The Devil's Derivatives charts the untold story of modernfinancial innovation--how investment banks invented new financialproducts, how investors across the world were wooed into buyingthem, how regulators were seduced by the political rewards of easycredit, and how speculators made a killing from the near-meltdownof the financial system. Author Nicholas Dunbar demystifies the revolution that brieflygave finance the same intellectual respectability as theoreticalphysics. He explains how bankers created a secret trillion-dollarmachine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and richesbeyond dreams to the financial innovators. Fundamental to this saga is how "the people who hated to lose"were persuaded to accept risk by "the people who loved to win." Whydid people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? Whowere the bankers competing to assemble the basic components intoincreasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve itsown unstoppable momentum, ending in collapse,

In The Futures , Emily Lambert, senior writer at Forbes magazine, tells us the rich and dramatic history ofthe Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, whichtogether comprised the original, most bustling futures market inthe world. She details the emergence of the futures business as akind of meeting place for gamblers and farmers and its subsequenttransformation into a sophisticated electronic market wherecontracts are traded at lightning-fast speeds. Lambert also detailsthe disastrous effects of Wall Street's adoption of the futurescontract without the rules and close-knit social bonds that hadmade trading it in Chicago work so well. Ultimately Lambert arguesthat the futures markets are the real "free" markets and thatspeculators, far from being mere parasites, can serve a vitaleconomic and social function given the right architecture. Thetraditional futures market, she explains, because of its writtenand cultural limits, can serve as a useful example for how marketsought to work and becom

From Rin Tin Tin to Casablanca to HarryPotter , the Warner Bros. story is the history of Hollywood.Eighty-five years of screen icons, legendary films, andhistory-making achievements are detailed in this comprehensive,photo-filled treasure trove, fully authorized by the studio. No production company has had more legendary films, stars, orinfluence on the course of Hollywood than Warner Bros. Among thesuperstars who worked for the studio are Bette Davis, HumphreyBogart, Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford, Marlon Brando, James Dean,and John Wayne. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrickmade history for the studio, and it has been home to blockbusterfranchises like Superman , Batman , LethalWeapon , and Harry Potter . Produced in conjunction with Warner Bros., this volume is theultimate guide to the greatest movie studio in history. You MustRemember This: The Warner Bros. Story is also the companion toa five part documentary in the PBS American Masters series byauthor Richard Schickel that will

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.

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

Warren Buffett is the most famous investor of all time and one of today's most admired business leaders. He became a billionaire and investment sage by looking at companies as businesses rather than prices on a stock screen. The first two editions of The Warren Buffett Way gave investors their first in-depth look at the innovative investment and business strategies behind Buffett's spectacular success. The new edition updates readers on the latest investments by Buffett. And, more importantly, it draws on the new field of behavioral finance to explain how investors can overcome the common obstacles that prevent them from investing like Buffett. New material includes: How to think like a long-term investor —— just like Buffett Why "loss aversion", the tendency of most investors to overweight the pain of losing money, is one of the biggest obstacles that investors must overcome. Why behaving rationally in the face of the ups and downs of the market has been the key to Buffett's investing success Analy

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.