John Cassidy

A critical assessment of the economic orthodoxies behind the current global financial crisis examines the growing field of behavioral economics to identify the interconnectedness of the world and how it gives way to price spikes and boom-and-bust cycles.

The Logic of Economic Calamities

How Markets Fail

The Internet stock bubble wasn't just about goggle-eyed day traderstrying to get rich on the Nasdaq and goateed twenty-five-year-olds playing wannabe Bill Gates. It was also about an America that believed it had discovered the secret of eternal prosperity: it said something about all of us, and what we thought about ourselves, as the twenty-first century dawned. John Cassidy's Dot.con brings this tumultuous episode to life. Moving from the Cold War Pentagon to Silicon Valley to Wall Street and into the homes of millions of Americans, Cassidy tells the story of the great boom and bust in an authoritative and entertaining narrative. Featuring all the iconic figures of the Internet era -- Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Steve Case, Alan Greenspan, and many others -- and with a new Afterword on the aftermath of the bust, Dot.con is a panoramic and stirring account of human greed and gullibility.

How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era

Dot.con

The San Francisco Exploratorium squeezed between the covers of a book! The "pages" reflect, magnify, or grow as you follow the instructions. Seven subjects are covered, including light wave craziness, ouchless physics, and hair dryer science.

A Kid's Science Museum in a Book

Explorabook

Juggling for the complete klutz

كيف تفشل الأسواق

David Stein

Explains how soap bubbles are formed and what can be done with them.

The Unbelievable Bubble Book

James Frey

Josephine Meckseper

Stephen Roach

Over the past ten years, the New York-based artist Josephine Meckseper has developed a practice that melds the aesthetic language of modernism with a profound critique of consumerism. Meckseper employs window displays, vitrines, installations, photographs, films and magazines to explore how consumer culture defines subjectivity. In this volume, published for her 2011 solo exhibition at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, Meckseper presents a series of new works focusing on display modes of retail environments such as car dealerships, highlighting their aesthetic overlap with mid-century modernism. Chrome car rims sit atop mirrored pedestals; sleek corporate logos populate wall assemblages; and canvases are shrinkwrapped in plastic. Meckseper's new vitrines, stocked with familiar and unfamiliar objects, function as time capsules of contemporary culture. The works in this catalogue possess a monumental quality, bearing as they do the insignia of American power and authority--flags, eagles and car logos.

Quentin Blake

This write-right-in-it book of tips, techniques, and shameless cheerleading for every want-to-be artist is like a sketchbook with training wheels. Pages of scribble-starters and what-to-draw ideas created by beloved artist Sir Quentin Blake (himself a master scribbler), create a funny, ridiculously-encouraging kids’ drawing book that proves that you can laugh and draw at the same time. Comes with: 106 page book, sketch pen, 2 watercolor pencils.

Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered

Klutz, Inc

Brendan Boyle

Offers a catalog of never-before-seen contraptions that are equal parts brilliant, useful and ridiculous, including a helium filled hide-a-bed and a tricycle-lawnmower, among other inventions that are intended to spark innovative thinking.

The Klutz Book of Inventions

More than 50 educators helped develop 21 different interactive "exhibits" on topics such as Trash, Get Lost, Meet the Humans and Earth: A Wet, Dirty, Bumpy Rock for this hands-on geography museum.

A Kids' Geography Museum in a Book

Earthsearch

This is a sceptical history of the internet/stock market boom. John Cassidy argues that what we have just witnessed wasn't simply a stock market bubble; it was a social and cultural phenomenon driven by broad historical forces. Cassidy explains how these forces combined to produce the buying hysteria that drove the prices of loss-making companies into the stratosphere. Much has been made of Alan Greenspan's phrase irrational exuberance, but Cassidy shows that there was nothing irrational about what happened. The people involved - fund managers, stock analysts, journalists and pundits - were simply acting in their own self-interest.

The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Exploratorium (Organization)

Includes activities in magnetism, light wave craziness, optical illusions, hair dryer science, and bacterial stories.

A Kids' Science Museum in a Book

The Odd, The Furry, and The Speckled

Take soccer and mix it with juggling. This book introduces the 5 basic kicks, along with various games played with a footbag. Includes information on joining the World Footbag Association.

