A star White House journalist provides a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, the in-boxes, and the super-sharp minds of the pedigreed propeller heads who attempted to guide President Obama out of a global economic crisis.

Each day, Donald Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University, writes a letter to the editor of a major American publication. Often, he writes in response to an absurdity offered up by a columnist or politician, or an eye-catching factoid misleadingly taken out of context. This collection, comprised of one hundred of Boudreaux's best letters, provides intelligent, witty rejoinders to questions like these:

- Are taxes "really just prices"? (New York Times)
- Does the Tea Party suffer from a "fatuous infatuation" with the Constitution? (Washington Post)
- Is it "obvious" that "if there are fewer guns, there are fewer shootings and fewer funerals" (New Orleans Times-Picayune)
- Has "slowing population growth" proven to be "critical to long-term economic growth"? (Wall Street Journal)

Without swearing allegiance to any party or ideology, Boudreaux takes aim at pundits and politicos on the left, right, and everywhere between. He tackles issues ranging from "lookism" in the office and the futility of border walls to naive faith in alternative energy and the all-too-common tendency to trust a fallible and ever-expanding government.

Half-truths and Hypocrites won't change the deeply held convictions of readers. But it will entertain them, enlighten them, and sharpen their eye for shaky facts, faulty reasoning, and intellectual dishonesty--all of which are threats to a free, prosperous country.

This bestselling and hilarious book blew the doors off Wall Street's boardrooms and introduced the world to the writing of Michael Lewis. In this shrewd and wickedly funny book, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton?) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call. With the eye and ear of a born storyteller, Michael Lewis shows us how things really worked on Wall Street. In the Salomon training program a roomful of aspirants is stunned speechless by the vitriolic profanity of the Human Piranha; out on the trading floor, bond traders throw telephones at the heads of underlings and Salomon chairman Gutfreund challenges his chief trader to a hand of liar's poker for one million dollars; around the world in London, Tokyo, and New York, bright young men like Michael Lewis, connected by telephones and computer terminals, swap gross jokes and find retail buyers for the staggering debt of individual companies or whole countries. The bond traders, wearing greed and ambition and badges of honor, might well have swaggered straight from the pages of Bonfire of the Vanities. But for all their outrageous behavior, they were in fact presiding over enormous changes in the world economy. Lewis's job, simply described, was to transfer money, in the form of bonds, from those outside America who saved to those inside America who consumed. In doing so, he generated tens of millions of dollars for Salomon Brothers, and earned for himself a ringside seat on the greatest financial spectacle of the decade: the leveraging of America. - Publisher.

Met o.a. liedteksten

Geschiedenis, techniek, stijlkenmerken en achtergronden van het oosterse tapijt.

Wat als? geeft hilarische en informatieve antwoorden op belangrijke vragen waar je nooit aan zou denken.

De voorlaatste biografie van Guido Gezelle verscheen in 1923-24 geschreven door de Vlaming A. Walgrave.

Bloemlezing uit de jaren 1929-1940 en een interview met de schrijver uit 1936.

Onderzoek naar het joodse aspect in het werk van 19 bekende joodse kunstenaars uit de 19e en 20e eeuw. Eeuwenlang weerhield het tweede van de tien geboden kunstenaars uit de Joodse gemeenschap ervan mensen af te beelden. En de enkeling die het toch deed, bleef anoniem. Net als de overige Joodse kunstenaars, die vooral religieuze attributen en boekrollen vervaardigden, in de anonimiteit, want het ging er vooral om God te eren. Bovendien was de maatschappelijke positie van Joden in de diaspora (afgezonderd en buitengesloten, vaak opgesloten in ghetto's) er niet naar bekend te worden buiten de eigen kring.

Dankzij de Franse revolutie is hier verandering in gekomen. De Joden werden vrij, kregen gelijke rechten en begonnen deel te nemen in deel te nemen in de cultuur van de landen waar ze woonden. Verschillende toonaangevende kunstenaars zijn inmiddels uit hun midden opgestaan.

Kunsthistorica Ruth le Febvre-Feld bespreekt in dit boek dat betrekkelijk nieuwe verschijnsel: de Joodse kunstenaar of architect, die bekend is en beroemd en deel uitmaakt van het culturele leven. Aan de orde komen grote namen als Chagall, Isra en Libeskind maar ook een aantal toonaangevende Isra sche kunstenaars, inclusief de Bauhaus-architecten van Tel Aviv en de bewoners van het kunstenaarsdorp Ein Hod.

Overzicht van de ontwikkeling van de krantencolumn in Nederland, Frankrijk en de Verenigde Staten.

Kritische beschouwingen over de Amerikaanse politiek onder het presidentschap van George W. Bush en uiteenlopende facetten van de Amerikaanse samenleving.

Verslag van een journalistieke speurtocht naar inhoud en achtergronden van Annie M. G. Schmidts (1912-1995) werk voor de media: hoorspel, tv-series, cabaret, toneel, musical en opera.

Autobiografie van de joodse journalist (1928- ) over zijn leven in Poolse concentratiekampen, in het naoorlogse communistische Polen en in Israël.

Herinneringen van de jongste broer van de schrijvers Thomas Mann (1875-1955) en Heinrich Mann (1871-1950) aan zijn familie.

Biografie van de Vlaamse schrijver (1882-1960).

The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

De eerste volledige en authentieke geschiedenis van ontstaan en gevolgen van het Stalinisme

Bundel essays over een breed scala aan onderwerpen waarover de historicus (1943) zijn veelal non-conformistische meningen uit.

No one has more authority to call the shots the way they really are than Paul Krugman, whose provocative New York Times columns are keenly followed by millions. One of the world's most respected economists, Krugman has been named America's most important columnist by the Washington Monthly and columnist of the year by Editor and Publisher magazine.

In this long-awaited work containing Krugman's most influential columns along with new commentary, he chronicles how the boom economy unraveled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, how fiscal responsibility collapsed. From his account of the secret history of the California energy crisis to his devastating dissections of dishonesty in the Bush administration, Krugman tells the uncomfortable truth about how the United States lost its way. And he gives us the road map we will need to follow if we are to get the country back on track.

The story of this storm in the global markets is the story of how government intervention to solve previous crises laid the foundation for a new one, writes Johan Norberg in his important new book. Tracing the causes of our current financial crisis with liveliness and clarity, Financial Fiasco shows the mistakes made in Washington, on Wall Street, and in communities across America that led to the economic meltdown. While many analysts have placed the blame solely on Wall Street, Norberg exposes the crucial role government regulation played in creating the opportunities and incentives that led to the financial collapse. In six concise chapters, Financial Fiasco tells the complex story of the crisis, showing how monetary policy, housing policy, and financial innovations combined to create financial catastrophe. The final two chapters describe the government's mismanagement of the crisis and how we are now dangerously repeating many of the very same mistakes that caused it. An understanding of the roots of the financial crisis is crucial for every American who has felt its effects - and would like to prevent the same disaster from happening again. Financial Fiasco provides that understanding, with great insight, clarity, and wit. Just as important, the book serves as a profound warning against pursuing the wrong solutions. After government authorities had helped create the worst financial crisis in generations, the climate of ideas has now shifted dramatically in the direction of bigger and more active government," Norberg writes. Financial Fiasco is the perfect antidote to those ideas, a cautionary tale on how to stop confusing the disease with the cure."--Jacket.

Een Amerikaanse journaliste beschrijft haar leven met haar man, een militair die naar Irak wordt uitgezonden en daar sneuvelt; hij laat een dagboek na vol wijze raad aan hun pasgeboren zoontje.