General Books - Page 2

Globalization and Its Discontents

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton & Company Amazon Marketplace: 133 new & used starting at $5.71

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> International
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 109 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This powerful, unsettling book gives us a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of global financial institutions by the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics.

When it was first published, this national bestseller quickly became a touchstone in the globalization debate. Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations.

Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book. With a new foreword for this paperback edition.

China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America (Edition 001)

James Kynge

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mariner Books Amazon Marketplace: 83 new & used starting at $3.31

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Commercial Policy
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic Conditions
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

great book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Must-read if you want to learn more about China's recent economic growth. Kynge's anecdotal style really brings home the reality of China's economic boom that you only hear in the abstract in the US media.

Great Book On China's Economic Miracle 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book is not difficult and it is not complex, but it is dense in the sense it is packed with so much insight and value. I started out putting post-its on the pages I thought I would want to refer to again later, but had to stop when it became clear I was "post-itting" (if that is not a word, it certainly should be) just about every other page.

This book is unsurpassed in analyzing China's impact on the world. Through real world examples, it captures just how different China is in its business conduct just how strange a trading partner China is, and how it resembles no other great power. Kynge beautifully weaves China's contradictions into a tapestry that allows us to understand it, as best as is possible.

Though this book is in many ways a "big-think" book, it is nonetheless absolutely relevant to those doing business in or with China. It provides the best macroeconomic analysis of China I have yet seen and, by doing so, it provides invaluable knowledge of how to adjust/position your business to compete.

Editorial Review:

"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." Napoleon's words seem eerily prescient today, as the shock waves from China's awakening reverberate around the globe. Award-winning journalist James Kynge takes measure of the tremors made as China's ravenous hunger for jobs, raw materials, energy, and food — and its export of goods, workers, and investments — drastically reshapes world trade and politics. Through dramatic stories of the people who are driving China's transformation — entrepreneurs and visionaries, factory workers and store clerks — Kynge describes the breakneck rise of China, the extraordinary problems the country now faces, and the consequences of both.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

Clotaire Rapaille

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $7.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Marketing & Sales -> Consumer Behavior

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes.

In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do.

Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us.

In The Culture Code, Dr. Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging from sex to money to health to America itself—to give us “a new set of glasses” with which to view our actions and motivations. Why are we so often disillusioned by love? Why is fat a solution rather than a problem? Why do we reject the notion of perfection? Why is fast food in our lives to stay? The answers are in the Codes.

Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different, and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter

Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, World Cafe Community

Amazon Price: $14.25 List Price: $20.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $8.93

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Skills -> Communications

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The World Café process has been used by tens of thousands of people around the world to tackle real-life issues. Based on seven key principles, it begins with small, intimate conversations at café -style tables; these gatherings then link and build on each other as people move between groups and cross-pollinate ideas. In this way, Café learning enables even very large groups to think together creatively in a single, connected conversation. This complete resource explains the Café concept and provides readers with the tools they need to get started. Each chapter opens with stories from business, education, government, and community organizations, each a dramatic example of how leaders are using this process in the real world. Such stories underline the Café 's immediate, practical implications for meeting and conference design, strategy formation, knowledge creation, and large-scale systems change. The book includes a foreword by best-selling author Margaret J. Wheatley, an afterword by author Peter Senge, and real-world stories of the Café process in action at Hewlett-Packard, the nation of Singapore, and the University of Texas.

International Business: Managing Globalization

John S. Hill

Amazon Price: $89.95 List Price: $89.95 Not yet published By: Sage Publications, Inc

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Organizational Behavior -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“This is a wonderful text, remarkable for its breadth and freshness of approach. Hill links the often arcane world of international business to society and history. He has a good eye for the telling detail and the illuminating quotation. I shall be recommending this to my friends who are teaching, saying 'read this and get your students to stay curious.’”

-John Stopford, Emeritus, London Business School


Reflecting a strong managerial orientation, a corporate emphasis, and a true global-local focus, International Business: Managing Globalization explains the whats and whys of global differences as it covers industries, competitors, regions, and markets from the perspectives of practicing managers. Author John S. Hill reviews the geographic and historic backgrounds of regions and markets in a way that no other text has done, with special focus on global supply chains, global branding, and world religions as they affect management at the local level.

