A Little Book of Ripping Riddles and Confounding Conundrums

A Little Book of Ripping Riddles and Confounding Conundrums
Author: Hugh Morrison
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2014-12-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9781505548136

'A Little Book of Ripping Riddles & Confounding Conundrums: Classic Riddles and Brainteasers for Young and Old' contains 110 short and long riddles from times past which are still intriguing today. Why does it take so long to play chess? How can you take something from nothing, and leave a number? What gets larger, the more you take from it? If Jim's father be John's son, what relation then is Jim to John? All these questions and more are answered in this little book of family fun which will be a perfect antidote to a long car or train journey.

Seeing Like a State

Seeing Like a State
Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300252986

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Einstein's Riddle

Einstein's Riddle
Author: Jeremy Stangroom
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-05-01
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9781596916654

A unique compilation of logical teasers and lateral-thinking problems designed to stretch your brainpower and strengthen your mind. Riddles, paradoxes, and conundrums have been confusing and confounding people since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks. The eponymous riddle, according to legend, was devised by Albert Einstein as a child. He claimed that only about 2% of the population would be able to work out the correct answer. There are no tricks and there is only one answer. It requires the cool application of logic to solve. And a lot of patience. Einstein's Riddle features fifty of the toughest logic problems, lateral thinking puzzles, and tests of mental agility. By turns entertaining and infuriating, the puzzles challenge our preconceptions, tell us about how we reason, and provide a rigorous intellectual workout.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
Author: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2011-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1616405414

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

The Globalization Paradox

The Globalization Paradox
Author: Dani Rodrik
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2012-05-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191634255

For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.

The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2011-08-09
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1439170916

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Talk Santa to Me

Talk Santa to Me
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-09-27
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1534478833

"Fifteen-year-old Frankincense (Frankie) Wood tries to pull off the Christmas of her dreams as she juggles trying to keep in touch with her best friend, family dynamics at the family's Holiday shop, and recovering from world's worst first kiss"--

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Author: Marlon James
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735220190

One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman "Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Einstein's Riddle

Einstein's Riddle
Author: Jeremy Stangroom
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 9781408801499

Puzzles.

The Improv Handbook

The Improv Handbook
Author: Tom Salinsky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2017-10-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350026174

The Improv Handbook is the most comprehensive, smart, helpful and inspiring guide to improv available today. Applicable to comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone who needs to think on their toes, it features a range of games, interviews, descriptions and exercises that illuminate and illustrate the exciting world of improvised performance. First published in 2008, this second edition features a new foreword by comedian Mike McShane, as well as new exercises on endings, managing blind offers and master-servant games, plus new and expanded interviews with Keith Johnstone, Neil Mullarkey, Jeffrey Sweet and Paul Rogan. The Improv Handbook is a one-stop guide to the exciting world of improvisation. Whether you're a beginner, an expert, or would just love to try it if you weren't too scared, The Improv Handbook will guide you every step of the way.