Economics: Efficiency vs Company Responsiveness and a Re-Evaluation of Economic Theories

Controversial writings about new and revised economic theory, analysis from professors at some of the top universities in the world on the recent economic downturn, and a reevaluation of what the best minds in the history of economics have to offer us.

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (BOOK): by Richard A. Posner

A surprising volume that explains what happened to the banking system and economy in terms the lay reader can easily understand...[Posner's] critique is bracing, all the more so because it comes from a right-leaning thinker normally hostile to the ministrations of government bureaucrats. –Paul M. Barrett, Washington Post Book World

Before seeking political asylum in free-market Hong Kong, consider reading a new book that critiques what went wrong with capitalism, written in order to save it. Judge Richard Posner's A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression is noteworthy. As a longtime University of Chicago professor and father of the free-market-based law-and-economics movement, Judge Posner makes an unlikely critic of capitalism. But as author of some 40 books and as the most frequently cited federal appeals court jurist, he is also one of our most original and clearheaded thinkers. –L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal

Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World (BOOK): by Michael Hugos

The relentless pursuit of industrial efficiency no longer yields the profits it once did because it requires a level of business predictability that no longer exists. Instead, the Internet and global video and telecom systems provide a massive and continuous flow of data that causes the whole world to behave like a giant stock market, with all the volatility and uncertainty that goes along with such markets. Responsiveness now trumps efficiency.

By being responsive to the evolving needs and desires of specific groups of customers, companies can wrap their products and services in a tailored blanket of value-added services to consistently earn an additional four percent or more gross margin than they would otherwise earn for the product or service alone. This customer and market specialization is the most promising and the most sustainable source of profits in our fluid, real-time economy.

Invitation to Economics: Understanding Argument and Policy (BOOK): by Thomas Mayer

“This well-written, clearly organized book presents a nontechnical, overarching view of economic theory and how it gets applied and interpreted”—Choice Reviews, June 2009

"I wish I had read a book of this kind when I started studying economics. It is more than an introduction to economics--it is an introduction to economic thinking."–Facundo Albornoz-Crespo, University of Birmingham

“Mayer’s work is a timely discussion of behavioral economics and other movements within the field. His comments on the subprime mortgage crisis in particular provide the book with an up-to-date flavor.”–Brandon Dupont, Western Washington University

Economics 2.0: What the Best Minds in Economics can Teach You about Business and Life (Okonomie 2.0. English translation) (BOOK): by Norbert Haring and Olaf Storbeck

"Economics 2.0 is a very readable and timely collection by two of Europe's best economic journalists, covering topics that range from the nature of happiness to the origins of the current financial crisis. Each chapter seamlessly blends field research in the Freakonomics tradition with laboratory research, and entertains while it enlightens." –Daniel Friedman, Professor of Economics, US Santa Cruz and author: Moral and Markets

"The nature of economic research has changed drastically over the last years, revoking the mantra of rationality, exploring creative new data sources, and venturig into topics far from the classical bundle of themes. This book provides a very entertaining and insightful overview of where modern economic stands today." --Ulrike Malmendier, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (BOOK): by George Soros

"Totally compelling. They're wrong about oil, by George. In short, the standard economic assumption that supply and demand drive prices is only a starting point for understanding financial markets. In boom-bust cycles, the textbook theory is not just slightly inaccurate but totally wrong. This is the main argument made by George Soros in his fascinating book on the credit crunch, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, launched at an LSE lecture last night." — BBC Business editor Robert Peston

"The next generation of economists will have to understand financial bubbles rather than ignore them, as Greenspan and his fellow central bankers have done. They would be well advised to give Soros's theory of reflexivity serious consideration."—the Times

The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers (BOOK): by Mark Skousen

A candid, irreverent, passionate, sometimes humorous and often highly opinionated account of the lives and theories of famous economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. The author's unique view compares the development of economic thought to the construction of a building, designating Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations as the foundation. He contends that Smith's philosophy of natural liberty and the invisible hand was a sound foundation that created a new era of wealth and economic growth spanning two centuries. With the inclusion of photographs, diagrams, commentaries, and even appropriate music selections, each chapter is devoted to a major economist and his theories, showing how he added to or detracted from Smith's positions. Skousen ends on an optimistic note even as fighting continues over which economic policies to pursue in times of crisis, uncertainty, and globalization. –Mary Whaley, American Library Association

The Making of Modern Economics is a reference bible. What an absolutely ideal gift for college students. –The National Review

Film: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss

(DVD): Stephen Spielberg, Cableman Roy Neary is one of several people who experience a close encounter of the first kind, witnessing UFOs flying through the night sky. He is subsequently haunted by a mountainlike image in his head and becomes obsessed with discovering what it represents, putting severe strain on his marriage. Meanwhile, government agents around the world have a close encounter of the second kind, discovering physical evidence of otherworldly visitors in the form of military vehicles that went missing decades ago suddenly appearing in the middle of nowhere. Roy and the agents both follow the clues they have been given to reach a site where they will have a close encounter of the third kind: contact.

Education: New Teaching Theory, Also New Ways to Teach Writing and Vocabulary to Your Students

Education Majors - know the latest in Teaching Theory, Classroom Assessment Strategies, and how to Teach Writing and Vocabulary. Make your students well rounded!

Chaos in the Classroom: A New Theory of Teaching and Learning (BOOK): by Elizabeth Jane Davis, Thomas J. Smith and Dorothy Leflore

This book combines cognitive learning theory, constructivist learning theory, brain-based learning theory with chaos theory to create an entirely new theory of learning. It shows how the four theories share mutual principles that explain many of the gaps in our understanding of the learning process. The authors take the reader through each of the theories and explain their overlapping principles. Using examples from actual classrooms from elementary school to graduate school, they show how an understanding of the new learning theory helps create the conditions necessary for critical thinking and deep understanding of content. The last chapter is a play-by-play set of instructions for creating chaos in your own classroom.

Comprehension Assessment: A Classroom Guide (BOOK): by JoAnne Schudt Caldwell

"Caldwell offers teachers a logical and comprehensive means for gauging comprehension growth. Using a multidimensional approach that mirrors the ways in which comprehension is fostered, Caldwell lays out a clear argument for moving fluidly between instruction and assessment. Each chapter features information on how to apply these assessment principles within a response-to-intervention program, making it a timely addition to every teacher’s professional library. I recommend this book for graduate-level reading assessment courses."—Nancy Frey, PhD, School of Teacher Education, San Diego State University

"Caldwell captures the complex nature of comprehension while providing easily accessible examples that are relevant to teachers. Unique to this book is Caldwell’s attention to how educators can use content-free dialogue and think-alouds as part of the comprehension assessment process. This book is a wonderful resource for literacy graduate courses and practicing educators, since Caldwell assists teachers and reading specialists as they make informed comprehension assessment decisions. I will likely use this book in the future for graduate courses."—Katherine Hilden, PhD, School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Radford University

Crafting Writers, K-6 (BOOK): by Elizabeth Hale

Most of us know good writing when we read it, but writing teachers need to know what makes it work. Filled with easy-to-use charts, and practical lessons, Crafting Writers, K–6 provides clear insight into identifying and teaching the small elements that make good writing successful.

Creating Robust Vocabulary: Frequently Asked Questions and Extended Examples (BOOK): by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown and Linda Kucan

"If you don't already belong to a teachers-as-readers group, this book is reason to start one. The authors expand on the fundamentals that made their Bringing Words to Life such a treasure. They provide practical and specific ideas that will increase your knowledge of the 'what,' 'when,' and 'how' of vocabulary instruction, supported throughout by explanations that will stretch your thinking about the 'why.' Motivated by concerns raised by real teachers, this book contains everything you wanted to know about robust vocabulary instruction."—Mary E. Curtis, PhD, Director, Center for Special Education, Lesley University

"Get out your highlighter when you read Creating Robust Vocabulary! The authors discuss why a robust vocabulary is essential to comprehension and how to enrich vocabulary instruction. This is one professional book you will really enjoy using--I couldn't put it down. Reading this book felt like having a marvelous conversation with the authors; they answered all my vocabulary-related questions, plus ones I didn't know I had. This invaluable, teacher-friendly resource inspired me to start implementing the robust vocabulary strategies with my first graders today, and they loved it!"—Ann Uzendoski, MS, first-grade teacher, Highwood Hills Elementary School, St. Paul, Minnesota

Education: Teaching Reading Through Comic Books and Preparing Your Classroom for the Future (all grades)

New ways to teach reading, taking a look at the history behind our education system, futurizing your classroom, and assessment based education.

Adventures in Graphica: Using Comics and Graphic Novels to Teach Comprehension, Grades 2-6 (BOOK): by Terry Thompson

Comic books and graphic novels, known collectively as "graphica," have long been popular with teenagers and adults. Recently graphica has grown in popularity with younger readers as well, motivating and engaging some of our most reluctant readers who often shun traditional texts. While some teachers have become curious about graphica's potential, many are confused by the overwhelming number of new titles and series, in both fiction and nonfiction, and are unsure of its suitability and function in their classrooms.

Drawing on his own success using graphica with elementary students, literacy coach Terry Thompson introduces reading teachers to this popular medium and suggests sources of appropriate graphica for the classroom and for particular students. Taking cues from research that supports the use of graphica with students, Terry shows how this exciting medium fits into the literacy framework and correlates with best practices in comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency instruction. Adventures in Graphica contains numerous, easy-to-replicate, instructional strategies, including examples of how graphic texts can be used to create a bridge as students transfer abstract comprehension strategies learned through comics and graphic novels to traditional texts.

