The Clean Tech Revolution or Good Neighbors Bad Times

The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity

Author: Ron Pernick

When industry giants such as GE, Toyota, and Sharp and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multibillion-dollar investments in clean technology, the message is clear. Developing clean technologies is no longer a social issue championed by environmentalists; it's a moneymaking enterprise moving solidly into the business mainstream. In fact, as the economy faces unprecedented challenges from high energy prices, resource shortages, and global environmental and security threats, clean tech—technologies designed to provide superior performance at a lower cost while creating significantly less waste than conventional offerings—promises to be the next engine of economic growth.

In The Clean Tech Revolution, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street trading floors, and in government offices around the globe. By highlighting eight major clean-tech sectors—solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration—they uncover how investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals can profit from this next wave of technological innovation. Pernick and Wilder shine the spotlight on the winners among technologies, companies, and regions that are likely to reap the greatest benefits from clean tech—and they show you why the time to act is now.

Groundbreaking and authoritative, The Clean Tech Revolution is the must-read book to understand and profit from the cleantechnologies that are reshaping our fast-changing world.

The Motley Fool

For individual investors interested in profiting from this opportunity, The Clean Tech Revolution offers an excellent overview.

Read also Modern Political Economy or Essentials for Speech Language Pathologists

Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village

Author: Mimi Schwartz

Mimi Schwartz grew up on milkshakes and hamburgers—and her father’s boyhood stories. She rarely took the stories seriously. What was a modern American teenager supposed to make of these accounts of a village in Germany where, according to her father, “before Hitler, everyone got along”? It was only many years later, when she heard a remarkable story of the Torah from that very village being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, that Schwartz began to sense how much these stories might mean. Thus began a twelve-year quest that covered three continents as Schwartz sought answers in the historical records and among those who remembered that time. Welcomed into the homes of both the Jews who had fled the village fifty years earlier and the Christians who had remained, Schwartz peered into family albums, ate home-baked linzertorte (almost everyone served it!), and heard countless stories about life in one small village before, during, and after Nazi times. Sometimes stories overlapped, sometimes one memory challenged another, but always they seemed to muddy the waters of easy judgment. Small stories of decency are often overlooked in the wake of a larger historic narrative. Yet we need these stories to provide a moral compass, especially in times of political extremism, when fear and hatred strain the bonds of loyalty and neighborly compassion. How, this book asks, do neighbors maintain a modicum of decency in such times? How do we negotiate evil and remain humane when, as in the Nazi years, hate rules?

The Washington Times

A fascinating picture, atypical of so much written on the subject. Blessed with good antennae and a skeptical mind, Ms. Schwartz is not an innocent abroad. Never gullible or credulous, but open to the evidence of her own eyes and ears, she is an ideal guide to her father's lost world, which for so long she resisted. . . . It is a measure of her nuanced approach and refusal to settle for pat, simplistic answers that her book finds and genuinely values a rare point of light in that darkest of times without ever exaggerating its overall significance.

an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Shofar

Mimi Schwartz . . . has written a brilliant book that is 'not a Holocaust book,' not a book about the annihilation of European Jewry. And yet, if a Holocaust book should transmit how dear and how fragile every human life is-if it should transmit our infinite responsibility to one another in the light of the Nazi assault on the Infinite One-it is a Holocaust book, a Jewish book, a most human book. In any case, it is a book that should be read by all.

-Michael Berenbaum - Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

Schwartz . . . writes beautifully; her words flow, characters are portrayed seemingly effortlessly and she makes vivid the tensions between the German generations and between those Germans who insist on remembering what others would equally insistently forget. The result is most satisfying, the tale of a woman in search of her roots who finds what she is looking for-and so much more; but the story is much larger than that. It is a vivid portrayal of good neighbors who experienced the worst of times that tested themselves and each other and that scattered fragments of the truth of that time to the four corners of the earth, seemingly waiting for one fine writer to unite them.

