Global Warming: The Complete Briefing

John Houghton's market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of climate change and highlights the need for action on global warming. Is there evidence for climate changing due to human activities? How do we account for recent extremes of weather and climate? Can global electricity provision and transport ever be carbon free? Written by a leading figure at the forefront of action to confront humanity's most serious environmental problem, this undergraduate textbook comprehensively explores these and other issues, allowing students to think through the problem, assess the data and draw conclusions on the action that should be taken, by governments, by industry and by each and every one of us.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Fair, balanced, scientific, non-partisan, clear. - I have to take immediate issue with the [anonymous] reviews below that claim that this book doesn't address the difference between natural climate cycling and anthropogenic climate change: that difference, in a nutshell, is PRECISELY what this book deals with. Those reviewers never read it, or failed completely to follow its line of reasoning. This is NOT a partisan, political, ideological book. It is simply a guided tour of the science of climate change, revised in 2004. It carefully parses the current research. Read the table of contents [you can click on it at the top of the page] and see that the book is organized around the following inevitable questions: Is climate changing? How much is it changing? How much of that change is caused by people? What are the likely effects, short- and long-term, of these changes? What can we do about it? In the case of climate change, despite all of the political complications that have accrued to what was originally science, these questions are PRECISELY the ones a thinking person needs to ask. To have a book structured around them, referring, as it does, to the best [scientific, independently-refereed] research is a gift. It seems that almost everybody today picks their position on climate change as part of an ideological package-deal: most American conservatives almost automatically disdain the science because the Bush White House and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter disdain it. Most American progressives almost automatically embrace the NOTION of climate change without actually knowing the science, because Al Gore, et al, have told them to. Both positions, taken in ignorance of the science, are ideolgical and symptomatic of the worst party-line politics. I urge you to read the science. It will take some effort, but that effort is our civic duty. This book has no agenda other than compiling the research and putting it before the reading public in an accessible format.

By J. V. Lewis VINE VOICE on July 12, 2006

2) Informative and stimulating overview of global warming issue - This is the first book I have read on global warming. Sir John Houghton has provided a carefully written account, with good explanations, fairly thorough referencing, and informative charts and figures. The subject of global warming is presented from a multifaceted perspective, with both informative factual material as well as elements of a personal perspective, introduced in a non-forceful but persuasive manner.

The book is aimed at those who know little about climatology or global warming. It will help to have some general scientific background. The pertinent facts - how much we have increased the atmosphere's CO2 concentration, in what way this gas effects the earth's energy balance, etc. - are available here, and the information is referenced to primary scientific sources. The prognosis for a warming of the atmosphere is gently asserted in the affirmative, but the uncertainties are also presented. Without being a climatologist, I found most of my qestions of this nature were answered. The only point I was curious about but found missing was what recent changes in glaciers tell us about the present tendency of global temperature.
After presenting the data, the models and arguing gently for a moderate warming tendency, Houghton presents several nice chapters on effects (potentially severe) and responses to the problem, with a particular emphasis on energy. The suggested responses leave one with the sense that Houghton is an optimist. He incites to action, where it is hard to imagine today's politicians asking us to change our habits so fundamentally.
This book is stimulating, both on the subject of global warming (whether or not it is occurring, how much, what is our role), as well as on the potential consequences and suitable responses. Considering that a response is advisable - a point of view which Houghton advances - one is left with a sense of the large scale of the responses which are necessary to reverse the accumulation of CO2: is mankind's ability to improvise its way out of a fix capable of dealing with a problem whose solution would require changes of this magnitude?

By sinklerwl@aol.com on January 3, 1999

For Detail

                                                                  

Click –Global Warming: The Complete Briefing

Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System

The definitive story of American health care today—its causes, consequences, and confusions

In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It was the most extensive reform of America’s health care system since at least the creation of Medicare in 1965, and maybe ever. The ACA was controversial and highly political, and the law faced legal challenges reaching all the way to the Supreme Court; it even precipitated a government shutdown. It was a signature piece of legislation for President Obama’s first term, and also a ball and chain for his second.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a special adviser to the White House on health care reform, has written a brilliant diagnostic explanation of why health care in America has become such a divisive social issue, how money and medicine have their own—quite distinct—American story, and why reform has bedeviled presidents of the left and right for more than one hundred years.
Emanuel also explains exactly how the ACA reforms are reshaping the health care system now. He forecasts the future, identifying six mega trends in health that will determine the market for health care to 2020 and beyond. His predictions are bold, provocative, and uniquely well-informed. Health care—one of America’s largest employment sectors, with an economy the size of the GDP of France—has never had a more comprehensive or authoritative interpreter.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) Six Megatrends: Agree or disagree? - Ezekiel Emanuel just published an important book with a great title, "Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System." In it, he describes the history of health care reform in the US, gives an overview of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and speculates about future trends in American health care.

