No substitute for victory

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Wilfried Feldenkirchen

"Wilfried Feldenkirchen continues the examination of the House of Siemens that he started in his previous work, Werner von Siemens: Inventor and International Entrepreneur. This new volume covers the period during the two world wars." "Taking as his point of departure the situation following World War I, Feldenkirchen describes the cyclical movements that characterized the period of high inflation, the subsequent so-called Weimar boom, the Great Depression, the period of economic recovery under National Socialist rule, and World War II. Drawing on a wide range of previously inaccessible and unpublished sources, Feldenkirchen analyzes the company's actions and reactions in a period in which its success was determined extensively by outside influences. Siemens's policy decisions are evaluated in the context of the German economy as a whole as well as within the company's own field of engineering. Feldenkirchen also probes Siemens's involvement in the National Socialists' wartime economy and discusses the issues of rearmament and forced labor from a judicious academic perspective." "This book makes an important contribution to an assessment of the company's role in this period of history and at the same time provides important insight into the social and economic history of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich."--Jacket.

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Charlie Samuels

"Describes civilian life for people around the world on the home front during World War II, including stories of relocation, rations, and new jobs to support war efforts"--Provided by publisher.

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Thomas Kemper Hitch

Why has Hawaii, from the times of Polynesian antiquity to the present, enjoyed the highest material standard of living in Oceania? How did changes in the social structure of pre-Cook Hawaii affect that standard? What happened to the islands' economy as western dominance took place, as land ownership was created, as technology was imported, as plantation workers immigrated, as World War II broke the social mold of the islands? These are some of the basic questions raised by Thomas Hitch in "Islands in Transition," the first book-length economic history of Hawaii to be printed in a generation. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "From the Record, "traces the development of Hawaii's economy from the moneyless, sharing, tribute, and barter system of the native culture to a plantation economy controlled from Honolulu and dominated by the Big Five. In the second section, "As I Saw it," Dr. Hitch describes the further development of Hawaii into a high-tech service economy, heavily based on tourism and military expenditures, increasingly involved in the multi-national global economy. He appraises the recent past and projects the future from the vantage point of his long career at Honolulu business community, first as director of research for the Hawaii Employers Council and then as Senior Vice President for Research at First Hawaiian Bank, until his death in August, 1989. This volume is written for the general reader, but appendices address questions of particular interest to economists and business analysts. These include measuring the cost of living in Hawaii, estimating the growth rate of the state economy, and appraising its sensitivity to the national business cycle.

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Steven Ricchiuto

Who caused the Great Recession? We did. In Disequilibrium, economist Steven Ricchiuto traces how destructive changes in our economic systems have created our present unbalanced economy. He expertly shows how today's disequilibrium between supply and demand came from decades of misguided economic policies made in response to the Great Inflation of the 1970s and 1980s. Ricchiuto then goes even further, investigating how economic forces created in the World War II era laid the groundwork for this destructive shift. Ricchiuto's timely book offers a method for assessing macro economic credit quality and suggests policy makers alter their behavior to handle new macro dynamics. Today's economic framework cannot be counted on to protect us forever. In Disequilibrium, Ricchiuto shows us where we went wrong in the past so that we can work to get the future right.