About this product: Teacher, scholar, and university administrator Annette Kolodny entered academia with dreams of stimulating conversation, exciting research, and the chance to make a difference in educating young people--how frustrating to end up stuck in a quagmire of shrinking budgets, increasing enrollments, and petty politics. In Failing the Future, she takes on the daunting task of outlining the present state of higher education and what lies ahead. Kolodny clearly identifies the problems. Campus administrators make all the decisions about how to allocate budget cuts, without ever spending time in the departmental trenches to find out how the cuts will affect educational practice. Add to this antifeminist (and anti- intellectual) harassment, turf wars, and changing student and faculty needs. Her solutions are simple and sensible, if surprisingly idealistic coming from someone who has fought the budget beast herself: break down faculty-administration barriers, safeguard intellectual freedom, accommodate older students with children. Kolodny realizes how much this will cost. "If we will put off further tax cuts for the rich, we can begin the reinvestment in higher education that will allow colleges and universities to accommodate increasing numbers of students from a radically different demographic base...." An insider's view of the economic and intellectual future of higher education.
About this product: In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today. "Terrifically readable." --Time.com "Set to become a classic. Crammed with statistical nuggets and common sense, his book should be compulsory reading." --The Economist "If Sachs seems too saintly and Easterly too cynical, then Collier is the authentic old Africa hand: he knows the terrain and has a keen ear.... If you've ever found yourself on one side or the other of those arguments--and who hasn't?--then you simply must read this book." --Niall Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "Rich in both analysis and recommendations.... Read this book. You will learn much you do not know. It will also change the way you look at the tragedy of persistent poverty in a world of plenty." --Financial Times
About this product: The most gripping portion of Stephen Flynn's examination of America's defense shortcomings in the war on terror arrives early. The entire second chapter imagines an elaborate but feasible dirty-bomb attack that brings the nation's transportation system to a halt and presents the President with two dreadful options: reopen borders closed by the emergency and risk further attack, or inspect everything that comes into the country and accept the cataclysmic economic consequences. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and veteran of the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations, paints a picture of a government that is flailing in its efforts to protect its citizens. We are, Flynn argues, hamstrung by entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and ideological power centers on the right and left, and he isn't optimistic about the near-term likelihood that we'll meet our greatest challenge: "identifying how to formally engage the broader civil society and private sector, not just the federal government, in a national effort to make America a less attractive terrorist target." America the Vulnerable isn't as powerful or contentious as the bestseller Imperial Hubris; Flynn is a practical government veteran who keeps his outrage largely in check. It's clear he aims to have an impact with this expose of a national defense he compares to France's in the days of the Maginot line. And we know how effective that "impenetrable" defense stood up in the face of an unconventional opponent. --Steven Stolder
About this product: This book tells stories of life in a "failing" school. These are insider stories of the daily lives of children and educators in an urban school during a time when accountability weighs heavy on both teachers and students. Most educators are in favor of accountability. The kind and amount of testing associated with the current accountability movement, however, influence teachers' and students' lives in a way not often apparent to parents and politicians.
About this product: Gavin Griffiths was a fairly straight-laced, newlywed shipping executive when he bought a magazine called The Erotic Review for #1 - not just one copy, the whole business! Little did he know it would soon become the darling of the chattering classes, and a case study in heroic failure. More in the tradition of Tony Young (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) than Felix Dennis (How to be Rich), in this highly entertaining memoir readers discover just why only one in ten new businesses make it, and what happens to the other nine.
About this product: This urgent appeal to policymakers, educators, and parents "is a comprehensive report on five different studies . . . the authors explore the differences between Asian and American school systems and outline what the United States can learn from these cultures" (The Christian Science Monitor).
About this product: This sharp and authoritative account of American foreign relations analyzes the last fifteen years of foreign policy in relation to the last forty years, since the end of the Cold War.
Provides an overview and understanding of the recent history of U.S. foreign relations from the viewpoint of one of the most respected authorities in the field
About this product: Over time, the stock market creates great wealth for investors. And yet, most investors do not become wealthy by investing in the stock market, instead having experiences that range from inadequate to disastrous.So why the disconnect?The answer is found in a set of widely held, mistaken beliefs about what it takes to be a successful investor. At first glance, these investment myths seem grounded in logic. In reality, though, these beliefs provide investors with perfect blueprints for investment failure by encouraging in them an emotion-driven, trading-intensive mentality. These myths are propagated by Wall Street, which reaps huge profits from this behavior and by the financial media that is starving for sensationalistic content.As an independent investment advisor, Jack Calhoun has spent much of the past 15 years educating investors about the dangers of these mistaken ideas. In The 12 Investment Myths, he explores and debunks these myths one-by-one and in the process sets investors on a path to harness the tremendous wealth-creation machine that is the stock market.
BOOK