The concluding chapter of Emanuel's book is entitled, "Six Megatrends in Health Care: The Long-Term Impact of the ACA." I will devote this review to discussing his six "megatrends."

Megatrend 1) The End of Insurance Companies as We Know Them

Emanuel argues that health insurance companies will "shift their business to focus on offering services they have expertise in, particularly analytics, actuarial modeling, risk management, and other management services...." or "transform themselves into integrated delivery systems," or they will go out of business. This seems quite plausible. However, I think it will depend on how the ACA implementation goes over the next several years. If insurance companies raise their rates, there could be major political fallout.

Megatrend 2) VIP Care for the Chronically and Mentally Ill

Emanuel argues that "tertiary prevention" for chronically ill people with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc, and mental health care for people with depression/anxiety, will become an increasing focus of our health care system. I agree. I've taken care of many patients with chronic diseases and mental illness who cycle in and out of the hospital. The question is if our fragmented health system can provide coordinated, community-based care for these vulnerable people. Doctors and nurses must learn to use a biosocial approach when taking care of marginalized patients with chronic disease and mental illness.

Megatrend 3) The Emergence of Digital Medicine and the Closing of Hospitals

Emanuel writes: "Digital medicine will allow physicians to monitor patients remotely anywhere they are, get labs and many imaging tests done, and perform interventions once done exclusively in the hospital." I agree - sort of. We are rapidly headed into a digital era. More health care will be provided in the community, and digital devices will continue to proliferate. But will these digital devices provide value for money? Or will the hype outpace their effectiveness? Unfortunately, so far, the hype is winning.

Megatrend 4) The End of Employer-Sponsored Insurance

This controversial megatrend was analyzed in yesterday's front-page New York Times article. I think this megatrend is very difficult to predict. It depends on a number of political and economic factors. Will America's health insurance system remain constant, or will it move 1) towards a Republican system based on tax credits, or 2) towards a single payer system based on universal health coverage, or 3) a Kaiser-like group model? The latter is the most likely.

Megatrend 5) The End of Health Care Inflation

I'm definitely not an economist, but I'm not sure I agree with Emmanuel that the ACA will succeed at controlling the growth in health care costs. In his book, Emanuel admits that the ACA didn't go far enough on payment reform, and that there remains "a serious misalignment between what we want physicians and hospitals to do in terms of improving value, efficiency, and reducing unnecessary care and how insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, and others pay them." As long as our fee-for-service system is around, and Medicare payments and RVUs are biased towards specialists, the growth of health care costs won't be controlled.

Megatrend 6) The Transformation of Medical Schools

I agree with Emanuel. Medical schools must change, and become much more team-oriented, community health oriented, and digital medicine oriented. The problem is that medical school curricula are very difficult to change. Can they begin to change rapidly? I'm not sure. If they can, it will require a major awakening of medical students and faculty.
With the enormous amount of material for physicians to learn, does reducing the length of medical school from 4 years to 3 years really make sense? I don't think so. I think it would be preferable to keep medical school at 4 years and subsidize medical school tuition, or provide 100% debt forgiveness for medical students who enter primary care careers. The National Health Service Corps is a good program, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. If medical school is reduced to 3 years, will the training physicians receive really be sufficient?

By Philip Lederer on March 23, 2014

2) Excellent Overview of U.S. Health Care - American health care leads the world in costs - 18% of GDP (while excluding about 15% from insurance coverage), vs. 4% for Singapore (excluding no-one) at the low-end. It also infects 5% of hospitalized patients - of which nearly 100,000 die, and kills another estimated 44,000 - 98,000 from other hospital errors. Surely this complicated mess deserves rethinking. Unfortunately, getting from the mess we have now to something akin to the high-quality, much-lower cost care in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan has proven beyond the capability of America's legislative leaders. Decades of failed prior attempts, followed by compromise after compromise was required to even get the limited improvements afforded by the ACA when it was enacted in 2010.

