Title search results
Showing 31141 - 31160 of 31395 items
The Economist: Perilous Journey (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Pakistan is in a tricky situation. It is under constant scrutiny by the world media but is more often than not described in terms of its problems.There are indeed difficulties - bordering the unsettled nations of Afghanistan and Iran puts it in a precarious position. A poor and badly educated population for the most part is not helping the country's growth.There is hope.The wealth of natural resources, a growing, urban population and a more democratic government all point to a positive future.But with the NATO withdrawal from its troubled neighbours nearing, Pakistan's survival hangs in the balance.Simon Long's special report includes the following sections:Perilous JourneyToo close for comfortState of vulnerabilityCaptain's inningsIn the shadow of the mosqueLights offA taste of HunnyAlways with usDripping with bloodGoing with the flowThe Economist: Revolution in Retreat (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Raúl Castro is changing Cuba. Recognising the limits that the Soviet style economy places upon the Cuban people, he is allowing the market greater freedoms. A new, private sector is emerging and is expected to employ around 25% of the labour force by 2015.What will these changes mean for foreign business and for Cuba's position on the global stage?As there doesn't seem to be a Castro successor and the party is pressured by the younger generation and the digital world, where will Cuba be in ten years time?This report will reflect on the likelihood and impact of political and economic change on the island - essential reading for anyone involved in the region.Sections include:Revolution in retreatThe deal's off - growing inequalitiesHasta la vista, baby - a disappearing populationEdging towards capitalism - slow reformGrandmother's footsteps - political changeThe Miami mirror - Cuba and MiamiThe biological factor - what next for the Castro dynasty?The Economist: Closing the Gap (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.When students graduate from university they are employed in equal numbers. Move up the ladder a few rungs and the number of women in high powered positions has fallen dramatically.Women make up just 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs and still generally get paid less than their male counterparts.Barbara Becks ask why this is and what can be done about it. She covers:Closing the gapFemale labour markets: The cashier and the carpenterA world of bluestockingsWork and family: Baby bluesTop jobs: Too many suitsWomen in China: The sky's the limitLooking ahead: Here's to the next half-centuryThe Economist: The Great Mismatch (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2011
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Globalisation and technology are changing the structure of the labour market. Now, companies have the choice to recruit from further afield and without the need for traditional office workers. Matthew Bishop explores how companies can, and will, recruit employees in the future and how individuals can get ahead in this era of change.Sections include:The great mismatchLabour-market trends: Winners and losersBottom of the pyramidSelf-help: My big fat careerFree-for-allCompanies' concerns: Got talent?The role of government: Lending a handA better balance: More feast, less famineThe Economist: All the World's a Game (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.In the US, the average age of a gamer is 37 and 42% are female. Last year the industry earned $56billion worldwide. Tim Cross analyses the proliferation of the video games in this Economist special report, and how its successes are set to grow. Sections in the report include:All the world's a gameAs you like itThe business of gaming: Thinking out of the boxPaying for pixels E-sports: Gentlemen, start your computersViolence and addiction: No killer appAlternative uses: The play's the thingThe importance of fun: Homo ludensThe Economist: Beyond the PC (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Twenty years ago one gigabyte of memory cost $200,000. Now, a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) costs a mere $100.Technology permeates our everyday lives and never more so than with our portable, personal devices. Businesses are struggling to keep up with their employees' technological abilities and demands.In Personal Technology, Martin Giles unpicks the changing landscape of technology, examining apps, new devices and their effect on world trade. In the following sections, he explains how technology and the economy are becoming inextricably linked and how this has resulted in the birth of the new, digital age.Beyond the PCConsumerisation: The power of manyApps on tapPersonal technology at work: IT's Arab springAdapting personal IT for business: The consumer-industrial complexDroid warsUbiquitous computing: Up closeTechnology and society: Here comes anywareThe Economist: The Visible Hand (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.As Western liberalist capitalism flounders in the wake of global recession, state backed companies are slowly taking over.The melding of the power of the state and the power of capitalism is on the rise. Prevalent in the emerging economies of China, Russia and Brazil, some of the world's most powerful companies are state owned. The 13 biggest oil firms are government controlled. China Mobile has over 600million customers and the Emirates airlines is growing at 20% a year.However, despite the numerous successes, Adrian Wooldridge urges caution. He asks whether it could easily survive if confronted with difficulty, criticises the embedded corruption and cronyism and asks whether a fair trading system is possible to maintain with government favoured business.Slowly but surely, the invisible hand of the market is being usurped by the visible, often authoritarian, hand of state capitalism.Sections include:The visible handSomething old, something new - a brief history of