Books like Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs

Samuel P. Huntington’s seminal work explores how rising international tensions after the Cold War may be driven by clash among cultural civilizations, offering a detailed theoretical framework beyond his 1993 Foreign Affairs article.

Amartya Sen’s 1999 book analyzes international development as a process of expanding human freedom.

“Green” has finally hit the mainstream. Soccer moms drive Priuses. And the business consultants say it’s easy and profitable. In reality, though, many green-leaning businesses, families, and governments are still fiddling while the planet burns. Why? Because implementing sustainability is brutally difficult. In this witty and contrarian book, Auden Schendler, a sustainable business foot soldier with over a decade’s worth of experience, gives us a peek under the hood of the green movement. The consultants, he argues, are clueless. Fluorescent bulbs might be better for our atmosphere, but what do you say to the boutique hotel owner who thinks they detract from his? We’ll only solve our problems if we’re realistic about the challenge of climate change. In this eye-opening, inspiring book, Schendler illuminates the path.

The world has many pressing problems. Thanks to the efforts of governments, NGOs, and individual activists there is no shortage of ideas for resolving them. However, even if all governments were willing to spend more money on solving the problems, we cannot do it all at once. We have to prioritize; and in order to do this we need a better sense of the costs and benefits of each 'solution'. This book offers a rigorous overview of twenty-three of the world's biggest problems relating to the environment, governance, economics, and health and population. Leading economists provide a short survey of the state-of-the-art analysis and sketch out policy solutions for which they provide cost-benefit ratios. A unique feature is the provision of freely downloadable software which allows readers to make their own cost-benefit calculations for spending money to make the world a better place.

[This book] focuses on policies that truly work, offering fresh new thinking about the questions that shape the globalization debate, including a plan to restructure a global financial system made unstable by America's debt, ideas for how countries can grow without degrading the environment, a framework for free and fair global trade, and much more. Throughout, [the author] reveals that economic globalization continues to outpace both the political structures and the moral sensitivity required to ensure a just and sustainable world. And he makes plain the real work that all nations must undertake to realize that goal. -Dust jacket.

lii, 472 pages ; 20 cm

A visionary look at the evolution and future of India by a preeminent business leaderIndia’s recent economic boom—similar in scope to that of the United States during the early 1990s or Europe’s during the 1970s—has triggered tremendous social, political, and cultural change. The result is a country that, while managing incredible economic growth, has also begun to fully inhabit its role on the world political stage. In this far-ranging look at the central ideas that have shaped this young nation, Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani offers a definitive and original interpretation of the country’s past, present, and future.India’s future rests on more than simply economic growth; it also depends on reform and innovation in all sectors of public life. Imagining India traces the efforts of the country’s past and present leaders as they work to develop new frameworks that suit India’s specific characteristics and challenges. Imagining India charts the ideas that are crucial to India’s current infrastructure revolution and quest for universal literacy, urbanization, and unification; maps the ideological battlegrounds of caste, higher education, and labor reform; and argues that only a safety net of ideas—from social security to public health to the environment—can transcend political agendas and safeguard India’s economic future.As a cofounder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nandan Nilekani has actively participated in the company’s rise in the last fifteen years. In Imagining India, he uses the global experience and understanding he has gained at Infosys as a springboard from which to discuss the future of India and its role as a global citizen and emerging economic giant.A fascinating window into the future of India, Imagining India engages with the central ideas and challenges that face the country—from within and as a part of the global economy—and charts a new way forward for a nation that has proved itself to be young, impatient, and vitally awake.

Edited by Bjorn Lomborg, this abridged version of the highly acclaimed Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious yet accessible springboard for debate and discussion on the world's most serious problems, and what we can do to solve them. In a world fraught with problems and challenges, we need to gauge how to achieve the greatest good with our money. This unique book provides a rich set of dialogs examining ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: climate change, the spread of communicable diseases, conflicts and arms proliferation, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert who defines the scale of the issue and examines a range of policy options.

Against the Dead Hand explores how the legacy of central planning still shapes today’s global economy, offering a fresh analysis of the political and economic forces driving globalization.

This revised edition of Applied Economics is about fifty percent larger than the first edition. It now includes a chapter on the economics of immigration and new sections of other chapters on such topics as the “creative” financing of home-buying that led to the current “subprime” mortgage crisis, the economics of organ transplants, and the political and economic incentives that lead to money earmarked for highways being diverted to mass transit and to a general neglect of infrastructure. On these and other topics, its examples are drawn from around the world. Much material in the first edition has been updated and supplemented. The revised and enlarged edition of Applied Economics retains the easy readability of the first edition, even for people with no prior knowledge of economics.

Health and Safety at Work has been updated to include the latest legislation and considerations required for your workplace including: Construction Regulations (2007); Smoking at work (Health Act 2006); Principles of good practice (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations); Work at height (2005); Control of noise at work (2005); Behavioural society; and Workplace exposure limits.