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La société de provocation: essai sur l'obscénité des riches (Lettres libres)
Par Dahlia Namian. 2023
Bernés par les prestidigitations des ultrariches, nous regardons ceux-ci, stupéfaits, dilapider les ressources de la planète. Dans son roman Chien…
blanc, Romain Gary appelle "société de provocation" cet ordre social où l'exhibitionnisme de la richesse érige en vertu la démesure et le luxe ostentatoire tout en privant une part de plus en plus large de la population des moyens de satisfaire ses besoins réels. Ce pamphlet cinglant énumère et analyse les mille façons qu'ont les ultrariches de nous nuire, et invite à rompre avec cette société de provocationGoodbye christopher robin: A. a. milne and the making of winnie-the-pooh
Par Ann Thwaite. 2023
Goodbye Christopher Robin: A.A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh is drawn from Ann Thwaite's Whitbread Award-winning biography of A.…
A. Milne, one of England's most successful writers. After serving in the First World War, Milne wrote a number of well-received plays, but his greatest triumph came when he created Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, and, of course, Christopher Robin, the adventurous little boy based on his own son. Goodbye Christopher Robin inspired the film directed by Simon Curtis and starring Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, and Kelly Macdonald. It offers the listener a glimpse into the relationship between Milne and the real-life Christopher Robin, whose toys inspired the magical world of the Hundred Acre Wood. Goodbye Christopher Robin is a story of celebrity, a story of both the joys and pains of success, and, ultimately, the story of how one man created a series of enchanting tales that brought hope and comfort to an England ravaged by the First World WarShakespeare was a woman & other heresies: How doubting the bard became the biggest taboo in literature
Par Elizabeth Winkler. 2023
An "extraordinarily brilliant" and "pleasurably naughty" (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare…
wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy...and who the Bard might really be. The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard's biography is a "black hole," yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) "immoral." In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies , journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo. Whisking you from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries. As she considers the writers and thinkers—from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices—who have grappled with the riddle of the plays' origins, she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. A forgotten woman? A disgraced aristocrat? A government spy? Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare's plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem. As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler's interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth—and of how human imperfections (bias, blindness, subjectivity) shape our construction of the past. History is a story, and the story we find may depend on the story we're looking for. "Lively" ( The Washington Post ), "fascinating" (Amanda Foreman), and "intrepid" (Stacy Schiff), Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare...and of how we as a society decide what's up for debate and what's just nonsense, just heresyThe war below: Lithium, copper, and the global battle to power our future
Par Ernest Scheyder. 2024
An unprecedented look inside the global battle to power our lives from acclaimed Reuters reporter Ernest Scheyder. A new economic…
war for critical minerals has begun, and The War Below is an urgent dispatch from its front lines. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, and other vital building blocks. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change and powering crucial technologies. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of necessary materials, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder, whose exclusive access to sites around the globe has allowed him to gain unparalleled insights into a future without fossil fuels. The War Below reveals the explosive brawl among industry titans, conservationists, community groups, policymakers, and many others over whether some places are too special to mine or whether the habitats of rare plants, sensitive ecosystems, Indigenous holy sites, and other places should be dug up for their riches. With vivid and engaging writing, Scheyder shows the human toll of this war and explains why recycling and other newer technologies have struggled to gain widespread use. He also expertly chronicles Washington's attempts to wean itself off supplies from China, the global leader in mineral production and processing. The War Below paints a powerfully honest and nuanced picture of what is at stake in this new fight for energy independence, revealing how America and the rest of the world's hunt for the "new oil" directly affects us allOur Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada's Housing Crisis
Par Gregor Craigie. 2024
An urgent and illuminating examination of the unrelenting housing crisis Canadians find ourselves facing, by Balsillie Prize finalist and CBC…
