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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

ISBN UK: 9781846686108 Publisher: Profile Books (Mar 8, 2012)
ISBN US: 9780307719218 Publisher: Crown Business (Mar 20, 2012)
Author(s): Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
In the West are the 'haves', while much of the rest of the world are the 'have-nots'. The extent of inequality today is unprecedented. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, Why Nations Fail looks at the root of the problems facing some nations. Economists and scientists have offered useful insights into the reasons for certain aspects of poverty, such as Jeffrey Sachs (it's geography and the weather), and Jared Diamond (it's technology and species). But most theories ignore the incentives and institutions that populations need to invest and prosper: they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it – and the key to ensuring these incentives is sound institutions. Incentives and institutions are what separate the have and have-nots. Based on fifteen years of research, and stepping boldly into the territory of Ian Morris's Why the West Rules – For Now, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson blend economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty. And, perhaps most importantly, they provide a pragmatic basis for the hope that those mired in poverty can be placed on the path to prosperity.

REVIEWS:
"You will have three reasons to love this book. It's about national income differences within the modern world, perhaps the biggest problem facing the world today. It's peppered with fascinating stories that will make you a spellbinder at cocktail parties—such as why Botswana is prospering and Sierra Leone isn't. And it's a great read. Like me, you may succumb to reading it in one go, and then you may come back to it again and again." ...Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

"A compelling and highly readable book. And [the] conclusion is a cheering one: the authoritarian 'extractive' institutions like the ones that drive growth in China today are bound to run out of steam. Without the inclusive institutions that first evolved in the West, sustainable growth is impossible, because only a truly free society can foster genuine innovation and the creative destruction that is its corollary." ...Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money.

"Acemoglu and Robinson—two of the world's leading experts on development—reveal why it is not geography, disease, or culture which explains why some nations are rich and some poor, but rather a matter of institutions and politics. This highly accessible book provides welcome insight to specialists and general readers alike." ...Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and The Last Man and The Origins of Political Order.
 

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Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration

ISBN: 9781589017696
Author(s): Jack Mahoney Publisher: Georgetown University Press

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Evolution has provided a new understanding of reality, with revolutionary consequences for Christianity. In an evolutionary perspective the incarnation involved God entering the evolving human species to help it imitate the trinitarian altruism in whose image it was created and counter its tendency to self-absorption. Primarily, however, the evolutionary achievement of Jesus was to confront and overcome death in an act of cosmic significance, ushering humanity into the culminating stage of its evolutionary destiny, the full sharing of God's inner life. Previously such doctrines as original sin, the fall, sacrifice, and atonement stemmed from viewing death as the penalty for sin and are shown not only to have serious difficulties in themselves, but also to emerge from a Jewish culture preoccupied with sin and sacrifice that could not otherwise account for death. The death of Jesus on the cross is now seen as saving humanity, not from sin, but from individual extinction and meaninglessness. Death is now seen as a normal process that affect all living things and the religious doctrines connected with explaining it in humans are no longer required or justified. Similar evolutionary implications are explored affecting other subjects of Christian belief, including the Church, the Eucharist, priesthood, and moral behavior.

REVIEWS:
"This is a very important work in the challenges it places to the traditional interpretation of Church dogmas, especially those to do with original sin, the image of God, and God's purpose in Creation and in the Incarnation. It provides a very good historical review of various dogmas before reinterpreting each dogma in the light of scientific evolution. I do not know of any other work that does this so thoroughly." ...George V. Coyne, SJ, president, Vatican Observatory Foundation

"This challenging and readable book is the work of a scholar who is theologically well-informed, aware of previous and contemporary discussions of the need for theological development in view of evolutionary science, and skillful in suggesting alternatives to traditional formulations of Christian teaching. Mahoney's work should stimulate much fruitful theological discussion. Strongly recommended." ...John F. Haught, senior fellow in science and religion, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University

"Jack Mahoney's Christianity in Evolution presents a courageous and intellectually honest attempt to face the theological implications of the undeniable fact of human evolution. His carefully crafted assessment of various evolutionary accounts of morality for Christian ethics is a gem of concise analysis. His novel way of highlighting the altruistic dimensions of the imago Dei, Jesus' command of neighbor-love, and Trinitarian communion challenges Christian ethicists to take more seriously the theological basis of their discipline. [This book] represents a new stage in the encounter of theology with evolutionary thinking, but it should be read not only by theologians but by any Christian seeking to develop an intellectually engaged faith." ...Stephen J. Pope, professor of theological ethics, Boston College
 

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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Paperback (US Edition) ISBN: 9780143036555
Paperback (UK Edition) ISBN: 9780140279511
Author(s): Jared Diamond Publisher:Penguin (US), Faber & Faber (UK)

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
From groundbreaking writer and thinker, Jared Diamond comes an epic, visionary new book on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations — and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Collapse also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.

