"Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively "codes" certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital - and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients' needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations--assets that exist only in law. A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it."--Provided by publisher.

Peter Farrow is a slave. He's grown up on Dover Plantation, South Carolina where he does small jobs. When he's not working, Peter likes to play with the other slave's children, or go fishing with the master's daughter, Emily. Sometimes, he even gets to sit in on Emily's school lessons and learn to read.But Peter is almost twelve, and it's time for him to learn a trade. The master has agreed for Peter to apprentice with Samuel, the plantation's carpenter. Peter is happy he won't have to fetch and carry anymore, or work in the dairy, churning butter.But John, the cruel overseer, has other plans for Peter. He wants Peter out in the fields, doing the backbreaking work of a grownup slave, where Peter is close enough to feel his whip. So when Peter comes between Samuel and the overseer's whip, Peter makes a terrible enemy. Will Peter be allowed to apprentice with Sam?Or will he end up in the fields, at the mercy of Overseer John?Based on historical facts and accounts of the Underground Railroad.

When RS was fourteen, he met a new friend that lived in the next farm over from his house. His name was Alex. Alex and RS would spend the summer days fishing, bike riding, and sharing their crazy dreams they would have and try to make sense of them. RS thought Alex was the smartest kid he had ever known. Maybe it was because Alex had told RS that his mother and father were scientists. Alex told RS that one day, RS would build a machine that would help make people's life better. Alex moved away in the fall and told RS they would see each other one day in the future. Early in the spring of the next year, after the snow had melted and the back roads were dry. RS walked the four miles to the farm where Alex ha lived hoping he had returned. To RS's surprise, he found only an old farmhouse that looked like it hadn't been lived in for years. RS did not remember it looking that way. After all these years RS still remember his friend and hoped that he would see him again.

Twenty-five-year-old Jack Sparrow is a clean-cut merchant seaman pursuing a legitimate career as a first mate for the East India Trading Company. He sometimes thinks back to his boyhood pirating days, but he doesn't miss Teague's scrutiny or the constant threat of the noose. Besides, he doesn't have much choice—he broke the Code when he freed a friend who had been accused of rogue piracy, and he can no longer show his face in Shipwreck Cove. When Jack's ship is attacked by pirates and his captain dies in the altercation, he suddenly finds himself in command.

The Depository Line is a family intertwined with the fate of our Network of Life, the Semay Wem. Their purpose is to do nothing more than live a quiet life, ignorantly passing down the Great Mejmer Energy throughout their generations. But when someone attacks Emmanuel, the forefather and founder of the Line, and gains knowledge of the First Mejmer Language and Ability called The Leadership of Matter, the fates of the Depository Line and the Semay Wem are changed forever. No longer ignorant of the Great Mejmer Energy, or its inherent Mejmer Languages and Abilities, one by one, the Depository Line are thrust into the ongoing dramas that exist throughout the Semay Wem. But without the Great Mejmer Energy, the Earth cannot sustain life for more than seven years. By the time the Depository Line settle back down on Earth, the planet has already been struck by two devastating comets. It remains up to them to settle the Great Mejmer Energy, and the entire fate of the Semay Wem, once and for all.

A “beautifully written” Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family’s secrets in the American South (The Atlantic Monthly). Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Over the course of a century, the Howlands accumulated a fortune, fought for secession, and helped rebuild the South, establishing themselves as one of the most respected families in the state. But that history means little to Abigail Howland. The inheritor of the Howland manse, Abigail hides the long-buried secret of her grandfather’s thirty-year relationship with his African American mistress. Her fortunes reverse when her family’s mixed-race heritage comes to light and her community—locked in the prejudices of the 1960s—turns its back on her. Faced with such deep-seated racism, Abigail is pushed to defend her family at all costs. A “novel of real magnitude,” The Keepers of the House is an unforgettable story of family, tradition, and racial injustice set against the richly drawn backdrop of the American South (Kirkus Reviews). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Shirley Ann Grau, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.