The Real Story of Risk PDF Download

Author: Glenn E. Croston
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616146605
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A biologist examines the many facets of the hazardous modern environment that people only dimly perceive. He explains why people let their guard down for a beautiful face, why slow-moving risks are hard to stop, how a story can be more persuasive than dry statistics, and many other intriguing quirks.

Author: Hannah Farber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469663643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. The international information they gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state building and economic development. During the Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation's institutional fabric. By the early nineteenth century, insurers were no longer just risk assessors. They were nation builders and market makers. Deeply and imaginatively researched, Underwriters of the United States uses marine insurers to reveal a startlingly original story of risk, money, and power in the founding era.

Author: Bob Gabordi
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1728366054
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
I can still feel the chills as I recall the scene on Fifth Avenue below the editor’s office in August 1997. This was really happening. Justice had prevailed. Two people were given their lives back because of the journalism by my team, the courage of our reporter and photographer. Now, their family was gathering in front of the building, holding copies of an EXTRA edition of The Herald-Dispatch that declared their freedom, holding signs and crying tears of gratitude. This was why, I was sure, the Founders had created the First Amendment. We had stood up to a foreign government and forced our own to do the right thing. Stories would not always end so elegantly. Justice and good journalism do not always win. There would be decades of frustration between moments of celebration. But this is a moment when journalism won. And it felt amazing.

Author: Hank Thomas
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1662446446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Almost nobody approves of the way our government is working. Almost everybody agrees that money in the form of political donations is a major part of the problems we witness. Corporate and special interest donations are seen as the most egregious parts of the political finance problem. Our history books are not as complete as they arguably should have been when it comes to some of our more controversial historical events. It is difficult to imagine any reason for these omissions that does not involve malice on the part of the author. After all, when was the last time someone came to you with information they did not want you to have? The goal of this book is to offer ideas about how we might fix the political dysfunction that dominates our daily news and conversation. The reader will, I hope, find themselves drawn into a conversation that will be comfortable and productive when it comes to their involvement. The more we talk to one another, the more likely it will be that we begin to agree on solutions to our current political problems.

Author: Dan Bouk
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656486X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Classing -- Fatalizing -- Writing -- Smoothing -- A modern conception of death -- Valuing lives, in four movements -- Failing the future.

Author: Amina Gautier
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820341320
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
“Gautier writes with exhilarating insight and confidence about the lives of teenagers . . . at risk from themselves, their families and their friends.”—Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author In Amina Gautier’s Brooklyn, some kids make it and some kids don’t, but not in simple ways or for stereotypical reasons. Gautier’s stories explore the lives of young African Americans who might all be classified as “at-risk,” yet who encounter different opportunities and dangers in their particular neighborhoods and schools and who see life through the lens of different family experiences. Gautier’s focus is on quiet daily moments, even in extraordinary lives; her characters do not stand as emblems of a subculture but live and breathe as people. In “The Ease of Living,” the young teen Jason is sent down south to spend the summer with his grandfather after witnessing the double murder of his two best friends, and he is not happy about it. In “Pan Is Dead,” two half-siblings watch as the heroin-addicted father of the older one works his way back into their mother’s life; in “Dance for Me,” a girl on scholarship at a posh Manhattan school teaches white girls to dance in the bathroom in order to be invited to a party. As teenagers in complicated circumstances, each of Gautier’s characters is pushed in many directions. To succeed may entail unforgiveable compro­mises, and to follow their desires may lead to catastrophe. Yet within these stories they exist and can be seen as they are, in the moment of choosing. “Despite its title, this is not a debut composed of rapid shocks and dangers, but a quieter accumulation of heartbreaking pressures.”—Foreword Reviews

Author: Dan Gardner
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551992108
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Gardner explores a new way of thinking about the decisions we make. We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear is growing, with deadly consequences — such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those — politicians, activists, and the media — who promote fear for their own gain. Culture also matters. But a more fundamental cause is human psychology. Working with risk science pioneer Paul Slovic, author Dan Gardner sets out to explain in a compulsively readable fashion just what that statement above means as to how we make decisions and run our lives. We learn that the brain has not one but two systems to analyze risk. One is primitive, unconscious, and intuitive. The other is conscious and rational. The two systems often agree, but occasionally they come to very different conclusions. When that happens, we can find ourselves worrying about what the statistics tell us is a trivial threat — terrorism, child abduction, cancer caused by chemical pollution — or shrugging off serious risks like obesity and smoking. Gladwell told us about “the black box” of our brains; Gardner takes us inside, helping us to understand how to deconstruct the information we’re bombarded with and respond more logically and adaptively to our world. Risk is cutting-edge reading.

Author: Gilbert M. Gaul
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374718520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history—but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.

Author: Bill Bradley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 158836626X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
“Politics is stuck,” writes Bill Bradley, in this insightful, informative, and provocative book about America at a crossroads, but “idealism isn’t dead. It can be reawakened.” What will it take to make America a better, stronger, truer country? asks the bestselling author, former Knicks star, and onetime presidential candidate. Bill Bradley believes that America is at a teachable moment when we are compelled to reevaluate our political system, our leadership, our agenda as a nation, and ourselves as citizens. With clarity and urgency, Bradley shows why the story we are being told now about who we are as a people is not true. He then offers a new story about our nation, based on America’s rich heritage and his belief in the character of the American people. Bradley explores what changes need to be made in our parties, in our politics, and in citizen activism to ensure America’s future. He asserts that the American people are ready for the truth and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation. Writing from his own experience in politics and drawing on his knowledge of history, Bradley shows how the Republican Party has built a solid pyramid structure since the 1970s, at the base of which are money, ideas, and media, whereas the Democratic Party’s structure is an inverted pyramid, with too much emphasis put on the need for a charismatic leader to hold the pyramid up. Each party, for different reasons, fails to deal with the real issues that now confront America. This informed and inspiring call to action is addressed not only to the parties and elected leaders, but to citizens as well. Bradley proposes things every American can do to shape our nation’s future. He points out that if eighty percent of the electorate voted, instead of fifty percent, it would be the most important change in American politics since women got the vote. Now more than ever, he says, we need to embrace an “ethic of connectedness,” a combination of collective action and individual responsibility, to solve our nation’s most pressing problems, and he argues that the fate of all countries is bound together as never before. Writing today with the freedom of a private citizen, Bradley provides this transformative and eye-opening book about the danger and the promise of America’s choice at this crucial moment in the nation’s history.

Author: Jonathan Levy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067207
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortuneis one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.