Inside the Infrastructure Revolution: A Roadmap for Rebuilding America

A unique insider's guide to how America is reinventing the way we plan, build, deliver, and maintain our essential services and civil infrastructure, much of which is fifty-plus years old, built for a smaller nation with out-of-date technologies. Our airports are ranked among the worst in the world, our water systems are failing, our transportation corridors are clogged. 
How will we finance the $3 trillion of work needed to keep America competitive in a global economy? Author Mary Scott Nabers has been working on this question for more than two decades as a matchmaker between public officials and the private sector contractors. She reports that today's innovative companies and forward-thinking public officials are reshaping how the US purchases and delivers public assets. The trends Nabers predicted six years ago in her first book, Collaboration Nation, have gained momentum, evolved, and matured into a sophisticated market for solutions for our infrastructure and public service needs.
The new model is the public-private partnership--PPP or P3. Instead of taxpayers alone shouldering the financial burden and risk of replacing worn-out bridges, renovating schools, modernizing airports, and upgrading water systems, Nabers describes in detail the development of joint ventures that transfer risk and maintenance responsibility to private vendors under long-term contracts--with government retaining control and oversight.
Inside The Infrastructure Revolution is filled with specific information and actual examples and case studies of public-private joint ventures, illustrating the opportunities and benefits as well as pitfalls to avoid.
America has the capital, the tools, and the creativity to tackle this problem. Let the revolution begin!

Business & Money

Mary Scott Nabers

Industries

Platform Press

What does a horrific airline crash have to do with retirement planning? Thomas C. Scott saved a dozen lives as a crewmember on a Boeing 747 that crashed in 1974, killing 59 people. When he became a financial adviser he discovered that, like airline passengers who ignore preflight safety instructions, most people ignore the basics in handling their finances, make assumptions that are inaccurate, and leave themselves unprepared for disaster. This is the book you should have read before the global financial meltdown in 2008 and it is the book that will prepare you for the future by explaining how you can fasten your financial seatbelt. Tom Scott has taken what he learned about how we behave under stress and the common mistakes people make with their money and put it all together in this unique, inspiring, and personal look at how easily we can lose what we have when we forget to fasten our financial seatbelts. Scott’s hard-earned insights include the value of planning and preparing for the worst. Like airline crashes, most of us think that financial disaster only happens to other peopleuntil it happens to us. As in an airline crash, the survivors of a financial calamity are often paralyzed by fear and unable to see the way out of their predicament. Like flying, our relationship with money is often emotional and tinged with anxiety. It’s important to have a trusted adviser on your side, protecting you from those human instincts that interfere with our ability to make good financial choices. Discover important principles that can change your financial life: *The ""rear-view mirror"" investment trap *The difference between investing and speculating *The ""plumage"" trap *Why a big salary is not wealth *How shame and guilt keep us from seeking help *How to find a good investment ""sherpa""

Fasten Your Financial Seatbelt: What Surviving an Airline Crash Taught Me About Retirement Planning

Biographies & Memoirs

Scott, Thomas

Professionals & Academics

Co-founder of the Dow Jones Dharma Index and an ethics and investment consultant, Nitesh Gor shows how Eastern culture is reshaping Western ideas about social responsibility and "doing the right thing." A practical, anecdote illustrated guide to a decision-making process that merges concepts from East and West to more predictably create "good" outcomes in business and in life that are both profitable and practical.

The Dharma of Capitalism: A Guide to Mindful Decision-Making in the Business of Life

Gor, Nitesh

Management & Leadership

Just about everything most of us have learned about how to find love is wrong. That's the premise of The Selfish Path to Romance. Love is not about sacrifice. Real, lasting romance comes when you are certain about yourself, your needs, and your worth. In the words of top-selling novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, It is one's one personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love. Authors Dr. Edwin Locke and Dr. Ellen Kenner are inspired by the work of philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand. Their book explores Ayn Rand's belief that the assertion of your own needs and values is the foundation of love. The Selfish Path to Romance offers a no-nonsense, rational alternative for those who are serious about finding and sustaining a lifetime romance. Be prepared to have your preconceptions shattered, your intuition challenged, and be ready for candid introspection.

Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion & Reason

Locke, Edwin A.

Kenner, Ellen

Parenting & Relationships

America's manufacturing economy has shrunk but it's alive and kicking, and it can be rebuilt by drawing on some time-tested techniques and some forward-looking ideas. So says J. Henry Warren, CEO of Philadelphia-based company Warren Industries that manufactures precision measuring instruments for military and industrial uses.In An Industrial Manifesto for America, he brings together ideas from some of the best and brightest thought leaders on topics such as tax policy, education, globalization, and international trade. Each chapter focuses on a particular topic discussing innovative and common sense ways to strengthen and rebuild the American economy by revitalizing our workforce and tapping into the American penchant for innovation.Topics examined include the emergence of American apprenticeship programs; using tax policy to stimulate the build-it-here movement; how to remake our educational system to train a workforce with high tech skills; and innovative ways to rebuild our infrastructure using public-private partnerships. Warren's decades of experience as an American manufacturer bring a high level of credibility and common sense to his perspective on how to reinvigorate American manufacturing.Like books such as Blink, The Tipping Point, and The World is Flat, this is a book every public official will want to have in his or her arsenal of great ideas for remaking America as a global industrial leader.