Kirkus Reviews

The American-born daughter of a German Jew tells the story of her father's tiny village, where charity mostly trumped hate during Hitler's reign. Schwartz (Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, 2002, etc.) compiles material from personal interviews, local archives and Holocaust literature into an eloquent and affectionate account of Benheim (a fictional name). Jews and Catholics had lived as friends in this small southwestern farming community for centuries, until Nazis from a nearby town shattered the interracial and interreligious peace by destroying the local synagogue on Kristallnacht in 1938. A number of the town's Jews had left the year before; some established a refugee community in Israel, others emigrated to America, as Schwartz's father did. Many chose to stay and were aided by their Christian neighbors; nonetheless, almost a third of Benheim's Jewish population eventually died in concentration camps. Schwartz's main concern is to distinguish between historical truth and inherited nostalgia, to find out whether Benheim really was a uniquely peaceful hamlet of loyal neighbors who rejected the Nazis's systematized stereotyping and brutality. Her final tally reveals a town in which personal decency was frequently upheld. The village's most cherished story (recounted in several versions) is of a policeman who hid the synagogue's Torah during Kristallnacht, then gave it to his Jewish neighbors to take to Israel. Wisely conceding that village life during the Holocaust wasn't always so generous, Schwartz also includes stories of Christians turning their heads so as not to see the deportations and of the Nazi-appointed mayor erecting a swastika over the village. The town contained"contradictions that refuse a neat labeling," the author acknowledges, to the chagrin of Holocaust scholars who favor more official records. As she got to know the surviving villagers, she writes, "their stories [made] my need for judgment recede." Schwartz's tone is gentle, her prose brilliantly clear and her insights keen, if not entirely new. A ruminative exploration of the murkiness of collective memory.

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations     xiii
Author's Note     xv
Close to Home
Treadmill to the Past     3
Anonymous Translation     8
At the Nachmittag     17
Kaffeeklatsch     24
Joie de Vivre     35
Four Stories of the Torah     48
The Revolving Room     59
An Ocean Away
Off the Record     75
A Little Respect, Please     95
The Good Raincoat     102
Hedwig, Fritz, and "Schtumpela"     113
The Second Generation     122
Back and Forth
Willy from Baltimore     139
Five Kilometers Away     151
Katherine of Dorn     164
Truth Transposed     175
What Willy's Neighbor Says...     177
The Red Album     180
Where Legend Ends     193
At My Father's Grave     203
End Points
The Other Miriam     213
Three Little Girls     221
Yes or No?     234
The Celebration     243
Acknowledgments     259

The Keys to the White House or Good Intentions Bad Outcomes

The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President

Author: Allan J Lichtman

About the Author:
Allan J. Lichtman is professor of American history at American University, a veteran political commentator, and author of the forthcoming White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (2008)

Jack Germond - Baltimore Sun

This is a must book for political junkies who want to answer one important question about any campaign: Who's going to win?

Toronto Sun

If you're into American presidential politics, "The Keys to the White House" is a must, and fun, read.

Roll Call

Of the hundreds of books written about presidential elections, one of the best is Allan J. Lichtman's "The Keys to the White House".

What People Are Saying

William Schneider
Do me a favor. Don't read this book. Because if you do, it could put all of us pundits and political consultants out of business. Allan Lichtman has some nerve, revealing our trade secrets to the great unwashed public. Including the biggest secret of all, which is that the presidential vote is simple, rational, and highly predictable.

David Broder
For generations, politicians, pundits, and poll-takers have been seeking their version of the Holy Grail--a surefire, guaranteed way to predict presidential elections well ahead of time. It may have been found in this book.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Introduction
1	Logic of the Keys: How Presidential Elections Really Work	1
2	Turning the Keys to the Presidency	19
3	Civil War and Reconstruction	49
4	The Gilded Age	65
5	Rise and Fall of Progressivism	81
6	Depression, War, and Cold War	99
7	New Directions, War, and Scandal	123
8	Reagan and Beyond	143
9	Lessons of the Keys	159
10	Toward a New Presidential Politics	171
11	How to Bet in '96	177
	Notes	183
	Index	189
	About the Author	197

Interesting book: Heal Your Heart or Generation Extra Large

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: Social Policy, Informality, and Economic Growth in Mexico

Author: Santiago Levy

Despite various reform efforts, Mexico has experienced economic stability but little growth. Today more than half of all Mexican workers are employed informally, and one out of every four is poor. Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to this state of affairs and it suggests reforms to improve the situation.

