Fund-of-funds Books

Reading a first-hand account by one of the three scientists who discovered that DNA was the genetic material was fascinating. Dr. Macarty's humble and objective recollections from his work in Dr. Avery's laboratory show us what true scientific determination can accomplish. This book, which I devoured in less than one week, has proven to be a great source of inspiration.

Robert Nisbet was without a doubt one of the most creative and original thinkers in recent memory. His expertise was in sociology, but his works concerned history, politics and, more broadly, what might be called the history of ideas.

In 1975 - at the end of the Watergate Era - Nisbet came out with the TWILIGHT OF AUTHORITY, a work which contained for the most part material published in journals from 1969-1974. These were crucial times in American history, and Nisbet's perspective is invaluable.

As Nisbet indicates, modern society is marked by the expansion of the state and the decline in intermediary institutions. As government gets bigger, it becomes more corrupt. Lies became a way of life. Contrary to some conservatives, Nisbet didn't see Watergate is a minor scandal blown out of proportion by the leftist media. More than anything it showed how corrupt and venial government had become. It's now often forgotten how Americans were shocked at the vulgar language on the Nixon tapes. Of course, as Nisbet says, Kennedy and Johnson paved the way for Nixon. As government gets bigger, intermediate institutions get less powerful and lose influence over people's lives.

As usual, Nisbet is illuminating on any topic with which he deals. For example: the self-destruction of the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican II, the relationship between war and democracy, the decline in influence of the university, the takeover of science by the state, and even popular culture.

This edition contains an excellent introduction by Prof. R. Perrin. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain an index.

This book, although ancient in some respects, is an excellent primer on the American federal reserve system and the risks inherent in U.S. and international banking.

Particularly today, when paper checks are often not even accepted, the functioning of the Clearing House Interbank Payment System (CHIPS) and dozens of other funds, securities, options and other financial instruments settlement systems are of enormous interest.

But what especially intrigues me is the notion that, in the event of a default, the clearing corporation is obligated to "make good on the default," by liquidating the defaulting participant's margin or collateral accounts, or shared assessment on other participants.

As noted in a highly poignant article by former president of the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, E. Gerald Corrigan, "credit and financial interdependencies resulting from these arrangements--especially when they arise in the context of otherwise tightly linked and volatile markets--are a main reason why structural features of clearing and settlement systems are so important."

In other words, pricing, credit risk, spreads, bank reserves and so on are everything, and there is no ultimate guarantee or assurance that the expected net settlement in any banking transaction will successfully conclude without financial resources and commitments to cover a high number of potential eventualities and risks.

This is another way of saying that playing with hot new financial instruments is akin to playing with fire. I'm not sure that's what Corrigan meant, but it's one of many instructions I take away from this educational, if somewhat dated, volume.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

This is an excellent a succinct and cogent analysis of an issue, that while obscure, has an impact on millions of Americans. Romer was the leading advocate for human service organizations in the 1980s and his writing addresses the key aspects of the House Ways and Means oversight hearings that were held over 20 years ago. Congress is about to revisit the basis on which nonprofit organizations have been granted their tax exempt status. They would be well advised to read this article that will give them a helpful historical perspective on this subject.

Ludwig von Mises published his first book in 1912 ("Theory of Money and Credit") and his final book - "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" - in 1962 (although he continued to write articles until near the end of his incredibly productive life).

In "The Ultimate Foundation", von Mises returns to one of his central concerns: the foundation of economic theories. According to von Mises, the principles of economic thought are "a priori." In fact, they are a "subset" of more basic principles of human action. Von Mises called the study of human action "praxiology." According to Mises, the a priori categories "are the mental equipment by dint of which man is able to think and to experience and thus to acquire knowledge." [p. 18.] It is these categories which provide order and regularity to man's understanding. The category of human action is: "Man acts because he is dissatisfied with the state of affairs as it prevails in the absence of his intervention." [p. 3.] Further axioms follow logically from this axiom. [p. 45.] The principles of economics are therefore deductive. On the other hand, the principles of the physical sciences are inductive. The error of positivism is to apply the principles of the physical sciences to economics, where they are not applicable. Economics is closer to mathematics than it is to chemistry.

It's hard to summarize this book. Von Mises deals with a large number of topics in a relatively small number of pages. These include evolution, Marxism, theism, the use of statistics, and methodological individualism. Yet what shines through is von Mises' love of economics and his belief that the teachings of economics - which is to say free enterprise - is the key to increasing man's standard of living and promoting social cooperation.

Interestingly, von Hayek - Mises' best known student -- also returned to methodology in his final book, "The Fatal Conceit." While von Mises remained a rationalist until the end, Hayek drifted toward a more empirical approach to social and economic thought. It would make an interesting study to compare these two works. Joseph Salerno touches on some of these points in his essay "Mises as Social Rationalist" in Herbener, ed., "The Meaning of Ludwig von Mises."

Collaboratively written by Frances A. Karnes (Professor of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, and Director of the Frances A. Karnes Center for Gifted Studies, University of Southern Mississippi) and Kristen R. Stephens (Support Services Coordinator for Duke University's Talent Identification Program and Adjunct Assist Professor in Programs in Education, Duke University), The Ultimate Guide To Getting Money For Your Classroom & School is a informed and informative, no-nonsense, "user friendly" guide to acquiring financial aid and funding supplementation for anyone charged with the necessity of securing educational grants and donations. Practical, real-world appropriate, step-by-step tactics for successful fund raising, and enhanced with the provision of useful forms and checklists, ideas for fund-raising events to organize, and much, much more in this very highly recommended volume which will provide to be invaluable for classroom teachers, school administrators, and parent-teacher support groups who are on a tight budget or find themselves chronically underfunded.

