33% Off Discounts: Best Price Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip Review

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Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip Review

Jim Rogers may never hit the list of top 10 best selling authors but that's not because his latest book lacks any of the important characteristics of a bestseller. The only disqualifier is self-imposed by the author. The book is designed to blow away many common illusions and prejudices about the world we live in. It is not the stuff popular fiction is made of.
Jim is a former hedge fund manager who retired at 37, following a successful stint on Wall Street alongside George Soros. In the early nineties he published his first book Investment Biker, a story of his round-the-world trip by motorcycle.
His new book called Adventure Capitalist-The Ultimate Road Trip describes his second round-the-world trip, this time by a custom built Mercedes-Benz car. He set out with his wife Paige and a team of two other guys in 1999. The trip took them on a 240,000 kilometer journey through 116 countries and ended three years later.
I believe that this book should be required reading at schools and colleges not just because it beats Phileas Fogg's journey hands down in intellectual stimulation, but because the book is also a compendium of free-market ideas and live comparative social analysis.
Jim's starting point was to search for investment opportunities. He set out with the open mind of a moneymaker on pilgrimage to find the truth about market conditions. He is looking for profitable opportunities, businesses and countries to invest in and is not prepared to accept conventional wisdom, official or ideological distortions. He has equal contempt for the party politics in US as with those of any other country he visits. He lashes out against Turkmenbashi, the dictator in charge of Turkmenistan, for perpetuating his own brand of Stalinist cult of personality and destroying the country in the process. But then shows the same contempt for President Bush for confusing devaluation with depreciation and also with former President Clinton who he blames for failing to observe and react to the creation and bursting of the biggest market bubble in decades. "I would cast a pox on both their houses-the Democrats and the Republicans" he proclaims in exasperation.
Adventure Capitalist exposes some official and popular myths for what they are in a way that made me look at politics and religion from a very different perspective. In China, Jim tells of attending service in a Chinese Christian Church, where the local worshipers, while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" never realized that in lands as far as North Carolina there are people like Jesse Helms who are frothing at the mouth while bemoaning religious persecution in their country.
Despite not being able to obtain a visa to drive freely though Iran, Jim still admits to holding some small investments in the country and suggests forgetting the official analysis coming from Washington. "...there is a lot of positive change coming from Iran." he claims.
Jim squarely lays the blame on the British for their Imperial invention of the passport and for the subsequent regulation of immigration by Government bureaucrats worldwide. His prediction is that in some parts of the world passports will not manage to stop the changing of borders.
He talks of countries where he likes to invest and economies that he believes are on the verge of collapse. Which ones are those? Well, let's say I don't expect he will be a best selling author in Moscow.
Jim Rogers will probably not be officially proclaimed as prophet any time soon, but I know there will be people who will quote passages of the Adventure Capitalist for the years to come.

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20% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap Introduction to Geography: People, Places, and Environment (5th Edition) Review

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Introduction to Geography: People, Places, and Environment (5th Edition) Review

I have used this text for approximately a year and found that the students are able to comprehend geography better with a systematic approach than a regional one. One of the things that sold me on this text was the auxillary material, particularly the webpage. The book is very easy to read and has excellent illustrations and photos. Needless to say, I highly recommend this text.

Introduction to Geography: People, Places, and Environment (5th Edition) Overview

In today's world, what happens in places depends more and more on what happens among places. Introduction to Geography: People, Places, and Environment, Fifth Edition demonstrates that fact—and shows that we can understand mapped patterns only if we recognize the movement that creates and continuously rearranges those patterns. The authors discuss what happens in one set of geographic processes and how that process affects others. For example, what happens in economic systems affects environmental conditions; what happens to climate affects political dynamics. This text will introduce you to the major tools, techniques, and methodological approaches of the discipline of geography.

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45% Off Discounts: Special Prices for Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Review

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Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Review

