A Gale of Creative Destruction: The Coming Economic Boom, 1992-2020

Book Description

This groundbreaking work challenges pessimistic views of the U.S. economy, arguing instead that the U.S. is on the brink of a radical economic and social transformation, primarily caused by technological advance. According to Ross, the American economy, like other market-oriented economies, is subject to long waves, or cycles. In the early 1990s, he asserts, the U.S. economy will experience the beginning of a rising phase of a long wave, with the economy growing for two or three decades. The fundamental underlying cause of the booming economy will be the momentum associated with an unprecedented rate of technological advance; it will be associated with an increase in the standard of living of the average American beyond current expectations. Written in a style accessible to both scholars and educated lay readers, A Gale of Creative Destruction is an important counterweight to the recent spate of books which posit the impending collapse of the U.S. economy. Ross takes a unique approach to the subject by integrating structural change in the American economy with technological advance in an international setting. To build his case, he analyzes the historical long waves the U.S. economy has already seen and examines the technological advances such as superconductivity and biotechnology. He shows that such major innovations have coincided with the rising phase of long waves. He also explores changes in the workforce, the diminution of racial and gender discrimination, the increasing interdependence of the world's economies, and the tremendous strides being made toward more democratization and more vibrant market-driven economies, arguing that each of these factors will act to help fuel economic growth in the 1990s and beyond. Based on his analysis, Ross concludes that optimism about the economic future is more than warranted and that today's children will be significantly better off than their parents.

Customer Reviews:

What is "Creative Destruction".......2000-03-23

Immediately, upon beginning to read this book, I began to ask the question, "What is "Creative Destruction?"

Basically this is a term coined by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), an economist who taught at Harvard University starting in 1932. Creative Destruction is essentially old technologies and the resulting processes, products, and companies based upon these older technologies being replaced by the new. Examples include the horse and buggy being replaced by the automobile in the early 1900s; carbon paper copies being replaced by "Xerox" copies in the 1960s; and in electronic circuits, the vacuum tube being replaced by the transistor (in the 1950s and 60s) and, subsequently, by the integrated circuit (in the 1980s).

Schumpeter, until his death in 1950, was a leading economic researcher and author of several economic textbooks. One of the theories he promoted extensively was the existence of long, repeating economic cycles. In the 1920s, a Russian economist, Nikolai D. Kondratieff (1892-1932), originally hypothesized - based upon empirical research - that long economic cycles containing both boom and then bust phases, lasting in length from 50 to 60 years did exist. This theory was based upon an extensive review of late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century commodity prices, wages, interest rates, gold prices, and foreign trade in both Europe and the United States. These cycles, later termed "Kondratieff cycles" and, also, "long cycles," were shown to vary in duration from cycle to cycle and, thus, were not strictly periodic. An average cycle length was approximately 56 years. The cycles were shown to contain an initial period of rising economic growth with rising productivity and wages followed by a period of decline, with each cycle terminating at a higher level than the previous.

Ross, a professor of economics at Western Michigan University until his retirement, believes that the next Kondratieff cycle will begin about 1992. Other authors and economists date the beginning of this next cycle - the 5th Kondratieff cycles since the beginning of the United States in 1787 - somewhat differently. Some put the date further in the future - as far forward as 2003. However, all economists who adhere to the existence of Kondratieff cycles seem to believe that the next Kondratieff cycle is either at hand or eminent.

Ross writes in the opening pages of his book: "In the early 1990s, the United States economy will experience the beginning of a rising phase of a long (economic) wave, with the economy booming for two or three decades, interrupted only briefly by shallow recessions. Combined with some favorable structural changes in the economy, the fundamental underlying cause of the booming economy will be the momentum associated with a significantly above-average rate of technological advance. This `gale of creative destruction' will be associated with an unimagined increase in the level of living by the average American."

Thus, if you believe in long economic (Kondratieff) cycles, the next 28 years or so may be a period of improving quality of life for residents and citizens of the United States. As Ross states in the last sentence of his book: "Prosperity makes civilization possible and perhaps even probable."

Book Description

"We the People" have forgotten many of our constitutional rights, or we have allowed government officials to interpret them for us -- even when they are wrong. It is time to reclaim our Constitution.