Over the past decade, Mexico has channeled an increasing number of resources into subsidizing the creation of low-productivity, informal jobs. These social programs have hampered growth, fostered illegality, and provided erratic protection to workers, trapping many in poverty. Informality has boxed Mexico into a dilemma: provide benefits to informal workers at the expense of lower growth and reduced productivity or leave millions of workers without benefits. Former finance official Santiago Levy proposes how to convert the existing system of social security for formal workers into universal social entitlements. He advocates eliminating wage-based social security contributions and raising consumption taxes on higher-income households to simultaneously increase the rate of growth of GDP, reduce inequality, and improve benefits for workers.

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes considers whether Mexico can build on the success of Progresa-Oportunidades, a targeted poverty alleviation program that originated in Mexico and has been replicated in over 25 countries as well as in New York City. It sets forth a plan to reform social and economic policy, an essential element of a more equitable and sustainable development strategy for Mexico.

What People Are Saying

Nancy Birdsall
"This is a rare study linking misguided social programs to low productivity and wages and disappointing growth in Mexico. Clear, compelling, and worrying, justifying a bold policy prescription, from an author who knows his economics, his politics, and his Mexico."--(Nancy Birdsall, President, Center for Global Development, and former Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank)

Ravi Kanbur
"The central thesis of this monograph is that the way Mexico's social programs are structured vis-à-vis the labor market is inequitable and inefficient. This excellent book argues that such programs, which the author strongly supports, should be delivered in a manner that does not discriminate between different types of employment arrangements. Benefits should be financed with general taxes, not employment-specific contributions by firms and workers. It will become a standard reference in the development literature because although the focus of the study is Mexico, the issues considered are faced by most developing countries, in Latin America and beyond."--(Ravi Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Professor of Economics, Cornell University, and former Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank)

Franзois Bourguignon
"Santiago Levy demonstrates how important it is that we consider the systemic implications of individual actions when designing economic and social policies. His comprehensive analytical framework, his thorough interpretation of an unusual data set, and his acute sense of how real people behave combine to make for a fascinating and constructive critique of Mexico's social protection system that would also apply to several other emerging economies."--(François Bourguignon, Director, Paris School of Economics, and former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank)

James D. Wolfensohn
"Santiago Levy makes a compelling case for the reform of the Mexican social protection system. He provides a brilliant in-depth analysis of the shortcomings of the current approach that fails to achieve the basic goal of protecting those in need and also seriously harms Mexico's growth prospects."--(James D. Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank)

Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant or Novus Ordo Seclorum

Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography

Author: Renee Winegarten

When they first met in 1794, shortly after the Reign of Terror, Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant were both in their twenties, both married, and both outsiders. She was already celebrated and a published writer, whereas he, though ambitious, was unknown. This compelling dual biography tells the extraordinary story of their union and disunion, set against a European background of momentous events and dramatic social and cultural change. Renee Winegarten offers new perspectives on each of the protagonists, revealing their rare qualities and their all-too-human failings as well as the complex nature of their debt to one another.

 

Their passionate and productive relationship endured on and off for seventeen years. Winegarten traces their story largely through their own words—letters and autobiographical writings—and illuminates the deep intellectual and visceral bond they shared despite disparate personalities and gifts. Exploring their relationships with Napoleon and the Bourbons, their different responses to the momentous upheavals of postrevolutionary France, their support of individual liberty with order, and more, the book concludes with an appreciation of de Staël’s and Constant’s singular contributions to a new literature and to the history of liberty.

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

Winegarten tells the story of de Stael and Constant's "marriage of true minds" with absorbing detail…For many readers, I suspect that the names Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant are, in effect, just names. If that's the case, take heart: Renee Winegarten's fine dual biography will bring them to blazing life.

