Books about Implosion from Amazon.com

"In Financial Shock, Mr. Zandi provides a concise and lucid account of the economic, political and regulatory forces behind this binge." --The Wall Street Journal "Aggressive builders, greedy lenders, optimistic home buyers: Zandi succinctly dissects the mortgage mess from start to (one hopes) finish." --U.S. News and World Report "If you wonder how it could be possible for a subprime mortgage loan to bring the global financial system and the U.S. economy to its knees, you should read this book. No one is better qualified to provide this insight and advice than Mark Zandi." -- Larry Kudlow, Host, CNBC's Kudlow & Company "Every once in a while a book comes along that's so important, it commands recognition. This is one of them. Zandi provides a rilliant blow-by-blow account of how greed, stupidity, and recklessness brought the first major economic crises of the 21st entury and the most serious since the Great Depression." --Bernard Baumohl,Managing Director, The Economic Outlook Group and best-selling author, The Secrets of Economic Indicators "Throughout the financial crisis Mark Zandi has played two important roles.He has insightfully analyzed its causes and thoughtfully recommended steps to alleviate it. This book continues those tasks and adds a third--providing a comprehensive and comprehensible explanation of the issues that is accessible to the general public and extremely useful to those who specialize in the area." --Barney Frank, Chairman, House Financial Services Committee The subprime crisis created a gigantic financial catastrophe. What happened? How did it happen? How can we prevent similar crises from happening again? Mark Zandi answers all these critical questions--systematically, carefully, and in plain English. Zandi begins with a fast-paced overview and then illuminates the deepest causes, from the psychology of homeownership to Alan Greenspan's missteps. You'll see the home "flippers" at work and the real estate agents who cheered them on. You'll learn how Internet technology and access to global capital transformed the mortgage industry, helping irresponsible lenders drive out good ones.Zandi demystifies the complex financial engineering that enabled lenders to hide deepening risks, shows how global investors eagerly bought in, and explains how flummoxed regulators failed to prevent disaster, despite crucial warning signs. Most important, Zandi offers indispensable advice for investors who must recognize emerging bubbles, policymakers who must improve oversight, and citizens who must survive whatever comes next. *Liar's loans, flippers, predatory lenders, delusional homebuilders How the housing market came unhinged, and the whirlwind came together*Alan Greenspan's trillion-dollar bet Betting on the boom, ignoring the bubble*The subprime market goes global Worldwide investors get a piece of the action--and reap the results*Wall Street's alchemists: conjuring up Frankenstein New financial instruments and their hidden contents*Back to the future: risk management for the 21st century Respecting the "animal spirits" that drive even the most sophisticated markets.
Price: $15.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Janet Tavakoli takes you into the world of Warren Buffett by way of the recent mortgage meltdown. In correspondence and discussion with him over 2 years, they both saw the writing on the wall, made clear by the implosion of Bear Stearns. Tavakoli, in clear and engaging prose, explains how the credit mess happened beginning with the mortgage lending Ponzi schemes funded by investment banks, the Fed bailout and its impact on the dollar. Through her narrative, we hear from Warren Buffett and learn how his enduring principles caused him to see the mess that was coming well in advance and kept him and his investors well out of the way..
Price: $16.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

… there, at the main entrance of the World Bank was this large inscription
“ Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty ”
He couldn’t go wrong, he thought
Today, he often thinks the sentence should have been completed:
“… And we make sure it will just remain a dream.”

In this riveting economic thriller, Paul Jordon, a renegade World Banker, and Moni Cheng, an Andean woman who leads a socio-environmental nongovernmental organization in the Peruvian Amazon, endure kidnappings, bombings, and deadly chases in their fight against boundless capitalism, destructive economic policies, and corporate greed that are wreaking worldwide social injustice and destroying the globe’s richest zones of biodiversity.