This truly is a dazzling brief introduction to a subject that could not be covered even by a very long book. As Steger points out, the fact of globalization is the predominant issue of our time. Far too man, as he points out, tend to treat the subject in monolithic or simplistic fashion, focusing on merely one aspect of globalization, and assuming that that aspect defines all of globalization. Anyone familiar with Thomas Friedman's THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE (who is frequently described as a "hyper globalizer") will recognize one such very narrow approach. Despite his brief space, Steger wants to do justice to the complexity of the subject. For the past decade, most writers on globalization have focused on economic globalization, but Steger emphasizes that the process has political, economic, religious, cultural, environmental, and ideological conditions.
Many people who tackle the question of globalization seem to want to know, "Is this a good or bad thing?" Steger is anxious to emphasize that this does not admit of an easy answer. Clearly, the massive increase of economic inequality--which occurs both on international and national levels, e.g., wealth has more and more been concentrated in the industrial countries of the northern hemisphere, and within those countries, more and more in the hands of a small economic corporate and investing elite--is not a good thing, but that is not the only aspect of globalization. Steger seems to suggest that there are both significant advantages and some lamentable dangers in globalization.
The one aspect of globalization concerning which Steger is clearly and rightfully concerned is the promotion of globalization in the ideological terms of the Neoliberal project of promoting free markets over all other concerns. The term "Neoliberal" might throw some people, since the leading Neoliberal of recent decades would include Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and most members of the George W. Bush administration (though also many in the Clinton administration, including Clinton himself). Too many are unaware that Reagan and Bush are not conservatives by traditional understandings of the label: they both pushed for massive governmental intrusion into the markets, in taking an active role in eliminating regulation, and actively employing the government to control the economy, none of which are conservative projects. One reason that the Progressive movement gained so much steam during the McKinley, Roosevelt, and Wilson years was observing the extraordinary corruption and narrow concentration of wealth (and subsequent economic inequality) that resulted from an unregulated market economy. Steger, along with a host of others, points out that with the unfettered promotion of free market capitalism with little or no governmental regulatory control (Neoliberalism's big project) is once again resulting in extreme economic inequality. Numerous studies, to some of which he refers, have undermined one of the central claims of the Neoliberal project: that expanding world markets spreads wealth throughout the world; in fact, it actually shifts wealth into the hands of a very few, a trend that has been taking place not only on a global scale, but on the national level as well (e.g., according to Federal Reserve statistics, in 1979 1% of the population possessed 20% of the wealth in the U.S., while in 1997 the top 1% held 37%, a percentage that has surely exploded following the two massive Bush tax cuts). What I believe Steger could have emphasized even more is that economic inequality is likely going to be THE world issue in the decades to come, as it is likely to become the major issue in American politics as well (given a thirty year history of a massive shift of wealth from the middle class to a very small number of citizens).
My one complaint with the book is that many of the figures and graphs were close to unintelligible. Also, given the small format, sometimes the text and text boxes were laid out rather awkwardly. I found the annotated bibliography to be of great help in mapping out future reading (I sometimes wish that publishers would require all authors of academic books to provide either an annotated bibliography or a bibliographic essay; over the years I've probably learned of more good books to read in this fashion than in any other).
I have read several of the volumes in the Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions series, and this easily ranks as one of my favorites. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to gain a handle on one of the crucial issues of our time.

Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Overview

Globalization has become one of the defining buzzwords of our time--a term that describes a variety of complex economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental forces that are rapidly altering our experience of the world. In the years since World War II, we have seen national boundaries fade as financial markets, manufacturing concerns, information services, and cultural products (including movies, music, and television shows) have spread around the earth. Immigration and tourism have exploded, Japanese cars are assembled in the United States and American hamburgers are sold in Toyko. And the Internet connects virtually everyone on the planet who owns a computer. We are indeed now living in a borderless world.In clear, accessible language, Manfred B. Steger goes beyond a narrow economic focus to cover all the major causes and consequences of globalization as well as the hotly contested question of whether globalization is, ultimately, a good or a bad thing. This new edition has been fully updated for 2009 to include recent developments in global politics and the impact of terrorism and it expands the discussion of environmental issues, devoting an entirely new chapter to this key topic. The book also examines political movements both for and against globalization, from WTO protests to the recent rise in global jihadism; considers such concepts as "Americanization" and "McDonaldization"; and explores the role of the media and communication technologies in the process of cultural globalization. Finally, Steger explains in accessible language the connection between economic globalization and multinational corporations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.Including maps, diagrams, figures, textboxes, and a timeline, this compact book provides a wealth of information on one of the key new forces in the modern world.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

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43% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Review

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The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Review

No doubt, Friedman will get you thinking.
You may end up thinking Friedman has really informed you on what this grand notion of "globalization" is all about. His book has reached millions, including leaders in business government and education, many who now feel fully informed on the subject.
But, just stop to consider his "base assumptions," the 10 so-called flatteners. Most aren't new at all and some fundamental flatteners such as containerized shipping aren't mentioned at all (see The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger). (nevermind the consequences when the end of cheap eneregy flattens the global logistics routes)
So, go ahead and read this book, but when you are finished, and especially if you are awed, I'd suggest you consider reading Aronica and Ramdoo's critical analysis of Friedman's book. It just could make you "think again," even about those so-called 10 flatteners.
The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman
Aronica and Ramdoo will also point you to the true thought leaders on globalization, and summarize their take on Friedman's book: Stiglitz (Nobel Prize in economics), Baghwati(Columbia Professor), Prestowitz (Presidential Trade Advisor), Lemer (UCLA Professor), Ghemawat (Harvard Professor), Roach (Chief Economist at Morgan Stanley), Palast (Investigative Reporter, UK)and others.
So, thank Friedman for an entertaining read, and using his status as a celebrity pundit for making us all aware of the great reorganization the world is going through. But, please don't stop there, for there is far more to the unfolding story of globalization, and all of us are being affected.