Under Cover: Police Surveillance in America (1988)
Gary T. Marx

This book is written for both the scholar and the criminal justice practitioner and should be read by both. Although written nearly 20 years ago, this text still remains largely relevant to today's issues concerning law enforcement tactics of surveillance. The task of this book is to present the reader with an empirical assessment of a growing and emergent form of social control in America; undercover operations conducted by both formal and informal agents of social control. The text approaches the subject of surveillance from a critical albeit broad spectrum, choosing to spotlight both the potential positive and negative consequences of covert police action.

Marx traces the history of undercover police practices and the resultant development of police organizations such as the FBI, DEA, etc., as well as their existent roles in society (surprisingly, this remains relatively unexplored) as well as the increase of undercover police work by offering the reader a very detailed account of recent and developing changes in the area, which Marx argues among other things tends to be scattered, invisible, involuntary, covert and deceptive. The latter of which is sometimes viewed as problematic because lying violates trust, which is central to relationships and the whole of civil society.

The account of the development of undercover police work offered here continues to remain virtually unparalleled. Marx leaves no stone unturned, from the Western Frontier, to the development of private and federal police, to the emergence Bureau of Investigation (e.g. FBI), as established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. In explicating the development of undercover practices, Marx posits that indeed whenever undercover means are employed, problems are likely to appear, however we should be careful not dismiss undercover police work so disparagingly.

The remainder of the book reminds us that certain understandings associated with undercover police work (e.g. scandal, corruption, etc.) should not be held as fundamental toward all undercover police work. Indeed, changing crime patterns often facilitate the need for undercover police work. Nevertheless, privacy advocates continue to remain skeptical of such claims. Marx fully fleshes out both sides of these arguments; giving full credence to neither, but rather seeks to outline the types and dimensions of undercover police work, which are dependent upon contextual variations that collectively are useful for understanding different types of undercover operations, their appropriateness, usefulness, validity and consequences, and how these correspond with real world implications.

Marx provides an extensive review of the existent research literature (as well as his own research) to address the intended and unintended consequences of undercover work of police, suspects, informants, families, as well as non-participant third parties. Marx suggests that assumptions (negative or positive) about the nature of undercover police work at best are often questionable. In order to stabilize the unstructured nature of undercover police work, Marx offers some key policy implications on how to perhaps best control undercover operations so that their virtue remains democratic, avoiding certain pitfalls, namely the foreseeable decent toward a totalitarian state.

The book concludes with a telling account of what Marx calls the "new surveillance" (undercover police work is just one extension of this surveillance). For instance, Marx addresses the ways in which computers qualitatively change the nature of surveillance (e.g. "data mining"). The electronic nature of contemporary surveillance lends itself to other technologies such as visual and audio surveillance that collectively transcend traditional fixed barriers thereby undermining the principal spirit of the Fourth Amendment, "because the burden of proof is shifted from the state to the target of surveillance" (p. 227). However, Marx argues that the concern here is not all doom and gloom, but rather suggests that we should be critical of our current understanding of such technologies and how the proliferation of these emergent technologies simultaneously serve as a means for protecting and undermining our most cherished values. All in all this book presents a very comprehensive analysis of undercover policing and should be read by anyone interested in police work, sociology, criminology, political science, and the law.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY:
Random House.

Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

This book was somewhat difficult for me to get through, however, the knowledge taken is priceless. When it comes to the activities of the IMF and World Bank, this is the best case study out there. Even beginners will take a lot from the book, both by the book's brief, explicit explanation of the origin and function of the two multilateral organizations and by the reader's ability to carefully treat this instance as a microcosm for other IMF and Bank activities. Broad uses tons of internal documents and accounts to compile a great sense of the Fund's and Bank's activities in the Philipines, but also to show that this happens everywhere.

Developing nations seeking independence from major world powers in post-WWII had two options: either become communistic or industrialize as fast as possible. For the countries that chose the second option, they had to either nationalize industry (which has often led them to be called communistic, if the nationalizing hurts Western interests) and/or take out loans to cover the industrializing. Broad shows how the functions of the IMF and Bank have changed over time, so that they became the ones dishing out these loans,however, with conditions attached. According to the IMF and Bank these conditions have been attached to increase "competition" so that developing nations can enter into the world market, however, Broad does well pointing out the falacies of the policies used to make the Philipines "competitive," as well as the collateral damage (especially to lower wage workers). The IMF and Bank have a one-size-fit-all solution to every developing nation, regardless of different political economies and in general these solutions seem to support a more western world order.

Also mentioned is the impact this had on the fall of Marcos, and although published in 1988, the reader can contextualize the political change that occurred shortly thereafter (specifically the expulsion of the U.S. from the island in 1992).

John Calhoun, the revered Son of South Carolina, was the South's pre-eminent advocate of ordered liberty in the nineteenth century. His two most important contributions, Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Government and Constitution of the United States, are both included in this fine release by Liberty Fund. These two alone are worth the price of the book, and should be required reading for any student of American political philosophy. With the twelve speeches and papers included as well, they give a good overall picture of the man who spawned so much controversy by advocating nullification while sitting as Vice President of the U.S. Some have hailed his theory of the concurrent majority as the only truly original American contribution to political theory. This is surely one of my top ten books to go on the list of any thoughtful American reader.

I read this book expecting to find a comprehensive but somewhat boring step-by-step analysis of the law. But never did I imagine a spicy, action-packed narrative concerning Brazilian assasins, Antarctican cross-dressers, and international plots all tying into federal gift-giving laws. Astounding!