Did you know that:
-- The Supreme Court is not the ultimate authority for constitutional interpretation. It is subservient to the People, who can amend the Constitution through a kind of national referendum.
-- In certain cases juries may decide for themselves how to interpret the Constitution rather than follow judges' opinions.
-- The Framers intended for us to be able to protect ourselves from the federal government.

We the People have awesome responsibilities. If the Constitution really is to be an instrument of the People, as intended, it is imperative that we all understand this great document. Read this book and keep it (and its copy of the Constitution) on your shelf. We all owe ourselves, and our fellow citizens, an education in our constitutional rights and responsibilities.

Customer Reviews:

Review of For the People.......2000-12-25

This book is VERY thought provoking. It examines the basis for our constitutional rights with some keen insight. Problematic in the book is the fact that the authors, while building an excellent history, tend to get lost in their own vision /version of what the Constitution means rather than a clearly referenced document with meanings that can be clearly seen today. I own the book, not for its point of view but because of the issues it raises.

An interesting try at reclaiming the constitution from elite.......1998-07-30

Amar and Hirsch set forth a number of theses that are sure to infuriate mainstream constitutional scholars: the importance of the jury, the centrality of the militia to the framers, and above all, their emphasis on popular sovereignty. Some parts of their analysis are less persuasive than others -- the notion of amending the Constitution without formal amendment, for example -- but overall the book is certain to arouse interest in many quarters.

A fine study of the constitution for general readers........1998-03-30

For The People is an ideal book for the general reader with an interest in the Constitution as a living document. Focusing on several topics of current interest (including gays in the military, the right to bear arms, and the jury system) the authors offer a look both at the intentions of the founding fathers and the subsequent historical developments which have influenced our reading of the document. The book provides a populist perspective that cuts across partisan lines, with something to delight and to infuriate ideologues of both the left and the right. Without condescending to the lay audience, For The People is a serious and highly readable examination of the Constitution.

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Before Nature Die
Jean Dorst
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0140213910

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Before Nature Dies
Jean Dorst
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJ20JG

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Before Nature Dies
Jean Dorst
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NTZBDO

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Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share The World's Greatest Destinations
Chris Santella
Manufacturer: Stewart, Tabori and Chang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Ornithology | Zoology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1584796294

Book Description

It's estimated that 50 to 60 million Americans count birding among their hobbies. Some hang feeders in their backyards and accumulate yard lists; others participate in annual “Christmas Counts”; a select few travel to the ends of the earth in an effort to see every bird in the world. With Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die, Chris Santella takes the best-selling “Fifty Places” recipe and applies it to this most popular pastime.

Santella presents some of the greatest bird-watching venues in the United States and abroad through interviews with prominent birders, from tour leaders and conservationists to ornithologists and academics. Interviewees include ornithologist Kenn Kaufman; David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of The Sibley Guide to Birds; Rose Ann Rowlett, the “mother of modern birding”; John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; and Steve McCormick, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

The places vary from the urban (New York City's Central Park) to the mystical (the cloud forests of Triunfo in Chiapas, Mexico) to the extremely remote (the sub-Arctic islands of New Zealand). The book includes 40 gorgeous photographs that capture the vibrancy of our feathered friends, and the beautiful places they call home.

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Before Nature Dies
Dorst
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O8ILB8

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BEFORE NATURE DIES.
Jean: Dorst
Manufacturer: Pan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000W2N0YE

Book Description

The critically acclaimed laboratory standard, Methods in Enzymology, is one of the most highly respected publications in the field of biochemistry. Since 1955, each volume has been eagerly awaited, frequently consulted, and praised by researchers and reviewers alike. The series contains much material still relevant today--truly an essential publication for researchers in all fields of life sciences.

*
* Major topics covered include:
* Cell-cell fusion mediated by viruses and viral proteins
* Conformational changes of proteins during membrane fusion
* Membrane fusion during exocytosis
* Intracellular membrane fusion
* Membrane fusion in fertilization
* Introduction of macromolecules into cells by membrane fusion
* Protoplast fusion

Book Description

This study describes the nature of LCPs, their syntheses, characterization, properties and finally their application. It discusses the way in which liquid crystallinity or mesomorphism occurs in small molecules, monomer liquid crystals and polymer liquid crystals.

