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...

A renowned economist's classic book on capitalism in the developing world, showing how property rights are the key to overcoming poverty."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 ...

This professional book introduces an analytical framework of urban informality perspectives in the Middle East that is aligned with the Global South. The context of Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan—in the Middle East— is the transregional focus of this book. In these contexts, the book opens a new arena of academic discussion on the theory and practice of urban informality.Urban Informality: Experiences and Urban Sustainability Transitions in Middle East Cities questions urban informalit...

Before 2007, economists thought that financial crises would never happen again in the United States, that such upheavals were a thing of the past. Gary B. Gorton, a prominent expert on financial crises, argues that economists fundamentally misunderstand what they are, why they occur, and why there were none in the U.S. from 1934 to 2007.Misunderstanding Financial Crises offers a back-to-basics overview of financial crises, and shows that they are not rare, idiosyncratic ev...

Bloomsbury presents 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang, read by Joe Barrett.INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER"For anyone who wants to understand capitalism not as economists or politicians have pictured it but as it actually operates, this book will be invaluable."-Observer (UK)If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a ligh...

In just over three years, real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of investors' dollars on a single deal. In Other People's Money, Charles V. Bagli, the New York Times reporter who first broke the story of the sale of Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village takes listeners inside the most spectacular failure in real estate history, using this single deal as a lens to see how and why the real estate crisis happened.How did the smarte...

Everyone has heard of the story of DNA as the story of Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin, but knowing the structure of DNA was only a part of a greater struggle to understand life's secrets. Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that ultimately enables a spiraling molecule to give rise to the life that exists all around us. This great scientific breakthrough has had far-reaching consequences for how we understand ours...

For more than a decade, America has been waging a new kind of war against the financial networks of rogue regimes, proliferators, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates. Juan Zarate, a chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world. In this gripping story, he explains in unprecedented detail how a small, dedicated group of officials redefined the Treasury's role and used its unique powers, r...

The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded.In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today's polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pu...

The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos.Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambitio...

In a book that “sets a new standard in economic history” (Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist), acclaimed economic historian Victoria Bateman tells the story of how women made the world richHow many female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries, merchants, and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none at all.But what about Phryne, the richest woman in ancient Athens, who ...

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become “history” at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it—and the results are proving calamitous.In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization, with its geographical shif...