Radio host Gregor Craigie, Our Crumbling Foundation offers real-life solutions from around the world and hope for new housing innovation in the face of seemingly impossible obstacles.Canada is experiencing a housing shortage. Although house prices in major Canadian cities appear to have topped out in early 2023, new housing isn’t coming onto the market quickly enough. Rising interest rates have only tightened the pressure on buyers, and renters, too, as rising mortgage rates cost landlords more, which are passed along to tenants in rent increases. Even with the recent federal budget commitment to bring more housing online by 2030, there will still be a shortfall of 3.5 million homes by 2030.Gregor Craigie is a CBC journalist in Victoria, one of the highest-priced housing markets in the country. On his daily radio show On The Island he's been talking for over 15 years to local experts and to those across the country about housing. Craigie has travelled to many of the places he profiles in the book, and in his interviews with Canadians he presents the human face of the shortfall as he speaks with renters, owners and homeless people, exploring their varying predicaments and perspectives. He then shows, through comparable profiles of people across the globe, how other North American and international jurisdictions (Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, Singapore, Ireland, to name a few) are housing their citizens better, faster and with determination—solutions that could be put into practice here.With passion, knowledge and vigour, Craigie explains how Canada reached this critical impasse and will convince those who may not yet recognize how badly our entire country is in need of change. Our Crumbling Foundation provides hope for finding our way out of the crisis by recommending a number of approaches at all levels of government. The prescription for how we’re going to house ourselves and do so equitably, requires not just a business solution, nor simply a social solution.Tiff: A life of timothy findley
Par Sherrill Grace. 2021
Timothy Findley (1930-2002) was one of Canada's foremost writers—an award-winning novelist, playwright, and short-story writer who began his career as…
an actor in London, England. Findley was instrumental in the development of Canadian literature and publishing in the 1970s and 80s . During those years, he became a vocal advocate for human rights and the anti-war movement. His writing and interviews reveal a man concerned with the state of the world, a man who believed in the importance of not giving in to despair, despite his constant struggle with depression. Findley believed in the power of imagination and creativity to save us. Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley is the first full biography of this eminent Canadian writer. Sherrill Grace provides insight into Findley's life and struggles through an exploration of his private journals and his relationships with family, his beloved partner, Bill Whitehead, and his close friends, including Alec Guinness, William Hutt, and Margaret Laurence. Based on many interviews and exhaustive archival research, this biography explores Findley's life and work, the issues that consumed him, and his often profound depression over the evils of the twentieth-century. Shining through his darkness are Findley's generous humour, his unforgettable characters, and his hope for the future. These qualities inform canonic works like The Wars (1977), Famous Last Words (1981), Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), and The Piano Man's Daughter (1995)Nomadland: Surviving america in the twenty-first century
Par Jessica Bruder. 2017
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people…
who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers." Building on her groundbreaking Harper's cover story, "The End of Retirement," which brought attention to these formerly settled members of the middle class, Jessica Bruder follows one such RVer, Linda, between physically taxing seasonal jobs and reunions of her new van-dweller family, or "vanily." Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of both the economy's dark underbelly and the extraordinary resilience, creativity, and hope of these hardworking, quintessential Americans?many of them single women?who have traded rootedness for the dream of a better lifeKnife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder
Par Salman Rushdie. 2024
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.Le couteau
Par Salman Rushdie. 2024
"Il était essentiel que j'écrive ce livre : une manière d'accueillir ce qui est arrivé, et de répondre à la…
violence par l'art." Pour la première fois, Salman Rushdie s'exprime sans concession sur l'attaque au couteau dont il a été victime le 12 août 2022 aux États-Unis, plus de trente ans après la fatwa prononcée contre lui. Le romancier lève le voile sur la longue et douloureuse traversée pour se reconstruire après un acte d'une telle violence ; jusqu'au miracle d'une seconde chance. "Le Couteau" se lit aussi comme une réflexion puissante, intime et finalement porteuse d'espoir sur la vie, l'amour et le pouvoir de la littérature. C'est également une ode à la création artistique comme espace de liberté absolue. Clément Bresson met tout son talent au service de la plume limpide et directe de Salman Rushdie, qui témoigne ici de l'attentat dont il a été victime. Couverture : d'après photos © Nenov / MirageC / Getty ImagesLe sucre rouge de Duplessis
Par Stéphane Lussier Johnson. 2023
Jamais un Premier Ministre québécois n'a suscité autant d'intérêt que Maurice Duplessis. Son règne a été étudié, analysé, raconté de…