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15% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Centennial Book) Review

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Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Centennial Book) Review

Scheper-Hughes's book is certainly the most impacting book I have read in months. I cannot call it entertaining but it is riveting in presenting a mind-boggling situation of abject poverty in Northeastern Brazil with its consequent infant and child mortality and impacts on the family structure.
Death Without Weeping is a very original, very relevant, and carefully written book although not perfect. The book is the result of extensive field research by Dr. Scheper-Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley but nevertheles very readable. I could understand and enjoy most of it without having had extensive training in Anthropology.
The author does a wonderful job in translating Alto do Cruzeiro reality into something the average American can understand. This "translation" certainly adds a bias but is still indispensable in my opinion. I consider that the author's religious beliefs strongly affected the outcome of the book and that I think could have been avoided.
I understand that the author has it's ethics and wouldn't reveal in the text the actual location name for Bom Jesus da Mata. I'm not tied by the same ethics so I can tell it: Bom Jesus da Mata is actually Timbauba, a 60,000 inhabitants town on the outskirts of Recife. The book subtitle, "The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil" couldn't be worse. Timbauba is not Brazil. It has its own very specific problems and to read the book without understanding the great diversity among Brazil's regions would be very unfair to the country. Even in a local scale, Alto do Cruzeiro is not Timabuba and Timbauba is not Pernambuco. If you read the book don't rule out the possibility of going down to Brazil and having a wonderful time there. Tourism is a very good way of alleviating if not solving the problems presented in the book.
I have read now dozens of books written in English by the so-called Brazilianists who most of the times are not Brazilians themselves. Most of the books have the same problem of Death Without Weeping: there's a total sloppiness in spelling the Portuguese words. I can't believe UC Berkeley couldn't hire a Brazilian graduate student to proofread the originals. Moreover, the Geraldo Vandre quote on the very first page of the book, which gives the book its name was completely fabricated. Disparada is a great song and for writing songs such as "Disparada" and "Para Nao Dizer Que Nao Falei Das Flores", Geraldo Vandre was captured and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil. He was later released but severely braindamaged. However, the verses Scheper-Hughes quoted do not exist in "Disparada".
I was shocked to learn on the book's Epilogue who Seu Jacques, whom the book is dedicated to, was. But this suspense I'm not going to break.
Leonardo Alves - Houghton, MI - October 2002

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42% Off Discounts: Lowest Price The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade Review

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The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade Review

