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Limits to Growth
Donnella Meadows
In 1972, three scientists from MIT created a computer model
that analyzed global resource consumption and production. Their
results shocked the world and created stirring conversation
about global 'overshoot,' or resource use beyond the carrying
capacity of the planet. Now, preeminent environmental
scientists Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows
have teamed up again to update and expand their original
findings in The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global
Update….Overshoot cannot be sustained without collapse. But, as
the authors are careful to point out, there is reason to
believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to
Earth if it takes appropriate measures to reduce inefficiency
and waste.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
Donella Meadows
Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering
insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal
to the global…this essential primer brings systems thinking out
of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible
world….Some of the biggest problems facing the world--war,
hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation--are essentially
system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in
isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details
have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow
thinking. Meadows …reminds readers to pay attention to what is
important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and
to stay a learner.
Donella H. Meadows was a pioneering environmental scientist, author, teacher, and
farmer widely considered ahead of her time. She was one of the world's foremost
systems analysts and lead author of the influential Limits to Growth. She was Adjunct
Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College, the founder of the
Sustainability Institute and co-founder of the International Network of Resource
Information Centers.
The Logic of Life:
The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take
drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational,
and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or
easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become
ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a
fortune for sitting behind a mahogany altar? Thorny questions–and you
might be surprised to hear the answers coming from an economist. But
award-winning journalist Tim Harford likes to spring surprises. In
this deftly reasoned book, he argues that life is logical after all.
Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at
work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most
unlikely places
Tim Harford is the author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist and a member of
the editorial board of the Financial Times, where he also writes the "Dear Economist"
column. He is a regular contributor to Slate, Forbes, and NPR's Marketplace. He was
the host of the BBC TV series Trust Me, I'm an Economist and now presents the BBC
series More or Less. Harford has been an economist at the World Bank and an economics
tutor at Oxford University.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Selected by the New York Times Book Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal..
as one of the best books of 2011
Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains
the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast,
intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and
more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and
also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the
pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and
behavior. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how
choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—the
difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the
challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the
profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the
stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be
understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape
our judgments and decisions. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform
the way you think about thinking.
Daniel Kahneman is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decisionmaking, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in prospect theory. In 2011, he was named by
Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. Currently, he is professor
emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson
School. Kahneman is a founding partner of The Greatest Good, a business and
philanthropy consulting company.
Neuroeconomics:
Decision Making and the Brain
Paul Glimcher, et al
Neuroeconomics is a new highly promising approach to
understanding the neurobiology of decision making and how it affects
cognitive social interactions between humans and societies/economies.
This book is the first edited reference to examine the science behind
neuroeconomics, including how it influences human behavior and
societal decision making from a behavioral economics point of view.
Presenting a truly interdisciplinary approach, Neuroeconomics
presents research from neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral
economics, and includes chapters by all the major figures in the
field, including two Economics nobel laureates. Carefully edited for
a cohesive presentation of the material, the book is also a great
textbook to be used in the many newly emerging graduate courses on
Neuroeconomics in Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics graduate
schools.
Glimcher is Professor of Natural Sciences at New York University and the Director of
the Glimcher Lab at NYU.
Unholy Trinity:
The IMF, World Bank and WTO
Richard Peet
Who really runs the global economy? The triad of "governance
institutions"--The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.
Globalization hugely increased these undemocratic institutions’
power, drastically affecting the livelihoods of peoples across
the world with their particular kind of neoliberal capitalism.
Their 'Washington Consensus' proposed that poverty was to be
ended by increasing inequality. This new edition of Unholy
Trinity is completely updated and revised. It argues neoliberal
global capitalism has produced an unstable global economy, rife
with speculation and structurally prone to crises. Indeed the
crisis is now so severe that governance will become impossible.
The IMF is in disgrace, the WTO can hardly meet and the World
Bank survives as a global philanthropist. Is this the end for
the Unholy Trinity?
Richard Peet is Professor of Geography at Clark University.
Dead Aid:
Way for Africa
Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better
Dambisa Moya
Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our
time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to
developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase
growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates
have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Debunking the
current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood
celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road
map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries. Much
debated in the United States and the United Kingdom on publication,
Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge
to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided
development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more
hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues
millions.
Winner Take All:
Means for the World
China's Race for Resources and What It
Dambisa Moya
Winner Take All is about the commodity dynamics that the world will
face over the next several decades. In particular, it is about the
implications of China’s rush for resources across all regions of the
world. The scale of China’s resource campaign for hard commodities
(metals and minerals) and soft commodities (timber and food) is among
the largest in history… the breadth of China’s operation is awesome,
and seemingly unstoppable. China’s global charge for commodities is a
story of China’s quest to secure its claims on resource assets, and
to guarantee the flow of inputs needed to continue to drive economic
development. Moyo, an expert in global commodities markets, explains
the implications of China’s resource grab in a world of diminishing
resources.
