The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas PDF Author: Corey Robin
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627793844
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows. “One of the marvels of Robin’s razor-sharp book is how carefully he marshals his evidence.... It isn’t every day that reading about ideas can be both so gratifying and unsettling.” – The New York Times Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist. In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin– one of the foremost analysts of the right (The Reactionary Mind) – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way. There’s a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that often sounds similar to their own. Cutting across the ideological spectrum, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is key to understanding today’s political stalemate.

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas PDF Author: Corey Robin
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627793844
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows. “One of the marvels of Robin’s razor-sharp book is how carefully he marshals his evidence.... It isn’t every day that reading about ideas can be both so gratifying and unsettling.” – The New York Times Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist. In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin– one of the foremost analysts of the right (The Reactionary Mind) – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way. There’s a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that often sounds similar to their own. Cutting across the ideological spectrum, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is key to understanding today’s political stalemate.

The Enigma of Reason

The Enigma of Reason PDF Author: Hugo Mercier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
“Brilliant...Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times “Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.” —Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs. “Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant...Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?...Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker “Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.” —Financial Times “The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.” —Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

The Scandal of Money

The Scandal of Money PDF Author: George Gilder
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621575667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
"Why do we think governments know how to create money? They don't. George Gilder shows that money is time, and time is real. He is our best guide to our most fundamental economic problem." --Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies "Thirty-five years ago, George Gilder wrote Wealth and Poverty, the bible of the Reagan Revolution. With The Scandal of Money he may have written the road map to the next big boom." --Arthur B. Laffer, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States "Gilder pushes us to think about the government monopoly on money and makes a strong case against it. If you believe in economic freedom, you should read this book." --Senator Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation As famed economist and New York Times bestselling author George Gilder points out, “despite multi-billion dollar stimulus packages and near-zero interest rates, Wall Street recovers but the economy never does.” In his groundbreaking new book, The Scandal of Money, Gilder unveils a radical new explanation for our economic woes. Gilder also exposes the corruption of the Federal Reserve, Washington power-brokers, and Wall Street’s “too-big-to-fail” megabanks, detailing how a small cabal of elites have manipulated currencies and crises to stifle economic growth and crush the middle class. Gilder spares no one in his devastating attack on politicians’ economic policies. He claims that the Democrats will steer us to ruin – but points out that Republicans are also woefully misguided on how to salvage our economic future. With all major polls showing that voters rank the economy as one of the top three “most important problems” facing the nation, Gilder’s myth-busting, paradigm-shifting recipe for economic growth could not come at a more critical time. In The Scandal of Money, the reader will learn: Who is to blame for the economic crippling of America How the new titans of Wall Street value volatility over profitability Why China is winning and we are losing Who the real 1% is and how they are crushing the middle class The hidden dangers of a cashless society What Republicans need to do to win the economic debate—and what the Democrats are doing to make things worse

The Ways of the World

The Ways of the World PDF Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469463
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
David Harvey is one of most famous Marxist intellectuals in the past half century, as well as one of the world's most cited social scientists. Beginning in the early 1970s with his trenchant and still-relevant book Social Justice and the City and through this day, Harvey has written numerous books and dozens of influential essays and articles on topics across issues in politics, culture, economics, and social justice. In The Ways of the World, Harvey has gathered his most important essays from the past four decades. They form a career-spanning collection that tracks not only the development of Harvey over time as an intellectual, but also a dialectical vision that gradually expanded its reach from the slums of Baltimore to global environmental degradation to the American imperium. While Harvey's coverage is wide-ranging, all of the pieces tackle the core concerns that have always animated his work: capitalism past and present, social change, freedom, class, imperialism, the city, nature, social justice, postmodernity, globalization, and the crises that inhere in capitalism. A career-defining volume, The Ways of the World will stand as a comprehensive work that presents the trajectory of Harvey's lifelong project in full.

On the Origin of MONEY

On the Origin of MONEY PDF Author: Carl Menger
Publisher: Cosimo Classics
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
On the Origins of Money is a discussion of the history of money and currency, from its crudest form as cowrie shells, animal pelts, and salt in early societies to the coin and paper money we use today. Rather than focusing on the type or shape of the money, author and economist Carl Menger looks at the reasons behind monetary exchange and why money is so valuable (or where it gets its inherent value). His argument centers on the "saleableness" of the goods or commodities being sold-in other words, the more "saleable" (or valuable or in demand) an item is, the more money it is worth. Hence, money gets its value from the objects it pays for. This short work is an insightful look into the history and value of money for any student or professional economist.

