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How we have come to define the debate on free and fair trade in this country and around the world fascinates, and often frustrates me. I think trade needs to remain just that—free and fair—but I don't believe that "free" necessarily means "unfettered," or that "fair" means "protected. " Those that point to the fact that more open markets in China, India and elsewhere have pulled more people out of poverty more quickly than any other force in the history of the world have the past 30 years of evidence on their side, and those that argue that labor and environmental concerns need to have a seat at the table so that they're not being exploited have history on their side.
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We last covered Tim Harford here when Random House released his last book, The logic of Life, which we reviewed as a Jack Covert Selects. But you may have heard his name more recently because of the press that his new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, has been getting.
There was an excerpt on Slate last week entitled The Airplane That Saved the World: What the RAF's World War II Spitfire Can Teach Us About Nurturing Innovation and Radical Ideas.
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With the NFL owners and players union currently in court over the lockout, it might seem like an odd time to use the NFL as an example for how to run anything. But current labor disputes aside, the NFL is by far the most successful business operating in sport today—it must be doing something right. And Roger L.
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Opportunism is a bad word in our culture, and an excellent book released earlier this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
To get a popular definition of the word, let's turn to our society's new reference of choice—Wikipedia. The entry on opportunism begins by describing it as "the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles.
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The article below was printed in last year's In the Books—our annual review of the best in the business genre. It my (possibly ill-advised) attempt to look at how some of the books published in 2009 tackled the macroeconomic issues, with a (possibly ill-advised) splash of Candide thrown in awkwardly, for emphasis. If you don't feel like reading the entire essay on the topic, you can skip to the end of the post and see F.
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