An Illustrated Guide to the New American Footbag Games

The Hacky-Sack Book

Mike Burke

Dick Linford

Bob Volpert

Brian Chaffin

This is a collection of stories by, and usually about, river guides and outfitters. The tales focus on river related events that usually have little to do with whitewater. Many don't even take place on a river. All say a lot about the culture of guiding and the people attracted to wild places and the odd things that happen once they get there. These are the stories shared around a campfire after a day on the water. Some are funny, some sad, some quirky, but they all come from personal river experiences and lifelong friendships. Join some guides on their day off when they decide to take a raft over a dam to see if they can make it right-side up. Dive into a vast garbage dump to find the $500 drysuits you threw out with the trash from a 21 day Grand Canyon trip. Try to explain how your employees set a Forest Service employee on fire during a torch-lit dance on a picnic table. Share an evening with an outfitter who is about to lose his business because one of his guests has disappeared on a hike and has been missing all night. Get ready to set your underwear on fire if precipitation stays below average because that's how you end a drought. Take the Vice President of the United States down a river but never get him or anyone else wet. Be part of the wedding of two guides who really only wanted to sleep together but found themselves ?together forever.? Steal a bus and lead a wild chase down a mountain canyon highway looking for a group coming off the river. Drive home from the airport naked and try to sneak into the house without your wife noticing your lack of attire. Not every story is about good times. A few are tributes to friends who are no longer with us but belong around our campfire. You probably never heard their names but you will enjoy meeting them here. They told great stories. There is an odd thing that brings folks back for river trips. They usually come the first time because of the excitement of rapids and whitewater. They come back for another trip because of all the other stuff that happens. This book attempts to capture some of that magic, the memories and good times running a river with friends fosters.

Halfway to Halfway and Other River Stories

When a little girl gets trapped within a terrible storm, the mouse size creatures of Willow Creek risk paw and tail to rescue her as they are bombarded by ravenous crows, hampered by a battalion of ants, besieged by angry bees, attacked by a gruesome mole, flooded by a raging sprinkler system, and still they have yet to travel a single block. Welcome to Willow Creek, home of the rarest pups on earth; they also happen to be the most self-absorbed, neurotic, ill-mannered, chatterboxes this side of the Mississippi. But happy they are, beloved by their masters, and spoiled rotten. But when Willow comes to town, a young varmint straight out of boot camp, they are immediately put off by her toe-the-line demeanor. As tempers escalade, tragedy strikes: Willow and her young master, Misty, get stranded in Redwood City amidst a dreadful storm. To bring them home again, the pint-size varmints soar off on a dazzling adventure that is chalk full of wonder and danger. But the question remains, can these oddball creatures hold it together long enough to save the day? It is a scary world out there after all, especially when youre the perfect size to be gobbled up.

The Rise of the Feet Varmints

The Odd, the Furry, and the Speckled

Dot.Con

B. C. Rimbeaux

Comes with three aerodynamically sound beanbags and a storage bag.

Juggling for the Complete Klutz

Marco Mucciarelli

Marijan Herak

The current state-of-the-art allows seismologists to give statistical estimates of the probability of a large earthquake striking a given region, identifying the areas in which the seismic hazard is the highest. However, the usefulness of these estimates is limited, without information about local subsoil conditions and the vulnerability of buildings. Identifying the sites where a local ampli?cation of seismic shaking will occur, and identifying the buildings that will be the weakest under the seismic shaking is the only strategy that allows effective defence against earthquake damage at an affordable cost, by applying selective reinforcement only to the structures that need it. Unfortunately, too often the Earth’s surface acted as a divide between seism- ogists and engineers. Now it is becoming clear that the building behaviour largely depends on the seismic input and the buildings on their turn act as seismic sources, in an intricate interplay that non-linear phenomena make even more complex. These phenomena are often the cause of observed damage enhancement during past ear- quakes. While research may pursue complex models to fully understand soil dyn- ics under seismic loading, we need, at the same time, simple models valid on average, whose results can be easily transferred to end users without prohibitive expenditure. Very complex models require a large amount of data that can only be obtained at a very high cost or may be impossible to get at all.

Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data

Thacher Hurd

A playful guide to learning the art of watercolor painting combines storytelling with instruction and includes a complete set of watercolor paints and a brush.

John Cassidy

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