Looks at how and where wine is made and how this affects its quality and pricing, including information on how the professionals taste and rate wine and a country-by-country tour of the latest vintages.

Essays and addresses on man's new knowledge in the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, from the viewpoint of an evolutionary humanist.

My Promised Land by Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit has been one of the most widely discussed and lavishly praised books about Israel in recent years. It has garnered encomiums from a broad spectrum of influential voices, including Thomas Friedman, David Remnick, Jonathan Freedland, Jeffrey Goldberg, Franklin Foer, and Dwight Garner. Were he not already inured to the logrolling that passes for informed opinion on this topic, Norman Finkelstein might have been surprised, astonished even. That’s because, as he reveals with typical precision, My Promised Land is riddled with omission, distortion, falsehood, and sheer nonsense. In brief chapters that analyze Shavit’s defense of Zionism and Israel’s Jewish identity, its nuclear arsenal and its refusal to negotiate peace, Finkelstein shows how highly selective criticism and sanctimonious handwringing are deployed to create a paean to modern Israel more sophisticated than the traditional our-country-right-or-wrong. In this way, Shavit hopes to win back an American Jewish community increasingly alienated from a place it once regarded as home. However, because the myths he recycles have been so comprehensively shattered, this project is unlikely to succeed. Like his landmark debunking of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial, Finkelstein’s clinical dissection of My Promised Land will be welcomed by those who prefer truth to propaganda, and who yearn for a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict based on justice, rather than arguments framed by anguish and schmaltz.

Today many believers have been led astray and are in bondage, because they have been fed on the old wine - the traditions of men that have accumulated in Christendom through twenty centuries, and that have been added to God's Word, or that have replaced God's Word. When the new wine is offered to them, they say, "The old is good enough" (Luke 5:39). This they remain in spiritual stagnation, year after year. Most Christians are unwilling to give up the traditions of their elders, even when they see these to be clearly contrary to the teaching of God's Word. We need to come back to the faith that was revealed by God to His holy apostles and prophets, as recorded in the New Testament Scriptures, if we are to fulfil God's purpose in our day and age. To come back to that, we must be willing to do violence to every tradition of man that is contrary to God's Word (Matthew 11:12). This book will change your life and your ministry, because it will question many 'sacred' ideas that you have held that have no foundation in God's Word. That in turn will save you from regret and loss when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of your life to Him. He who has an open mind and a bold heart, let him read on...

The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it. The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. “Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek

Having undertaken billions of FDI in many continents and nations, between Argentina and the PRC, I consider Dr Sauvant s book an eye-opener, a new page, showing us a new super highway. The OFDI volume of emerging markets today, surpassing the entire FDI volume of not even 20 years back, is a signal of success of the free market economy. It signals also the end of privileges for the Europeans. It reflects entrepreneurship at its best on the part of the fast developing nations of Asia. It shows that free access to know how and capital has permitted Asia to catch up at an unprecedented speed. Contrary to often repeated but wrong opinions, the poor of the world have benefited the most by globalization. A market place of unimaginable potential is under construction in the first half of the 21st century, accelerated by FDI. This book should find many readers, particularly among the political leaders of today and tomorrow. Carl H. Hahn, Chairman Emeritus of Volkswagen AG This comprehensive analysis deals with the range of issues raised by the rise of transnational corporations from emerging markets. This insightful book shows that foreign direct investment (FDI) from emerging markets has grown from negligible amounts in the early 1980s to $210 billion in 2007, with the stock of investment now being well over $1 trillion. This reflects the rise of firms from these economies to become important players in the world FDI market. The contributors to this book comprehensively analyze the rise of emerging market TNCs, the salient features of the transnational activities of these firms, the relationship of outward FDI and the competitiveness of the firms involved, their impact on host and home countries and implications for the international law and policy system. The subject of this study is both topical and important and poses a number of challenges that will require considerable policy attention in the future. It will appeal to academics interested in FDI as well as emerging markets. Karl P. Sauvant has gathered together a group of leading academics that makes this an informative and valuable read for anyone interested in the subject, including academics, students at all levels and private sector entities, as well as government officials dealing with outward FDI.