state capitalismNew masters of the universe - how state enterprise is spreadingTheme and variations - state capitalism is not all the sameMixed bag - infrastructure and innovationThe world in their hands - state capitalism looks outward and inwardAnd the winner is - fatal flawsThe Economist: Rising Power, Anxious State (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.'The line up for next year's change of leadership does not give cause for optimism' says James Miles, the Economist's China correspondent.With a heavily state owned banking system, waning numbers of workers in a labour intensive industrial economy and lack of development in new business, China's current boom may be set to bust. In the following sections, James Miles examines the restrictive nature of government in China, and what it will mean for the country and the rest of the world.Urbanisation: Where do you live?Rising power, anxious stateChina's new leaders: The princelings are comingGrowth prospects: Beware the middle-income trapDeng & CoGovernment's role in industry: The long arm of the stateDemography: Getting onIdeological battles: Universalists v exceptionalistsThe Economist: Retail Renaissance (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Retail banking is heading for a revival. With the financial crisis still hanging over Western economies, banks have rejuvenated the retail arm of the business. They are now seen as more stable sources of profit than the risky traders.Technology is both a help and a hindrance. On one hand, online banking is revolutionizing money management. But will this lead to the close of the high street bank? How can banks outstrip the developing tech companies who are offering rival services?This report will assess the challenges and opportunities that banks face in the rich world and the emerging markets. Sections include:Retail renaissanceWithering awayDispatches from the hothouseCrunching the numbersA wealth of walletsOver the sea and far awayPrivate pursuitsWorld, here we comeThe Economist: Playing with Fire (Penguin Specials)
By The Economist Publications. 2012
The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies,…
to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour.Is financial innovation good or bad?Did it cause the financial crisis of 2007/2008?Are the current financial systems working for a stable global economy?Andrew Palmer answers these questions in his special report, but urges that it's more that just a debate on whether financial innovation does or doesn't work. In fact, he claims, it is almost impossible to draw these distinctions.Using a variety of examples - from social bonds to securitisations risks - he highlights the weaknesses in innovative strategies, revealing how some innovation is doomed to failure.The consequences of innovation are now so crucial and so scrutinised - it is essential reading for anyone in the business world.Sections include:Playing with fireThe ferment of financeThe little guyFrom vanilla to rocky roadThe fast and furiousOf plumbing and promisesOn the side of the angelsSafety firstThe Econocracy: On the Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts
By Joe Earle, Cahal Moran, Zach Ward-Perkins. 2017
A century ago, the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now economics is the supreme ideology of our time, with…
its own rules and language. The trouble is, most of us can't speak it. This is damaging democracy. Dangerous agendas are hidden inside mathematical wrappers; controversial policies are presented as 'proven' by the models of economic 'science'. Government is being turned over to a publicly unaccountable technocratic elite. The Econocracy reveals that economics is too important to be left to the economists - and shows us how we can begin to participate more fully in the decisions which affect all our futures.Written in AD 731, Bede's work opens with a background sketch of Roman Britain's geography and history. It goes on…
to tell of the kings and bishops, monks and nuns who helped to develop Anglo-Saxon government and religion during the crucial formative years of the English people. Leo Sherley-Price's translation brings us an accurate and readable version, in modern English, of a unique historical document. This edition now includes Bede's Letter to Egbert concerning pastoral care in early Anglo-Saxon England, at the heart of which lay Bede's denunciation of the false monasteries; and The Death of Bede, an admirable eye-witness account by Cuthbert, monk and later Abbot of Jarrow, both translated by D. H. Farmer.The Dreamer Of Calle San Salvador
By Roger Osborne. 2001
Spell-binding, horrific, poetic, apocalyptic, heart-rending, disturbing, prophetic, seditious, compelling and utterly fascinating - the dreams of Lucrecia de Leon have…
lain virtually undisturbed in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition for more than four hundred years. Lucrecia was a nineteen-year-old Madrilena when, in 1587, her dreams began to be recorded and published by a disaffected group of clerics. Over the next three years they transcribed four hundred of Lucrecia's dreams which they considered to be messages from God. The dreams warned of the defeat of the Armada, of the death of King Philip II, of the fall of Spain and of a new beginning under a new king - all told in bold and highly original visions. As some of her prophecies came true and as the Spanish court grew more discontented, she fell foul of the authorities and was arrested by the Holy Order. The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador produces thirty-five of Lucrecia's most captivating dreams. The imagery and inventiveness of her visions are astonishing, while the stories that they tell are compelling and of immense historical significance. Roger Osborne weaves a commentary around each dream, which allows us to see the world through the eyes of Lucrecia and helps us to understand the nature of her visions and the time and place she inhabited. This pioneering work shows us what history is like seen from the inside out.The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In…