Key Features

• Integrates business topics and environmental analysis into a strategic, global-local framework
• Places current events in focus by covering history and geography as they affect international business
• Includes a unique chapter on global industry and competitor analysis-a common business tool-but a topic not covered in other texts
• Covers religion as a key determiner of behaviors worldwide to help readers understand why behaviors differ depending on the local context
• Focuses on corporate analysis, planning, and internationalization-vital corporate practices rarely covered in other textbooks
• Includes both shorter and longer, more complex cases, thus appealing to both introductory and advanced courses

Intended Audience
International Business: Managing Globalization is ideal for the Introduction to Business course or for courses focusing on international or global business strategy.

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

Pietra Rivoli

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 90 new & used starting at $4.66

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Exports & Imports
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Praise for THE TRAVELS OF A T-SHIRT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

"Engrossing . . . (Rivoli) goes wherever the T-shirt goes, and there are surprises around every corner . . . full of memorable characters and vivid scenes."
—Time

"An engaging and illuminating saga. . . . Rivoli follows her T-shirt along its route, but that is like saying that Melville follows his whale. . . . Her nuanced and fair-minded approach is all the more powerful for eschewing the pretense of ideological absolutism, and her telescopic look through a single industry has all the makings of an economics classic."
—The New York Times

"Rarely is a business book so well written that one would gladly stay up all night to finish it. Pietra Rivoli's The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is just such a page-turner."
—CIO magazine

"Succeeds admirably . . . T-shirts may not have changed the world, but their story is a useful account of how free trade and protectionism certainly have."
—Financial Times

"[A] fascinating exploration of the history, economics, and politics of world trade . . . The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is a thought-provoking yarn that exhibits the ugly, the bad, and the good of globalization, and points to the unintended positive consequences of the clash between proponents and opponents of free trade."
—Star-Telegram (Fort Worth)

"Part travelogue, part history, and part economics, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is ALL storytelling, and in the grand style. A must-read."
—Peter J. Dougherty, Senior Economics Editor, Princeton University Press author of Who's Afraid of Adam Smith?

"A readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of free trade . . . As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan."
—San Francisco Chronicle

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind

Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 59 new & used starting at $14.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Organizational Behavior -> Workplace

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Monumental Book Well Worth the Read 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The father and son team of Geert and Geert Jan Hofstede have done a remarkable job breaking down the (measurable) elements of the world's cultures, usingt the somewhat antiquated IBM studies combined with more recent (less comprehensive) studies. The end result is that nations can be evaulauted on the basis of criteria such as "uncertainty avoidance," "individualism" and "power distance from superiors."

The work is enlightening and helpful to anyone who works internationally. It is also useful to break down one's own nation (for example, some Americans lean toward the British way of thinking while others are more German-like). The same criteria that divide nations also divide families within a society.

Businessmen, missionaries, pastors, counselors, journalists, and social scientists should devour these materials!

This should be required reading for anyone planning to live overseas or anyone who deals with internationals. In short, this book is relevant to our modern "shrinking" world and quite well done.

Like most significant works, this volume has its weak points.

Although the authors claim to espouse a "values neutral" position (which I have always argued is an impossible and illogical position), their Dutch/Swedish preferences ring out loudly and clearly (humanistic, environmnetalist, etc.). Although the authors do make a serious attempt to look at things from other perspectives, they simply cannot divorce themselves from their own cultural preferances. This is not bad -- they simply need to be above board and stop pretending to take the role of the neutral outsider (at least to better influence those of us who are American conservatives; we are big into distinguishing between fact and evaluation of fact; these evaluations are always done through a person's own personal gridwork).

The authors also have occasional trouble connecting a few dots. For example, on the bottom of p. 355, the Hofstedes are tactfully scolding the U.S. for its lack of foreign aid (again, showing their own bias), but on the top of p. 356 they add, "Looking back to half a century of development assistance, most observers agree that the effectiveness of much of the spending has been dismal." They then say those countries which did improve did so because of their cultural values, not foreign aid. But they seem incapable of concluding that good intentions (and even money) is not the most effective way to solve these problems. They just don't get it.

