Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

Michael Lewis · 220 pages

As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wante

Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism

Elizabeth Becker · 456 pages

Travel is no longer a past-time but a colossal industry, arguably one of the biggest in the world and second only to oil in importance for many poor countries. One out of twelve people in the world are employed by the tourism industry which contributes $6.5 trillion to the world's economy. To investigate the size and effect of this new industry, the author traveled the globe. She speaks to the Min

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Elizabeth L. Cline · 258 pages

Evaluates the costs of low-priced clothing while tracing the author's own transformation to a conscientious shopper, a journey during which she visited a garment factory, learned to resole shoes, and shopped for local, sustainable clothing.

The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

Russell Gold · 375 pages

Fracking has vociferous critics and fervent defenders, but the debate between these camps has obscured the actual story: Fracking has become a fixture of the American landscape and the global economy. It has upended the business models of energy companies around the globe, and it has started to change geopolitics and global energy markets in profound ways. Here the author tells the story of this o

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

Rose George · 295 pages

En las páginas webs de seguimiento de buques, las aguas son de color negro con puntos. Cada punto es un buque, cada buque está cargado de contenedores y cada contenedor está cargado de mercancías. En las economías postindustriales ya no producimos, pero compramos, por lo que debemos enviar. Sin envío no habría ropa, alimentos, papel, o combustible. Sin envío, el mundo que conocemos no funcionaría.

China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

Howard W. French · 304 pages

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense

David Cay Johnston · 344 pages

The bestselling author of Perfectly Legal returns with a powerful new exposeHow does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today's government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of

Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

Noam Scheiber · 384 pages

All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera · 389 pages

According to the authors, both business journalists, no one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. This title explores the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It goes back more than twenty years to reveal, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought t

Confidence Men

Ron Suskind · 515 pages

Draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and in-depth research to relate the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown, from the trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway.

The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change

Roger Thurow · 328 pages

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming

McKenzie Funk · 310 pages

"An investigation into how entrepreneurial people and institutions around the globe are cashing in on the new world being created by global warming--and who will pay the price for it"--

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth

Tom Burgis · 336 pages

The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of t

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil

Peter Maass · 276 pages

Oil is the substance that allows our world to work. Over the course of a century it has taken on such a variety of functions that even a small decrease in oil output would cause economic chaos and nightmarish shortages. We know, of course, that this reliance is a disaster but what we are perhaps less clear about is the terrible damage done by oil to those countries that produce it: the people who

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages

The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein · 619 pages

**The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism** is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (dis

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Elizabeth Royte · 288 pages

Tap or bottled? This book is an incisive, stylish and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialization of our most basic human need: drinking water. Having already surpassed milk and beer, and second now only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spri

The Price of Politics

Bob Woodward · 428 pages

This book examines the struggle between President Obama and the United States Congress to manage federal spending and tax policy for the three and one half years between 2009 and the summer of 2012. More than half the book focuses on the intense 44-day crisis in June and July 2011 when the United States came to the brink of a potentially catastrophic default on its debt. Based on eighteen months o

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Siddharth Kara · 320 pages

"Across eighteen countries and six continents, Siddharth Kara has witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed more than five hundred slaves of all kinds, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them. In this book he draws on his background in finance and law to provide the first ever business and economic analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focu

The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey

Witold Szablowski · 210 pages

The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan

Christina Lamb · 352 pages

Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. - How the Working Poor Became Big Business

Gary Rivlin · 358 pages

"A unique and riveting exploration of one of America's largest and fastest-growing industries--the business of poverty"--Provided by publisher.

Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo

Anjan Sundaram · 265 pages

A journalist who has reported from Africa and the Middle East presents a memoir about his life-threatening, disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's most conflicted nations in 2005-2006.