The author explores his theory that the food industry's used three essential ingredients to control much of the world's diet. Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese and seventy pounds of sugar. Every day, we ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales. In Salt...

A refreshingly level-headed exploration of the effects of immigration.

"In [this book], author and economist Tim Harford paints an epic yet intimate picture of economic change by telling the stories of the ideas, people, and tools that have had far-reaching and unexpected consequences for all of us. Drawing on his hugely popular BBC radio program and podcast ..., Harford expands on them with fascinating glimpses into the inventions that have transformed the ways, we work, play, and live. From the plow to artificial intelligence,...

"The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option. In This Changes...

Technology and science are evolving at a blistering, almost incomprehensible pace. The Human Genome Project took eleven years and $2.7 billion dollars to complete. Today, it would take two days to finish, and cost less than getting a pizza delivered. It is estimated that forty percent of the current Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist by 2025. In 2005, half a billion devices were connected to the Internet. By 2030, that number will reach one...

"From the author of Skipjack & The Melting World comes a mystery: the curious boom in America's beloved lobster industry and its probable crash. Maine lobstermen have happened upon a bonanza along their rugged, picturesque coast. For the past five years, the lobster population along the coast of Maine has boomed, resulting in a lobster harvest six times the size of the record catch from the 1980s--an event unheard of in fisheries. In a detective story,...

"In "The Value of Art" Michael Findlay offers an up-close and personal view of almost a half century in the business of art. He explains art's three kinds of value: commercial, social, and what he terms its essential value - the range of responses to art that we as individuals have depending on our culture, education, and life experience. He explains exactly how artworks are valued and reveals the workings of the art market.

When it’s not attached to your head, your very own hair takes on a disconcerting quality. Suddenly, it is strange. And yet hair finds its way into all manner of unexpected places, far from our heads, including cosmetics, clothes, ropes, personal and public collections, and even food. Whether treated as waste or as gift, relic, sacred offering or commodity in a billion-dollar industry for wigs and hair extensions, hair has many stories to tell.