Dr. Emanuel clearly likes the ACA - understandable given his role in its development. However, he minimizes trying to sell the ACA, doesn't mince words excoriating the initial ACA rollout efforts, and focuses on explaining our current complicated, dysfunctional system. I'm very hopeful that one of ACA's mandates (electronic medical records) will prove far more valuable than imagined, helping to identify important interactions, improve treatment protocols, and save lives. Improving access to care will also save lives. Similarly, encouraging the growth of accountable care organizations with bundled payments should also save lives and reduce costs by incentivizing quality improvement and removing incentives to over-treat. Finally, taxing 'Cadillac' plans will also hopefully make a dent in cost control.

An excellent and objective overview of complicated subjects.

By Loyd E. Eskildson HALL OF FAME on March 7, 2014

For Detail

                                                                  

Click –Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

New York Times Bestseller
Washington Post Bestseller

Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Stress Test is the story of Tim Geithner’s education in financial crises. 
 
As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from boom to bust to rescue to recovery. In a candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, he takes readers behind the scenes of the crisis, explaining the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions he made to repair a broken financial system and prevent the collapse of the Main Street economy. This is the inside story of how a small group of policy makers—in a thick fog of uncertainty, with unimaginably high stakes—helped avoid a second depression but lost the American people doing it. Stress Test is also a valuable guide to how governments can better manage financial crises, because this one won’t be the last.

Stress Test reveals a side of Secretary Geithner the public has never seen, starting with his childhood as an American abroad. He recounts his early days as a young Treasury official helping to fight the international financial crises of the 1990s, then describes what he saw, what he did, and what he missed at the New York Fed before the Wall Street boom went bust. He takes readers inside the room as the crisis began, intensified, and burned out of control, discussing the most controversial episodes of his tenures at the New York Fed and the Treasury, including the rescue of Bear Stearns; the harrowing weekend when Lehman Brothers failed; the searing crucible of the AIG rescue as well as the furor over the firm’s lavish bonuses; the battles inside the Obama administration over his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan to end the crisis; and the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in more than seventy years. Secretary Geithner also describes the aftershocks of the crisis, including the administration’s efforts to address high unemployment, a series of brutal political battles over deficits and debt, and the drama over Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss. 

Secretary Geithner is not a politician, but he has things to say about politics—the silliness, the nastiness, the toll it took on his family. But in the end, Stress Test is a hopeful story about public service. In this revealing memoir, Tim Geithner explains how America withstood the ultimate stress test of its political and financial systems.

Author -

TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER was the seventy-fifth secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He wrote this book as a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) An honest account - I worked with Geithner at the NY Fed. I was a bit player present at many of the meetings and calls described.

I imagine most ratings will reflect their predisposition to the actions taken by the Fed and Treasury during the crisis. I did not come here to debate those.

I merely came to state that the book is an honest account of how Tim and the rest of us thought during the events described. This is what he believed, and what we believed. I cannot comment on the accounts from Treasury, though they correspond with what I annecdotally heard at the time.

By Brian L Peters on May 14, 2014

2) Beaten like a red haired stepchild - And, Geithner still seems shell shocked. He does a much better job framing the crisis in the book than in real time. But he still doesn't do an a sufficient job of conveying the crushing impact of market panic. It was the kind of fear that you can smell.

His major error is not emphasizing just how small the differences are between market based traditional bankruptcy, bailouts, and nationalization. With nationalization, the owners/shareholders are wiped out as well as some of the bondholders. In traditional bankruptcy, the owners/shareholders are wiped out and bondholders are usually wiped out or take a serious haircut. With partial nationalization (bailouts) including TARP and other guarantee programs, shareholders were either totally wiped out or lost 90% of their investment in the weakest banks. The shareholders of the stronger banks suffered dilution of their ownership through TARP fees, mandatory warrants, and Treasury imposed capital raises.

1/4 to 1/3 of the largest financial firms were effectively nationalized. The owners/shareholders were wiped out. The ONLY difference was the treatment of bond holders, who did better under the TARP and other backstop programs. And these bondholders weren't hedge funds or investment bankers. Hedge funds wouldn't touch low yield bank debt. It was owned by Pension Funds, bond mutual funds, ordinary people and institutions that look more like the president of your local branch bank then anyone on Wall Street.

