Economic history

Queensland, the great north-eastern State of the Commonwealth of Australia, is an enormous territory, possessing a considerable variety of climate and soil. It is situated in the northeast corner of the island-continent of Australia, between latitude 28 degrees and 9 degrees south, and longitude 153.5 degrees and 138 degrees east. It has a coastline between 2000 and 3000 miles, along which are many splendid natural harbours.

Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, starting with its humble beginning when our early ancestors started digging underground to find the stones they needed for their tools. He traces the links between mineral riches and empires, wars, and civilizations, and shows how mining in its various forms came to be one of the largest global industries. He also illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties. The easy mineral resources, the least expensive to extract and process, have been mostly exploited and depleted.

This book tracks the rise of a powerful idea in global biodiversity conservation. Many scientists, bureacrats, and environmentalists now believe that the only way  to slow the decimation of nonhuman life on earth is to translate conservation into an economically rational -- even profitable -- set of policies and practices. Through multi-sited analysis, Jessica Dempsey explores the drive to produce a nature that can prove its value in economic terms, a nature that can compete in the marketplace and the cost-benefit accounting of modern governance. 

This book shows how revolutionary ideas from economics and science are providing answers to these age-old questions. Around the world, researchers are upending a hundred years of economic theory and recasting the economy as a teeming evolutionary stew, a ' complex adaptive system' more akin to the brain, the Internet, or an ecosystem than to the static picture presented by traditional theory.

When it was first published, this national bestseller quickly became a touchstone in the globalization debate. Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank.