Unreconstructed Rebel

It was an unlikely place for a city, scourged by disease-ridden mosquitos and pummeled by hurricanes. But for more than three hundred years, Mobile has thrived on the unlikely and endured the unimaginable. Mobilians love their gumbo but are likely unaware that it was first served up here by women sent from France to foster population growth. Times were once so dire for free blacks that a shocking number petitioned the courts to become slaves. The city witnessed the first operational submarine, the first Mardi Gras celebration and the last major battle of the Civil War. Author Joe Cuhaj navigates the backwaters of Mobile's fascinating history.

A college graduate at 16 and a founder of the Sigma Chi fraternity, Caldwell entered the Confederate Army as an artillery lieutenant. He fought at Shiloh, Port Hudson and other campaigns before being captured in 1863 and imprisoned on Johnson's Island, in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio. He kept a daily diary for 18 months, describing the prison food and conditions, as well as his classical and intellectual interests. The book features letters, a poem, notes, and an index.

Why the global economy has become increasingly unstable, and how financial “de-carbonization” could break the pattern of bubble-driven wealth destruction. The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, banks “too big to fail,” financial regulation (or the lack of it), and the European debt crisis. Wall Street has discovered that it is more profitable to make money from other people's money than by investing in the real economy, which has limited access to capital—resulting in slow growth and rising inequality. What we haven't heard much about is the role of natural resources—energy in particular—as drivers of economic growth, or the connection of “global warming” to the economic crisis. In The Bubble Economy, Robert Ayres—an economist and physicist—connects economic instability to the economics of energy. Ayres describes, among other things, the roots of our bubble economy (including the divergent influences of Senator Carter Glass—of the Glass-Steagall Law—and Ayn Rand); the role of energy in the economy, from the “oil shocks” of 1971 and 1981 through the Iraq wars; the early history of bubbles and busts; the end of Glass-Steagall; climate change; and the failures of austerity. Finally, Ayres offers a new approach to trigger economic growth. The rising price of fossil fuels (notwithstanding “fracking”) suggests that renewable energy will become increasingly profitable. Ayres argues that government should redirect private savings and global finance away from home ownership and toward “de-carbonization”—investment in renewables and efficiency. Large-scale investment in sustainability will achieve a trifecta: lowering greenhouse gas emissions, stimulating innovation-based economic growth and employment, and offering long-term investment opportunities that do not depend on risky gambling strategies with derivatives.

"California Sabers is the story of the California Hundred and Battalion, the only organized group of Californians to fight in the East during the Civil War. The 500 select men volunteered their enlistment bounty to pay their passage across Panama and on to Massachusetts, where they became the cadre of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry"-- Book jacket, front flap.