Book Description

Providing a solid background in basic physics, this book shows how science is significant for more than its technological consequences. The book includes clear and well-planned links to the arts and philosophies of relevant historical periods to bring science and the humanities together. Professor David Lee (Nobel Laureate in Physics) of Cornell University calls the book "… a beautiful discussion of the progression of our understanding of the physical world and universe. …" and Professor Brian Greene of Columbia University says it is "… a masterful synthesis of humanity's long search to understand the deep workings of the universe. …"

Customer Reviews:

Science at its best.......2003-01-13

Science, literature, art, history are all combined in this wonderful, easily read, book. I recommend it for all interested both in scince and how it developed. The many stories make the giants of science into real people. The pictures are well-chosen and add greatly.

Unifying the Universe: the Physics of Heaven and Earth

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Unifying the Universe: the Physics of Heaven and Earth
Hasan S Padamsee
Manufacturer: Institute Of Physics Publish
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000R3F1HW

Amazon.com

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel, one of the handsome series of Vintage Spiritual Classics, contains a rich collection of extraordinary writings, any one of which would be worth the price of the whole book. Andrew Motion's clear, accessible, entertaining, and erudite introduction explains the situation of both Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions--written in 1624, when Donne was feeble with a fever that doctors believed might kill him--and Death's Duel--Donne's final sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, preached only a month before his death at age 59. Also included is Izaak Walton's The Life of Dr. John Donne, a spry and penetrating biography of the poet, written in 1640. And then there is the meat: both Devotions and Death's Duel show Donne at his very best--theatrical, humble, faithful, and doubting all at once. This is a book of severe and joyful mortality. Here is a foretaste from Devotions: "Death is in an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young man's back, and says nothing.... There is scarce anything that hath not killed somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly poison." --Michael Joseph Gross

Book Description

John Donne (1572-1631) is best known as the greatest English metaphysical poet. But there was another dimension to Donne's life and writing that, if less well known, is no less profound and beautiful.

Born into an aristocratic Catholic family, Donne joined the Church of England at the age of twenty-one out of fear of persecution. At the age of forty-three, he gave up his preoccupations with secular prestige and devoted himself utterly to religion. It was eight years later when, battered with fever, the deaths of his beloved wife, several of his children, and many dear lifelong friends, he composed Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. There is both trauma and great drama in this extended meditation on the meaning of mortality, the possibility of salvation, and the true nature of the passage of eternal life. With a new introduction by poet and biographer Andrew Motion, one of the most revered books of Christian devotion speaks to us again of the higher aspirations of man and the always-present possibility of a relationship with God.

This long out of print edition also contains Donne's last sermon, "Death's Duel" as well as the short colorful biography of him written by his contemporary Izaak Walton.

Customer Reviews:

That action concerns me.......2002-05-31

I must admit that I bought this book solely for the most famous of Donne's Meditations - Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris, AKA "no man is an island". I was unaware of the circumstances which surrounded Donne's writing of the Meditations. He had taken ill with a strong and high fever, and believed that he was dying. The meditations trace his spiritual journey through his illness, starting with the beginning (The first alteration, the first grudging, or the sickness), through attempts to treat him (The physician is sent for), to treatments (They apply pigeons, to draw the vapors from the head - yuck!), until he comes to terms spiritually with his fate (From the bells of the church adjoining, I am daily remembered of my burial in the funerals of others).

These meditations make a fascinating contrast with the other work by Donne in this book: Death's Duel. This was the last sermon that Donne ever preached, one month before he died. Not only did he know that the end was near, but so did his audience, who called it "the doctor's funeral sermon". It is interesting to see how Donne's view of death had changed in the years between the two works. By the time Death's Duel was written, Donne's mother, wife, and six of his twelve children were already dead.

In spite of the fact that Donne wrote over three hundred years ago, I am still influenced by his writings. Although I am not Christian, I agree with many of Donne's thoughts on how people interact with each other, and how we effect the lives of others, though we might not realise it. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Donne, though dead, is still involved in mankind, and this book aptly displays it.

what gives me the write to title this thing when a title...........2001-03-12

for this book,devotions upon emergent occasions and deaths duel has already been so good. Wow! what more can i possibly say....alot. firstly, fascinating stuff. it was really great and jesus Christ we love him, John Donne? WOW?!! what do you think? read it really it is very nicely proportionate for me the dimensions where spectacular and also a very nice size, John Donne? Where in the world is John Donne when we need him now....bye John Donne?

