This is the untold history of the fight for the Irish revolutionary government's funds, the bank inquiry that shook the financial establishment and the first battle in the intelligence war.

THE GROUNDBREAKING NEW METHOD FOR RAISING VENTURE CAPITAL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS “The declaration of independence for our industry!” —MAT DELLORSO, WealthForge Inc. “The Crowdfunding Revolution should be on the mandatory reading list for everybody active in the industry or for everyone who’s planning to be.” —CROWDFUND NEWS “Kevin Lawton and Dan Marom have done a great job. . . . A must-read for everybody entering the field of crowdfunding!”—GIJSBERT KOREN, Smarter Money “We recommend this book highly to anyone who is fascinated by this new methodology for funding projects and endeavors. . . . A wonderful read.” —BRIAN MEECE, RocketHub “Read this book if you want to catch the next wave!” —FRED BRYANT, WealthForge Inc. “A must-read for anyone interested in the early stage funding process.” —MANDAR KULKARNI, pluggd.in “The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.” —BUSINESS2COMMUNITY “The Crowdfunding Revolution offers fundraising inspiration for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.” —SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS YOUR POOL OF INVESTORS JUST INCREASED BY 2 BILLION . . . Since the day the first human being approached a prospective investor, the province of capital allocation has been controlled by a small and entrenched minority. All this has changed. Now, the power of the Internet—particularly social media—enables anyone to connect with more investors in less time than it used to take to connect with one. The investing pool is open, everyone is in—and The Crowdfunding Revolution shows how to get to the forefront of the new world of venture financing. This groundbreaking guide explains how the explosive growth of connectivity is obviating human-to-human networks and centralized planning of capital allocation—and describes how crowdfunding can be used to tap into a “collective intelligence” for far superior results. Providing a wealth of information that will make your crowdfunding efforts more efficient and productive, the book is organized into three thematic sections: THE ROAD HERE: A thorough overview of what crowdfunding is—and how and why this radical new approach is replacing traditional means of venture financing THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN: Proven methods for marketing to the crowd, setting clear objectives, building a crowdfunding team, and communicating in a way that inspires action THE ROAD AHEAD: The crowdfunding ecosystem, intellectual property issues, mining collective IQ, new investment models, and regulations More than 2 billion people globally are now active online—and that number is guaranteed to grow at an extraordinary rate. The Crowdfunding Revolution explains all the ins and outs of raising investment capital by using social media and new technologies to draw small sums of money from an almost countless number of sources. Organic. Transparent. Decentralized. This is crowdfunding. This is the future. Read The Crowdfunding Revolution and become the first expert in your crowd on this radical new approach poised to supplant age-old venture financing methods.

What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, twenty years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the white Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom." Out three protagonists include Manny, a fixer that shuttles journalists in and out of war zones and provides footage for outside news agencies. Sasha is a teenage woman that joins the Heavenly Kingdom before she discovers the ugly truths behind their movement. Finally, we have Roland: A US Army vet kitted out with cyberware (including blood that heals major trauma wounds and a brain that can handle enough LSD to kill an elephant), tormented by broken memories, and 12,000 career kills under his belt. In the not-so-distant world Evans conjures we find advanced technology, a gender expansive culture, and a roving Burning Man-like city fueled by hedonistic excess. This powerful debut novel from Robert Evans is based on his investigative reporting from international conflict zones and on increasingly polarized domestic struggles. It is a vision of our very possible future.

Do you know where your money is? More importantly, do you know what your money is doing? Most of us feel confident that we know what money is. But few of us feel confident in taking responsibility for what our money does. We hand over the power of money to banks and mainstream finance with real, often damaging, consequences for people and planet. A unique collaboration between an academic and a practitioner, this book tells the story of money, from ancient Athens to the Bitcoin revolution, to explain how crowdfunding is the way for people to reclaim the power of their money in pursuit of a fairer and greener society.

The media are in crisis. Confronted by growing competition and sagging advertising revenue, news operations in print, on radio and TV, and even online are struggling to reinvent themselves. Many have gone under. For too many others, the answer has been to lay off reporters, join conglomerates, and lean more heavily on generic content. The result: in a world awash with information, news organizations provide citizens with less and less in-depth reporting and a narrowing range of viewpoints. If democracy requires an informed citizenry, this trend spells trouble. Julia Cagé explains the economics and history of the media crisis in Europe and America, and she presents a bold solution. The answer, she says, is a new business model: a nonprofit media organization, midway between a foundation and a joint stock company. Cagé shows how this model would enable the media to operate independent of outside shareholders, advertisers, and government, relying instead on readers, employees, and innovative methods of financing, including crowdfunding. Cagé’s prototype is designed to offer new ways to share and transmit power. It meets the challenges of the digital revolution and the realities of the twenty-first century, inspired by a central idea: that news, like education, is a public good. Saving the Media will be a key document in a debate whose stakes are nothing less crucial than the vitality of democracy.

Government Alone Can’t Solve Society’s Biggest Problems World hunger. Climate change. Crumbling infrastructure. It’s clear that in today’s era of fiscal constraints and political gridlock, we can no longer turn to government alone to tackle these and other towering social problems. What’s required is a new, more collaborative and productive economic system. The Solution Revolution brings hope—revealing just such a burgeoning new economy where players from across the spectrum of business, government, philanthropy, and social enterprise converge to solve big problems and create public value. By erasing public-private sector boundaries, the solution economy is unlocking trillions of dollars in social benefit and commercial value. Where tough societal problems persist, new problem solvers are crowdfunding, ridesharing, app-developing, or impact-investing to design innovative new solutions for seemingly intractable problems. Providing low-cost health care, fighting poverty, creating renewable energy, and preventing obesity are just a few of the tough challenges that also represent tremendous opportunities for those at the vanguard of this movement. They create markets for social good and trade solutions instead of dollars to fill the gap between what government can provide and what citizens need. So what drives the solution economy? Who are these new players and how are their roles changing? How can we grow the movement? And how can we participate? Deloitte’s William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan answer these questions and more, and they introduce us to the people and organizations driving the revolution—from edgy social enterprises growing at a clip of 15 percent a year, to megafoundations, to Fortune 500 companies delivering social good on the path to profit. Recyclebank, RelayRides, and LivingGoods are just a few of the innovative organizations you’ll read about in this book. Government cannot handle alone the huge challenges facing our global society—and it shouldn’t. We need a different economic paradigm that can flexibly draw on resources, combine efforts, and create value, while improving the lives of citizens. The Solution Revolution shows the way.

This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries. Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years – the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books – was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs. The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age. This unrivalled account of the book publishing industry as it faces its greatest challenge since Gutenberg will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.