contrast to the formalised and official theology of the "founding fathers" of the church, the Desert Fathers were ordinary Christians who chose to renounce the world and live lives of celibacy, fasting, vigil, prayer and poverty in direct and simple response to the gospel. Their sayings were first recorded in the 4th century and consist of spiritual advice, anecdotes and parables. The Desert Fathers' teachings and lives have inspired poetry, opera and art, as well as providing spiritual nourishment and a template for monastic life.Crossing Continents: A History of Standard Chartered Bank
By Duncan Campbell-Smith. 2021
For almost a hundred years from the 1860s, the City of London's overseas banks financed the global trade that lay…
at the core of the British Empire. Foremost among them from the beginning were two start-up ventures: the Standard Bank of South Africa, which soon developed a powerful domestic franchise at the Cape, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. This book traces their stories in the nineteenth century, their glory days before 1914 - and their remarkable survival in the face of global wars and the collapse of world trade in the first half of the twentieth century.The unravelling of the Empire after 1945 eventually forced Britain's overseas banks to confront a different future. The Standard and the Chartered, alarmed at the expansion of American banking, determined in 1969 on a merger as a way of sustaining the best of the City's overseas traditions. But from the start, Standard Chartered had to grapple with the fading fortunes of its own inherited franchise - badly dented in both Asia and Africa - and with radical changes in the nature of banking. Its British managers, steeped in the past, proved ill-suited to the challenge. By the late 1980s, efforts to expand in Europe and the USA had brought the merged Group to the brink of collapse.Yet it survived - and then pulled off a dramatic recovery. Standard Chartered realigned itself, just in time, with the phenomenal growth of Asia's 'emerging markets', many of them in countries where the Chartered had flourished a century earlier. In the process, the Group was transformed. Trebling its workforce, it brushed aside the global financial crisis of 2008 and by 2012 could look back on a decade of astonishing growth. Recent times have added an eventful postscript to a long and absorbing history.Crossing Continents recounts Standard Chartered's story with a wealth of detail from one of the richest archives available to any commercial bank. The book also affords a rare and compelling perspective on the evolution of international trade and finance, showing how Britain's commercial influence has actually worked in practice around the world over one hundred and fifty years.Country Church Monuments
By C. B. Newham. 2022
A landmark illustrated history of rural church monuments - the forgotten national treasures of England and WalesDeep in the countryside,…
away from metropolitan abbeys and cathedrals, thousands of funerary monuments are hidden in parish churches. These artworks - medieval brasses and elegant marble effigies, stone tomb chests and grand mausoleums - are of great historical and cultural significance, but have, due to their relative inaccessibility, faded from accounts of our art history.Over twenty-five years, C. B. Newham FSA has visited and photographed more than eight thousand rural churches, cataloguing the monumental sculptures encountered on his quest. In Country Church Monuments, he presents 365 of the very best, each accompanied by detailed photographs, biographies of both the deceased and their sculptors and a wealth of contextual material. Many of these works commemorate famous historical figures, from scheming Tudor courtier Richard Rich to Victorian prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. But more moving are the countless others - minor aristocrats, small-time industrialists, much-loved mothers, fathers and children - who, if not for their memorials, would wholly be lost to time.As Newham blows the dust off these artworks and breathes life into the stories they tell, a new aesthetic history of rural England and Wales emerges. Country Church Monuments is a poignant record of the art we make at the borders of life and death, of our ceaseless human striving for eternity.Confessions
By Saint Augustine. 1961
'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent…
his early years torn between conflicting world-views. The Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recounts how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from his youthful ideas and licentious lifestyle to become one of Christianity's most influential thinkers. A remarkably honest spiritual autobiography, the Confessions also addresses fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of the faith today.Translated with an Introduction by R. S. PINE-COFFINA Confession and Other Religious Writings
By Leo Tolstoy. 1880
Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional…
honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was 'a happy man' and in good health - yet life had lost its meaning. In this poignant confessional fragment, he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics, and to search instead for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth'.Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin Great Ideas)
By Thorstein Veblen. 2005
With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social…
ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.City of God
By Saint Augustine. 1984
City of God is an enduringly significant work in the history of Christian thought, by one of its central figuresWritten…
as an eloquent defence of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, this great theological and philosophical work by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last for eternity, City of God is one of the most influential documents in the development of Christianity.Translated with Notes by Henry Bettenson with an Introduction by G. R. Evans