In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.But the container did...

From the acclaimed author of The Box, a new history of globalization that shows us how to navigate its futureGlobalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh and l...

The decades after World War II were a golden age across much of the world. It was a time of economic miracles, an era when steady jobs were easy to find and families could see their living standards improving year after year. And then, around 1973, the good times vanished. The world economy slumped badly, then settled into the slow, erratic growth that had been the norm before the war. The result was an era of anxiety, uncertainty, and political extremism that we are still grappling with t...

From the acclaimed author of The Box, a new history of globalization that shows us how to navigate its futureGlobalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is alsoone of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massiveflows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh and lively historyof ...

In An Extraordinary Time, acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson recounts the global collapse of the postwar economy in the 1970s. While economists struggle to return us to the high economic growth rates of the past, Levinson counterintuitively argues that the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly; slow economic growth is the norm—no matter what economists and politicians may say. Yet these atypical years left the public with unreasonable expectations of what gover...

Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale.Sachs takes listeners through a series of seven distinct waves of technological and institutional change, starting with the original settling of the planet by early modern humans through long-distance migration and ending with reflections on today's globalization. Along the w...

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminish...

Born into a Christian minority in Lebanon and since settled in France, acclaimed writer Amin Maalouf claims a unique position in global conversation. His first book, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, was a critical and commercial success and remains in print after 20 years. In Disordered World, Maalouf combines his command of history with a critical perspective on contemporary culture East and West-joining them with a fierce moral clarity and a fluid, propulsive style....

Think outside the borders.Global economics affects every aspect of our lives. Free trade agreements, tariffs, terrorism, trade deficits, international debt, global warming, OPEC, outsourcing, and sweat shops are just some of the forces driving our world, food supply, jobs, and future. The Complete Idiots Guide® to Global Economics provides the key to understanding the various facts, figures, policies, and practices that offer insight into this dy...

"Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet."—New York Times Book Review"Unwavering political contrarian Noam Chomsky smart-bombs the US military's global Interventions. Shock and awe!"—Vanity FairBecause We Say So presents more than thirty concise, forceful commentaries on US politics and global power. Written between 2011 and 2015, Noam Chomsky's arguments forge a persuasive c...

"Comprehensive and compelling…a landmark study" of the Arab-Zionist conflict, told from both sides, by the author of Israel's Secret Wars (Sunday Times, UK).Setting the scene at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral testimonies to his own vivid-on-the-ground reporting—to illuminate the most polarizing conflict of m...

WITH SUBSTANTIAL MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED IN THE DOCUMENTARYAcademy Award winner Oliver Stone was able to secure what journalists, news organizations, and even other world leaders have long coveted: extended, unprecedented access to Russian President Vladimir Putin.The Putin Interviews are culled from more than a dozen interviews with Putin over a two-year span—never before has the Russian leader spoken in such depth or at such length with a Western int...