"Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty...

A presentation of economics in plain, straightforward language, without the jargon, graphs, or equations that dominate most other economic writings. This book is aimed at people with no previous study of the subject, namely the general public and beginning students in economics. Basic Economics illustrates economic principles with vivid examples from countries around the world, to make those principles memorable in a way that technical jargon or mathematical...

"How to Make Finance a Force for Good Just as Thomas Piketty offered a sweeping critique and progressive reassessment of capitalism, former World Bank Group chief financial officer Bertrand Badre looks at the destructive role finance played in the global economic crisis of 2007-2008 and offers a bold prescription for making it a force for good. Badre describes how finance can be harnessed to help us solve many of the world's biggest problems--climate...

The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books. It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem...

A leading economist challenges dominant theories on global inequality, discussing why wealth persistently remains in the hands of a few and how technological development threatens to create a scarcity of unskilled jobs that will lead to even greater inequality. "In his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Pikkety argued that the contemporary phenomenon of rising inequality across the globe is a function of the inheritance of...

In 1899, the author's uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generation that followed enjoyed privilege--but were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments. More than 100 years later, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with incurable cancer, the disease that claimed her own mother's life. Mary began researching...

"Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of "surveillance...

Publisher's description -- Nancy Folbre challenges the conventional economist's assumption that parents have children for the same reason that they acquire pets--primarily for the pleasure of their company. Children become the workers and taxpayers of the next generation, and "investments" in them offer a significant payback to other participants in the economy. Yet parents, especially mothers, pay most of the costs. The high price of childrearing...

Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling to show how people respond to incentives.

"Private currencies have always existed, from notes printed by individual banks to the S&H Green Stamps that consumers once redeemed for household items. Today's economy has seen an explosion of new forms of monetary exchange not created by the federal government. Credit card companies offer points that can be traded in for a variety of goods and services, from airline miles to online store credit. Online game creators have devised new mediums of...