“Compact and immensely readable . . . a tour de force. Prepare to be amazed.” ― John C. Bogle, Founder and Former CEO, The Vanguard Group “Vital―a cogent, timely journey through the economic history of the modern world.” ― Publishers Weekly
 In The Birth of Plenty, William Bernstein, the bestselling author of The Four Pillars of Investing, presents his provocative, highly acclaimed theory of why prosperity has been the engine of civilization for the last 200 years. 
 This is a fascinating, irresistibly written “big-picture” work that highlights and explains the impact of four elements that when occurring simultaneously, are the fundamental building blocks for human progress: 
<ul>
<li>Property rights, which drive creativity </li>
<li>Scientific rationalism, which permits the freedom to innovate without fear of retribution; </li>
<li>Capital markets, which provide funding for people to pursue their visions; </li>
<li>Transportation/communication, which allows for the effective transfer of ideas and products. </li>
</ul>
 Meticulously researched, splendidly told, and featuring a new preface and introduction, The Birth of Plenty explains the interplay of the events, philosophies, and related phenomena that were nothing less than the crucible of the modern age. This is one of the rare books that will change how you look at the world.

The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created

Business & Money

Bernstein, William J.

Economics

McGraw=Hill

The classic guide to constructing a solid portfolio―without a financial advisor! “With relatively little effort, you can design and assemble an investment portfolio that, because of its wide diversification and minimal expenses, will prove superior to the most professionally managed accounts. Great intelligence and good luck are not required.” William Bernstein’s commonsense approach to portfolio construction has served investors well during the past turbulent decade―and it’s what made The Four Pillars of Investing an instant classic when it was first published nearly a decade ago. This down-to-earth book lays out in easy-to-understand prose the four essential topics that every investor must master: the relationship of risk and reward, the history of the market, the psychology of the investor and the market, and the folly of taking financial advice from investment salespeople. Bernstein pulls back the curtain to reveal what really goes on in today’s financial industry as he outlines a simple program for building wealth while controlling risk. Straightforward in its presentation and generous in its real-life examples, The Four Pillars of Investing presents a no-nonsense discussion of: <ul>
<li>The art and science of mixing different asset classes into an effective blend</li> <li>The dangers of actively picking stocks, as opposed to investing in the whole market</li> <li>Behavioral finance and how state of mind can adversely affect decision making</li> <li>Reasons the mutual fund and brokerage industries, rather than your partners, are often your most direct competitors</li> <li>Strategies for managing all of your assets―savings, 401(k)s, home equity―as one portfolio</li> </ul>
Investing is not a destination. It is a journey, and along the way are stockbrokers, journalists, and mutual fund companies whose interests are diametrically opposed to yours. More relevant today than ever, The Four Pillars of Investing shows you how to determine your own financial direction and assemble an investment program with the sole goal of building long-term wealth for you and your family.

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between

A timeless approach to investing wisely over an investment lifetime With the current market maelstrom as a background, this timely guide describes just how to plan a lifetime of investing, in good times and bad, discussing stocks and bonds as well as the relationship between risk and return. Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Investor's Manifesto will help you understand the nuts and bolts of executing a lifetime investment plan, including: how to survive dealing with the investment industry, the practical meaning of market efficiency, how much to save, how to maintain discipline in the face of panics and manias, and what vehicles to use to achieve financial security and freedom. <ul>
<li>Written by bestselling author William J. Bernstein, well known for his insights on how individual investors can manage their personal wealth and retirement funds wisely</li> <li>Examines how the financial landscape has radically altered in the past two years, and what investors should do about it</li> <li>Contains practical insights that the everyday investor can understand</li> <li>Focuses on the concept of Pascal's Wager-identifying and avoiding worst-case scenarios, and planning investment decisions on that basis</li> </ul>
With The Investor's Manifesto as your guide, you'll quickly discover the timeless investment approaches that can put you in a better position to prosper over time.

