Concrete Economics

“an excellent new book” — Paul Krugman, The New York Times History, not ideology, holds the key to growth. Brilliantly written and argued, Concrete Economics shows how government has repeatedly reshaped the American economy ever since Alexander Hamilton’s first, foundational redesign. This book does not rehash the sturdy and long-accepted arguments that to thrive, entrepreneurial economies need a broad range of freedoms. Instead, Steve Cohen and Brad DeLong remedy our national amnesia about how our economy has actually grown and the role government has played in redesigning and reinvigorating it throughout our history. The government not only sets the ground rules for entrepreneurial activity but directs the surges of energy that mark a vibrant economy. This is as true for present-day Silicon Valley as it was for New England manufacturing at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The authors’ argument is not one based on abstract ideas, arcane discoveries, or complex correlations. Instead it is based on the facts—facts that were once well known but that have been obscured in a fog of ideology—of how the US economy benefited from a pragmatic government approach to succeed so brilliantly. Understanding how our economy has grown in the past provides a blueprint for how we might again redesign and reinvigorate it today, for such a redesign is sorely needed.

The third edition of this authoritative handbook provides the structural designer with comprehensive guidance on prestressed concrete and its effective use, covering materials, behaviour, analysis and design of prestressed elements. It includes numerous examples, design charts and details of post-tensioning systems.

Kosik writes that the history of a text is in a certain sense the history of its interpretations. In the fifteen years that have passed since the fust (Czech) edition of his Dialectics of the Concrete, this book has been widely read and interpreted throughout Europe, in diverse centers of scholarship as well as in private studies. A faithful English language edition is long overdue. This publication of KosIk's work will surely provoke a range of new interpretations. For its theme is the characterization of science and of rationality in the context of the social roots of science and the social critique which an appropriately rational science should afford. Kosik's question is: How shall Karl Marx's understanding of science itself be understood? And how can it be further developed? In his treatment of the question of scientific rationality, Kosik drives bluntly into the issues of gravest human concern, not the least of which is how to avoid the pseudo-concrete, the pseudo-scientific, the pseudo-rational, the pseudo historical. Starting with Marx's methodological approach, of "ascending from the abstract to the concrete", Kosik develops a critique of positivism, of phenomenalist empiricism, and of "metaphysical" rationalism, counter posing them to "dialectical rationalism". He takes the category of the concrete in the dialectical sense of that which comes to be known by the active transformation of nature and society by human purposive activity.

High performance concrete is a key element in virtually all-large construction projects, from tall office and residential buildings to bridges, tunnels and roadways. The fully updated Second Edition helps professionals to understand the performance capabilities of these construction materials when selecting the type of concrete to use for particular projects. The author is one of the worlds acknowledged experts on high performance concrete.

This comprehensively rewritten, updated and extended new edition of this established text focuses on what has become the most important single facet of the quantity surveyor's role - cost management. The scope of the book has been broadened to take account of the widening and more sophisticated cost management and control service that clients now require. The book examines the factors influencing building costs and how the precontract costs can be estimated, analysed and controlled, to ensure that buildings can be completed within the agreed budget and timescale, and be of acceptable quality, function effectively and provide value for money. A new chapter on value management has been added, together with an introductory chapter on cost modelling; the chapter on life cycling costing is extended, while the sections on energy conservation and occupancy costs are expanded. Throughout the text many new case studies, with supporting tables and diagrams, are included in order to enhance the value of this book to the student and the practitioner.