Partial nationalization. If you don't believe it, ask Ralph Nader. "Nader has been arguing the government needs to recognize the rights of shareholders, instead of sending all the profits of the GSEs to the Treasury, aside from minimal capital buffers." Yes Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were bailed out. But the owners/shareholders weren't bailed out. Nader complains that all the profits were sent to the taxpayer. Per Nader, "... they sensed that this would help keep the deficit down -- that this huge Niagara of profits would --and they were right on that." That 'huge Niagara went to the TAXPAYERS.

Geithner was beaten like a red haired stepchild. And he plays defense in this book.

The story he didn't spell out in 18 point type is:

1. TARP had a positive return of $billions. Which went to the taxpayer.
2. A huge portion of the financial system WAS effectively nationalized Bear Sterns, WaMu, Wachovia, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 80% of Citi, 92% of AIG and small chunks of the institutions that were required to increase capital by Geithner's stress test.
3. When the Fed and Treasury acted, markets that had been worshiped since the breakup of the USSR -- failed. For a market system to work, markets need to be relatively efficient, liquid and deep. These characteristics, which were plausible prior to panic, were proven to be illusory.
4. The greed of the prior decade was reversed and replaced by the ice cold sweat of fear. Financial markets were frozen and our economy went into free fall.
5. Geithner won. The Fed, Treasury, and both Bush and Obama saved the country from Great Depression 2.0.

The misnamed bailout didn't bail out the owners of weak financial firms. It bailed out the rest of the country, including iconic American brands like Harley Davidson. Harley (ticker symbol HOG) is the only brand in history whose most loyal customers get tattooed with the brand name permanently and prominently. In early 2009, it was simply unable to finance sales to customers with good credit. It was choking on loans that couldn't be sold into frozen markets. Geithner's TALF broke that logjam and prevented businesses from disintegrating. Anyone that doesn't believe this should simply look it up.

Yes Geithner said it.

But he should have said it more like this. With conviction.

By Generic Guy on May 19, 2014

For Detail

                                                                  

Click –Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

Business adventures

From Wall Street to Main Street, John Brooks, longtime contributor to the New Yorker, brings to life in vivid fashion twelve classic and timeless tales of corporate and financial life in America

What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety; these notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.

Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history repeats itself.

Five additional stories on equally fascinating subjects round out this wonderful collection that will both entertain and inform readers . . . Business Adventures is truly financial journalism at its liveliest and best.

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) It's Great to Have This Title Back - Back in the Late Bronze Age, aka the 1970s, I discovered John Brooks and his marvelous accounts of Wall Street and USAmerican business. Brooks died in 1993, and his books have been half-forgotten. I'm very pleased to see this title rereleased in digital format, and I hope all his works are appear soon as eBooks.

This book casts a wide net over the USAmerican business and investing scene, always with with and insight. There's a lot to be learned here, as Brooks examines the three-day stock market mini-crash of 1962, how Ford lost a bundle on the Edsel, how GE broke the anti-trust laws, how Xerox became very wealthy (later, Xerox became very broke, but that was after this article) . . . all great stuff.

Rereading these after forty years, I'm impressed with Brooks ability to get to the bottom of things, especially when there is no "bottom". Why did the New York Stock exchange lose over 5% one day in 1962, then rally suddenly? No one really knows, but Brooks examines the chaos of that day, and dissects the explanations offered after the fact — while noting that BEFORE the fact, none of the explainers had a clue what was about to happen. Interspersed are comments from THE first book ever written on stock markets, "Confusion of Confusions", by Josseph Penso de la Vega (no product link; apparently Amazon doesn't want to use its reviews to sell books other than the one being reviewed anymore). Brooks demonstrates how little has changed over the centuries.

And so it goes through the rest of the essays. Facts and insight, presented with wit, charm, and grace. Highly recommended.
By Stephen M. St Onge on July 13, 2014


2) Anecdotes on Business - I had heard, as I think everyone else has, that Business Adventures was a favorite book of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. I read the ebook, and I understand a print version will be forthcoming in September.

This book makes me feel as though I'm sitting at the knee of my grandfather, listening to wise recollections.
A writer of articles in the 1950's and 1960, many for the New Yorker, the author intelligently and thoughtfully steps through 12 events, one per chapter.

At first I thought perhaps I was particularly dense and wasn't getting the message. What held these stories together? Eventually, I realized that the author is not driving home a point, selling anything, or giving advice. His observations leave room for the reader to consider events, their connections, their parallels to today, the importance of character, and the question of morality in business. It was refreshing not to be told what to think.

