Economics
In the Affluent Society, Galbraith offers up his view of the world, or rather how he feels the rest of the world views it wrong! He points out that when much of the early economic literature was written, there had begun a fundamental shift in world economics. Up until that time, poverty was the norm... bare sustenance was the primary economic problem to be solved. About the time Adam Smith began observing the pin factory, the world was changing to become what Galbraith calls, an "Affluent Soc
Full disclosure: I am a software developer that is generally a free-market conservative. David Rice writes as though software developers are incompetantly nefarious drolls who have created a market failure that requires heavy government intervention to protect the masses. If that sounds like "over the top" rhetoric, wait until you read his book. Peppering his prose with emotionally charged language like "sad irony", "public ignorance" and "shockingly", and of course his most quoted phrase "six
Robert Austin manages to sum up in this short book the observations that bothered me for 16 years working for FedEx. As a courier for most of those years, I watched the company struggle with measurement dysfunction as they attempted to get more and more productivity from their employees. The symptoms I witnessed first-hand are so clearly described by Austin that it surprises me that no one at FedEx picked the book up and fixed the widespread problem. If you doubt me, stop your FedEx courier s
I made the mistake of reading the two Taleb books on my list out of order. In fact, had I read Fooled By Randomness first, I could have skipped reading The Black Swan since the bulk of the material is covered in the first book (and covered better in my opinion.) That is not to say that there was no new material in the second book, but rather that the new material was not enough to justify spending the time to read through the re-hash. As far as readability goes, I would recommend Fooled By Ra
Nassim Taleb writes an interesting book about unexpected events. His theories about probability provide a different perspective on some old topics. Taleb's writing style is engaging if not eccentric. He injects dry humor along with plenty of parenthetical comments. He is a self-described philosopher - trader, however unlike most philosophers, he doesn't seem to be too concerned with the reader thinking he is smart. Most modern philosophers seem more concerned with impressing the reader than
Copyright: 1992
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
From Stone Money to the "Cross of Gold", Friedman does his best to keep the reader interested in exchange rates, inflation and monetary policy in this excellent book. While injecting plenty of his own theory, philosophy and conjecture into the text, Friedman does a marvelous job of documenting the history of money as it relates to the supply of money. Beginning with a brief and yet solid background into what money really is he moves qu
This is a collection of Galbraith's works that, according to the author in the preface, were chosen by his associates, his publisher and the reading public. This books serves as a quick primer on the economics of this renowned economist as well as a fascinating overview of his literary life.