People's ability to think is often paralyzed in the face of overwhelming information and a myriad of opinions. Critical data is drowned out by noise data, important details are confused by minutiae, deeper pathologies are confused by superficial pathologies, core reasoning is tied up in trivial logic, analysis loses its bearings and judgment goes astray. Ultimately, the illusion displaces the truth. This is particularly true in the economic sphere. Five years after the end of the financial crisis in 2008, views on the future course of the world economy are still divided. Has the U.S. quantitative easing been effective or not? Is the global currency overshoot a blessing or a curse? Are financial markets becoming safer, or more dangerous? Has the economic recovery been steady or short-lived? In short, is the world gradually moving away from the last recession, or is it accelerating its slide to the next crisis? All the activities that mankind has ever engaged in have always revolved around two most basic tasks, one of which is the creation of wealth and the other is the distribution of wealth, from which all other activities are derived. Whether creating wealth or distributing it, human greed has been the source of their ultimate energy since the beginning. The "good in greed" drives technological advances that save energy, reduce time, reduce intensity, and increase pleasure, resulting in a continuous increase in productivity and more prosperous wealth creation. However, the insatiable greed of greed can inspire trickery, speculation, fraud, quick gains and extravagance, which in turn stifle productivity progress, lead to a distorted distribution of wealth and reduce the economic vitality of society.

A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

This book will follow the main line of world reserve currency hegemony, starting with the deliberate overthrow of the pound sterling hegemony by the US dollar, showing how the US monetary strategy masters have gradually eroded the pound sterling power, squeezed the pound sterling's international reserve currency status and trade settlement pricing power, and how the pound sterling power has counterattacked the US dollar through the "imperial preference system", and returned the US dollar to its original "isolationist" form. The fierce struggle between the dollar and the pound created a vacuum of world financial power in the 1930s that exacerbated the Great Depression worldwide. The Second World War provided a historic opportunity for the dollar to eradicate the pound, and the Atlantic Charter and the Lend-Lease Act were all sharp scalpels in Roosevelt's hands, aimed at dismembering the British Empire's pound. Eventually, the United States established a "Bretton Woods dynasty" with a dollar-based system as regent by "holding gold hostage to the vassals". The basis of interest in the "China-America" economic marriage is fracturing and disintegrating. America's tolerance for China's booming economy was originally based on the model of Chinese production, American enjoyment, Chinese savings, American consumption. China's future economic transformation will inevitably require a shift in the main resources of the national economy from being tilted towards overseas markets to being tilted towards domestic markets, thereby reducing savings exports to the United States. This process would change the basic U.S. position of continuing to tolerate China's economic growth.

ONE OF THE EVENING STANDARD'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Barney Campbell's Rain is a searingly powerful début that reads like a British Matterhorn ******** 'A wonderfully achieved, enthralling and moving novel of war. Its authenticity is as telling as it is terrifying' William Boyd 'No better on-the-ground description of Britain's war will ever be written. Rain is what Chickenhawk or, more recently, Matterhorn was to Vietnam. It's unputdownable, except for when the reader needs to draw breath or battle a lump in the throat' Evening Strandard Corporal Thomas (my acting sergeant since Adams died) and I have to go down the line of the boys as they're checking their kit before we go out. Some of them are crying, not bawling just weeping gently but still steadfast; others are just pumped to the max, bouncing their heads up and down like they're listening to trance music, just amped about getting the rounds down. Those are the ones I'm most worried about; how they're going to cope with being back home is beyond me. Tom Chamberlain was destined to be a soldier from the moment he discovered a faded picture of his father patrolling the streets of Belfast. With the war in Afghanistan at its savage peak, Tom is despatched from home in the dead of an anonymous September night, a blood tribute leaving without fanfare. Full of eagerness, but wracked by self-doubt, he must discover who he is and what he is capable of. But as the bonds with his comrades grow, home - and the loved ones left behind - seem ever more remote from the surreal violence and exhilaration of war. Drawing on the author's own experience, Rain is the most powerful, vivid and affecting portrait of the Afghan frontline to have yet emerged - a novel of war that will take its place among the classics from previous generations. 'Rain is not merely good, it's remarkable. Powerful, at times unbearably harrowing, it captures both the fear and exhilaration of men pushed to breaking point' Jeremy Paxman 'Gripping . . . the ending is genuinely shocking' Daily Mail 'A powerful and moving story of war with all the authenticity of a memoir' Charles Cumming 'One of the most powerful and emotional works ever written about British soldiers in battle. Troubling, funny, upsetting, exhilarating and deeply moving. You will never forget it' Colonel Richard Kemp 'Thrilling, gut-wrenching and profoundly moving, this book, like all the very best novels of war, has the utterly compelling grip of authenticity' James Holland 'An extraordinary book: authentic, beautifully written and very moving' Saul David 'Simply superb. It could become the defining account of the British in Afghanistan' Tom Petch, writer and directer of 'The Patrol' 'One of the best novels about the Afghanistan war . Brutally honest, it could have been a memoir' David Axe 'A must-read debut' Tom Newton-Dunn

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

The bestselling author of The Death of Money and Currency Wars reveals the global elites' dark effort to hide a coming catastrophe from investors in The Road to Ruin, now a National Bestseller. A drumbeat is sounding among the global elites. The signs of a worldwide financial meltdown are unmistakable. This time, the elites have an audacious plan to protect themselves from the fallout: hoarding cash now and locking down the global financial system when a crisis hits. Since 2014, international monetary agencies have been issuing warnings to a small group of finance ministers, banks, and private equity funds: the U.S. government’s cowardly choices not to prosecute J.P. Morgan and its ilk, and to bloat the economy with a $4 trillion injection of easy credit, are driving us headlong toward a cliff. As Rickards shows in this frightening, meticulously researched book, governments around the world have no compunction about conspiring against their citizens. They will have stockpiled hard assets when stock exchanges are closed, ATMs shut down, money market funds frozen, asset managers instructed not to sell securities, negative interest rates imposed, and cash withdrawals denied. If you want to plan for the risks ahead, you will need Rickards’s cutting-edge synthesis of behavioral economics, history, and complexity theory. It’s a guidebook to thinking smarter, acting faster, and living with the comfort­ing knowledge that your wealth is secure. The global elites don’t want this book to exist. Their plan to herd us like sheep to the slaughter when a global crisis erupts—and, of course, to maintain their wealth—works only if we remain complacent and unaware. Thanks to The Road to Ruin, we don’t need to be. "If you are curious about what the financial Götterdämmerung might look like you’ve certainly come to the right place... Rickards believes -- and provides tantalizing snippets of private conversations with those who dwell in the very eye-in-the-pyramid -- that the current world monetary and financial system is on the verge of insolvency and that the world financial elites already have a successor system for which they are laying the groundwork." --Ralph Benko, Forbes