economics money

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 457 pages, b&w illustrations. Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs - more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking. Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, reprint, 1932, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 257 pages. Later printing. Bound in black cloth boards with paper titles present to the spine and front board. Stuart Chase was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller. Chase's thought was shaped by Henry George, Thorstein Veblen and Fabian socialism. Chase spent his early political career supporting "a wide range of reform causes: the single tax, women's suffrage, birth control and socialism." Chase's early books The Tragedy of Waste (1925) and Your Money's Worth (1928) were notable for their criticism of corporate advertising and their advocacy of consumer protection. Although not a Marxist, Chase admired the planned economy of the Soviet Union, being impressed with it after a 1927 visit. Chase stated that "The Russians, in a time of peace, have answered the question of what an economic system is for." It has been suggested that he was the originator of the expression a New Deal, which became identified with the economic programs of American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 368 pages. In an extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Fischl discusses the impact of his dysfunctional family on his art--his mother, an imaginative and tragic woman, was an alcoholic who ultimately took her own life. Following his years as a student at Cal Arts and teaching in Nova Scotia, he describes his early years in New York with the artist April Gornik, just as Wall Street money begins to encroach on the old gallery system and change the economics of the art world. Fischl rebelled against the conceptual and minimalist art that was in fashion at the time to paint compelling portraits of everyday people that captured the unspoken tensions in their lives. Still in his thirties, Eric became the subject of a major Vanity Fair interview, his canvases sold for as much as a million dollars, and The Whitney Museum mounted a major retrospective of his paintings. Bad Boy follows Fischl's maturation both as an artist and sculptor, and his inevitable fall from grace as a new generation of artists takes center stage, and he is forced to grapple with his legacy and place among museums and collectors. Beautifully written, and as courageously revealing as his most provocative paintings, Bad Boy takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the passion and politics of the art world as it has rarely been seen before.

Softcover. Annapolis MD, Naval Institute Press, 1st pbk, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages, b&w illustrations. Author Edward S. Miller contends in this work that the United States forced Japan into international bankruptcy to deter its aggression. While researching newly declassified records of the Treasury and Federal Reserve, Miller, a retired chief financial executive of a Fortune 500 resources corporation, uncovered just how much money mattered. Washington experts confidently predicted that the war in China would bankrupt Japan, not knowing that the Japanese government had a huge cache of dollars fraudulently hidden in New York. Once discovered, Japan scrambled to extract the money. But, Miller explains, in July 1941 President Roosevelt invoked a long-forgotten clause of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 to freeze Japan's dollars and forbade it to sell its hoard of gold to the U.S. Treasury, the only open gold market after 1939. Roosevelt s temporary gambit to bring Japan to its senses, not its knees, was thwarted, however, by opportunistic bureaucrats. Dean Acheson, his handpicked administrator, slyly maneuvered to deny Japan the dollars needed to buy oil and other resources for war and for economic survival. Clean copy.