Finance

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

William J. Bernstein’s A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, an Economist and Financial Times Best Book of the Year, placed him firmly among the top flight of historians like Jared Diamond and Bill Bryson, capable of distilling major trends and reams of information into insightful, globe-spanning popular narrative. Bernstein explains how new communication technologies and in particular our access to them, impacted human society. Writing was born thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. Spreading to Sumer, and then Egypt, this revolutionary tool allowed rulers to extend their control far and wide, giving rise to the world’s first empires. When Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy’s first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. In Rome, it helped spell the downfall of the Republic. Later, medieval scriptoria and vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, and with the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg’s printing press, the fuse of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution brought the telegraph and the steam driven printing press, allowing information to move faster than ever before and to reach an even larger audience. But along with radio and television, these new technologies were more easily exploited by the powerful, as seen in Germany, the Soviet Union, even Rwanda, where radio incited genocide. With the rise of carbon duplicates (Russian samizdat), photocopying (the Pentagon Papers), the internet, social media and cell phones (the recent Arab Spring) more people have access to communications, making the world more connected than ever before. In Masters of the Word, Bernstein masterfully guides the reader through the vast history of communications, illustrating each step with colorful stories and anecdotes. This is a captivating, enlightening book, one that will change the way you look at technology, history, and power.

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

History

World

GROVE PRESS

In his new book, William J. Bernstein, the celebrated author of A Splendid Exchange, chronicles the history of media, starting with the origin of writing thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. The revolutionary tool gave rise to the world’s ancient empires. And when Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy’s first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. But it’s not just new communication technologies that have changed the worldit’s access to them. Vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, but it was only when the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg’s printing press drove down the cost of books by 97 percent that the fuse of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution allowed information to move faster and farther than ever before, though it concentrated power in the hands of those who ran radio and TV stations, large newspapers, and then, totalitarian governments. With the twenty-first century boom of the mobile Internet, control of media has again spread, and the world is both more connected and freer than ever before. An utterly captivating, enlightening book, Masters of the Word will change the way you look at technology, human history, and power.

Acclaimed by readers and critics around the globe, A Splendid Exchange is a sweeping narrative history of world tradefrom Mesopotamia in 3000 B.C. to the firestorm over globalization todaythat brilliantly explores trade’s colorful and contentious past and provides new insights into its future.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

Reference

From the award-winning author ofA Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries "We are the apes who tell stories," writes William Bernstein. "And no matter how misleading the narrative, if it is compelling enough it will nearly always trump the facts." As Bernstein shows in his eloquent and persuasive new book,The Delusions of Crowds, throughout human history compelling stories have catalyzed the spread of contagious narratives through susceptible groups--with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classicMemoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years--from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarizedAmerica; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their motivation, invariably "the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next." As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania: for example, belief in dispensationalist End-Times has over decades profoundly affected U.S. Middle East policy. Bernstein observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups

Atlantic Monthly Press

From the award-winning author of A Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries "We are the apes who tell stories," writes William Bernstein. "And no matter how misleading the narrative, if it is compelling enough it will nearly always trump the facts." As Bernstein shows in his eloquent and persuasive new book, The Delusions of Crowds, throughout human history compelling stories have catalyzed the spread of contagious narratives through susceptible groups--with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years--from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their motivation, invariably "the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next." As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania: for example, belief in dispensationalist End-Times has over decades profoundly affected U.S. Middle East policy. Bernstein observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

Industries

Adam Smith wrote that man has an intrinsic propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” But how did trade evolve to the point where we don’t think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world? In this sweeping narrative history of world trade, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports readers from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth; from the American trade battles of the early twentieth century to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, and T-shirts from China. Lively, authoritative, and astonishing in scope, A Splendid Exchange is a riveting narrative that views trade and globalization not in political terms, but rather as an evolutionary process as old as war and religion--a historical constant--that will continue to foster the growth of intellectual capital, shrink the world, and propel the trajectory of the human species.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bernstein, William J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bernstein, William J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bernstein, William J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups

The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World