The same is true with contributions through governments to Tsunami relief. It should be expected that individualistic countries would be more prone to give as individuals, not as collective societies. Rather than look at total giving (or perecentage) OF A SOCIETY, they authors confuse a society with its government. Lots of missed "dot connections" in this work.

Despite the books weakspots, it is overwhelming strong and rich with fascinating content. It is a "mind opening" work -- well worth the read. You simply must read this one!

Editorial Review:

The landmark study of cultural differences across 70 nations, Cultures and Organizations helps readers look at how they think—and how they fail to think—as members of groups. Based on decades of painstaking field research, this new edition features the latest scientific results published in Geert Hofstede’s scholarly work Culture’s Consequences, Second Edition. Original in thought and profoundly important, Cultures and Organizations offers vital knowledge and insight on issues that will shape the future of cultures and nations in a globalized world.

Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions

Ben Mezrich

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 71 new & used starting at $3.15

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ben Mezrich, author of the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House, returns with an astonishing story of Ivy League hedge-fund cowboys, high stakes, and the Asian underworld.

John Malcolm was the ultimate gunslinger in the Wild East, prepared to take on any level of risk in making mind-boggling sums of money. He and his friends were hedge-fund cowboys, living life on the adrenaline-, sex-, and drugs-fueled edge—kids running billion-dollar portfolios, trading information in the back rooms of high-class brothels and at VIP tables in nightclubs across the Far East.

Malcolm and his Ivy League-schooled twenty-something colleagues, with their warped sense of morality, created their own economic theory that would culminate in a single deal the likes of which had never been seen before—or since.

Ugly Americans is a story of extremes, charged with wealth, nerve, excess, and glamour. A real-life mixture of Liar's Poker and Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, and exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold true story that rocked the financial community.

New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought

Todd G. Buchholz

Amazon Price: $10.88 List Price: $16.00 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Plume Amazon Marketplace: 71 new & used starting at $0.41

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Theory
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Title -- Trivial Contents 1 out of 5 stars.
14 of 23 people found this review helpful.

When I first saw this book, I thought this sounds really interesting. It is, if you like to read trivia about economists, most of whom are dead. There are loose connections made to miscellaneous events in modern times, but the bulk of the book combines jokes that have been around for decades (as dead as the economists) with mini-biographies more suited to a fan magazine, focusing on John Stuart Mill's dysfunctional childhood, John Maynard Keynes' marriage to a ballerina, John Kenneth Galbraith's height, Thorstein Veblen's odd mode of dress and his lecture on cannibalism, and similar delicacies.

My impression is that the author found no use for this information when he was studying economics, but hated to throw out his boxes of notes. So he came up with a great, if dishonest, title and packaged the miscellany for sale. If you have no real interest in economics, but love gossip columns and want to sound like you know something about famous economists, this is the book for you.

Editorial Review:

Featuring brand new sections on the remarkable shifts in the world economy, this economic study is a relevant, entertaining, and fascinating guide for those seeking both a solid lesson on the development of economic theory throughout the past two hundred years and a balanced perspective of our current economic state on the brink of the millennium. By applying age-old economic theories to contemporary issues, Todd Buchholz helps readers to see how the thoughts and writings of the great economists of the past have vital relevance to the dilemmas affecting all our lives today.

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

Ha-Joon Chang

Amazon Price: $11.56 List Price: $17.00 Not yet published By: Bloomsbury Press

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> International -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustrations, this penetrating study could be entitled ‘Economics in the Real World.’ Chang reveals the yawning gap between standard doctrines concerning economic development and what really has taken place from the origins of the industrial revolution until today. His incisive analysis shows how, and why, prescriptions based on reigning doctrines have caused severe harm, particularly to the most vulnerable and defenseless, and are likely to continue to do so.”—Noam Chomsky

Using irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of examples, Chang blasts holes in the “World I s Flat” orthodoxy of T homas Friedman and other liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today’s economic superpowers—from the U .S. to Britain to his native Korea—all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and—via our proxies such as the World Bank, I nternational Monetary Fund, and World T rade Organization—ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world.