American Education: A History (BOOK): by Wayne J. Urban and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr.

Now in its fourth edition, American Education: A History is the best general history of American education in print today. With twelve chapters containing material ranging from Native American education in pre-colonial America to the advent of No Child Left Behind at the turn of the twenty-first-century, Urban and Wagoner’s textbook presents a comprehensive survey of American educational history that is unparalleled.--Jeffrey Aaron Snyder, Education Review, September 2009

Anticipate the School You Want: Futurizing K-12 Education (BOOK): by Arthur B. Shostak

How can you make sure that your classroom and students stay ahead of the curve? Anticipating can help your class be an effective propulsion point in the lives of students. As a teacher, our abilities to adapt will translate into our student’s quality of education.

Assessment-Centered Teaching: A Reflective Practice (BOOK): by Kathryn DiRanna

"All assessment is formative-what a great idea! Here's a resource to take you from good assessment ideas to good assessment practices. Building on the work of many assessment and professional development experts, DiRanna and her colleagues have created a reasoned and realistic guide to assessment-centered teaching that is grounded in the realities of the classroom and that aspires to greater student learning." –Elizabeth K. Stage, Director, Lawrence Hall of Science

"An excellent and timely resource for administrators, teachers, teacher educators, and inservice professionals. This book sheds light on the all-too-often missing link in teaching and learning: formative assessment. Applicable across subject areas and grade levels, this resource provides a very helpful balance of educational vision and rationale, practical tools and procedural guidance, and compelling stories of transformed instruction in teachers’ own words."—Pamela Aschbacher, Director of Research and Evaluation

"Makes practical the notion that teaching, learning, and assessment go hand-in-hand. Good teaching activities make good assessment tasks and vice versa. The reflective practitioner, as envisioned in this book, uses assessment information to re-engage students and move them along a progression of learning. This is a valuable book for practitioners who wish to improve their teaching and their students’ learning, and for researchers concerned with putting ideas of formative assessment into teaching practice.”—Richard J. Shavelson, Margaret Jack Professor of Education

Nutrition: Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism: Fat and Finland?

Full issues of electronic journals available in EBSCO. The August 2009 Supplement 1. Vol. 54 is focused on the importance of fat. These recent surveys, studies and discoveries in this journal are shaping how we will think and act towards the consumption of fat.


Fat and Heart Disease: Yes We Can Make a Change – The Case of North Karelia (Finland).

The exceptionally high mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the Finnish population in the 1970s ensued the initiation of preventive health interventions, which were first started in the Province of North Karelia and later on extended to all other regions of Finland. Their aim was to change population diets, especially with respect to the quality of fat: to reduce saturated and increase unsaturated fat intake. In addition, emphasis was placed on increased vegetable intake and salt reduction. The aim of this paper was to illustrate the effect of combined efforts of several stakeholders on CVD.

Consumer Perception and Insights on Fats and Fatty Acids: Knowledge on the Quality of Diet Fat.

Research indicates that consumers do not understand dietary fat, either the importance of the quality or the quantity of fats needed for health. Previous consumer surveys suggest the priority placed on fat in various nutrition communications (i.e., low fat or reduction in fats) has contributed to this confusion. Methods: This consumer study was carried out in 16 countries in two waves, investigating in total 6,426 subjects. The survey was conducted by phone, internet and face-to-face interviews, depending on the acceptable method for the population. Participants, aged 18–70 years, were the main family shopper.

Foods with a High Fat Quality Are Essential for Healthy Diets.

Fat is generally a highly valued element of the diet to provide energy, palatability to dry foods or to serve as a cooking medium. However, some foods rich in fat have a low fat quality with respect to nutrition, i.e., a relative high content of saturated (SFA) as compared to unsaturated fatty acids, whereas others have a more desirable fat quality, i.e., a relative high content of unsaturated fatty acids as compared to SFA. High-fat dairy products and fatty meats are examples of foods with low fat quality, whereas vegetable oils (tropical oils such as palm and coconut oil excluded) are products with a generally high fat quality. The aim of this paper is to explore the nutritional impact of products made of vegetable oils, e.g. margarines and dressings, and how they can be designed to contribute to good health. Since their first industrial production, the food industry has endeavored to improve products like margarines, including their nutritional characteristics. With evolving nutrition science, margarines and cooking products, and to a lesser extent dressings, have been adapted to contain less trans fatty acids (TFA), less SFA and more essential (polyunsaturated, PUFA) fatty acids. This has been possible by using careful fat and oil selection and modification processes. By blending vegetable oils rich in the essential PUFAs α-linolenic acid (vegetable omega–3) or linoleic acid (omega–6), margarines and dressings with both essential fatty acids present in significant quantities can be realized. In addition, full hydrogenation and fat rearrangement have enabled the production of cost-effective margarines virtually devoid of TFA and low in SFA. Dietary surveys indicate that vegetable oils, soft margarines and dressings are indeed often important sources of essential fatty acids in people’s diets, whilst providing negligible amounts of TFA and contributing modestly to SFA intakes. Based on empirical and epidemiological data, the public health benefit of switching from products with a low fat quality to products with a high fat quality can be predicted. For example, switching from butter or palm oil to a soft margarine shows a substantial improvement in the nutritional quality of the diet. These simple, practical dietary adaptations can be expected to contribute to the healthy growth and development of children and to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.

