From America's liveliest writer on mathematics, a witty andinsightful book on the stock market and the irrepressibility of ourdreams of wealth. In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Marketbest-selling author John Allen Paulos demonstrates what the toolsof mathematics can tell us about the vagaries of the stock market.Employing his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles(and even a film treatment), Paulos addresses every thinkingreader's curiosity about the market: Is it efficient? Is itrational? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamentalanalysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of pickingstocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams?What light do fractals, network theory, and common psychologicalfoibles shed on investor behavior? Are there any approaches toinvesting that truly outperform the major indexes? Can a deeperknowledge of mathematics help beat the odds? All of these questionsare explored with the engaging erudition that made Paulos's AMathematic

Although Africa has long been known to be rich in oil,extracting it hadnt seemed worth the effort and risk untilrecently. But with the price of Middle Eastern crude oilskyrocketing and advancing technology making reserves easier totap, the region has become the scene of a competition between majorpowers that recalls the nineteenth-century scramble forcolonization there. But what does this giddy new oil boom meanforAmerica, for the world, for Africans themselves? John Ghazviniantraveled through twelve African countriesfrom Sudan to Congo toAngolatalking to warlords, industry executives, bandits, activists,priests, missionaries, oil-rig workers, scientists, and ordinarypeople whose lives have been transformednot necessarily for thebetterby the riches beneath their feet. The result is a high-octanenarrative that reveals the challenges, obstacles, reasons fordespair, and reasons for hope emerging from the worlds newestenergy hot spot.

The international bestseller on the extent to which personalfreedom has been eroded by government regulations and agencieswhile personal prosperity has been undermined by governmentspending and economic controls. New Foreword by the Authors;Index.

THE ESSENTIAL GALBRAITH includes key selections from the mostimportant works of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the mostdistinguished writers of our time - from THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, thegroundbreaking book in which he conined the tern "conventionalwisdom," to THE GREAT CRASH, an unsurpassed account of the eventsthat triggered America's worst economic crisis. Galbraith's newintroductions place the works in their historical moment and makeclear their enduring relevance for the new century. THE ESSENTIALGALBRAITH will delight old admirers and introduce one of our mostbeloved writers to a new generation of readers. It is also anindispensable resource for scholars and students of economics,history, and politics, offering unparalleled access to the seminalwritings of an extraordinary thinker.

John Kenneth Galbraith has long been at the center of Americaneconomics, in key positions of responsibility during the New Deal,World War II, and since, guiding policy and debate. His trenchantnew book distills this lifetime of experience in the public andprivate sectors; it is a scathing critique of matters as they standtoday. Sounding the alarm about the increasing gap between realityand "conventional wisdom" -- a phrase he coined -- Galbraith tells,along with much else, how we have reached a point where the privatesector has unprecedented control over the public sector. We havegiven ourselves over to self-serving belief and "contrivednonsense" or, more simply, fraud. This has come at the expense ofthe economy, effective government, and the business world.Particularly noted is the central power of the corporation and theshift in authority from shareholders and board members tomanagement. In an intense exercise of fraud, the pretense ofshareholder power is still maintained, even with the immediatepart

When Guerrilla Marketing was first published in 1983, JayLevinson revolutionized marketing strategies for the small-businessowner with his take-no-prisoners approach to finding clients. Basedon hundreds of solid ideas that really work, Levinson's philosophyhas given birth to a new way of learning about market share and howto gain it. In this completely updated and expanded fourth edition,Levinson offers a new arsenal of weaponry for small-businesssuccess including * strategies for marketing on the Internet(explaining when and precisely how to use it) * tips for using newtechnology, such as podcasting and automated marketing * programsfor targeting prospects and cultivating repeat and referralbusiness * management lessons in the age of telecommuting andfreelance employees Guerrilla Marketing is the entrepreneur'smarketing bible -- and the book every small-business owner shouldhave on his or her shelf.

Offering a straightforward, non-intimidating approach tolearning investing, this book gives beginner investors theknowledge they need to understand documentation and investingconcepts--from key terms to complicated interest-bearingaccounts.

This book was written to offer encouragement and basicinformation to the individual investor. Who knew it would gothrough thirty printings and sell more than one million copies? Asthis latest edition appears eleven years beyond the first, I'mconvinced that the same principles that helped me perform well atthe Fidelity Magellan Fund still apply to investing in stockstoday. It's been a remarkable stretch since One Up on Wall Street hit thebookstores in 1989. I left Magellan in May, 1990, and pundits saidit was a brilliant move. They congratulated me for getting out atthe right time -- just before the collapse of the great bullmarket. For the moment, the pessimists looked smart. The country'smajor banks flirted with insolvency, and a few went belly up. Byearly fall, war was brewing in Iraq. Stocks suffered one of theirworst declines in recent memory. But then the war was won, thebanking system survived, and stocks rebounded. Some rebound! The Dow is up more than fourfold since October, 1990,from the 2,400 lev