Together, Jordon and Cheng expose corporate ruthlessness, military brutality, and Machiavellian economic policies of the foremost financial ivory towers of Washington, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. With other visionaries from around the globe, Jordon and Cheng untiringly disseminate truth and candid information about the calamities caused by this cruel machinery. And against all odds, they mobilize the power of the people.

Richly detailed, grounded in actual events and statistics, and complete with notes from author and former World Bank economist Peter Koenig, Implosion is both an unsettling, gripping novel and a powerful commentary on the realities of the modern world’s corporatocracy.

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Price: $11.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This unique and encyclopedic reference work charts the evolution of the physics of shock waves and detonations from the earliest investigations into percussion and impact phenomena right up to the most recent groundbreaking research in the field.

The history of this long and complex process is first reviewed in a general survey that encompasses everything from the earliest observations and interpretations of puzzling high-rate dynamic phenomena associated with natural and man-made explosions to a discussion of the merits of modern numerical computer simulations.

The subject is then treated in more detail and in chronological order in the central section of the book, while also being richly illustrated in form of a picture gallery. The bibliographic index provides 122 short biographies of eminent researchers who have contributed to the field. Further references for biographical sources are given, and both name and subject indices (with over 4500 and 2700 entries, respectively) are provided.

"This book is of tremendous value to all who teach, research or write about the subject or, simply, are inquisitive about the people whose names appear in the text or bibliographies. The whole community is indebted to Peter Krehl for what has clearly been a labour of love and for what must surely become the "bible" of shock waves, explosives and impact" Professor John E. Field, FRS, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

 

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Price: $568.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Trinity was the first test of technology for a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at a location 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what is now White Sands Missile Range, headquartered near Alamogordo. Trinity was a test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb. The Fat Man bomb, using the same conceptual design, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, a few weeks later. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of around 20 kilotons of TNT, and is usually considered as the beginning of the Atomic Age.

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Price: $0.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At a time of unprecedented national power, why do so many Americans believe that our nationhood is fragile and precarious? Why the talk--among politicians, academics, and jurists--of "coups d'etat," of culture wars, of confederation, of constitutional breakdown? In this wide-ranging book, Robert Nagel proposes a surprising znswer: that anxiety about national unity is caused by centralization itself. Moreover, he proposes that this anxiety has dangerous cultural consequences that are, in an implosive cycle, pushing the country toward ever greater centralization.
Carefully examining recent landmark Supreme Court cases that protect states' rights, Nagel argues that the federal judiciary is not leading and is not likely to lead a revival of the complex system called federalism. A robust version of federalism requires appreciation for political conflict and respect for disagreement about constitutional meaning, both values that are deeply antithetical to the Court's function. That so many believe this most centralized of our Nation's institutions is protecting, even overprotecting, state power is itself a sign of the depletion of those understandings necessary to sustain the federal system.
Instead of a support for federalism, Nagel finds a commitment to radical nationalism throughout the constitutional law establishment. He traces this commitment to traditionally American traits like perfectionism, optimism, individualism, and legalism. Under modern conditions of centralization, these attractive traits are leading to unattractive social consequences, including tolerance, fearfulness, utopianism, and deceptiveness. They are degrading our political discourse. All this encourages further centralization and further cultural deterioration.
This book puts the major federalism decisions within the framework of the Court's overall record, including its record on individual rights in areas like abortion, homosexuality, and school desegregation. And, giving special attention to public debate over privacy and impeachment, it places modern constitutional law in the context of political discourse more generally..
Price: $4.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Nuclear Implosions tells the story of a state government agency's failed attempt in the 1970s to build five large nuclear power stations in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Facing huge cost overruns and long construction delays, the agency completed only one plant and found itself unable to repay a $2.25 billion of municipal bonds. These projects reflect the tangled relationships between American nuclear power and nuclear weaponry, the emerging era of limits, and the nation's troubled attempts to resolve conflicts through complex legal cases..
Price: $55.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]