Spurred by a Georgetown student anti-sweatshop protest, Pietra Rivoli took up the task of tracing the life of a (tacky souvenir) t-shirt she buys in Florida, to examine the economics and politics of this non-trivial segment of the apparel industry. Why she buys the t-shirt in the first place remains a mystery. Why she needs one from Florida that she will likely discard is even more of a mystery. She made me think about studying the American practice of souvenir shopping and excess consumption. But her t-shirt has a story worth telling.
Rivoli first adeptly traces the history of cotton as a critical world commodity, including the struggles in England two hundred fifty years ago by the wool industry to combat the comfort of cotton, going so far as to prohibit the use of calico and the requirement that people be buried in wool. The questionable economics of slavery moved cotton production to the United States, but it was and still is the intervention of technology, research and financial capital that made cotton farming so much more productive today. Nonetheless, the ability of Texas farmers to market "low quality" cotton can best be attributed to both technology and federal price supports, up to 19 cents on a 59 cent pound of cotton. Cotton, while still a major commodity in global trade, has probably declined in relative value and share of the world economy. What we may be seeing is more of the slow death of the importance a dated commodity and less of a "race to the bottom" that she suggests.
She then takes us to t-shirt and apparel manufacturing and employment, now on the wane in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. People mistakenly think that these jobs are being sent to China. They're not. In fact, they're just disappearing. Rivoli notes that China, between 1995 and 2003, lost ten times the numbers of textiles manufacturing jobs as did the United States (p. 142), and Chinese workers have little or no safety net or alternative employment, unlike their displaced American brethren. In the ill-fated "race to the bottom," it should be clear that this fate seems to await any industry that is unable to maintain a long-term competitive advantage, and the only way to do that seems to be through protectionism. While t-shirts are cheap, saving textile jobs is not cheap. Saving American textile jobs costs between $135,000 and $180,000 per job saved, according to best estimates (p. 144), costing American taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars. Where jobs are being created is in the lobbying and trade association industry. This section (Part III) is an overwhelming alphabet-soup of acronyms - WTO, AGOA, NAFTA, CBTPA, ADTPA, ATC, MFA, ACMI, LTA, ATMI, and ITCB -- for trade agreements, trade associations, trade and lobbying groups, and other defenders of (primarily) protectionism. The complexity of the letters is exceeded by the complexity of the trade agreements they promulgate. It takes a lot of honest, well-intentioned effort and dollars to disrupt the free flow of trade.
As noted above, Rivoli generally passes over the details of the American retail trade for apparel, other than minimal attention to the hated global icon Wal-mart. She observes the expensive foreign vehicles and SUVs in the American shopping mall parking lot, lined up to drop off used clothing at the Salvation Army van in anticipation of going inside and buying up more equally recyclable apparel. I doubt that those malls contain a Wal-mart, and that there is likely a big difference between those who shop at Wal-mart and those who re-cycle clothes before shopping at Lord & Taylor.
This recycled donation sets the stage for the best example of free trade in the book - the used clothing stalls in Tanzania, where savvy shoppers brand shop at rock bottom prices, haggling and playing the market from dawn to dusk. Discriminating, well-informed, fashion-conscious shoppers happily haggle, engaged in one of Tanzania's functioning markets. She is careful not to buy the `humiliation' argument, the one that says that Africans should be ashamed to wear second-hand clothes. As she notes, some of the used stuff dropped off at the American mall never makes it to Africa; it gets picked off along the way as "vintage clothing" and worn by Americans and Japanese willing to pay "hundreds of dollars" for used jeans. As she notes, while much has remained the same in impoverished Africa, most Africans do dress better today, thanks to this free market.
She offers a short conclusion (pp. 211-215) and analysis. She does see some hope: "Cutting agricultural subsidies, democratization, and giving poor countries a place at the table at trade negotiations are all steps in the right direction." She notes Cordell Hull's view, that global commerce may be the best prevention for war.
The book is relatively short (215 pages), well-written, engaging, and, despite the need to use acronyms, very clear and readable. It is an excellent primer on the problems of protectionism and the intricacies of delivering on truly free trade, while noting that many who espouse free trade really don't want to practice it or, more commonly, be subjected to the competition from free trade.
Three minor quibbles.
She writes deferentially about Tom Friedman, his lions and gazelles metaphors, hardware and software analogies, but forgets that he also says that the world is flat. This book shows that the world markets for t-shirts is not free, fair or flat. And the playing field is not level. It is full of lumps, dips, and massive mountains. And, as Rivoli notes, it was not made or kept this way other than by "snarling dogs", not lions, not gazelles. Friedman has popularized interest in globalization but he has shed little light on its understanding or analysis.
With two or three almost casual asides, she seems intent on laying this travesty of fair or free markets at the feet of George Bush, if only because west Texas cotton farmers are such beneficiaries of federal subsidies. A fairer view would recognize that people of the same political and social demeanor who now fight against globalization once fought --- and still do fight -- for crop price protection for farmers.
Rivoli claims that economists everywhere around the globe appear to have universally adopted, recommended and embraced free trade ("virtually unanimous support among professional economists, a group almost without exception who scorn protectionism in general" p. 148). I am not willing to go that far. But you should go so far as to read this good book.

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38% Off Discounts: Best Price Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) Review

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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) Review

Steven Levitt, an economist at U Chicago, is less interested in numbers and more interested in why people turn out the way they do. He examines the influence of incentive, heredity, the neighborhood you grew up in, etc.
Some of his conclusions are less than earth-shattering. For example, African-American names (DeShawn, Latanya) don't influence African-American test performance. As a second example, Levitt compiled data regarding online dating websites and concluded that bald men and overweight women fared badly. Not rocket science.
However, Levitt livens up the book with some controversial discussions. He believes that the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s can be traced to Roe v. Wade. He thinks that the children who would have committed crimes (due to being brought up by impoverished, teenage, single mothers) are simply not being born as often.
He also writes about the man who more or less singlehandedly contributed to the KKK's demise by infiltrating their group and leaking their secret passwords and rituals to the people behind the Superman comic book (Superman needed a new enemy).
Interestingly, he also discusses how overbearing parents don't contribute to a child's success. For example, having a lot of books in the house has a positive influence on children's test scores, but reading to a child a lot has no effect. Highly educated parents are also a plus, while limiting children's television time is irrelevant. Similarly, political candidates who have a lot of money to finance their campaigns are still out of luck if no one likes them.
In the chapter entitled "Why Drug Dealers Live With Their Mothers," Levitt explores the economics of drug dealing. An Indian, Harvard-affiliated scholar decided to get up close and personal with crack gangs and got some notebooks documenting their finances. Levitt concludes that drug dealers' empires are a lot like McDonald's or the publishing industry in Manhattan - only the people on the very top of the pyramid do well financially, while the burger flippers, editorial assistants, and low-level drug runners don't (indeed, some of them work for free, or in return for protection!)
Overall, this is a lively read, with some obvious conclusions and some not so obvious.

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