Book Bits | 4 April 2020

Short Selling for the Long Term: How a Combination of Short and Long Positions Leads to Investing Success
By Joseph Parnes
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
Short Selling for the Long Term describes the methods used by Joseph Parnes, President of Technomart, to obtain consistent returns in the stock market. Most investors fail to exceed the returns represented by the Standard and Poor’s Stock Index, but Parnes often does using his investment philosophy. This book outlines his method of stock assessment, providing an understandable formula. If the formula tells a reader to buy a stock, then, as explained, there is a significant chance that stock will go up. If the formula tells a reader to short a stock, then the book shows how there is a significant chance that the stock will go down.

Ripple: The big effects of small behaviour changes in business
By Jez Groom and April Vellacott
Summary via publisher (Harriman House)
Ripple is about how small behaviour changes can have wide-reaching effects in the real world. By applying behavioural science in your working life, you can have positive ripple effects on the world around you. While nudging is now commonplace in politics, most of our daily interactions with companies, products, and services have not yet been transformed with behavioural science. Doing so is often a messy process but, armed with this book, you’ll have the practical toolkit to get started. Through storytelling and practical tips, Ripple takes you on a journey across the globe which will leave you inspired to start applying behavioural science to improve the world around you.

The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do about It
By Julia Cagé
Summary via publisher (Harvard U. Press)
One person, one vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide elections. But it’s hardly news that, in reality, political outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy, Julia Cagé combines economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with its egalitarian promise. Cagé shows how different countries have tried to develop legislation to curb the power of private money and to develop public systems to fund campaigns and parties. But these attempts have been incoherent and unsystematic.

Snowdens Box: Trust in Age Surveillance
By Jessica Bruder
Review via E&T
At its centre is the gripping story of a box belonging to Edward Snowden, the CIA whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013, which turned up outside a private apartment in Brooklyn, New York one fine spring morning. The recipient, who didn’t even know the sender, was supposed to pass it on to a filmmaker friend. The box contained the now-notorious printouts of the documents, directly implicating the US government in spying on its own people with the help of social media and mobile phone data.

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