David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers (such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke) and advised top Wall Street executives and investors, from George Soros to Michael Steinhardt to Stan Druckenmiller. Political leaders (from Bill Bradley to Jack Kemp) have regularly sought his policy advice. The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, taking readers on an insider’s tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone’s mind: How bad could things really get in today’s volatile economy? And what can we do about it? Drawing on riveting anecdotes in language anyone can understand, Smick explains: Why the churning cauldron we call China (the next great bubble to burst) represents a powerful threat to everyone’s pocketbook How Japanese housewives have taken control of their nation’s savings, and why it matters to us How greed-driven bankers and investment bankers have put everyone’s pensions and 401(k)s at risk Why today’s “incredible shrinking central banks” may not be able to save us when the next crisis hits Why the big-money Russian, Chinese, Saudi, and Dubai sovereign wealth funds represent a tectonic shift in global financial power, away from the United States, Europe, and Japan Why the world desperately needs a “big think” financial doctrine to guide today’s dangerous ocean of money The World Is Curved is the rare book that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

A founder of the acclaimed quarterly The International Economy explains the economic problems behind the credit and mortgage issues of the past two years, identifying hidden connections between key events and the global economy. 50,000 first printing.

Explores globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political.

* More than 60 case studies of sensational curved buildings from around the world* Includes a short historical overview and the most recent design and technical developmentsIn Curved: Bending Architecture, the author seeks out the most sensational contemporary buildings from around the world that incorporate wave-like, rounded forms into their design. Curved forms in architecture are found throughout history (like the Colosseum in Rome) but today's constructions explore the curve to its utmost fluid and freeform potential. From Zaha Hadid to Bosjes Chapel and from Brussels to China, this is a selection of amazing buildings by world class architects who think outside the box and have redefined the built world around us.

If the talented Russian physicist Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann had to be introduced with a single sentence, the most appropriate sentence would be the title of his biography translated from the Russian: Alexander A. Friedmann: The Man who Made the Universe Expand. Indeed, he was the first to realize in 1922 that Einstein's equations have solutions which describe not only a stationary Universe as Einstein initially believed, but also a non-stationary world. Friedmann won the debate with Einstein over the admissibility of such solutions, but his life was too short and he could not see the triumph of his views when the experimental evidence fully supported his predictions and demonstrated that the Universe was expanding. This book contains three papers by Friedmann - "On the Curvature of Space", "On the Possibility of a World with a Constant Negative Curvature of Space", and "On the Geometry of Curved Spaces". The third paper is a 28-page manuscript (dated 15 April 1922) which has not been published even in Russian. Unlike the existing two English translations of Friedmann's 1922 and 1924 papers (done from the German publications), now these papers are translated directly from the original Russian texts.

Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment. Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.

This text explains special relativity and the basics of general relativity from a geometric viewpoint. Space-time geometry is emphasised throughout, and up-to-date information is provided on black holes, gravitational collapse, and cosmology.