The Costs Of Living

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 Longlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction From the twice-Booker-shortlisted author comes a witty and audacious examination of writing and womanhood "Life falls apart. We try to get a grip. We try to hold it together. And then we realize that we don't want to hold it together." Crystalline, witty and audacious, The Cost of Living addresses itself to the dual experiences of writing and of womanhood, examining what is essential in each. Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, which reflected deeply on the nature of gender politics and a life in letters, The Cost of Living returns to the same subject and to the same life, to find a writer in radical flux. If a woman dismantles her life, expands it and puts it back together in a new shape, how might she describe this new composition? "Words have to open the mind. When words close the mind you can be sure that someone has been reduced to nothingness." In this elegiac second instalment of her "living autobiography", Deborah Levy considers what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. The Cost of Living is a vital and astonishing testimony, as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels.

Every decision, from buying a home to grabbing a daily latte, has costs and benefits-personal as well as financial. The Real Cost of Living helps you make better decisions, both big and small- decisions that involve money, but aren't all about money. Well-known personal finance expert Carmen Wong Ulrich makes personal finance personal and takes into account that we all have motivations that go way beyond number crunching. From marriage and family to career, investing, and more, Carmen examines the "real cost" of the choices we all make every day. *Is deciding whether to go back to work full-time after you have a child really all about money? Should it be? *Is prepaying a mortgage a smart-money move, or is it really about craving security and stability-and which means more to you? *How much do your bad habits really cost you? And is saving thousands of dollars enough of a motivation to get you to stop? *Are college degrees really worthwhile? And if so, how can you maximize the odds of gaining all the benefits of a degree, both personally and financially? *Is becoming your own boss the answer to your career malaise? Can you handle the costs? The Real Cost of Living is a rare melding of personal psychology and personal finance at an important time when we have discovered that having more money may not bring more happiness, but knowing what really will make you happy can be worth any cost. Watch a Video

From the bestselling author of The God of Small Things comes a scathing and passionate indictment of big government's disregard for the individual. In her Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy turned a compassionate but unrelenting eye on one family in India. Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fierce humanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spirited polemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India's progress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul this sprawling subcontinent into the modern age--but which instead have displaced untold millions--and the detonation of India's first nuclear bomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains. Merging her inimitable voice with a great moral outrage and imaginative sweep, Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperity to show the true costs hidden beneath. For those who have been mesmerized by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire, of its topsy-turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificed for the comforts of the few. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Whether we are checking emails, following friends on Facebook and Twitter, catching up on gossip from TMZ, planning holidays on TripAdvisor, arranging dates on Match.com, watching videos on Youtube, or simply browsing for deals on Amazon, the Internet pervades our professional and personal environments. The Internet has revolutionized our lives, but at what cost? In The Internet Trap, Ashesh Mukherjee uses the latest research in consumer psychology to highlight five hidden costs of living online: too many temptations, too much information, too much customization, too many comparisons, and too little privacy. The book uses everyday examples to explain these costs including how surfing the Internet anonymously can encourage bad behavior, using social media can make us envious and unhappy, and doing online research can devalue the product finally chosen. The book also provides actionable solutions to minimize these costs. For example, the book reveals how deciding not to choose is as important as deciding what to choose, setting up structural barriers to temptation can reduce overspending on e-commerce websites, and comparisons with others on social media websites needs to be cold rather than hot. The Internet Trap provides a new perspective on the dark side of the Internet, and gives readers the tools to become smarter users of the Internet.

Providing a valuable resource for government economists, academics, and research libraries, this volume contains twelve papers by Robert Pollak--four previously unpublished--that explore the theory of the cost of living index. In addition to Pollak's classic paper, "The Theory of the Cost of Living Index," the volume includes papers on subindexes, the intertemporal cost of living index, welfare comparisons and equivalence scales, the social cost of living index, the treatment of "quality," and consumer durables in the cost of living index.