Thursday, December 18, 2008

Gold and Iron or How Are We to Live

Gold and Iron

Author: Fritz Richard Stern

This is a book about Germans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused on Bismarck and Bleichroder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker, collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of a Germany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism and an earlier world with its ancient feudal ethos; gradually a new and broadened elite emerged, and Bismarck's tie with Bleichroder epitomized that regrouping. It is the story of the founding of the new German Empire, in whose midst a Jewish minority rose to embattled prominence.



See also: Sports Economics or The Portable Mentor

How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest

Author: Peter Singer

Singer suggests that people who take an ethical approach to life often avoid the trap of meaninglessness, finding a deeper satisfaction in what they are doing than those people whose goals are narrower and more self-centered. He spells out what he means by an ethical approach to life and shows that it can bring about significant and far-reaching changes to one's life. How Are We to Live? explores the way in which standard contemporary assumptions about human nature and self-interest have led to a world that is fraught with social and environmental problems. Singer asks whether selfishness is in our genes and concludes that we do not have to accept the bleak view of human nature sometimes believed to be inevitable, given our evolutionary origins.



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