Money and Calculation

Money and Calculation PDF Author: Massimo Amato
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Emotions, reputations, relationships -- so many aspects of social and organizational life today are subject to quantification and other calculative practices. Calculation develops due to a demand for control and accountability. Money is one such instrument of calculation, and the foremost. As a unit of account and means of payment, it serves the purpose of exchange. Yet, money has itself increasingly become an object of calculation and exchange on financial markets tending less to the production and exchange of real goods than the elimination of uncertainty by means of exchangeability. Has the economy therefore lost its measure? The essays collected in Money and Calculation investigate, from various viewpoints, how calculation and money bear upon the meaning of measure in contemporary economic life. They will excite and give much pause for thought to economists, sociologists, and all who have an interest in the meaning of life in our globalized world.

The Enigma of Arrival

The Enigma of Arrival PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning author distills his wide experience of countries and peoples into a moving account of the rites of passage endured by all people and all communities undergoing change or decay. • "Naipaul's finest work." —Chicago Tribune "A subtly incisive self-reckoning." —The Washington Post Book World The story of a writer’s singular journey – from one place to another, and from one state of mind to another. At the midpoint of the century, the narrator leaves the British colony of Trinidad and comes to the ancient countryside of England. And from within the story of this journey – of departure and arrival, alienation and familiarity, home and homelessness – the writer reveals how, cut off from his “first” life in Trinidad, he enters a “second childhood of seeing and learning.” Clearly autobiographical, yet woven through with remarkable invention, The Enigma of Arrival is as rich and complex as any novel we have had from this exceptional writer. "The conclusion is both heart-breaking and bracing: the only antidote to destruction—of dreams, of reality—is remembering. As eloquently as anyone now writing, Naipaul remembers." —Time "Far and away the most curious novel I've read in a long time, and maybe the most hypnotic book I've ever read." —St. Petersburg Times

The Blackhope Enigma

The Blackhope Enigma PDF Author: Teresa Flavin
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763660671
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Sunni, her stepbrother Dean, and an art-student friend trace the footsteps of a labyrinth built in Blackhope Tower by a sixteenth-century artist, and suddenly find themselves trapped inside his painting, trying desperately to get out.

How Money Became Dangerous

How Money Became Dangerous PDF Author: Christopher Varelas
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062684779
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
From a veteran of the trade, a provocative and entertaining voyage into the turbulent heart of modern money that sheds new light on the rise of our threatening and complicated financial system, how money became our adversary, and why finding a new course is crucial to a healthy society In the not too distant past, money was simple. You might have had a bank account and a mortgage, perhaps some basic investments. Wall Street didn’t have a reputation for greed and recklessness. That all started to change in the eighties, as our financial systems became increasingly complex, moving beyond the understanding of the general public while impacting our lives in innumerable ways. The financial world began to feel like an enigma—a rogue force working against us, seemingly controlled by no one. From an industry veteran who’s had firsthand involvement in the events that shaped modern money, How Money Became Dangerous journeys from the crime-ridden LA jewelry district to the cutthroat Salomon Brothers trading floor, from the high-stakes world of investment banking to the center of the technology boom, capturing the key deals, developments, and players that made the financial world what it is today. The book illuminates the dark, hidden forces of Wall Street and how it has dehumanized and left behind everyday Americans. A fresh and enlightening take on how we reached this point, How Money Became Dangerous also makes the case for why Wall Street needs to be saved, if only to save ourselves.

Money

Money PDF Author: Michel Aglietta
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786634449
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
The major French economist offers a new theory of money As the financial crisis reached its climax in September 2008, the most important figure on the planet was Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The whole financial system was collapsing, with little to stop it. When a senator asked Bernanke what would happen if the central bank did not carry out its rescue package, he replied, “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.” What saved finance, and the Western economy, was fiscal and monetary stimulus – an influx of money, created ad hoc. It was a strategy that raised questions about the unexamined nature of money itself, an object suddenly revealed as something other than a neutral signifier of value. Through its grip on finance and the debt system, money confers sovereign power on the economy. If confidence in money is not maintained, crises follow. Looking over the last 5,000 years, Michel Aglietta explores the development of money and its close connection to sovereign power. This book employs the tools of anthropology, history and political economy in order to analyse how political structures and monetary systems have transformed one another. We can thus grasp the different eras of monetary regulation and the crises capitalism has endured throughout its history.