Hardcover. US, Skarstedt Fine Art, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 76 pages. Money Talks is the first publication to bring together a thematic grouping of Kruger's work. The subject chosen could not be more apt--not only because of current politics and economic realities, but also because this is the subject Kruger has repeatedly returned to throughout her career.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk., 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 300 pages. This account of Egyptian society in the reign of Muhammad Ali traces the beginnings of the nation state in Egypt. It considers Muhammad Ali as part of a social group whose economic interests led them in the direction of trade with Europe as a means of raising money for further investments. They attempted to increase agricultural exports and to use the profits to create industry; then, following the logic of imperialists, their next step was to seek to conquer the surrounding areas to find markets for their industries and sources of raw materials. These policies brought them into conflict with their suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, and with England, since England needed markets in the Middle East. England sought to destroy the new regime in Egypt as a means of exerting influence on the region. In carrying out these economic changes, the country underwent a series of internal developments that were to revolutionize the structure and shape of Egyptian society. The rules of landownership were altered and large estates were formed, Egyptian fallahin were drafted into the army, and the administration was Egyptianized, establishing the groundwork for a nation state. Small embossed stamp on title page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1st, 2014-03-15, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 119 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Carl Corey turns his camera on Wisconsin family-owned businesses in existence fifty years or longer. The businesses portrayed here--bakeries and barbecue joints, funeral homes and furniture builders, cheesemakers, fishermen, ferry boat drivers--have survived against all the odds, weathering tough economic times and big-business competition. The owners are loyal to their employees, their families, and themselves. And they are integral to their local economies and social fabric.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, When Bill Browder's young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life's mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime. As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, it was Browder's campaign to expose Putin's corruption that prompted Russia's intervention in the 2016 US presidential election. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st US, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 252 pages. collection of four blistering, darkly humorous stories that upend the idyllic image of the Greek holiday island. Seeking to escape the paralyzing effects of the Greek economic crisis, a group of Athenian friends move to an Aegean island in the hopes of starting over. Viewed with suspicion and disdain by the locals, they soon find themselves enmeshed in the same vicious cycle of money, power, and violence they thought they had left behind. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 320 pages. Money has always been at the heart of the American experience. Paper money, invented in Boston in 1698, was a classic of American ingenuity-and American disregard for authority and tradition. With the wry and admiring eye of a modern Tocqueville, Jason Goodwin has written a biography of the dollar, giving us the story of its astonishing career through the wilds of American history. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover set, complete in two volumes, both with bright dust jackets. Locke on Money presents for the first time the entire body of the philosopher's writings on this important subject (other than Two Treatises of Government). Accurate texts, together with an apparatus listing variant readings and significant manuscript changes, record the evolution of Locke's ideas from the original 1668-74 paper on interest to the three pamphlets on interest and coinage published in the 1690s. The introduction by Patrick Hyde Kelly establishes the wider context of Locke's writings in terms of contemporary debates on these subjects, the economic conditions of the time, and the circumstances of writing and publication. It shows, notably, that Locke's supposed responsibility for the 1696 recoinage is a myth. The account of what Locke derived from Mercantilist writings and of how he reformulated these in accordance with his philosophy illuminates his contribution to the evolution of economics, and will aid reappraisal of Two Treatises. The picture that emerges confirms Locke's status as major economic thinker, contrary to the prevalent view of recent decades. There are two volumes in the edition. The first contains the introductory matter, and the texts of the Early Writings on Interest, 1688-74, and Some Considerations. The second comprises Short Observations, Further Considerations, and the Appendices, Bibliography, and Index. 664 total pages. Name on front fly leaf in Vol. 1, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1st US, 1873, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brick-red cloth stamped in gilt and black. 359 pages, publisher's ads in rear. First US edition with 1873 date on title page. Described by J. M. Keynes as "an undying classic", Lombard Street analyses the operation of the British financial system, focusing on the economic role of the Bank of England. Bagehot's recommendation that the Bank alter gold reserves based on economic cycles was highly influential, and the book was considered authoritative into the 20th century. Thre is mild rear to top and bottom of spine, corners bumped, otherwise clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Sussex, Denham House, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 57 pages. Hardcover. Previous owners stamp on front endpaper. Clean, unmarked text. Light wear.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2nd Pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 251 pages, with her photo-illustrated dust jacket. Who speaks? Who is silent? Who is seen? Who is absent? These questions focus on how cultures are constructed through pictures and words, how we are seduced into a world of appearances: into a pose of who we are and aren't. On both an emotional and an economic level, images and texts have the power to make us rich or poor. In these essays and reviews, written over the last decade, Barbara Kruger addresses that power with intelligence and wit, in the hope of engaging both our criticality and our dreams of affirmation.Barbara Kruger is an artist whose pictures and words engage issues of power, sex, money, difference, and death. Her work has appeared throughout America, Europe, and Japan in galleries, newspapers, magazines, and museums and on billboards, matchbooks, TV programs, t-shirts, postcards, and shopping bags. She has written about television, film, and cultures for Artforum, Esquire, the New York Times, and the Village Voice.

Softcover. Berkeley, Evolver Editions/North Atlantic, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 468 pages. Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme--but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being. This book is about how the money system will have to change--and is already changing--to embody this transition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Palgrave Macmillan , 6thpr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 268 pages, color illustrations. Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million? Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. "...identifies the many economic pressures exerted on the game today and measures their effects both on the field and in the ticket office. He presents a detailed and original analysis of traditional baseball performance statistics from slugging to fielding and draws on a wealth of previously unpublished data divulged in recent collusion suits. At the heart of the controversy are the disparate claims of owners, who say they are loosing money and stay on only out of love for the game, and players, who insist they are being exploited by owner reaping huge profits."

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace and World, reprint, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 403 pages. Distinguished British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) set off a series of movements that drastically altered the ways in which economists view the world. In his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (first published in1936), Keynes critiqued the laissez-faire policies of his day, particularly the proposition that a normally functioning market economy would bring full employment. Keynes's forward-looking work transformed economics from merely a descriptive and analytic discipline into one that is policy oriented. For Keynes, enlightened government intervention in a nation's economic life was essential to curbing what he saw as the inherent inequalities and instabilities of unregulated capitalism. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 525 pages. "Forgotten founder" no more, Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name. Millions imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It's ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man's most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements-as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy. Thrilling to the romance of becoming the one-man inventor of a modern nation, our first Treasury secretary fostered growth by engineering an ingenious dynamo-banking, public debt, manufacturing-for concentrating national wealth in the hands of a government-connected elite. Seeking American prosperity, he built American oligarchy. Hence his animus and mutual sense of betrayal with Jefferson and Madison-and his career-long fight to suppress a rowdy egalitarian movement little remembered today: the eighteenth-century white working class. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 366 pages. This book concerns itself with the different ways in which money is used, the relationships which then arise, and the institutions concerned in maintaining its various functions. Thomas Crump examines the emergence of institutions with familiar and distinctive monetary roles: the state, the market and the banking system. However, other uses of money - such as for gambling or the payment of fines - are also taken into account, in an exhaustive, encyclopedic treatment of the subject, which extends far beyond the range of conventional treatises on money. Clean copy.