|
Every time you go to the site or update it, you'll get the latest updates on the U.S. and world populations. When I checked it (1 March at 6:30 p.m. Colorado time) they were at 292,704,827 and 6,351,630,428. When you check, those numbers will be higher. Click the "clocks" to get information behind the numbers. From This is True for 29 February 2004 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Lucette Lagnado List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17 Editorial Review: Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them. A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York. Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.  By: David Smith List Price: $18.95 Amazon Price: $12.89 Editorial Review: There are currently more than six billion people on the planet! This enormous number can be difficult to grasp, especially for a child. But what if we imagine the whole world as a village of just 100 people?In this village 22 people speak a Chinese dialect 20 earn less than a dollar a day 32 are of Christian faith 17 cannot read or write 39 are under 19 years oldIn a time when parents and educators are looking to help children gain a better understanding of the world's peoples and their ways of life, If the World Were a Village offers a unique and objective resource. By exploring the lives of the 100 villagers, children will discover that life in other nations is often very different from their own. The shrunk-down statistics - some surprising, some shocking - and David Smith's tips on building "world-mindedness" will encourage readers to embrace the bigger picture and help them to establish their own place in the global village.  By: Peter H. Wood List Price: $17.95 Amazon Price: $12.21  By: Stephen CastlesMark J. Miller List Price: $39.00 Amazon Price: $35.10 Editorial Review: Now in a revised and expanded third edition, this widely adopted text provides a global perspective on the nature of migration movements, why they take place, and their effects on industrialized countries and the developing world. Extensively rewritten chapters provide information on and comparative analyses of the world's main migration regions. The role of migration in the formation of ethnic minority groups is examined, as is the impact of growing ethnic diversity on economies, cultures, and political institutions. Included are a wealth of concrete examples, tables, and maps.  By: Robert J. Shapiro List Price: $26.95 Amazon Price: $15.68 Editorial Review: What will life be like in America, Europe, Japan or China in the year 2020? As everyone’s lives across the world are become increasingly interconnected by globalization and new technologies quicken the pace of everything, the answer to that question depends on the fate and paths of the world’s major nations. In Futurecast, Robert Shapiro, former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce and Chairman/Co-founder of Sonecon, looks into the future to tell us what our world will over the next dozen years. Though that time span seems brief, Shapiro foresees monumental changes caused by three historic new forces—globalization, the aging of societies, and the rise of America as a sole superpower with no near peer— will determine the paths of nations and the lives of countless millions. What jobs will there be for you and your children? What will happen to your health care? How safe will you be at home or abroad? Answers to these questions will depend, even more than today, on where you live in the world: • Even as China expands its military and its economy, America will be the world’s sole superpower for at least the next generation, and continue to lead efforts to preserve global security and stability. • The U.S. and China will be the world’s two indispensable economies, dominating the course of globalization. • Globalization will continue to shift most heavy manufacturing and millions of high-end service jobs from advanced countries like the US, to China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Romania, Turkey and other developing nations. • Europe’s major nations and Japan will face the prospect of genuine economic decline and critical problems in their retirement pension systems, moving further towards the periphery of global economic and geopolitical power. • Every major country—the U.S., Europe, Japan, China—will face critical problems with their health care systems, and the entire world will face a crisis over energy and climate change. If one adds the wildcard of possible, catastrophic terrorist attacks to this mix, the period between now and 2020 will be as challenging as any in modern times. Taking these deep global developments into account when planning for the future isa necessity. Robert Shapiro’s clear-eyed Futurecast is the knowledge portfolio you need to prepare for the years to come. In 2020, the man from whom both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are seeking economic guidance, looks into the future to tell us what our world will be like a dozen years off. Though the chronological difference seems small, the changes Shapiro foresees will be monumental as four major forces--globalization, demographics, politics and the status of energy sources influenced by constantly changing quality of the environment--will determine how nations rise and fall. Rob Shapiro thinks we can expect: -US military hegemony will be a thing of the past while the new superpower rivalry will be between China and the US -Mexico and Turkey will produce most of the world's cars -The US will be the premiere source for sophisticated products and services, but our economy will be hostage to foreign lenders for capital to develop these products -China will be able to offer less-developed countries a new model of political and economic success based on investment-led growth -Japan and Europe will move to the periphery of world power In the past, Shapiro's predictions have played out just as he suggested: In 1992, he predicted that economic recovery that year would not help George H.W. Bush get re-elected because the real incomes of average families were still considerably lower than when Bush took office. This prediction morphed into Carville's famous "It's the economy, stupid" and took Clinton into the White House. In 1998, when e-commerce represented a miniscule amount of total consumer purchases and there was much uncertainty about consumer response, he predicted the Internet would become a major channel for buying and selling. Today, e-commerce represents approximately $10 Billion in consumer purchases. In 2003, he predicted the US would become more dependent on lending from China and Japan. By 2006, China held more than $350 billion in U.S. Treasury securities and Japan more than $670 billion accounting for 50 % of all foreign-held U.S. debt. In a book as important as that of Thomas Friedman and Alvin Toffler, Shapiro gives us a clear-eyed vision of where we're headed. |
About the Site
About This is True About the Authors
Prev: Martin Pesch's MP3 tools Next: Public Debt to the Penny |