Money Finance History

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Bestselling author Volker Ullrich presents a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced.

Famines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming. That is just one of the arguments that Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the world's leading authorities on the history and economics of famine, develops in this wide-ranging audiobook, which provides crucial new perspectives on key questions raised by famines around the globe between the 17th and 21st centuries.

Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States. Spanning twelve presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from William McChesney Martin to Jerome Powell, this is an insider's story of macroeconomic policy that hasn't been told before—one that is a pleasure to listen to, and as interesting as it is important.

Best-selling author Chris Turner brings listeners onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the myriad ways the oil sands of Alberta impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: To both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? This is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the life cycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.

A groundbreaking look at how Black visionaries—from Wall Street to Lagos and beyond—are reimagining capitalism to benefit the needs of Black people and, ultimately, everyone. “Black Capitalists is a dive into the history of how money is made and our attitudes about wealth. A must read...

With investors more eager than ever to protect their investments, The Empire of Debt is an essential guide to the future of finance, harnessing history to accurately plot where we are and where we're going.

Frederick J. Fisher's "Claims-Made Insurance: The Policy That Changed the Industry" is an indispensable guide for insurance professionals navigating claims-made policies. This comprehensive book explores the evolution and critical aspects of these policies that have transformed the insurance landscape.

Education is important. But schools don’t teach you how to become wealthy by using the incredible power of your mind. You don’t need a high IQ or a college degree to be successful. You can become a millionaire, even a billionaire, faster than you ever imagined possible by following a simple formula.

Collaborative Disruption is an insider’s account of the relationship between two of the most successful companies on the planet—Walmart and Procter & Gamble—and the transformative impact their collaborative strategy has had on their business for more than thirty years, particularly in the retail industry. Their innovative partnership produced what has come to be known as the “one-company model,” an approach that has fundamentally changed how suppliers and their retail customers interact with each other.

Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: how do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time? From gains in health, education, wealth and technology to crises of conflict, disease and mass migration, the similarities between today's world and that of the 15th century are both striking and prophetic: we have been here before.

VC tells the riveting story of how the industry arose from the United States' long-running orientation toward entrepreneurship. Venture capital has been driven from the start by the pull of outsized returns through a skewed distribution of payoffs - a faith in low-probability but substantial financial rewards that rarely materialize. Whether the gamble is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the newest startup in Silicon Valley, VC is not just a model of finance that has proven difficult to replicate in other countries.

Financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson first made his reputation studying the “resource curse,” seeing first-hand the disastrous economic and societal effects of the discovery of oil in Angola. He then gained prominence as an expert on tax havens, revealing the dark corners of that world long before the scandals of the Panama and Paradise Papers.

Every now and then, a story comes along that absolutely captures your attention. Dubai is one of those for me, but not just me - millions around the world yearn to come to Dubai. This global super city, which just five decades ago was a cholera-plagued backwater, might just be the picture of a dream becoming reality. But how, exactly, did this incredible transformation take place? Leadership! But not your run-of-the-mill government leadership, nor typical corporate leadership....

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.

Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6% - almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929 - equal to a one-day loss of nearly 5,000 points today. Black Monday was more than seven years in the making and threatened nearly every US financial institution. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of missed opportunities, market delusions, and destructive actions.

Digital technology is wonderful, but it's making us miserable, say former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. There's a reason Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Guardian he won't let his nephew on social networks. We've become a nation of tech addicts - although it's not entirely our fault, and it is possible to enjoy the benefits of technology while taking our happiness back from the bots. Wadhwa and Salkever describe the applied neuroscience techniques developers are using to make their products so insidiously habit-forming.

One of the great economists of the 20th century, Milton Friedman has always challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy. At the same time, his work has become popular because it is engagingly written and because it helps in practical prediction. Thanks to Friedman, money is now regarded as a far more powerful factor than it had been before. It offers the prospect of permanently controlling the inflation that has become the most important economic problem of our age.

This is the third book in the Easy Money trilogy which discusses how what the world now calls the global financial crisis evolved in the aftermath of the real estate bubble bursting in the United States and other parts of the world. In this book, we will try to understand the various reasons behind the financial crisis, and also identify the different villains behind it.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

The second book in the Easy Money trilogy discusses how the global financial system evolved in the aftermath of the First World War and how that finally led to the dot-com crash in the United States, in the early 2000s. It gives an overview of how in the aftermath of the First World War, Europe was in major trouble. The book also analyzes how the United Kingdom of Great Britain, which was once the premier nation of the world, lost out to its former colony, the United States of America.

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs.