House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made The Last Tycoons a bestseller and a prize winner, House of Cards is a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.
Adam Smith (1723-90) is a thinker with a distinctive perspective on human behaviour and social institutions. He is best known as the author of the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Yet his work is name-checked more often than it is read and then typically it is of an uninformed nature; that he is an apologist for capitalism, a forceful promoter of self-interest, a defender of greed and a critic of any 'interference' in market transactions. To offset this caricature, this Handbook provides an informed portrait.
Delightfully told tale recounts the escapades of an amiable bear who comes to live in the Green Forest, where he playfully annoys Little Joe Otter and other occupants. Gentle lessons about the dangers of greed, pride, and insensitivity accompanied by charming illustrations.
Amateur sleuth Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who also uses her training to solve unusual mysteries. Isabel is Editor of the Review of Applied Ethics – which addresses such questions as ‘Truth telling in sexual relationships’ – and she also hosts The Sunday Philosophy Club at her house in Edinburgh. Behind the city’s Georgian facades its moral compasses are spinning with greed, dishonesty and murderous intent. Instinct tells Isabel that the young man who tumbled to his death in front of her eyes at a concert in the Usher Hall didn’t fall. He was pushed.
Imagine a time and space traveler from another planet. One that looks human and exemplifies the ideal world he comes from, a world free from human nature's greed and cruelty. That creature would be "prot", as he calls himself, the newest patient at the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute.
