Published in 1998. In spite of spectacular improvements in market flexibility, the characteristics of the past twenty years are slow growth and high unemployment. Economics Through the Looking-Glass exposes the theoretical fallacy at the heart of the New Economic Orthodoxy. The fallacy lies in treating the economy as a "single-gear" machine guaranteed to operate at its full employment potential as long as it benefits from the lubricant of perfectly flexible markets (in a Walrasian Utopia of continuous market-clearing equilibrium). Unemployment is thereby reduced to a structural problem of market imperfection. As a cure for unemployment, market flexibility is presumed to be adequate; as a cure for inflation, monetary restriction is presumed to be safe. The flaw in Orthodox logic is exposed by a demonstration that a monetary economy operates as a 'multi-gear' machine. Unless it is in 'top-gear', market flexibility (even of Utopian perfection) is not sufficient for full employment. 'Single-gear' Economic Orthodoxy is shown to have developed, not as a science, but as a religion beginning with Adam Smith's revelation of the Law of Competition. A Looking-Glass journey backwards in time from Adam Smith uncovers his suppression of the Law of Circulation and exposes the dangerous delusion of Orthodox economic policy. As a weapon against unemployment, market flexibility is inadequate; as a weapon against inflation, monetary restriction is unsafe. The 'multi-gear' alternative heralds the final stage of economic liberalisation: deregulation of the market for money. The rescue of interest rates from political or central bank interference and the control of inflation by a mechanism triggered by market forces would put an end to the Orthodox policy of maintaining unemployment above its natural market rate by misguided monetary intervention.

The Global Economic Crisis through an Indian Looking Glass is about the onset and unfolding of the global financial crisis and the great recession of 2008-2009, tracing its origin and causes, dimensions and impact, policy responses, lessons and the way forward from an Indian perspective. A significant feature of the book is the analysis of the four facets of the crisis: (i) genesis, (ii) impact on the world and India, (iii) the response, and (iv) the aftermath. The objective is to capture the specific aspects of the onset of the crisis and the policy responses, with particular emphasis on the sequencing thereof. The authors underscore the gaps in the international financial architecture that allow the recurrence of crises with global ramifications and emphasize the importance of cooperation, coordination and collective action to secure and sustain macroeconomic and financial stability across the globe. The book is a testament to the powerful values of global interconnectedness.

The investment markets have never been more dangerous. Interest rates are at all-time lows; the sanctity of cash deposits is under threat; government bonds are expensive and offer ultra-low or negative yields; equity markets are largely detached from reality after years of loose monetary policy. Investors need to calibrate themselves to the realities of this extraordinary new environment so that they can protect their wealth and, ideally, prosper. In Investing Through the Looking Glass, longstanding portfolio manager and investment columnist Tim Price identifies and shatters a number of investment myths and misconceptions. He questions whether stock markets inevitably rise over the longer term, whether bonds continue to be relevant as a failsafe low-risk asset, whether professional fund managers represent "smart money", and much more besides. But this is not just a counsel of despair. Having identified the problems besetting today's investor, the focus then moves on to practical guidance to help investors preserve and grow their capital in this age of inflationary and deflationary uncertainty. Tim Price provides ideas on how to find attractive investments in distorted equity markets, on what might be the best-kept secret in finance, and how best to insure portfolios in an environment of heightened systemic risk. Investing Through the Looking Glass presents a route map for navigating one of the most challenging financial environments that anyone has ever seen. For the sake of your wealth, can you afford not to read it?

Fifty-five years after its founding at the dawn of the cold war, North Korea remains a land of illusions. Isolated and anachronistic, the country and its culture seem to be dominated exclusively by the official ideology of Juche, which emphasizes national self-reliance, independence, and worship of the supreme leader, General Kim Jong Il. Yet this socialist utopian ideal is pursued with the calculations of international power politics. Kim has transformed North Korea into a militarized state, whose nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and continued threat to South Korea have raised alarm worldwide. This paradoxical combination of cultural isolation and military-first policy has left the North Korean people woefully deprived of the opportunity to advance socially and politically. The socialist economy, guided by political principles and bereft of international support, has collapsed. Thousands, perhaps millions, have died of starvation. Foreign trade has declined and the country's gross domestic product has recorded negative growth every year for a decade. Yet rather than initiate the sort of market reforms that were implemented by other communist governments, North Korean leaders have reverted to the economic policies of the 1950s: mass mobilization, concentration on heavy industry, and increased ideological indoctrination. Although members of the political elite in Pyongyang are acutely aware of their nation's domestic and foreign problems, they are plagued by fear and policy paralysis. North Korea Through the Looking Glass sheds new light on this remote and peculiar country. Drawing on more than ten years of research—including interviews with two dozen North Koreans who made the painful decision to defect from their homeland—Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig explore what the leadership and the masses believe about their current predicament. Through dual themes of persistence and illusion, they explore North Korea's stubborn adherence to policies that have

Modern Western culture is saturated with images, imprinting visual standards of concepts such as beauty and femininity onto our collective consciousness. Blindness Through the Looking Glass examines how gender and femininity are performed and experienced in everyday life by women who do not rely on sight as their dominant mode of perception, identifying the multiple senses involved in the formation of gender identity within social interactions. Challenging visuality as the dominant mode to understand gender, social performance, and visual culture, the book offers an ethnographic investigation of blindness (and sight) as a human condition, putting both blindness and vision “on display” by discussing people’s auditory, tactile, and olfactory experiences as well as vision and sight, and by exploring ways that individuals perform blindness and “sightedness” in their everyday lives. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 blind women in Israel and anthropological fieldwork, the book investigates the social construction and daily experience of blindness in a range of domains. Uniquely, the book brings together blind symbolism with the everyday experiences of blind and sighted individuals, joining in mutual conversation the fields of disability studies, visual culture, anthropology of the senses, and gender studies.