By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night hespent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and internationalglobe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht,crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to thewife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking,hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did hisbidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of theill-fated genius they called… In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notoriousinvestment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamousnames in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper wholed his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Streetand into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astoundingand hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story ofgreed, power, and excess no one could invent. Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, StrattonOakmont turned microcap investing into a wi

Updated for paperback publication, Aftershock is a brilliantreading of the causes of our current economic crisis, with a planfor dealing with its challenging aftermath. When the nation’s economy foundered in 2008, blame was directedalmost universally at Wall Street bankers. But Robert B. Reich, oneof our most experienced and trusted voices on public policy,suggests another reason for the meltdown. Our real problem, heargues, lies in the increasing concentration of wealth in the handsof the richest Americans, while stagnant wages and rising costshave forced the middle class to go deep into debt. Reich’sthoughtful and detailed account of where we are headed over thenext decades—and how we can fix our economic system—is a practical,humane, and much-needed blueprint for restoring America’s economyand rebuilding our society.

Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball.Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-lifegeneral manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateurbaseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "thesingle most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) butalso what "may be the best book ever written on business" (WeeklyStandard). I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story.The story concerned a small group of undervalued professionalbaseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected asunfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one ofthe most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But theidea for the book came well before I had good reason to writeit-before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really,with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams inbaseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? With thesewords Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, andm

The time was the1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’sPoker. Michael Lewis wasfresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when helanded a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premierinvestment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose fromcallow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firmand cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is theculmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes lookat a unique and turbulent time in American business. From thefrat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to thekiller instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything ona high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is MichaelLewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedentedera of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.

"This is a modern classic." —Paul A. Samuelson, First AmericanNobel Prize Winner in Economics "The best book there is about the stock market and all that goeswith it." — The New York Times Book Review "Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where thehappenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game andread it with due diligence." — Book World " 'Adam Smith' is a veteran observer and commentator on the eventsand people of Wall Street.... His thorough knowledge of financialaffairs gives his observations a great degree of authenticity. Butthe joy of reading this book comes from his delightful sense ofhumor. He is a lively and ingeniously witty writer who never stoopsto acerbity. None of the solemn, sacred cows of Wall Street escapesdebunking." — Library Journal

For more than thirty years, The Only InvestmentGuide You’ll Ever Need has been a favorite finance guide,earning the allegiance of more than a million readers across theUnited States. Now even more indispensable, this completely revisedand updated edition will show readers how to use money to theirbest advantage in the wake of epochal change on Wall Street, nomatter how much or how little they may have.

Americans are infatuated with the stock market. The number of households that own stock has increased from around 20 percent in the early 1980s to over 40 percent today. The market offers the hope of quick wealth and early retirement, and just about everyone who is in the market is looking for an edge, from sources such as CNBC and Wall Street Week to the Beardstown Ladies and "The Motley Fool." So it should be no surprise the most successful investor of our time--Warren Buffett--has been the subject of dozens of books and magazine articles. The value of Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, has increased from $18 per share in 1965 to over $70,000 per share today. The interest in Buffett has spawned an approach to investing called "Buffettology," which is the subject of a book by the same name written by Buffett's former daughter-in-law, Mary Buffett.

For anyone interested in the world behind the business-pageheadlines, this is the book to read. --Publishers Weekly With the same breadth of vision and narrative élan he brought tohis monumental biographies of the great financiers, Ron Chernowexamines the forces that made dynasties like the Morgans, theWarburgs, and the Rothschilds the financial arbiters of the earlytwentieth century and then rendered them virtually obsolete by thecentury's end. As he traces the shifting balance of power among investors,borrowers, and bankers, Chernow evokes both the grand theater ofcapital and the personal dramas of its most fascinatingprotagonists. Here is Siegmund Warburg, who dropped a client in theheat of a takeover deal because the man wore monogrammed shirtcuffs, as well as the imperious J. P. Morgan, who, when faced witha federal antitrust suit, admonished Theodore Roosevelt to "sendyour man to my man and they can fix it up." And here are the menwho usurped their power, from the go-getters of the 1

Mutual-fund superstar Peter Lynch and author John Rothchildexplain the basic principles of investing and business in a primerthat will enlighten and entertain anyone who is high-school age orolder. Many investors, including some with substantial portfolios, haveonly the sketchiest idea of how the stock market works. The reason,say Lynch and Rothchild, is that the basics of investing -- thefundamentals of our economic system and what they have to do withthe stock market -- aren't taught in school. At a time whenindividuals have to make important decisions about saving forcollege and 401(k) retirement funds, this failure to provide abasic education in investing can have tragic consequences. For those who know what to look for, investment opportunities areeverywhere. The average high-school student is familiar with Nike,Reebok, McDonald's, the Gap, and the Body Shop. Nearly everyteenager in America drinks Coke or Pepsi, but only a very few ownshares in either company or even understand how to buy them. Everystu