North American sociologist Paula Palmer collaborated with two indigenous Bribri women to produce this unique oral history of the Bribri people, inhabitants of Costa Rica's Atlantic rainforests. Elders share the traditional knowledge that defines them as a people who "take care of Sibo's gifts"--The sacred gifts of flora and fauna. As they tell how their lives depend on rainforest resources, the Bribri people appeal to us all to support them in their struggle to preserve their forests and their way of life. -- Amazon

Overwhelmingly green and moist, smelling of river mud and the salty sea, Costa Rica is the Earth's national park. While visitors can find a wealth of modern comforts in San Jose and the ever-expanding beach resorts along the Pacific shores, the true soul of the country lies beyond these plush enclaves in the accessible wilderness. The Traveler's Costa Rica Companion highlights the places that no visitor to Costa Rica should miss and surveys the country in terms of holiday themes - such as hiking, walking, rafting, touring, living it up or relaxing in palm-fringed comfort, or absorbing the local culture - that readers may personally relate to. Visitors will be led along the accessible jungle and rain forest trails, up volcanos and down riverbeds and on to scenes reminiscent of the film African Queen.

Long characterized as an exceptional country within Latin America, Costa Rica has been hailed as a democratic oasis in a continent scorched by dictatorship and revolution; the ecological mecca of a biosphere laid waste by deforestation and urban blight; and an egalitarian, middle-class society blissfully immune to the violent class and racial conflicts that have haunted the region. Arguing that conceptions of Costa Rica as a happy anomaly downplay its rich heritage and diverse population, The Costa Rica Reader brings together texts and artwork that reveal the complexity of the country’s past and present. It characterizes Costa Rica as a site of alternatives and possibilities that undermine stereotypes about the region’s history and challenge the idea that current dilemmas facing Latin America are inevitable or insoluble. This essential introduction to Costa Rica includes more than fifty texts related to the country’s history, culture, politics, and natural environment. Most of these newspaper accounts, histories, petitions, memoirs, poems, and essays are written by Costa Ricans. Many appear here in English for the first time. The authors are men and women, young and old, scholars, farmers, workers, and activists. The Costa Rica Reader presents a panoply of voices: eloquent working-class raconteurs from San José’s poorest barrios, English-speaking Afro-Antilleans of the Limón province, Nicaraguan immigrants, factory workers, dissident members of the intelligentsia, and indigenous people struggling to preserve their culture. With more than forty images, the collection showcases sculptures, photographs, maps, cartoons, and fliers. From the time before the arrival of the Spanish, through the rise of the coffee plantations and the Civil War of 1948, up to participation in today’s globalized world, Costa Rica’s remarkable history comes alive. The Costa Rica Reader is a necessary resource for scholars, students, and travelers alike.

If you’re one of the 25 to 45 million Americans living with IBS, finding an accurate diagnosis, treatment, and ultimately good health can feel like an impossible mystery. SIBO Made Simple brings you answers. Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) is a common cause of unwanted bloating, abdominal pain, weight fluctuations, and GI distress. In this guide for achieving long-term healing, health advocate, chef, and SIBO sufferer Phoebe Lapine covers everything you need to know about SIBO and how to thrive in spite of it. Lapine answers all your questions, from what SIBO is (and what it isn’t) to related conditions (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Celiac disease, and more) to practical strategies for on-going prevention. With expert medical advice from dozens of top SIBO practitioners, SIBO Made Simple provides resources for all phases of treatment, offering a clear culinary road map that can be customized to fit a large variety of gut-healing diets, such as the Bi-Phasic Diet, GAPS, SCD, SIBO Specific Food Guide, and more. With 90 delicious, easy, low FODMAP recipes that make a notoriously tough diet doable and delicious, SIBO Made Simple is a one-of-a-kind toolkit for learning about your condition and tailoring your diet toward healing. Every recipe adds anti-inflammatory ammunition to your diet, while offering suggestions for how to add problematic ingredients back in as you diversify your plate. Getting healthy and feeling great doesn't have to be punitive. SIBO Made Simple offers a clear path forward, from someone who's been there.

