Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

  • Paperback in colors of white, green and black.
A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the world’s poorest citizens

Among the most eagerly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Sachs’s aim is nothing less than to deliver a big picture of how societies emerge from poverty. To do so he takes readers in his footsteps, explaining his work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, while offering an integrated set of solutions for the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the poorest countries. Marrying passionate storytelling with rigorous analysis and a vision as pragmatic as it is fiercely moral, The End of Poverty is a truly indispensable work.Celebra! ted economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think that is too ambitious or wildly unrealistic, you need to read this book. His focus is on the one billion poorest individuals around the world who are caught in a poverty trap of disease, physical isolation, environmental stress, political instability, and lack of access to capital, technology, medicine, and education. The goal is to help these people reach the first rung on the "ladder of economic development" so they can rise above mere subsistence level and achieve some control over their economic futures and their lives. To do this, Sachs proposes nine specific steps, which he explains in great detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plan certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial assistance Sachs calls for is surprisingly modest--more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what has been promised in the past. For the U.S., for instanc! e, it would mean raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of! GNP to 0.7 percent. Sachs does not view such help as a handout but rather an investment in global economic growth that will add to the security of all nations. In presenting his argument, he offers a comprehensive education on global economics, including why globalization should be embraced rather than fought, why international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank need to play a strong role in this effort, and the reasons why extreme poverty exists in the midst of great wealth. He also shatters some persistent myths about poor people and shows how developing nations can do more to help themselves.

Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the sa! me commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This important book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. --Shawn Carkonen

Dead & Buried (Limited Edition)

  • DEAD & BURIED LIMITED EDITION 2-DISC (DVD MOVIE)
Paul Conroy is not ready to die. But when he wakes up six feet underground with no idea of who put him there or why, life for the truck driver and family man instantly becomes a hellish struggle for survival. Buried with only a cell phone and a lighter, his contact with the outside world and ability to piece together clues that could help him discover his location are maddeningly limited. Poor reception, a rapidly draining battery, and a dwindling oxygen supply become his worst enemies in a tightly confined race against time; fighting panic, despair and delirium, Paul has only ninety minutes to be rescued before his worst nightmare comes true.Alfred Hitchcock, eat your heart out. Sure, the master of suspense set himself some tough challenges with limited scenarios: Lifeboat took place entirely within the title craft, Rear Window d! idn't stray from Jimmy Stewart's apartment, and Rope stuck mostly to an unbroken take. But Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés wants to do the master one better: Buried is set inside a coffin, buried beneath a few feet of immovable earth. Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up inside the coffin, a cell phone and lighter next to him; for the next 90 minutes, we won't leave the narrow space of that wooden box. No cheats: no flashbacks to Paul's past, no cross-cutting with efforts to free him. Cortés sticks to the rules and follows his story out to its conclusion, and in the process he must think of every possible way to shoot and light someone in a confined space. Seems Paul was in Iraq as a non-military truck driver when he got caught in some crossfire, and somebody wants to make a point. The cell phone allows him to speak, and try to puzzle out what's happening, but except for the voices on the other end, this is entirely Ryan Reynolds's show. The actor is up for ! it: although he can't use his body, he calls on both his actio! n-movie chops and (at certain exasperating moments) his comic talents. By definition, this is a bravura turn, and Reynolds comes through firing on all cylinders. Buried is an exercise, but it manages to sneak in a few sly suggestions about the nature of an American's presence in the Middle East. It even earns points for an excellent credits sequence--a clever nod to Hitchcock classics. Somehow you suspect the master would approve. --Robert HortonDEAD AND BURIED - DVD MovieOverlooked during its theatrical run but a cult favorite on video, this unique and chilling take on the zombie film finally joins the digital ranks with a two-DVD set from Blue Underground. James Farentino stars as a small-town sheriff who discovers that the victims in a string of grisly murders are reappearing seemingly alive and unharmed. His investigation leads him to suspect that the local mortician (Jack Albertson) is somehow responsible for these reanimated corpses; what Farentino doesn't know i! s the extent to which the entire town-himself included-is involved. First-time viewers will appreciate director Gary Sherman's attention to pacing and atmosphere, as well as the often darkly humorous script by co-producer Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Total Recall) and the solid cast (which includes future horror star Robert Englund); longtime fans will appreciate the fact that Blue Underground's uncut print restores many of Stan Winston's gruesome special effects. --Paul Gaita

Buffalo Soldiers

Carriers

The Foreign Correspondent: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780812967975
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls “America’s preeminent spy novelist,” comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and love of freedomâ€"the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts’ passion to fight in the war against tyranny.

By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini’s fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of émigré life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an unde! rground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story.

Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers’ hotel. But this is no romantic tragedâ€"it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini’s fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sûreté, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or mur! der.

The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo W! eisz and a handful of antifascists: the army officer known as “Colonel Ferrara,” who fights for a lost cause in Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz’s life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin.

The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute bestâ€"taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement.


From the Hardcover edition.

Philosophy Birthday Girl, 8-Ounce

  • Vanilla birthday cake for the birthday girl
  • Multitasking, 3-in-1 shower gel
  • Highly emollient lip shine
The irresistible Nicole Kidman (MOULIN ROUGE, THE OTHERS) powers a sexy thriller where appearances can be deceiving and nothing ends as expected! A lonely and repressed bank employee, John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin, THE THIN RED LINE) desperately wants to meet the right girl. Then, through a Russian mail-order bride service, he is introduced to Nadia (Kidman), a quiet and attractive woman who doesn't speak English. After several sensual encounters, John's fondness for Nadia grows ... until the sudden arrival of Nadia's two gregarious cousins makes John realize that he's in over his head. Acclaimed by critics everywhere, this unpredictably entertaining hit will keep you guessing as it keeps you on the edge of your seat!If Birthday Girl is a far-fetched thriller, it's also! a slice of absurdist fun populated by some awfully interesting actors. Nicole Kidman plays Sophia, a chain-smoking, mascara-smudged, wildly sexual mail-order bride from Russia who answers an Internet plea for companionship from a lonely British bank employee, John (Ben Chaplin). For a while, the two make a startling and intriguing pair: she apparently speaks no English and he naively frets over the veracity of the Web business that brought them together. The gorgeous Kidman and sad-eyed Chaplin are briefly the engine of their own unique movie, but then the other shoe drops. Sophia, obviously up to something mysterious, is paid a visit on her birthday by two Russian "cousins" (French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz and one of his own frequent stars, Vincent Cassel, also seen in Brotherhood of the Wolf). Suddenly, John's quest for a lover becomes a web of deceit and corruption. Directed and cowritten (with his brother Tom) by Jez Butterworth, Birthday Girl! is hampered a bit by sluggishness and insufficient charac! ter dev elopment. But it is also original and strikingly entertaining. Tom Keoghevery birthday girl wants cake. give her birthday girl, featuring vanilla birthday cake shampoo, shower gel and bubble bath 8 oz. and vanilla birthday cake lip shine .5 oz. philosophy captured the fresh-baked scent in this extra rich and creamy, 3-in-1 shower gel and very emollient, high-gloss, high-flavor lip shine. she can have her cake and give sweet kisses too!