Books about Socio economic from Amazon.com

America's leading historian on Korea offers a nuanced analysis that demolishes familiar generalizations.

Depicted as an insular and forbidding police state with an "insane" dictator at its helm, North Korea —charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" —is a country the U.S. loves to hate. Now the CIA says it possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as long-range missiles capable of delivering them to America's West Coast.

But, as Bruce Cumings demonstrates in this provocative, lively read, the story of the U.S.-Korea conflict is more complex than our leaders or our news media would have us believe. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Korea, and on declassified government reports, Cumings traces that story, from the brutal Korean War to the present crisis. Harboring no illusions regarding the totalitarian Kim Jong Il regime, Cumings nonetheless insists on a more nuanced approach. The result is both a counter-narrative to the official U.S. and North Korean versions and a fascinating portrayal of North Korea, a country that suffers through foreign invasions, natural disasters, and its own internal contradictions, yet somehow continues to survive..
Price: $7.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Drawing from studies in North America, Europe and Australia, the authors show how combinations of policy instruments, tailored to particular environmental goals, will produce more effective and efficient policy outcomes. They also examine how, at a time of fiscal constraint, environmental policy might still be designed in ways that improve outcomes both for the environment and for business..
Price: $100.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. It was the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons.

The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

Source: Wikipedia.org.
Price: $1.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this award-winning environmental history of Cuba since the age of Columbus, Reinaldo Funes Monzote emphasizes the two processes that have had the most dramatic impact on the island's landscape: deforestation and sugar cultivation. During the first 300 years of Spanish settlement, sugar plantations arose primarily in areas where forests had been cleared by the royal navy, which maintained an interest in management and conservation for the shipbuilding industry. The sugar planters won a decisive victory in 1815, however, when they were allowed to clear extensive forests, without restriction, for cane fields and sugar production. This book is the first to consider Cuba's vital sugar industry through the lens of environmental history. Funes Monzote demonstrates how the industry that came to define Cuba—and upon which Cuba urgently depended--also devastated the ecology of the island.

The original Spanish-language edition of the book, published in Mexico in 2004, was awarded the UNESCO Book Prize for Caribbean Thought, Environmental Category. For this first English edition, the author has revised the text throughout and provided new material, including a glossary and a conclusion that summarizes important developments up to the present..
Price: $23.61 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Ethiopian Afar are a pastoral people with a fearless reputation. They have roamed the Awash Valley for ages. How do they cope with the modern development of irrigated cultivation in the lowlands and the policy to displace pastoral communities from these lands by a coercive state that looks down upon them as 'backward', to say the least? An outstanding study into the problems pastoral peoples face around the world when resource conflicts threaten their sources of livelihood..
Price: $28.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book addresses the pressing issue of severe poverty and inequality, and questions why violations of socio-economic rights are treated with less urgency than violations of civil and political rights, such as the right to freedom of speech or to vote?
Socio-economic rights have been widely regarded as aspirational goals, rhetorically useful, but having few practical implications for government policy and the distribution of resources within a polity. It is not therefore surprising that socio-economic rights have been systematically neglected in the world today, with millions still lacking access to even basic shelter, food or health-care. This book seeks to provide a sustained argument for placing renewed emphasis upon socio-economic rights in the fight against desperate poverty. It utilizes a combination of political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy in its focus on the right to food, to housing, and to health-care.
Part I involves the development of a philosophical theory of rights that provides a common normative foundation for both civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. This theory involves developing an understanding of value that recognizes individuals have fundamental interests of differing levels of urgency. It also involves drawing an important distinction between conditional rights that flow purely from a normative focus on the equal importance of individuals and unconditional rights that involve competing normative and pragmatic considerations. A general theory of judicial review is also put forward that provides a justification for judicial involvement in the enforcement of socio-economic rights.

Part II then considers the implications of this general philosophical theory for the interpretation and enforcement of socio-economic rights in law. The focus of this more applied discussion is upon South Africa, where entrenched, directly justiciable socio-economic rights are expressly protected in the constitution. The current approach of the South African Constitutional Court to their interpretation and enforcement is considered and criticized primarily for failing to provide sufficient content to such rights. A modified version of the minimum core approach to socio-economic rights is proposed as an alterative way which is supported by the philosophical theory developed in the first part of the book. This approach requires priority to be given to worst off in society through placing a heavy burden of justification on any society that fails to meet the minimal interests of individuals. It also requires concrete steps to be taken towards realizing a higher level of provision that guarantees individuals the necessary conditions for realizing a wide range of purposes. This is also shown to have important policy implications both for developing and developed countries that can, it is hoped, assist in creating an urgency and commitment towards eradicating extreme poverty.
.
Price: $60.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Meet a higher environmental standard with ISO 14000. First ISO 9000 set the international standard for quality. Now ISO 14000 sets an equal standard for environmental compliance--moving beyond mere legal requirements to demand organizations actively manager every environmental aspect of their operations, products, and services. In ISO 14000 Guide, Joseph Cascio--a lead developer of ISO 14000--and environmental management experts Gayle Woodside and Phillip Mitchell arm you with an instant primer to ISO 14000's rationale, importance, and implementation. Step by step they show you how to achieve ISO 14000 recognition. . .forge a workable environmental policy. . .set targets. . .monitor, audit, and correct the program. . .and more. You also get a self-assessment tool, a sample environmental management system manual, and other hands-on resources..
Price: $17.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A collaborative effort by scholars from the United States, China, and Japan, this volume focuses on the period 1972-1989, during which all three countries, brought together by a shared geopolitical strategy, established mutual relations with one another despite differences in their histories, values, and perceptions of their own national interest. Although each initially conceived of its political and security relations with the others in bilateral terms, the three in fact came to form an economic and political triangle during the 1970s and 1980s. But this triangle is a strange one whose dynamics are constantly changing. Its corners (the three countries) and its sides (the three bilateral relationships) are unequal, while its overall nature (the capacity of the three to work together) has varied considerably as the economic and strategic positions of the three have changed and post–Cold War tensions and uncertainties have emerged.

In considering this special era, when the three major powers in the East Asia region engaged in positive interaction, the essays in this volume highlight the importance of this triangular reality in achieving a workable framework for future regional and global cooperation..
Price: $30.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]