This short and accessible volume will provide an analytical description detailing the origins of the not-for-profit financial institution: The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (S.W.I.F.T.). In this book the authors will focus on how the design and current state of SWIFT was influenced by its historical origins, presenting a comprehensive account in a succinct form which provides an informative guide to the history, structure, activities and future challenges of this key international organization.

Winner of best book by a foreign author (2019) at the Business Book of the Year Award organised by PwC Russia The future of banking is already here — are you ready? Bank 4.0 explores the radical transformation already taking place in banking, and follows it to its logical conclusion. What will banking look like in 30 years? 50 years? The world’s best banks have been forced to adapt to changing consumer behaviors; regulators are rethinking friction, licensing and regulation; Fintech start-ups and tech giants are redefining how banking fits in the daily life of consumers. To survive, banks are having to develop new capabilities, new jobs and new skills. The future of banking is not just about new thinking around value stores, payment and credit utility — it's embedded in voice-based smart assistants like Alexa and Siri and soon smart glasses which will guide you on daily spending and money decisions. The coming Bank 4.0 era is one where either your bank is embedded in your world via tech, or it no longer exists. In this final volume in Brett King's BANK series, we explore the future of banks amidst the evolution of technology and discover a revolution already at work. From re-engineered banking systems, to selfie-pay and self-driving cars, Bank 4.0 proves that we're not on Wall Street anymore. Bank 4.0 will help you: Understand the historical precedents that flag a fundamental rethinking in banking Discover low-friction, technology experiences that undermine the products we sell today Think through the evolution of identity, value and assets as cash and cards become obsolete Learn how Fintech and tech "disruptors" are using behaviour, psychology and technology to reshape the economics of banking Examine the ways in which blockchain, A.I., augmented reality and other leading-edge tech are the real building blocks of the future of banking systems If you look at individual technologies or startups disrupting the space, you might miss the biggest signposts to the future and you might also miss that most of we've learned about banking the last 700 years just isn't useful. When the biggest bank in the world isn't any of the names you'd expect, when branch networks are a burden not an asset, and when advice is the domain of Artificial Intelligence, we may very well have to start from scratch. Bank 4.0 takes you to a world where banking will be instant, smart and ubiquitous, and where you'll have to adapt faster than ever before just to survive. Welcome to the future.

The first edition of BANK 2.0—#1 on Amazon's bestseller list for banking and finance in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan for over 18 months—took the financial world by storm and became synonymous with disruptive customer behaviour, technology shift, and new banking models. In BANK 3.0, Brett King brings the story up to date with the latest trends redefining financial services and payments—from the global scramble for dominance of the mobile wallet and the expectations created by tablet computing to the operationalising of the cloud, the explosion of social media, and the rise of the de-banked consumer, who doesn't need a bank at all. BANK 3.0 shows that the gap between customers and financial services players is rapidly widening, leaving massive opportunities for new, non-bank competitors to totally disrupt the industry. "On the Web and on Mobile, the customer isn't king—he's dictator. Highly impatient, skeptical, cynical. Brett King understands deeply what drives this new hard-nosed customer. Banking professionals would do well to heed his advice." —Gerry McGovern, author of Killer Web Content

"In the next 10 years, we'll see more disruption and changes to the banking and financial industry than we've seen in the preceding 100 years"—Brett King Breaking Banks: The Innovators, Rogues, and Strategists Rebooting Banking is a unique collection of interviews take from across the global Financial Services Technology (or FinTech) domain detailing the stories, case studies, start-ups, and emerging trends that will define this disruption. Features the author's catalogued interviews with experts across the globe, focusing on the disruptive technologies, platforms and behaviors that are threating the traditional industry approach to banking and financial services Topics of interest covered include Bitcoin's disruptive attack on currencies, P2P Lending, Social Media, the Neo-Banks reinventing the basic day-to-day checking account, global solutions for the unbanked and underbanked, through to changing consumer behavior Breaking Banks is the only record of its kind detailing the massive and dramatic shift occurring in the financial services space today.