy grew, the need to formalize a smooth exchange emerged. Printing local money followed. Easy Money illustrates how colonists invented contemporary currency by shifting its foundation from intrinsically valuable goods—such as silver—to the taxation of the state. Goldberg traces how this structure grew into a worldwide system in which, monetarily, we are all Massachusetts. Weaving economics, law, and American history, Easy Money is a new touchstone in the story of monetary systems.

The British military confronted significant challenges during the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Adhering to the principles and doctrines of previous campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence. By juxtaposing the deterioration of these cities against Britain’s celebrated legacy of counterinsurgency, this investigation identifies both the contributions and limitations of traditional tactics in such settings, exposing the gap between the ambitions and resources, intent and commitment, that proved so disastrous to the operation. In its detailed account of the Basra and Helmand campaigns, this volume conducts an unprecedented assessment of British military institutional adaptation in response to operations gone awry. It calls attention to the effectiveness of insurgent tactics and the danger of ungoverned spaces shielding hostile groups and underscores the need for the British military to acquire new skills for meeting irregular threats in future wars.

Traditionally, Americans have viewed war as an alternative to diplomacy, and military strategy as the science of victory. Today, however, in our world of nuclear weapons, military power is not so much exercised as threatened. It is, Mr. Schelling says, bargaining power, and the exploitation of this power, for good or evil, to preserve peace or to threaten war, is diplomacy—the diplomacy of violence. The author concentrates in this book on the way in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. He sees the steps taken by the U.S. during the Berlin and Cuban crises as not merely preparations for engagement, but as signals to an enemy, with reports from the adversary's own military intelligence as our most important diplomatic communications. Even the bombing of North Vietnam, Mr. Schelling points out, is as much coercive as tactical, aimed at decisions as much as bridges. He carries forward the analysis so brilliantly begun in his earlier The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (with Morton Halperin, 1961), and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on modern war and diplomacy. Stimson Lectures. Mr. Schelling is professor of economics at Harvard and acting director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs.

When the world's two largest steel producers went head to head in a bitter struggle for market domination, an epic corporate battle ensued that sent shockwaves through the political corridors of Europe, overheated the world's financial markets and transformed the steel industry. Billions of dollars were at stake. At the heart of the battle were two men: Guy Dollé, Chairman and CEO of Luxembourg-based Arcelor, the world's largest steel producer by turnover and Lakshmi Mittal, a self-made Indian industrialist and the richest man in Great Britain. Only one could prevail . . .