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Reflections on illness

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Devotionals | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Book Description

One of Donne's most important and haunting works in prose, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions was composed in less than a month, during an illness that nearly cost the writer his life. Donne divided the book into twenty-three sections, each corresponding to a stage of his illness and each consisting of a meditation, an expostulation, and a prayer. Filled with powerful images of mortality and immortality that have moved readers throughout the centuries, it provides a coherent spiritual message relevant not only to Donne's life but to the lives of all people.

Download Description

WHAT will not kill a man if a vapour will? How great an elephant, how small a mouse destroys! To die by a bullet is the soldier's daily bread; but few men die by hail-shot. A man is more worth than to be sold for single money; a life to be valued above a trifle. If this were a violent shaking of the air by thunder or by cannon, in that case the air is condensed above the thickness of water, of water baked into ice, almost petrified, almost made stone, and no wonder that kills; but that which is but a vapour, and a vapour not forced but breathed, should kill, that our nurse should overlay us, and air that nourishes us should destroy us, but that it is a half atheism to murmur against Nature, who is God's immediate commissioner, who would not think himself miserable to be put into the hands of Nature.

Customer Reviews:

Reflections on illness.......1998-04-08

First published in 1624, this series of meditations on illness were published following John Donne's sickness during late November and early December of 1623 (when he either had typhus or relapsing fever). Each of his ruminations are recorded in groups of three: meditation, expostulation, and prayer. Donne's insights about the "variable, therefore miserable condition of man" will always be pertinent as long as humans continue to fall prey to disease. The reading is a little slow at times, but there are some fine pieces in this book, including his famous meditation XVII, "No man is an island", that Hemingway quoted when he wrote FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. Even if you don't read all of the essays, this book is worth obtaining just to pore over meditation XVII.

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DEVOTIONS Upon Emergent Occasions
John; Raspa, Anthony (edited, with commentary) Donne
Manufacturer: McGill-Queen's University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OCPWJS

Devotions: Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel

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Devotions: Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel
John Donne
Manufacturer: Ann Arbor Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VROIT6

Generating Texts: The Progeny of Seventeenth-Century Prose

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Generating Texts: The Progeny of Seventeenth-Century Prose
Sharon Cadman Seelig
Manufacturer: University of Virginia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Holy Delight
Kate Gartner Frost
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Devotionals | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0691067813

Book Description

Composed on the occasion of the poet's near-fatal bout with typhus in 1623, the Devotions contains the essential germ of John Donne's mature thought, embodied in obscurely structured verse/prose divisions. Because of its seeming digressiveness, critics have struggled to understand this most significant of Renaissance texts as a whole. Kate Gartner Frost, however, shows that the Devotions, which combines odd bits of natural history, personal life-data, quotations from scripture, and descriptions of unpleasant medical nostrums with personal religious outpourings, is a unified work belonging to the tradition of English devotional literature and spiritual autobiography from Augustine onward. Frost examines how Donne patterned his work on models and structures that allowed the blending of chronology, experience, anecdote, and insight into the fullness of extended metaphor reflecting the human condition. Donne's use of biblical typology is treated, as well as his adherence to a poetics rooted in pre-Copernican cosmology, which relies on underlying spatial structures. Finally, Frost reveals the actual numerological structures present in the Devotions and addresses the problem of discursive reading in relation to spatially organized premodern works.

Holy Delight: Typology, Numerology, and Autobiography in Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

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Holy Delight: Typology, Numerology, and Autobiography in Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Kate Frost
Manufacturer: Princeton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IB8Z9E

John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Critical Edition (Renaissance Studies)

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John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Critical Edition (Renaissance Studies)
Elizabeth Savage
Manufacturer: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0773405143

Allegory and metaphor in Donne's Devotions

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Allegory and metaphor in Donne's Devotions
William B Soleim
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007AYOB4

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Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John; Raspa, Anthony Donne
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKOGAQ

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