Dietary Fat Intake – A Global Perspective. The objective of this review was to collect data on the dietary intake of total fat and saturated (SFA), monounsaturated (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), especially linoleic (LA), α-linolenic (ALA), eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic fatty acids, in adults from various countries and to compare them with current recommendations for fat intake. Methods: Weighted mean intake data were collected from national dietary surveys, large cross-sectional studies and/or studies with focus on health and nutrition. Thereof, only studies with diet recalls, weighing records or food frequency questionnaires were considered.

The List of Nutrition Journals Available through EBSCO

History: The Rockefellers and the Evolution of Civilization

Axillary Sciences of History studying the changes of "Civilization" and the inner conflicts of the Rockefeller family.

The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (BOOK): by Brett Bowden

From the Crusades to the colonial era to the global war on terror, this sweeping volume exposes “civilization” as a stage-managed account of history that legitimizes imperialism, uniformity, and conformity to Western standards, culminating in a liberal-democratic global order. Along the way, Bowden explores the variety of confrontations and conquests—as well as those peoples and places excluded or swept aside—undertaken in the name of civilization. Concluding that the “West and the rest” have more commonalities than differences, this provocative and engaging book ultimately points the way toward an authentic inter-civilizational dialogue that emphasizes cooperation over clashes.

"A timely and significant book that advances our understanding not only of how the discourse of civilization emerged after 1492 and crystallized during the Enlightenment but, above all, how it continues to structure contemporary world politics. Bowden develops a unique multi-disciplinary approach that speaks directly to international relations, international law, and political theory. The book deserves to find its place alongside other key texts written by the likes of Richard Tuck, James Tully, and Antony Anghie."-John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization

"This is an extremely erudite book that clearly illustrates Brett Bowden's mastery of a wide variety of philosophical and historical sources. There is a lot of very interesting material here that is of enormous relevance to any contemporary intellectual reader attempting to place the concepts of `civilization' and `civilizations' in their proper historical contexts."-Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, School of International Service, American University

The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America (BOOK): by Robert F. Dalzell, Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell

The Dalzells (George Washington's Mount Vernon) cover five generations of Rockefellers, focusing on the patriarch (called Senior here) and his son (Junior), at least as far as the mansion is concerned, while taking a stab at linking it to issues surrounding American country houses of the Gilded Age. What was different about Kykuit, the Dalzells claim, was the Rockefellers' moral aspirations, their insistence that the house be not only useful and fashionable, but good. Clean prose keeps things moving, but only the most serious Rockefeller devotees will pore over long passages detailing the process of drawing up blueprints, hiring interior decorators and strategizing housekeeping. The Dalzells chronicle every tussle over control of the house's planning between Junior and Senior and, later, between Nelson and his four brothers over Nelson's overflowing art collection. Several fine biographies exist to satisfy readers' curiosity about the Rockefeller family, and it's questionable whether there's nearly as much inherent interest in Kykuit as in Mount Vernon, the George Washington home that draws 20 times as many visitors.

Music: Arcangelo Corelli, Violin Sonatas, for Violin and Continuo

Sonatas, Violin, Continuo, Op. 5, Twelve Violin Sonatas, Op. 5 (CD): Corelli, Arcangelo, 1653-1713

Corelli's dedications of his Sonatas mark his progress among the great patrons of Rome. He dedicated his first set of twelve Church Sonatas, Opus 1, published in 1681, to Queen Christina, describing the work as the first fruits of his studies. His second set of trio Sonatas, Chamber Sonatas, Opus 2, was published in 1685 with a dedication to a new patron, Cardinal Pamphili, whose service he entered in 1687, with the violinist Fornari and cellist Lulier. A third set of trio sonatas, a second group of twelve Church Sonatas, Opus 3, was issued in 1689, with a dedication to Francesco II of Modena, and a final set of a dozen Chamber Sonatas, Opus 4, was published in 1694 with a dedication to a new patron, Cardinal Ottoboni, the young nephew of Pope Alexander VIII, after Cardinal Pamphili's removal in 1690 to Bologna. Cardinal Ottoboni became Corelli's main patron, who made it possible for Corelli to pursue his career without monetary worries, and it would seem that no composer has ever had a more devoted or understanding patron.