Dr. Dambisa Moyo is an international economist who writes on the macroeconomy and
global affairs. Ms. Moyo was named by Time Magazine as one of the "100 Most
Influential People in the World", and was named to the World Economic Forum's Young
Global Leaders Forum. She completed a doctorate in Economics at Oxford University and
holds a Masters degree from Harvard University. She completed an undergraduate degree
in Chemistry and an MBA in Finance at the American University in Washington D.C.
Masters of Illusion:
the World Bank and the Poverty of Nations
Catherine Caufield
This is the story of good intentions gone wrong--of misdirected
science, environmental degradation, mathematical formulae run amok.
It began in 1945 with a pledge to bring the third world into the
first, with the help of a powerful world bank, designed to finance
the takeoff of the poorest countries. Fifty years later the gap
between the rich and the underdeveloped nations is wider than ever.
This is the story of the making of a quagmire of debt and
impoverishment.
Predictably Irrational:
Shape Our Decisions
The Hidden Forces That
Dan Ariely
Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor
Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral
economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable
fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics
can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when
aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug
over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office
supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our
understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational
subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising
irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously
ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social
norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of
opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer
choice, as well as economic and educational policy. Ariely's
intelligent, exuberant style and thought-provoking arguments make for
a fascinating, eye-opening read.
Dan Ariely is the James B Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at
Duke University. He publishes widely in the leading scholarly journals in economics,
psychology, and business. His work has been featured in a variety of media including
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Business 2.0,
Scientific American, Science and CNN.
The Conscience of a Liberal
Paul Krugman
Krugman's great theme is economic equality and the liberal politics
that support it. America's post-war middle-class society was not the
automatic product of a free-market economy, he writes, but was
created... by the policies of the Roosevelt Administration. By
strengthening labor unions and taxing the rich to fund redistributive
programs like Social Security and Medicare, the New Deal consensus
narrowed the income gap, lifted the working class out of poverty and
made the economy boom. Conservative initiatives to cut taxes for the
rich, dismantle social programs and demolish unions, he argues, have
led to sharply rising inequality, with the incomes of the wealthiest
soaring while those of most workers stagnate. Krugman's accessible,
stylishly presented argument deftly combines economic data with
social and political analysis; his account of the racial politics
driving conservative successes is especially sharp. The result is a
compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for
Americans to retake control of their economic destiny.
End this Depression NOW!
Paul Krugman
A call-to-arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling
author Paul Krugman. The Great Recession is more than four years old—
and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful
volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the
ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—
remain in a state of intense pain." How bad have things gotten? How
did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And
above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions
with his characteristic lucidity and insight. He has a powerful
message for anyone who has suffered over these past four years—a
quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find
the "intellectual clarity and political will" to end this depression
now.
Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He writes a twiceweekly op-ed column for the New York Times and a blog named for his 2007 book "The
Conscience of a Liberal." He teaches economics at Princeton University.
The Price of Inequality:
Society Endangers Our Future
How Today's Divided
Joseph Stiglitz
The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s
wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top
enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they
fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99
percent live.” Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics
to show that growing inequality is not inevitable: moneyed interests
compound their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism. They have
made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while
crippling growth, trampling on the rule of law, and undermining
democracy. The result: a divided society that cannot tackle its most
pressing problems. With characteristic insight, Stiglitz examines our
current state, then teases out its implications for democracy, for
monetary and budgetary policy, and for globalization. He closes with
a plan for a more just and prosperous future.
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz is the bestselling author of Making Globalization Work; Globalization and Its Discontents; and,
with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. He was chairman of President
Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and served as senior vice president and chief
economist at the World Bank. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York
City.
The Paradox of Choice:
Why More Is Less
Barry Schwartz
Whether we’re buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee,
selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a
doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions--both big and
small--have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming
abundance of choice with which we are presented. We assume that more
choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of
excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions
you make before you even make them, it can set you up for
unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself
for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decisionmaking paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture
that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection
when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical
depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what
point choice--the hallmark of individual freedom and selfdetermination that we so cherish--becomes detrimental to our
psychological and emotional well-being.
Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action
in the psychology department at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where he
has taught for thirty years. He is the author of several leading textbooks on the
psychology of learning and memory, as well as a penetrating look at contemporary life,
The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality, and Modern Life.