See on Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

REVIEW:
"...the fact that one of the world's most original thinkers has chosen to pen this mammoth work when his career is at his apogee is itself a persuasive argument that Collapse must be taken seriously. It is probably the most important book you will ever read." ...Tim Flannery, Science
 

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Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Hardback (US Edition) ISBN: 9780393061314

Paperback (US Edition) ISBN: 9780393317558
Paperback (UK Edition) ISBN: 9780099302780
Author(s): Jared Diamond Publisher:WW Norton & Co (US), Vintage (UK)

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion — as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war — and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Jared Diamond's book is winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal.

See on Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

REVIEW:
"Yet despite its inevitable minor flaws, this book remains a very impressive achievement of imagination and exposition, which tells us much about the interaction between 'civilised' minds and 'primitive' peoples at the end of the second millennium of the Christian era. To end, as we began, with a nineteenth-century perspective on such matters:" ...Tom Tomlinson (University of Strathclyde) Reviews in History [LINK to full Review]
 

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Quarks, Chaos and Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion

ISBN: (UK Paperback) 9780281057665 (US Paperback) 9780824524067
Author(s): John Polkinghorne Publisher: SPCK (UK Edn) Crossroad Publishing Co (US)

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
In a crystal clear discussion of science and religion and their logical friendship in the search for truth and understanding, Polkinghorne draws on discoveries made in atomic physics to make credible the claims of Christianity, and helps refine Christian perceptions through the knowledge that the new science brings. He discusses belief in God, chaos, evolution, miracles, and prayer, and gives an answer to the question: Can a scientist believe?
 

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The End of Discovery: Are We Approaching the Boundaries of the Knowable?

Hardback ISBN: 9780199585243
Author(s): Russell Stannard Publisher: Oxford University Press

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

It is generally thought that science, by its very nature, must always progress. But this is not so. One day, fundamental science will come to an end. Not when we have discovered everything, but when we have discovered whatever is open to us to understand — which is not the same thing. Limitations as to what the human brain can comprehend, together with practical considerations to do with the need for ever more elaborate and expensive equipment, are likely to ensure that our knowledge will remain for ever incomplete. A further indication that the world will ultimately retain some of its mystery is suggested by evidence that in certain directions, scientific enquiry might already have come up against the boundaries of the knowable.

Author and broadcaster Russell Stannard, himself a high-energy physicist and former Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Open University, introduces the general reader to the deepest questions facing us today — questions to do with consciousness, free will, the nature of space, time, and matter, the existence of extraterrestrial life, and why there should be a world at all. In doing so, he speculates as to whether some of these questions will never be answered.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction; 1. Brain and consciousness; 2. Creation of the cosmos; 3. The laws of nature; 4. The anthropic principle; 5. The size of the cosmos; 6. Extraterrestrial life; 7. The nature of space; 8. Space in relation to time; 9. The nature of time; 10. High energy physics; 11. The quantum world; 12. Quantum gravity and string theory; 13. Concluding remarks
 

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A Short History of Nearly Everything

ISBN: 9780552997041
Author(s): Bill Bryson Publisher: Doubleday

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization — how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

REVIEWS:
"While this book doesn't cover 'nearly everything,' it does a fantastic job of tackling certain topics: biology, earth science, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Writing with wit and charm, Bryson, who has hiked the Appalachian Trail (A Walk in the Woods) and traveled around Australia (In a Sunburned Country), now takes us on a scientific odyssey from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Reflecting his gift for making science comprehensible yet fun, he tells the story of the discoveries and the people that have shaped our understanding of the universe. Along the way, we meet some fascinating and eccentric scientists. Although Bryson clearly intends this book for general readers, subject specialists will also enjoy his wry takes. The 30 chapters are divided among seven scientific topics, and this reviewer found himself reading chapters out of order, selecting topics of particular interest. There are useful footnotes, as well as chapter notes and a bibliography. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries." ...James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib, Chicago Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
 

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Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium

ISBN: 9780521253246 (Paperback); 9781107009585 (Hardcover)
Author(s): Anthony Fisher Publisher: Cambridge University Press

