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An eye-opening field guide to the wealth gap.For every dollar owned by the average white family in the United States, the average family of color has less than a dime. Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that benefit white Americans.This accessible book—published in conjunction with one of the country's leading economics education organizations—makes the case that until government policy tackles disparities in wealth, not just income, the United States will never have racial or economic justice. Written by five leading experts on the racial wealth divide who recount the asset-building histories of Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans, this book is a uniquely comprehensive multicultural history of American wealth. With its focus on public policies—how, for example, many post-World War II GI Bill programs helped whites only—The Color of Wealth is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of government on Americans' net worth.

“How to build a more just world and save the planet.... We should all heed Brown’s advice.”—Bill Clinton In this updated edition of the landmark Plan B, Lester Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline, including rising temperatures and spreading water shortage. In addition to these looming threats, we face the peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widening global economic divide, and a growing list of failing states. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent. With Plan A, business as usual, we have neglected these issues overly long. In Plan B 3.0, Lester R. Brown warns that the only effective response now is a World War II–type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

John Kenneth Galbraith has been immersed in economics for most of his long and remarkable life. The purpose of this extended essay is to illuminate examples of "innocent fraud" or the gulf between perception and reality in the modern American economic system--a system he had a hand in creating during his tenure in FDR's administration. Though tackling serious subjects, the book sparkles with wit and sly understatement. "A marked enjoyment can be found in identifying self-serving belief and contrived nonsense," he writes, clearly enjoying himself. The dominant role of the corporation in modern society is one such form of innocent fraud, and he explains how managers hold the real power in our system, not consumers or shareholders as the image would suggest. Despite the "appearance of relevance for owners," capitalism has given way to corporate bureaucracy--"a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards that verge on larceny." He also explains how the public realm is effectively controlled by the private sector. The arms industry is but one example of this: "While the Pentagon is still billed as being of the public sector, few doubt the influence of corporate power in its decisions." He also looks at the financial world which "sustains a large, active, well-rewarded community based on compelled but seemingly sophisticated ignorance," and in particular the Federal Reserve System, "our most prestigious form of fraud, our most elegant escape from reality." In essence, Galbraith says that the Fed, for all of its power and prestige, effectively does nothing. And he has little problem with this: "Let their ineffective role be accepted and forgiven." Both a guide to the present and an aid to shaping the future, this slim, satisfying book is a font of wisdom, conventional and otherwise, from a respected elder statesman in the twilight of his life. --Shawn Carkonen

Has globalization failed us? The promises of economic stability, increased prosperity, and cultural cooperation seem more like a pipe dream than ever before. Instead of abandoning globalization, Charles Derber challenges readers to rewrite its rules in oder to fulfill its potential as an agent of democracy. In this provocative and optimistic work, Derber argues that only a democratic curebegun at the grassroots levelwill end global terror and economic insecurity.Eye-opening in its analysis, and fresh in its solutions, People Before Profit provides an essential understanding of our world economy as well as a practical guide for building a stable global community.

Private enterprise is rapidly taking hold as the world's dominant economic paradigm, but business scandals, environmental degradation, and rampant poverty are stark reminders that business alone — unregulated and unsupervised — will not solve the world's problems. Using a unique market-based approach and a socially inclusive definition of wealth, Corporations and the Public Interest offers a refreshing new system for assessing corporations' real commitment to the public. Steven Lydenberg's plan includes strategies for steering companies in socially responsible directions and imposing costs on those that neglect their responsibilities to the community.

The New York Times bestselling examination of the worldwide movement for social and environmental change Paul Hawken has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries of hidden history. A culmination of Hawken’s many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire all who despair of the world’s fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself.

Can MBAs, often cast as risk-averse conflicted achievers caught in the MBA trap of "I'll make money now and then...", find their true happiness and achieve their destiny in the midst of societal and peer pressures? Absolutely--if you recognize that what you thought were your safest career choices actually may be your riskiest. How so? Your safest choices keep you on your destiny path; your riskiest ones take you away from it. How do you know? More Than Money offers four questions and twelve principles to keep you on your path and tools to help you measure where you are and what you need to do to fulfill your destiny.

Protecting our environment is one of the biggest issues facing our planet today. But how do we solve a problem that can seem overwhelming-even hopeless? As Diane MacEachern argues in Big Green Purse, the best way to fight the industries that pollute the planet, thereby changing the marketplace forever, is to mobilize the most powerful consumer force in the world-women. MacEachern's message is simple but revolutionary. If women harness the "power of their purse" and intentionally shift their spending money to commodities that have the greatest environmental benefit, they can create a cleaner, greener world. Spirited and informative, this book: - targets twenty commodities-cars, cosmetics, coffee, food, paper products, appliances, cleansers, and more-where women's dollars can make a dramatic difference; - provides easy-to-follow guidelines and lists so women can choose the greenest option regardless of what they're buying, along with recommended companies they should support; - encourages women to spend wisely by explaining what's worth the premium price some green products cost, what's not, and when they shouldn't spend money at all; and - differentiates between products that are actually "green" and those that are simply marketed as "ecofriendly." Whether readers want to start with small changes or are ready to devote the majority of their budget to green products, MacEachern offers concrete and immediate ways that women can take action and make a difference. Empowering and enlightening, Big Green Purse will become the "green shopping bible" for women everywhere who are asking, "What can I do?"

Over the last 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world's dominant economic institution. Eminent Canadian law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan contends that today's corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies. In this revolutionary assessment of the history, character, and globalization of the modern business corporation, Bakan backs his premise with the following observations:

• The corporation's legally defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception its own economic self-interest, regardless of the harmful consequences it might cause to others.
• The corporation's unbridled self-interest victimizes individuals, society, and, when it goes awry, even shareholders and can cause corporations to self-destruct, as recent Wall Street scandals reveal.
• Governments have freed the corporation, despite its flawed character, from legal constraints through deregulation and granted it ever greater authority over society through privatization.

But Bakan believes change is possible and he outlines a far-reaching program of achievable reforms through legal regulation and democratic control. Featuring in-depth interviews with such wide-ranging figures as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, business guru Peter Drucker, and cultural critic Noam Chomsky, The Corporation is an extraordinary work that will educate and enlighten students, CEOs, whistle-blowers, power brokers, pawns, pundits, and politicians alike.