long en large, immortalisé dans des publications écrites par des historiens, des journalistes, des collaborateurs, des opposants, des amis, des ennemis. Mais jusqu'à maintenant, personne ne s'était penché sur son rôle dans l'industrie du sucre au Québec, ni sur la manière dont il a délibérément réussi à la saboter. Alors que l'inflation fait un bond de 60% entre 1946 et 1962, cette industrie aurait pu à elle-seule assurer la prospérité de la province dans cette période où elle en avait tant besoin. Du moins, en théorie. Mais à cause de manigances et politicailleries de l'Union Nationale, nous ne le saurons jamais. Rencontrez Louis Pasquier. Ingénieur agronome français que l'on fait venir au Québec dans le but de sauver l'industrie du sucre de betteraves. Et que l'on détruisit ensuite pour avoir commis le crime d'y être parvenuThe Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths (Anthem Other Canon Economics Ser. #1)
Par Mariana Mazzucato. 2023
Award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato&’s famously incisive international bestseller debunking the pervasive myth of the inept state versus an innovative private…
sector—with a new preface by the authorAccording to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the bold entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if that wasn't case? What if, from the inventions of Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has actually been the most courageous and valuable risk-taker of all?Critically acclaimed and influential thinker and scholar Mariana Mazzucato argues comprehensively against the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector with remarkable original and deep research. In a series of case studies—from nanotechnology to the emerging green tech of today—Mazzucato reveals that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. The Entrepreneurial State reveals how every technology that makes the iPhone so &“smart&” was actually funded by the government—from the Internet and GPS technology, to touch-screen displays and voice-activated Siri.In the history of modern capitalism, the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. In doing so, it sometimes wins and sometimes fails. Yet by not admitting the State&’s role in active risk taking, we've created an "innovation system" where the public sector socializes risks while privatizing reward, as Mazzucato controversially argues. This bold and provocative book considers how we adopted this dysfunctional dynamic, and then how we can overcome it so that economic growth can be not only "smart" but "inclusive" as well.What role did Laura Ingalls Wilder&’s Christian faith play in her life and writing? The beloved Little House books by Laura…
Ingalls Wilder have sold over 60 million copies since their publication in the first half of the twentieth century. Even her unpolished memoir, Pioneer Girl, which tells the true story behind the children&’s books, was widely embraced upon its release in 2014. Despite Wilder&’s enduring popularity, few fans know much about her Christian beliefs and practice. John J. Fry shines a light on Wilder&’s quiet faith in this unique biography. Fry surveys the Little House books, Pioneer Girl, and Wilder&’s lesser-known writings, including her letters, poems, and newspaper columns. Analyzing this wealth of sources, he reveals how Wilder&’s down-to-earth faith and Christian morality influenced her life and work. Interweaving these investigations with Wilder&’s perennially interesting life story, A Prairie Faith illustrates the Christian practices of pioneers and rural farmers during this dynamic period of American history.With Every Great Breath: New and Selected Essays, 1995-2023
Par Rick Bass. 2024
"Master craftsman" (Los Angeles Times) and beloved author Rick Bass explores ecological, social, and personal landscapes through this collection that…
brings together his best-loved essays and brand-new piecesFor acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, the fragmented, the dead and dying and doomed to extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us.Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription, to inhabit, as deeply as possible, the greater depths of the beauty in each moment. With Every Great Breath ranges from the extremely local—a long-form essay about the community affected by the largest Superfund site in U.S. history, in Libby, Montana—to the far-flung: the Galápagos, Namibia, and Alaska. Throughout, Bass offers a portrait of our planet that is always alert to its wonders, even in the face of environmental crisis.The Emergence of Organizations and Markets
Par John F. Padgett, Walter W. Powell. 2013
A dynamic framework for studying social emergenceThe social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of…
the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of people come from? Combining biochemical insights about the origin of life with innovative and historically oriented social network analyses, John Padgett and Walter Powell develop a theory about the emergence of organizational, market, and biographical novelty from the coevolution of multiple social networks. They demonstrate that novelty arises from spillovers across intertwined networks in different domains. In the short run actors make relations, but in the long run relations make actors.This theory of novelty emerging from intersecting production and biographical flows is developed through formal deductive modeling and through a wide range of original historical case studies. Padgett and Powell build on the biochemical concept of autocatalysis—the chemical definition of life—and then extend this autocatalytic reasoning to social processes of production and communication. Padgett and Powell, along with other colleagues, analyze a very wide range of cases of emergence. They look at the emergence of organizational novelty in early capitalism and state formation; they examine the transformation of communism; and they analyze with detailed network data contemporary science-based capitalism: the biotechnology industry, regional high-tech clusters, and the open source community.Nature: An Economic History
