Many people today don't think about gold much. Far less really think about the U.S. dollar. They assume that there is no need. Ignorance is not bliss. In the future, people will wish they had considered the relationship that gold shares with our currency. For most of U.S. history, money was gold. The dollar was backed by gold, and the paper currency that traded hands were backed by gold held in vaults. It was no coincidence that the U.S. enjoyed a great rise to become a superpower in the world. People wanted our money because they recognized that it was good, honest, and sound money backed by gold. There was a reason and an incentive to save money. Other nations gladly accepted our money - in fact, the U.S. Dollar was so trusted and respected that our money became the world's Reserve Currency. This means that other nations would buy dollars and keep them as part of their money reserves, right along with their gold holdings. And why not - our money was as good as gold, because it was representative of gold. Over the years, there were some cracks to our system that developed. Finally, in 1971, gold was totally severed from the U.S. dollar. In that year the whole world changed. Our honest money which was so trusted turned into nothing more than worthless paper. The U.S. government and the big banks publicly told everyone that gold was no longer relevant. This was total hypocrisy, since they clung to their own gold reserves. Since 1971, both the government and the big banks have a love/hate relationship with gold. They hate gold when it is in the public's hands because it represents a threat to their fraudulent paper money system. They secretly love gold when it is in their vaults. You can't have it both ways. If gold is no longer relevant, the governments and largest banks on earth would get rid of their gold holdings. Instead, they maintain their gold holdings and even add to the gold in their vaults. While the governments of the world and big international banks hold tightly to their gold, we now have this paper currency in our lives. We work for it, spend it, save it, and have a belief that it somehow has value. The problem is that it really has no value. It is worth about as much as Monopoly Money with patriotic images. The only thing that gives it any buying power is our collective belief that it is worth something. Worse still, our government lets the privately owned Federal Reserve print as much money as they would like. This causes inflation and the purchasing power of a dollar to go down all the time. We'll examine all of this and how this current mess came to be. We'll look at the players and bad actors in this sorry saga of how our money has been debased from a solid gold backed system to worthless paper currency. We'll also look at what We The People can do about it to protect ourselves. I admit that this book is not light hearted fun reading. But it is essential reading to understand the current mess we are in, and what may come next for our world, our country, and our family.

Forests Are Gold examines the management of Vietnam's forests in the tumultuous twentieth century—from French colonialism to the recent transition to market-oriented economics—as the country united, prospered, and transformed people and landscapes. Forest policy has rarely been about ecology or conservation for nature’s sake, but about managing citizens and society, a process Pamela McElwee terms “environmental rule.” Untangling and understanding these practices and networks of rule illuminates not just thorny issues of environmental change, but also the birth of Vietnam itself.

Once a showcase for amateur athletics, the Olympic Games have become a global entertainment colossus powered by corporate sponsorship and professional participation. Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney offer the inside story of this transformation by examining the far-sighted leadership and decision-making acumen of four International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents: Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Jacques Rogge. Blending biography with historical storytelling, the authors explore the evolution of Olympic commercialism from Brundage's uneasy acceptance of television rights fees through the revenue generation strategies that followed the Salt Lake City bid scandal to the present day. Throughout, Wenn and Barney draw on their decades of studying Olympic history to dissect the personalities, conflicts, and controversies behind the Games' embrace of the business of spectacle. Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.

CITY OF GOLD gives the readers a view of Cagayan de Oro's history through the stories of people who have made the place their home. Read about the local Boy Scout who crossed paths with General Douglas MacArthur, one of the icons of WW II, at the Cagayan de Oro port; the young girl who witnessed the 97-kilometer Bataan Death March and later emerged as one of Cagayan de Oro's most influential women; the trader who fled war-torn Jolo, settled in the city and became a successful shirt designer; the inventor of the ubiquitous motorela; "Lady Love," the first female DJ of the city's first live FM radio outlet, who later built our Radyo Bombo station; and many others. Cagayan de Oro is no ordinary city because of these extraordinary people. And they tell us their fascinating stories in the CITY OF GOLD. "Truly an enjoyable read... gives a vivid picture of the uniqueness of Cagayan de Oro as well as an intimate look into the personal lives of the prominent Kagay-anons who shaped the CITY OF GOLD. Wonderful job, Annie." -- Irene Yatco, publisher and editor of the Philippine Journal, Vancouver, British Columbia ABOUT THE AUTHOR, ANN GORRA Ann Gorra was born in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental, and moved at the age of two with her family to Cagayan de Oro. She studied mass communication from Silliman University and then worked as a TV host in Cagayan de Oro. Ann emigrated to the North America in 1989 and now lives with her husband in Vancouver, Canada. She returns regularly to the city of her childhood, and maintains contact with many Kagay-anons living in the Philippines and around the world. Ann has written articles about Filipino-Canadians for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Manila and for Filipinas, a magazine based in Daly City, California.

Learn about the famous gold rush and its consequences.

Water or gold.

The town of White Oaks, New Mexico Territory, was born in 1879 when prospectors discovered gold at nearby Baxter Mountain. In Gold-Mining Boomtown, Roberta Key Haldane offers an intimate portrait of the southeastern New Mexico community by profiling more than forty families and individuals who made their homes there during its heyday. Today, fewer than a hundred people live in White Oaks. Its frontier incarnation, located a scant twenty-eight miles from the notorious Lincoln, is remembered largely because of its association with famous westerners. Billy the Kid and his gang were familiar visitors to the town. When a popular deputy was gunned down in 1880, the citizens resolved to rid their community of outlaws. Pat Garrett, running for sheriff of Lincoln County, was soon campaigning in White Oaks. But there was more to the town than gold mining and frontier violence. In addition to outlaws, lawmen, and miners, Haldane introduces readers to ranchers, doctors, saloonkeepers, and stagecoach owners. José Aguayo, a lawyer from an old Spanish family, defended Billy the Kid, survived the Lincoln County War, and moved to the White Oaks vicinity in 1890, where his family became famous for the goat cheese they sold to the town’s elite. Readers also meet a New England sea captain and his wife (a Samoan princess, no less), a black entrepreneur, Chinese miners, the “Cattle Queen of New Mexico,” and an undertaker with an international criminal past. The White Oaks that Haldane uncovers—and depicts with lively prose and more than 250 photographs—is a microcosm of the Old West in its diversity and evolution from mining camp to thriving burg to the near–ghost town it is today. Anyone interested in the history of the Southwest will enjoy this richly detailed account.

An inspiring middle-grade novel for horse lovers.

Issued in conjunction with the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, held January 26, 2019-July 21, 2019, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.