Analyzes the past, present, and future of the nation's trade politics and policymaking

Beyond Globalism: Remaking American Foreign Economic Policy

Business & Money

Spar, Debora L.

Vernon, Raymond

Economics

Free Pr

The high-tech bubble seems to have burst-or has it? Knowing where you are in the business cycle is crucial. Historical perspective helps, and so does keen analysis. Ruling the Waves offers both. Debora Spar begins the historical context with pirate tales. Jean Lafitte's domination of the seas and Rupert Murdoch's domination of the British airwaves with BskyB have much in common. Tales of the telegraph and radio help you understand the natural evolution of Microsoft, the trials of the codemakers who fought the U.S. government to protect Internet privacy, and the revolutionary rap stars who challenged the record industry. Great stories of quirky pioneers and their roller-coaster rides make this the one book that you need to become an expert on the path of future innovations and the natural development from idea to market in a changing world.

Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth, from the Compass to the Internet

Biography & History

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Beginning with the development of the compass, Ruling the Waves examines a series of technological revolutions that promised, in their time, to transform the world's politics and business. With Debora Spar's gifted storytelling, each chapter reads like an adventure tale as she recounts the histories of the printing press and maps; of the telegraph, radio, and satellite television; of software, encryption, and the advent of digital music. At each of these junctures Spar suggests that invention led to both a wave of commerce and of chaos. Entrepreneurs such as Samuel Morse and Rupert Murdoch carved new markets from the emerging technology and proclaimed that the old rules no longer applied. And for a while, they were right. But eventually--and inevitably--even cowboys need rules: rules of property, rules of coordination, rules of competition. The erstwhile pioneers thus turn to government, lobbying for order and setting the stage for the next wave of discovery. A fascinating history of business, Ruling the Waves is also an original, thought-provoking analysis of the parallels between past innovations and inventions and our own tumultuous times.

Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, a History of Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier

Job Hunting & Careers

Harper Business

In a rapidly shrinking world, governments everywhere find themselves increasingly obliged to deal with international economic issues. When dealing with such issues, their processes of decisionmaking prove strikingly different from those employed in the handling of political or strategic problems. This unique volume by Raymond Vernon, Debora L. Spar, and Glenn Tobin provides a close-up view of the decisionmaking process within the U.S. establishment as it has wrestled with a series of greatly publicized economic issues in recent years. The book synthesizes a literature that has been accumulating over three decades, deriving from this literature a model of the processes of decisionmaking in the field of U.S. foreign economic policy. Five detailed case studies are presented, each covering a major economic plan or agreement that raised significant controversy.
Since the process by which economic decisions are reached involves institutions and characteristics quite different from those encountered in political decisionmaking, Iron Triangles and Revolving Doors emphasizes the persistent regularities to be found in the United States when it comes to economic decisionmaking. The opening chapter offers a model of the characteristics of the foreign economic policymaking process. The next five chapters examine the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement; the battle over the codevelopment of the FSX fighter plane with Japan; the problem of international debt and the creation of the Brady plan; and U.S. trade policy and security export controls in light of the Toshiba-Kongsberg affair. Each of these cases is linked to the overall model of U.S. economic policy presented by the authors. This volume will be an excellent text for university or graduate courses in foreign economic policy, U.S. foreign policy, and international political economy. It will also be of interest to political scientists, economists, government officials, policy analysts, and others looking for insights into economic decisionmaking.

Iron Triangles and Revolving Doors: Cases in U.S. Foreign Economic Policymaking

Tobin, Glenn

Praeger

A crucial guide to life before--and after--Tinder, IVF, and robots. What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created? InWork Mate Marry Love, Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex. Now, as we enter an era of artificial intelligence and robots, how will our deepest feelings and attachments evolve? In the past, the prevailing modes of production produced a world dominated by heterosexual, mostly-monogamous, two-parent families. In the future, however, these patterns are almost certain to be reshaped, creating entirely new norms for sex and romance, and for the construction of families and the raising of children. Steering clear of both techno-euphoria and alarmism, Spar offers a bold and inclusive vision of how our lives might be changed for the better.

Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Fifty years after the Equal Pay Act, why are women still living in a man's world? 
Debora L. Spar never thought of herself as a feminist. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed the gender war was over. As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, she swore to young women that they could have it all. "We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow," she writes. "We were wrong." 
Now she is the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important all-women's college in the United States. And in Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection―a fresh, wise, original book― she asks why, a half century after the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, do women still feel stuck. 
In this groundbreaking and compulsively readable book, Spar explores how American women's lives have―and have not―changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it's time to change course. 
Both deeply personal and statistically rich, Wonder Women is Spar's story and the story of our culture. It is cultural history at its best, and a road map for the future.

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Sarah Crichton Books

Why does international cooperation work for some enterprises and not for others? And what distinguishes the few that succeed from the majority that fail? In this tough-minded, lucid book, Debora L. Spar finds answers to these questions when she examines four commodity cartels. Along the way, she tells some intriguing stories of skulduggery and collusion.

The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

NCROL

Debora L. Spar spent most of her life avoiding feminism. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed that the gender war was over. "We thought we could glide into the new era with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow," she writes. "We were wrong."
Spar should know. One of the first women professors at Harvard Business School, she went on to have three children and became the chair of her department. Now, she's the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important women's college in the country, and an institution firmly committed to feminism. Wonder Women is Spar's story, but it is also the culture's. Armed with reams of new research, she examines how women's lives have, and have not, changed over the past fifty years-and how it is that the struggle for power has become a quest for perfection. Wise, often funny, and always human, Wonder Women asks: How far have women really come? And what will it take to get true equality for good?

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Picador

A crucial guide to life before―and after―Tinder, IVF, and robots.\nWhat will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created?\nIn Work Mate Marry Love, Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex. Now, as we enter an era of artificial intelligence and robots, how will our deepest feelings and attachments evolve?\nIn the past, the prevailing modes of production produced a world dominated by heterosexual, mostly-monogamous, two-parent families. In the future, however, these patterns are almost certain to be reshaped, creating entirely new norms for sex and romance, and for the construction of families and the raising of children. Steering clear of both techno-euphoria and alarmism, Spar offers a bold and inclusive vision of how our lives might be changed for the better.

Work Mate Marry Love

Picador Paper

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

Books by Spar, Debora L.

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

Beyond Globalism: Remaking American Foreign Economic Policy

Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth, from the Compass to the Internet

Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, a History of Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier

Iron Triangles and Revolving Doors: Cases in U.S. Foreign Economic Policymaking

Iron Triangles and Revolving Doors: Cases in U.S. Foreign Economic Policymaking

Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection

The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection

Work Mate Marry Love