I enjoyed the stories of Ford's Edsel, Piggly Wiggly, Xerox, Goodrich vs Latex.

The chapter on the federal income tax is particularly relevant, given the wide-spread debate about taxes and modern conversations about the 1%.

John Brooks' perspective is firmly rooted in the past, when the book was written, and provides readers opportunity for a sense of omniscience since we can consider ramifications the author himself could not be aware of, at that time.

Times may change. People do not.

By H. Roulo on July 19, 2014

For Detail

                                                                  

Click – 

Business adventures

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have opened their pocketbooks in hopes of eradicating the scourge. How does a parasitic disease that we've known how to prevent for more than a century still infect three hundred million people every year, killing nearly one million of them? In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer this question, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.

Author -

Sonia Shah is a science writer and critically acclaimed author whose writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, New Scientist and elsewhere. Her latest book is "The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years" from Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (July 2010).

Her prize-winning 2006 drug industry exposé, The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients (New Press), has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a tautly argued study...a trenchant exposé...meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence," and as "important [and] powerful" by The New England Journal of Medicine. The book, which international bestselling novelist and The Constant Gardener author John Le Carré called "an act of courage," has enjoyed wide international distribution, including French, Japanese, and Italian editions. The Library Journal named it one of the best consumer health books of 2006.

Her 2004 book, Crude: The Story of Oil (Seven Stories), was acclaimed as "brilliant" and "beautifully written" by The Guardian and "required reading" by The Nation, and has been widely translated, from Japanese, Greek, and Italian to Bahasa Indonesia. Her "raw and powerful" (Amazon.com) 1997 collection, Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire, still in print after 10 years, continues to be required reading at colleges and universities across the country.

Shah's writing, based on original reportage from around the world, from India and South Africa to Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, and Australia, has been featured on current affairs shows around the United States, as well as on the BBC and Australia's Radio National. A frequent keynote speaker at political conferences, Shah has lectured at universities and colleges across the country, including Columbia's Earth Institute, MIT, Harvard, Brown, Georgetown and elsewhere. Her writing on human rights, medicine, and politics have appeared in a range of magazines from Playboy, Salon, and Orion to The Progressive and Knight-Ridder. Her television appearances include A&E and the BBC, and she's consulted on many documentary film projects, from the ABC to Channel 4 in the UK. Shah is a former writing fellow of The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation.

Shah was born in 1969 in New York City to Indian immigrants. Growing up, she shuttled between the northeastern United States where her parents practiced medicine and Mumbai and Bangalore, India, where her extended working-class family lived, developing a life-long interest in inequality between and within societies. She holds a BA in journalism, philosophy, and neuroscience from Oberlin College, and lives with molecular ecologist Mark Bulmer and their two sons Zakir and Kush. 

SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –

1) A brilliant synthesis of a complicated subject - Malaria is not something most of us think about in-depth unless traveling to an area where the disease is common. However, this incredible book makes an excellent argument for why we should. The author manages to magically transform volumes of scientific information into a riveting tale that just about anyone will enjoy.

Ms. Shah traces the very complex history of malaria from the beginning of human/mosquito interaction, and covers a range of related topics including the routes of infection and transmission; why certain areas and populations are more susceptible to malaria; the role of war, technology, and industry in sparking the disease; and why the efforts to control or at least contain it have not been universally successful. The book is meticulously sourced (at least 30% of the text consists of the references listed at the end of the book and footnoted within each chapter), but is not dry in the least.

The book reads like fiction, and it's too bad that it's not. The author leaves the reader with a very well-developed sense that the merest change in environmental conditions can leave us all susceptible to the next wave of malaria. I recommend this book strongly to just about anyone, but particularly for those who are interested in medical history and public health.

By EJ on July 19, 2010

2) Loved it! - This was a great read... So insightful. It's the perfect book for people who love non-fiction, but may feel a bit overwhelmed by a book like Guns Germs and Steel. That is not to say that Diamond and those types doesn't have a place. However, someone who would never take a text book on vacation for personal reading, but still likes an informative educational book that is well written and light enough to keep your attention throughout may find 'The Fever' to be a good fit. It is definitely deep enough to educate and make you feel like you've learned and stretched your knowledge base. Even more so if you are a fan of medical history, or even just history in general.

By Jessica E. Sims on October 10, 2010

For Detail

                                                                  

Click –The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years