With increased interest in Canada and Australia over the last decade, students of foreign policy have produced an increasingly diverse range of scholarly material concerning the role and issue-orientation of these two countries. But until now there has been no study that bridges the mode of analysis found in the distinctive sets of comparative and international relations literature. In Between Countries fills this gap by providing a detailed study of the similarities and differences between Australia and Canada relating to agricultural trade negotiations.
The lure of living abroad is one that nearly everyone has felt, at one time or another, whether or not we give into it. And while traveling for a week or two at a time to a new country can be a thrilling experience, it doesn't quite satisfy the same desire as spending years getting to know a place. Chelsea Fagan had always been in love with France, and after a two-week vacation in Paris, decided that she would live there. Five months later, she was all moved in. In Between Two Countries, a collection of her essays on travel, she shares what it means to immigrate intelligently, learn from your host culture, and make it work on a budget. And yes, you can do it, too.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
A thoughtful analysis of how our world's borders came to be and why we may be emerging from a lengthy period of "cartographical stasis" What is a country? While certain basic criteria--borders, a government, and recognition from other countries--seem obvious, journalist Joshua Keating's book explores exceptions to these rules, including self-proclaimed countries such as Abkhazia, Kurdistan, and Somaliland, a Mohawk reservation straddling the U.S.-Canada border, and an island nation whose very existence is threatened by climate change. Through stories about these would-be countries' efforts at self-determination, as well as their respective challenges, Keating shows that there is no universal legal authority determining what a country is. He argues that although our current world map appears fairly static, economic, cultural, and environmental forces in the places he describes may spark change. Keating ably ties history to incisive and sympathetic observations drawn from his travels and personal interviews with residents, political leaders, and scholars in each of these "invisible countries."
Two Countries, One Me - A Multicultural Children's Book Series Where Am I From? (Book 1) KJ is excited to learn about the two countries he comes from, even though he initially fails to accept that he comes from places other than England. When KJ asks, "Where Am I From?" Mum and Dad explain his ethnic heritage to him through fun facts and pictures. Throughout the story, KJ is shown facts about his parents' cultures that he can relate to and embrace, helping him understand his uniqueness being from both Ghana and Nigeria. He learns many valuable lessons that he cannot wait to share. 'Where Am I From?' is created to encourage a positive self-concept and self-identity in children who come from multicultural and diverse backgrounds. Lessons in children's ethnic diversity help to develop great pride and understanding of what makes them unique and special in today's society especially were cultural world issues are a major concern.
The experiences of Singapore, Finland, and Ireland show how small resource-poor economies, even if peripherally located, can achieve rapid and sustained growth: through a strategy of building quality human capital that attracts technology-intensive FDI and enables national firms to compete in global markets for high-value products and services.
A maverick economist explains how protectionism makes nations rich, free trade keeps them poor---and how rich countries make sure to keep it that way. Throughout history, some combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment has driven successful development everywhere from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite the demonstrable success of this approach, development economists largely ignore it and insist instead on the importance of free trade. Somehow, the thing that made rich nations rich supposedly won't work on poor countries anymore. Leading heterodox economist Erik Reinert's invigorating history of economic development shows how Western economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and only later promoted free trade, when it worked to their advantage. In the tug-of-war between the gospel of government intervention and free-market purists, the issue is not that one is more correct, but that the winning nation tends to favor whatever benefits them most. As Western countries begin to sense that the rules of the game they set were rigged, Reinert's classic book gains new urgency. His unique and edifying approach to the history of economic development is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and what to do next, especially now that we aren't so sure we'll be the winners anymore.
This book dispels these myths and shows that people rely on the relation-based system not owing to specific cultural factors, but because of the stage of development in these countries. When the market is limited in scale and informal networks are thick, the relation-based system can be quite effective and efficient.
This book introduces geography, history, culture, economy and politics of North America, Latin America, France and Africa. Based on the analysis of these aspects, this book explores the possibility of unification between two geographically adjacent countries, which are the same or similar in history, culture, language and other aspects. Unification should promote economy and improve people's living condition. This book does not make such proposition that all geographically adjacent countries with the same or similar history, culture and language should be unified. Unification between countries involves too many issues. For most adjacent countries, unification between countries is simply impossible, even if they are the same or similar in history, culture, language and other aspects. In this book, exploration of unification involves Canada, USA, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, France, South Africa and some Central American countries. Unification should get the consent of the involved peoples and be achieved through peaceful means, not forces.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