Marie Marmo Mullaney - Library Journal

This "dual biography" is the first full-length exploration of the tempestuous 17-year partnership between Madame de Stael, the most celebrated woman writer of the Napoleonic period, and up-and-coming liberal politician, journalist, and theorist Benjamin Constant. Literary critic Winegarten (Accursed Politics) uses letters, diaries, and published accounts to reveal the pair's innermost thoughts and feelings on love, marriage, and politics, skillfully interweaving the story of their parallel lives against the backdrop of the social and political maneuverings of post-revolutionary France. While the two were never a married couple, they consulted, advised, inspired, and used each other, and each responded in distinct ways to the new Napoleonic order. At times, the complexities of French politics in this period may make the book difficult to follow for all but the most engaged and informed readers, yet Winegarten's recounting of the nature of this partnership and clear examination of the pair's political ideas, writings, and emotions make her book an important contribution to the field. The author concludes that despite their private shortcomings, these two should be remembered and admired for their key contributions to Western liberalism in its formative phase. Students of French literary and cultural history will best appreciate this highly readable, if occasionally complex, narrative. Recommended for academic collections and large public libraries.

Table of Contents:

Prologue 1

1 A Chance Encounter 6

2 Prodigies 33

3 A Bold Throw 67

4 Enter the Hero 98

5 A New Order 125

6 Journey into the Unknown 155

7 Corinne and Adolphe 180

8 The Flight to Freedom 218

9 Reunion in Paris - and After 247

10 The Death of Corinne 277

Epilogue 288

Notes 301

Bibliography 319

Index 327

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Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origin of the Constitution

Author: Forrest McDonald

This is the first major interpretation of the framing of the Constitution to appear in more than two decades. Forrest McDonald, widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period, reconstructs the intellectual world of the Founding Fathers--including their understanding of law, history political philosophy, and political economy, and their firsthand experience in public affairs--and then analyzes their behavior in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in light of that world. No one has attempted to do so on such a scale before. McDonald's principal conclusion is that, though the Framers brought a variety of ideological and philosophical positions to bear upon their task of building a "new order of the ages," they were guided primarily by theiy own experience, their wisdom, and their common sense.

William and Mary Quarterly

Thoroughly impressive. A book that is consistently enlightening and one that, more than any of McDonald's previous works, stands as a monument to his remarkable talents.

Georgia Historical Quarterly

As provocative as it is difficult to put down.

The New York Times Book Review

A witty and energetic study of the ideas and passions of the Framers.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You or Babylon by Bus

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Author: Leo Tolstoy

The soul-searching book that inspired Gandhi to embrace the concept of passive resistance, Tolstoy's 1894 polemic outlines a radical, well-reasoned revision of traditional Christian thinking. The revered novelist and political thinker denounces violent revolution, calling upon readers to rely upon their inner divinity for the strength to effect social change.

See also: After Cancer Treatment or Silencing the Self

Babylon by Bus: Or, the True Story of Two Friends Who Gave Up Their Valuable Franchise Selling "Yankees Suck" T-shirts at Fenway to Find Meaning and Adventure in Iraq

Author: Ray Lemoin

and/or stickers showing their discounted price. More about bargain books

Ghosts of the Fireground or Federalist Papers

Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling of a Wildland Firefighter

Author: Peter M Leschak

A firefighter's remarkable first–hand account of the lessons of tragedy, courage and faith in the epic struggle between man and fire.

In April of 2000, on the brink of one of the most ferocious fire seasons ever recorded, Peter Leschak discovers the diary of Father Pernin, one of the few survivors of a wildfire that hit Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871. Throughout this harrowing summer, Leschak takes us through Pernin's dangerous clash with the Great Peshtigo Fire while reflecting on his own journey from the ministry to fireground leader. In so doing, Leschak captures the sacred and mysterious pull of the fireground and breathes life into one of the most astounding and little–known disasters to ever hit this country.

Ghosts of the Fireground weaves seamlessly between Father Pernin's struggle with an inferno so hot that not even the Peshtigo River guaranteed safety to Peter Leschak's breathtaking frontline battles 130 years later, offering a compelling look at the courageous and noble pursuit that is wildland firefighting.

The New Yorker

If almost no one has heard of the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, which consumed an entire Wisconsin town and killed twelve hundred people, that's because it occurred at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. But Peshtigo was a far more potent example of just how devastating and uncontrollable fire can be, which is why it fascinates the author. In this curious blend of history and autobiography, Leschak, himself a wildland firefighter, intersperses an account of the Peshtigo disaster with stories of his own experience on the fireground. The result is often formally awkward, but the material is gripping, and Leschak does an excellent job of evoking both the terror and the majesty of a raging fire. In clean, understated prose, he describes the world of the firefighter, in which endless days of waiting give way to hours of intensity and exaltation. Firefighters, Leschak suggests, may not like fires, but they're never happier than when they're in the middle of one.

Publishers Weekly

What is it about their work that makes firefighters so devoted addicted, even to the calling? Leschak (Trial by Wildfire), a 20-year veteran wildfire fighter, attempts to answer this question in his contemplative memoir. He focuses primarily on the spring of 2000, when he led a helitack crew (a rapid-response helicopter unit) battling especially fierce and persistent wildfires in western Montana. That was also when Leschak discovered the diaries of Father Peter Pernin, a survivor of the 1871 fire that leveled Peshtigo, Wis. He threads the story of the Peshtigo fire throughout the book, along with other historical facts about American forest fires and the formation of a wildfire subculture. As he describes the dangers faced by his own team, the plainspoken, articulate Leschak explores the psychology and spirituality of fire fighting particularly the exhilaration of life-threatening situations citing sources as diverse as Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy. Leschak had trained to become an evangelical minister in East Texas, and he recalls his conversion to evangelism at age 18, after listening to a radio preacher; his growing disillusionment with the narrow-mindedness of his Bible college; and his revelatory discovery of his true life' s work. In spite of its prominence in the subtitle, the story of the Peshtigo fire is woven casually and sporadically into the book; those looking for a sustained history should turn to another book on the Peshtigo fire being publishing the same month (Firestorm at Peshtigo, Forecasts, June 24). Nonetheless, Leschak' s action scenes crackle with energy, and his down-to-earth account of his spiritual quest should strike a chord with many. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

From Leschak (Letters from Side Lake, not reviewed, etc.), a good look into the mind of one wildland firefighter, his motivations and methods of operation. Though there are episodes throughout about fighting "magnificent, dangerous fires in remote and rugged terrain," what Leschak focuses on here are the questions of why he chose such a supremely high-risk job and whether he measures up to the quick-thinking, life-saving acts of Reverend Peter Pernin during the hellfire that struck Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871, killing an estimated 1,200 people and burning 1,800 square miles. Leschak, too, had trained for the ministry, but he bridled at the authoritarianism and yearned for more direct personal responsibility in his life. There's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here, from "the romantic attraction of hardship and hazard amid a corpulent society obsessed with mammon" through phrases like "grasp the hot iron," referring to a trial by fire believed by Saxons to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. It might be a stretch to say that the plain-speaking Leschak has a death wish ("I sure wouldn't want to miss it. Miss what? Let's slice to the core: miss the chance to die"), though on the daring meter he rates very high. "Action," he says, "is the crux of sentient life," and the crazy-sublime world of wildfires is just the place to find it, though he admits that "anyone who does it for the money is either desperately derelict or requires remedial arithmetic." Like Pernin, who led dozens to safety during the Peshtigo conflagration, Leschak "accepted the duty of decision" by becoming a crew chief. The urgency and drama that infuse his story never feel overstated but aptly fit the circumstances.History, danger, and courage, intriguingly rendered.

New interesting book: Rosso de novelo Realização de Excelência em Levantamento de Fundo

Federalist Papers

Author: Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist Papers--85 essays published in the winter of 1787-8 in the New York press--are some of the most crucial and defining documents in American political history, laying out the principles that still guide our democracy today. The three authors--Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay--were respectively the first Secretary of the Treasury, the fourth President, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in American history. Each had played a crucial role in the events of the American Revolution, and their essays make a compelling case for a new and united nation, governed under a written Constitution that endures to this day. The Federalist Papers are an indispensable guide to the intentions of the founding fathers and a canonical text in the development of western political thought. This is the first edition to explain the many classical, mythological, and historical references in the text, and to pay full attention to the erudition of the three authors, which enabled them to place the infant American republic in a long tradition of self-governing states.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Synopsis of The Federalist Papers

Select Bibliography

A Chronology of Events 1763-1791

Map of the United States c. 1789

The Federalist Papers 1

Appendix The Constitution of the United States (1787 and 1791) 433

Explanatory Notes 447

Thematic Index 467