Industrial Manifesto for America: 10 Big Ideas for Rebuilding Our Manufacturing Power

Warren, J. Henry

How government operates is going through a revolution that will result in an estimated $3 trillion of new business opportunities for private enterprise. Cities are outsourcing functions as mundane as parking garages; public-private partnerships are forming to replace aging bridges and other infrastructure projects; and government at all levels is looking to private enterprise to streamline operations and invent solutions to stubborn problems. Governments at all levels have to rethink how they deliver services and what services can be more efficiently delivered in collaboration with private enterprise. Nabers, who served for more than a decade as a statewide executive, pulls back the curtain on what makes government officials tick, the practical and political cross-currents that are unique challenges to doing business with government, and how to bridge the cultural divide between public officials and corporate executives who live in different worlds, speak different languages, and have distinctly different ways of doing business.

Collaboration Nation: How Public-Private Ventures are Revolutionizing the Business of Government

Nabers, Mary

Education & Reference

An unflinching look at what it's like to be a quadriplegic. “ Dan Gottlieb, PhDThis is the inspiring story of a Virginia country boy”J. Bryant Neville, Jr.”who became a quadriplegic thirty years ago after a car wreck, and how he refused to accept the medical sentence of a life unrealized. Hard work, devoted family, a caring community, and a determination to live as fiercely as his body would allow helped Bryant Neville earn two college degrees, become a respected banking executive, a loving husband and provider, an adoptive parent, and a biological father.Some 250,000 Americans live with spinal cord injury and impairment. On average, thirty more sustain a spinal cord injury every day. Bryant Neville's story is a beacon of hope for anyone facing a physical setback who needs proof that life can go on and dreams can be realized, and a guide for those who love and care for them.

How I Roll: Life, Love, and Work After a Spinal Cord Injury

Neville, J. Bryant

The revolution has already begun. The fracking revolution, that is. The Fracking Truth is a primer on America’s ongoing energy revolution, but it’s also a call to action. The oil and gas industry has failed itself and failed the American public by doing a poor job of educating the public on fracking and related technologies that have created the American energy revolution. Readers will learn about the myths and the truths of the controversial practice of fracking, how the United States is benefitting from the fracking boom, and how fracking can actually help the US and the world achieve climate change goals. The Fracking Truth seeks to bridge the information gap between public perception and an industry that fuels our daily lives, our national economy, and our future. After years of economic devastation and turmoil, the energy boom driven by fracking gives us a second chance at security, prosperity, and global leadership. Let’s hope we get it right.

The Fracking Truth:America’s Energy Revolution: America’s Energy Revolution: the Inside, Untold Story

Faulkner, Chris

Economics

This is the story of an impossible dream that came true. It starts with a ten-year-old boy in Ghana stumbling on an encyclopedia entry about the founders of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. William Mayo and his two sons, in a far-off place called Minnesota. He decides that one day, when he grows up, he will work there. Although the odds are stacked against him, he dreams of becoming a doctor, oblivious to the many obstacles he will encounter before it can come true. This is a story of how Kofi Boahene, son of a salesman and a bank teller, met and overcame those obstacles with the help of proverbial Good Samaritans that seemed to pop up at just the right moment. Sustained by his faith and devotion to his parents and seven younger siblings, Dr. Boahene pursued his impossible dream until it came true. He has been described by CNN as “The Man Who Rebuilds Faces,” and his example is inspiring a new generation of African students to follow in his footsteps.

However Far The Stream Flows: The Making of the Man Who Rebuilds Faces

Boahene, Kofi

Memoirs

The son of a steelworker from Pennsylvania tells the inside story, warts and all, of his career as a successful investment banker at two of the biggest, best-known, and most controversial firms in the world—Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase—during a historic and turbulent period in US history. Mark Melio’s personal anecdotes and observations illustrate the self-absorbed culture, hypocrisy, and rapacious practices of Wall Street’s leading banks, how he bought into the fiction that “the customer always comes first,” and how investment banks morphed from once-proud partnerships into predators in constant search of new ways to scalp clients. This is a rare glimpse by a thoughtful observer behind the scenes of an institution that built America’s “new” economy and then nearly destroyed it.

The Private Life of Public Finance: Confessions of a Recovering Investment Banker

Melio, Mark T.

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

Books by Platform Press