The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.Boldly calling i...

Why we need to stop wasting public funds on educationDespite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to educati...

Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on economic concepts and topics. This volume addresses the economic and business aspects of her writings. The authors of this anthology are from a variety of fields and all of them are enthusiastic supporters of her ideas.

We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening audiobook. Caplan, a self-described libertarian/anarchist, argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and ag...

We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinki...

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world’s most powerful military spen...

**FINALIST FOR THE BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Parents . . . you will be wowed and awed by [Dr. Shefali]." —Oprah WinfreyAs seen on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday, a radically transformative plan that shows parents how to raise children to be their best, truest selves, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Conscious Parent.**What if...?What if I told you that you can put an end to all of...

The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.First published in 2013, Ruling the Void presciently observed that the widening gap between citizens and their political leaders posed a crisis of legitimacy for the governing class, and was fuelling populist mobilizations against it. Europe's political e...

After a troubled upbringing that saw the early death of her mother from cancer, Sarah Gabriel had created a happy home life with her partner and two beautiful daughters. Then, at 44, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and learned that while you can turn your back on your past, you can't escape your genetic legacy. The problem was MI8T, a rare and deadly genetic mutation that was responsible for the death of her mother and countless female ancestors.In Gabriel's struggle for survi...

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after 25 years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a gr...