Peter Martin's books

Fools Gold, Gillian Tett

2009-06-24T21:10:00.005+10:00

How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe

Review

Review

The story begins with the intense JP Morgan brainstorming session in 1994 beside a pool in Boca Raton, where the team cooked up a dazzling new idea for the exotic financial product known as credit derivatives. A tale of blistering brilliance and willfully blind ambition, Fool's Gold is both a rare journey deep inside the arcane and wildly competitive world of high finance and a vital contribution to understanding how the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression was perpetrated.

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Stop at Nothing, Annael Crabb

2009-06-23T19:23:00.005+10:00

The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull

Review

Review

"To the Liberal Party of John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull is like a handsome stranger who turns up on a cruise boat. He’s charming, He’s witty, he’s erudite, and he’s happy to buy the drinks. So why, oh why do they hang back?"

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A crooked sixpence, Murray Sayle

2009-06-23T19:11:00.003+10:00

‘The best novel about journalism – ever' Phillip Knightley

Review

Review

A CROOKED SIXPENCE tells the tale of a young Australian reporter, fresh off the boat, brimming with excitement, enthusiasm and ambition, securing casual shifts on a mass-circulation Fleet Street Sunday scandal-sheet… and the disillusion that set in very shortly afterwards. It has been described as: ‘The best novel about journalism – ever’ ‘Effectively a documentary, lightly disguised as a novel’ and ‘the best novel never published’

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Animal Spirits, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller

2009-06-23T17:15:00.008+10:00

How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism

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Review

"In our view, economic theory should be derived not from the minimal deviations from the system of Adam Smith [needed to provide a plausible account of observed outcomes] but rather from the deviations that actually do occur and can be observed."

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Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink

2009-05-29T19:16:00.007+10:00

Why We Eat More Than We Think

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Review

Brian Wansink has spent a lifetime studying what we don’t notice: the hidden cues that determine how much and why people eat. How does packaging influence how much we eat? Which movies make us eat faster? How does music or the color of the room influence how much we eat? How can we recognize the "hidden persuaders" used by restaurants and supermarkets to get us to mindlessly eat? What are the real reasons most diets are doomed to fail?

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Free Culture, Laurence Lessig

2009-05-29T15:38:00.003+10:00

How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

Review

Review

Why does the Recording Industry Association of America bring enormous punitive lawsuits against high school kids who have used their browsers to download MP3s? Why do online archives grind to a halt in the face of a copyrighted poem? And why does Congress now enjoy the effective power to renew copyrights in perpetuity -- even though no less an authority than the U.S. Constitution states flatly that such congressional grants can exist only "for limited Times"

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Infiltration, Colin McLaren

2009-05-29T12:50:00.003+10:00

The True Story of The Man who Cracked the Mafia

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For two years police detective Colin McLaren disappears off the face of the earth, surfacing in Griffith as a dodgy art dealer with a pretty girlfriend, and talked his way into the Mafia. For days, weeks, then months and years, Colin eats with them, sits in their homes and cuddles their kids, all the while climbing the ladder, finally befriending the Griffith Godfather, Antonio Romeo.

This is the world of listening devices, wire taps and of trying to stay sane while doing deals to buy pure cocaine and tons of cannabis. All this while, the Mafiosi know they have a snitch and are leaving no stone unturned in their search for the traitor…

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The Murray Whelan Trilogies, Shane Maloney

2009-05-29T11:27:00.006+10:00

Review

Review

Murray Whelan thinks the life of a political advisor is complicated enough: there are intimations of intrigue among the party powerful and his ex-wife is mounting a custody battle over his beloved son. But throw in a Turk snap-frozen in a local meat plant, drugs planted under the bed, fascist funeral rites, a killer car, and blood-sucking parasites, and things are suddenly spinning fatally out of control. That's when red-hot Ayisha knocks on the door.

"The author of this book, its setting and its characters are entirely fictitious. There is no such place as Melbourne. The Australian Labor Party exists only in the imagination of its members."

So far there are six Murray Whelan thrillers

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A Failure of Capitalism, Richard A Posner

2009-05-18T17:40:00.005+10:00

The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression

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Review

Interview

"Who's to blame for the economic crisis? Primarily the deregulation movement — people like me who didn't carve out banking from the other industries to be deregulated." Richard Allen Posner is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. He is the author of nearly 40 books on jurisprudence, legal philosophy, and several other topics. He is considered to be one of the most respected judges in the United States and one of the most cited legal scholars of all time.

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Filthy Lucre, Joseph Heath

2009-05-16T23:13:00.004+10:00

Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism

Review

Review

A dozen times every day, individuals and organisations use economic claims to support social and political points of view. Those on the left tend to distrust economists, seeing them as friends of the right. There is something to this scepticism, since professional economists are almost all keen supporters of the free market. Yet while factions on the right naturally embrace economists, they also tend to overestimate the effect of their support on free-market policies. The result is widespread confusion. In fact, virtually all commonly held beliefs about economics — whether espoused by political activists, politicians, journalists, or taxpayers—are just plain wrong.

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A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark

2009-05-16T22:52:00.007+10:00

A Brief Economic History of the World

Review

Review

Clark's idea-rich book may just prove to be the next blockbuster in economics. He offers us a daring story of the economic foundations of good institutions and the climb out of recurring poverty. We may not have cracked the mystery of human progress, but A Farewell to Alms brings us closer than before."

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On The Wealth of Nations, PJ O'Rourke

2009-05-16T21:43:00.006+10:00

Review

Review

Audio interview

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776 and almost instantly it was recognized as fundamental to an understanding of economics. It was also recognized as being really long and, as P. J. O’Rourke points out, to understand The Wealth of Nations, the cornerstone of freemarket thinking and a book that shapes the world to this day, you also need to peruse Smith’s earlier doorstopper, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But now you don’t have to read either, because P. J. has done it for you.

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How Do You Know? Russell Hardin

2009-05-16T21:20:00.004+10:00

The Economics of Ordinary Knowledge

How do ordinary people come to know or believe what they do? Hardin presents an essentially economic account of what an individual can come to know and then applies this account to many areas of ordinary life: political participation, religious beliefs, popular knowledge of science, liberalism, culture, extremism, moral beliefs, and institutional knowledge.

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Sustainable Energy, David McKay

2009-05-16T17:15:00.005+10:00

Without the hot air

Review

Review

This is to energy and climate what Freakonomics is to economics: an accessible, meaty, by-the-numbers look at the physics and practicalities of energy... My only complaint about this book is its packaging: if it were tarted up to look like the transformative, important popular science book that it really is, I think it would be at the center of the environmental debate today.

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The End of Overeating, David Kessler

2009-05-14T01:53:00.002+10:00

Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

Review

Review

His resulting theory, described in his new book, "The End of Overeating," is startling. Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain's chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. "Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology -- what's going on in our body," he said. "The real question is what's going on in our brain."

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