Par Geerat Vermeij. 2004
From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth…
unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle. Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members. Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things.Theory of Games and Economic Behavior: 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition
Par John Von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern. 2004
This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as…
a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences. This sixtieth anniversary edition includes not only the original text but also an introduction by Harold Kuhn, an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein, and reviews and articles on the book that appeared at the time of its original publication in the New York Times, tthe American Economic Review, and a variety of other publications. Together, these writings provide readers a matchless opportunity to more fully appreciate a work whose influence will yet resound for generations to come.Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter--and More Unequal
Par Brink Lindsey. 2013
Why the rich are getting smarter while the poor are being left behindWhat explains the growing class divide between the…
well educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it's because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills—the right "human capital"—reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today's economy is not only making these lucky elites richer—it is also making them smarter. As the economy makes ever-greater demands on their minds, the successful are making ever-greater investments in education and other ways of increasing their human capital, expanding their cognitive skills and leading them to still higher levels of success. But unfortunately, even as the rich are securely riding this virtuous cycle, the poor are trapped in a vicious one, as a lack of human capital leads to family breakdown, unemployment, dysfunction, and further erosion of knowledge and skills. In this brief, clear, and forthright eBook original, Lindsey shows how economic growth is creating unprecedented levels of human capital—and suggests how the huge benefits of this development can be spread beyond those who are already enjoying its rewards.The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters - Revised Edition
Par Diane Coyle. 2010
For many, Thomas Carlyle's put-down of economics as "the dismal science" rings true--especially in the aftermath of the crash of…
2008. But Diane Coyle argues that economics today is more soulful than dismal, a more practical and human science than ever before. The Soulful Science describes the remarkable creative renaissance in economics, how economic thinking is being applied to the paradoxes of everyday life. This revised edition incorporates the latest developments in the field, including the rise of behavioral finance, the failure of carbon trading, and the growing trend of government bailouts. She also discusses such major debates as the relationship between economic statistics and presidential elections, the boundary between private choice and public action, and who is to blame for today's banking crisis.The classic history of economic thought through the ages—now fully updated and expandedHesiod defined the basic economic problem as one…
of scarce resources, a view still held by economists today. Diocletian tried to save the Roman Empire with wage and price fixes—a strategy that has not gone entirely out of style. Roger Backhouse takes readers from the ancient world to the frontiers of game theory, mechanism design, and engagements with climate science, presenting an essential history of a discipline that economist Alfred Marshall called “the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” Backhouse introduces the many fascinating figures who have thought about money and markets down through the centuries—from philosophers and theologians to politicians and poets—and shows how today’s economic ideas have their origins in antiquity. This updated edition of The Ordinary Business of Life includes a new chapter on contemporary economics and the rest of the book has been thoroughly revised.Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters (The Yrjö Jahnsson Lectures)
Par Timothy Besley, Torsten Persson. 2011
How nations can promote peace, prosperity, and stability through cohesive political institutions"Little else is required to carry a state to…
the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data, this book reinterprets Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters—places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes.To achieve peace, the authors stress the avoidance of repressive government and civil conflict. Easy taxes, they argue, refers not to low taxes, but a tax system with widespread compliance that collects taxes at a reasonable cost from a broad base, like income. And a tolerable administration of justice is about legal infrastructure that can support the enforcement of contracts and property rights in line with the rule of law. The authors show that countries tend to enjoy all three pillars of prosperity when they have evolved cohesive political institutions that promote common interests, guaranteeing the provision of public goods. In line with much historical research, international conflict has also been an important force behind effective states by fostering common interests. The absence of common interests and/or cohesive political institutions can explain the existence of very different development clusters in fragile states that are plagued by poverty, violence, and weak state capacity.