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Can the Hippocratic and Judeo-Christian traditions be synthesized with contemporary thought about practical reason, virtue and community to provide real-life answers to the dilemmas of healthcare today? Bishop Anthony Fisher discusses conscience, relationships and law in relation to the modern-day controversies surrounding stem cell research, abortion, transplants, artificial feeding and euthanasia, using case studies to offer insight and illumination. What emerges is a reason-based bioethics for the twenty-first century; a bioethics that treats faith and reason with equal seriousness, that shows the relevance of ancient wisdom to the complexities of modern healthcare scenarios and that offers new suggestions for social policy and regulation. Philosophical argument is complemented by Catholic theology and analysis of social and biomedical trends, to make this an auspicious example of a new generation of Catholic bioethical writing which has relevance for people of all faiths and none.
 

TABLE of CONTENTS:
Abbreviations;
Preface;
Introduction;
Part I. How are we to do Bioethics?:
Section 1. Context: Challenges and Resources of a New Millennium:
1. Sex and life in post-modernity;
2. Catholic engagement with the culture of modernity;
3. Promising developments;
4. Conclusion;
Section 2. Conscience: The Crisis of Authority:
5. The voice of conscience;
6. The voice of the magisterium;
7. Conscience in post-modernity;
8. Where to from here?;
Section 3. Cooperation: Should we ever Collaborate with Wrongdoing?:
9. Traditional example;
10. Five modern examples;
11. Some fundamental issues raised by these examples;
12. Why it matters so much;
13. Conclusion;
Part II. Beginning-of-Life:
Section 4. Beginnings: When do People Begin?:
14. Method, thesis and implications;
15. A closer look at Ford's science;
16. A closer look at Ford's philosophy;
17. Individuality criteria;
18. Conclusions;
Section 5. Stem Cells: What's all the Fuss About?:
19. Scientific potential and concerns about stem cells;
20. Ethical concerns about embryonic stem cells;
21. Social concerns about embryonic stem cells;
Section 6. Abortion - and the New Eugenics:
22. The perennial debate about abortion;
23. Pre-natal screening: a search and destroy mission?;
24. The new abortion debate;
Part III. Later Life:
Section 7. Transplants: Bodies, Relationships and Ethics:
25. Love beyond death;
26. Conceptions of the body and relationships in organ transplantation;
27. Fashionable bioethical approaches to organ procurement;
28. Better bioethical approaches to organ procurement;
29. Ethical issues in organ reception;
30. Conclusion;
Section 8. Artificial Nutrition: Why do Unresponsive Patients Matter?:
31. Civilisation after Schiavo?;
32. Why the unresponsive still matter: a philosophical account;
33. Why the unresponsive still matter: a theological account;
34. Some final questions;
Section 9. Endings: Suicide and Euthanasia in the Bible:
35. The problem of suicide and euthanasia in the Bible;
36. Suicides and euthanasias in the Bible;
37. The Scriptural basis of Judeo-Christian opposition to suicide and euthanasia;
Part IV. Protecting Life:
Section 10. Identity: What Role for a Catholic Hospital?:
38. A tale of two hospitals;
39. Current challenges for Catholic hospitals;
40. Catholic hospitals as diakonia;
41. Catholic hospitals as martyria;
42. Catholic hospitals as leitourgia;
43. Conclusion: six tasks for a new century;
Section 11. Regulation: What Kinds of Laws and Social Policies?:
44. A tale of three politicians;
45. Catholic principles for politicians;
46. Reasonable stances for a pro-life politician;
47. Some virtues of a pro-life politician.

ABC Radio National Interview with Bishop Anthony Fisher about the book:
Download, Listen or Read the transcript of Noel Debian's interview with Anthony Fisher on the ABC Radio National Religion & Ethics Report:
"Bishop Anthony Fisher of the Parramatta diocese in Western Sydney writes in his new book, Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium, about the issues dominating the social agenda today, including abortion, stem-cell research and euthanasia. As producer Noel Debien discovered when he spoke with Bishop Fisher, the book tries to, effectively, end the primacy of conscience for Catholics, and ties them to church doctrine on a raft very serious decision in life."
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/curbing-the-conscience-of-catholics/3832146

REVIEWS:
"Bishop Anthony Fisher's Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium provides coherent and comprehensive coverage of many of the most disputed topics in bioethics. With both clarity and charity, Bishop Fisher dispels the myths and misunderstandings that obscure inherent dignity of the human person. He shows the compatibility of faith and reason and ably defends Catholic teaching against critiques from both dissenting theologians and secular philosophers." ...Christopher Kaczor, Loyola Marymount University