Böcker utgivna av W. W. Norton & Company

In February 1995, the unthinkable happened: one of the oldest and most respected merchant banks in London went bankrupt. The story that "rogue" Barings trader Nick Leeson lost hundreds of millions of pounds speculating in the Far East was front-page news throughout the world. Accused of fraud on a massive scale, Leeson first strenuously opposed being tried in Singapore, then eventually was taken there from his prison in Frankfurt. In December 1995 he pleaded guilty - and the trial began and ended within two days. As a result, the prosecution case against Leeson was not heard. What really happened to cause the downfall of "the Queen's bank," and who was actually responsible?In The Collapse of Barings, Stephen Fay investigates the facts behind the headlines and discovers a closed network of privilege, greed, and incompetence. In the rapidly changing system of global finance, the directors of Barings came to rely on people they hardly knew - like Nick Leeson - to make their fortunes in markets they did not fully understand, like SIMEX in Singapore. The plasterer's son from Watford was still in his mid-twenties when he rose to become the golden boy of Barings, claiming to have made profits of ten million dollars in one week. His London bosses watched passively as a culture of speculation grew until it eventually destroyed them, and changed the face of London's financial heartland.

Now anyone can understand what the mathematical geniuses are thinking . . . .* How topologists figured out the way to turn a smokestack into a bowling ball -- and why.* How game theorists discovered that to elect the candidate of your choice you must sometimes vote for his opponent.* How computer theorists intend to create a robot that will think for itself -- and do all the housework.* How cryptographers have been laboring since 1822 to decipher a map that will lead to a buried treasure worth millions of dollars.Archimedes' Revenge takes the reader on a guided tour of the world of contemporary mathematics and makes its infinite marvels comprehensible, relevant, and fun."A breezy and lighthearted account of a number of topics in and around the periphery of mathematics . . . Mr. Hoffman approaches mathematics as a storyteller, and a good one." -- The New York Times Book Review "From the Paperback edition.

Of the three basic elements that formed the culture of Byzantium-Roman political concepts, Greek culture, and Christian faith-two were closely related to Rome. This affinity made Byzantium's artistic impact upon Italy a special one, despite the great political differences between the two parts of the former Roman empire. In this illustrated handbook, Daniel Crena de Iongh guides the reader to the surviving treasures of Italy's Byzantine heritage-the mosaics, paintings, and sculpture, in churches, palaces, catacombs, grottoes, and museums, from Milan and Venice in the north, to Calabria and Sicily in the south.

This is the story of Susan and Eric Hiscocks last voyage in the steel ketch Wanderer IV from their home in New Zealand to the west coast of Canada. On their return, they decided to replace the Wanderer IV with a smaller wooden sloop-rigged yacht. The maiden voyage of Wanderer V is not a tale of idyllic sailing.

In the first chapters, Mr. Altick examines the Victorian delight in murder as a social phenomenon. The remainder of the book is constructed around classic murder cases that afford a vivid perspective on the way people lived--and died--in the Age of Victoria.From the beginning of the age, homicide was a national entertainment. Penny broadsheets hawked in the streets highlighted the most gruesome features of crimes; newspapers recounted the most minute details, from the discovery of the body to the execution of the criminal. Real-life murders were quickly adapted for the gaslight melodrama and the bestselling novels of the "Newgate" and "sensation" schools. Murder scenes and celebrities were the most popular exhibits at Madame Tussaud's waxworks and in the touring peepshows and marionette entertainments.Murder, in fact, was a crimson thread running through the whole fabric of Victorian life. By tracing this thread in "not too solemn a spirit," Mr. Altick has written a book that will delight and inform all who are interested in social history, as well as that great number who relish true murder stories.

The story of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music as well as all the so-called minor arts from the days of the cavemen until the present time.

The most remarkable thing about the collapse of the savings and loan industry is that so many of the major participants--the regulators, politicians, and S&L operators themselves--chose to do nothing as they watched problems mount and taxpayer liabilities grow. That choice was dictated by a variety of motives: greed, political self-interest, and even (sometimes) misguided good intentions. Whatever the motives, this collective interest in hiding the debacle made it certain that the industry's final fall would come with an enormous bang, one that would force administrations that professed a free market philosophy essentially to nationalize a majority of the nation's thrifts. As a result, the industry in many respects became one of the best examples of socialism in the U.S. economy.

With the feminist challenge to family therapy, power is being recognized as a central organizing principle in families. Here theorists and clinicans address the many thorny questions around women and power, highlighting the different cultural messages for women and men concerning not only access to power but also the desirability of having power, pursuit of power and ways of exercising power. The way in which women are (typically) disadvantaged with regard to power are explored.

At the present time Vivaldi's music is enjoying a renewed life. His music is played in the concert halls and on the radio, and has been extensively recorded. Public interest in the composer is tremendous; yet until recently there has not been any book in English to which the reader could turn for information on his life and work.Marc Pincherle's book fills this need perfectly. His aim is to present the life and music of Vivaldi to those generally musical readers who do not claim specialized knowledge. He has made wide use of contemporary writings which are delightfully evocative of the Venice in which Vivaldi lived and worked. He follows the events of the composer's life and then proceeds to a detailed consideration of his music, discussing Vivaldi the violinist, the symphonist, the composer of concertos, of opera and of sacred music. Finally he describes the incalculable influence that Vivaldi exercised on Italian, French, English, and German composers, and most especially on the music of Bach.

In Search of Enemies is much more than the story of the only war to be found when the CIA sought to recoup its prestige after the Vietnam debacle. Though no American troops were committed to Angola, only "advisors," many millions were spent, many thousands died, and many lies were told to the American people, in waging a war without purpose to American vital interests and without hope of victory.

Though the Black Law did not succeed in forcing Crandall to close the school, vigilante violence finally did, in 1834. In the wake of the hostilities, which has tragic consequences for her family, Crandall "took to the prairie," where she spent the remainder of her remarkable life as a pioneer educator, feminist, and free-thinking spiritualist.This richly documented biography draws on the Crandall family papers and includes Prudence's correspondence with such abolitionist luminaries as William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Susan Strane brings the abolitionists' struggle to dramatic life in the story of one woman's incredible courage.

Brazil Red tells the story of two orphaned children, Just and Colombe, who are dragged off on the French colonizing expeditionthey are meant to learn the native languages and act as interpreters. Everything in this novel is outsized: the setting, a jungle still populated by cannibals; the characters, including Villegagnon, the expedition's eccentric leader, who might be a model for Cyrano or d'Artagnan; and the events, a dress rehearsal for the Wars of Religion ten years in the future. Packed with portraits, landscapes, and action, Brazil Red is a novel about coming of age and discovering love. On a deeper level, the story follows the destinies and decisions of Just and Colombe, presenting two conflicting views of man and nature. On one hand, a conquering European civilization, offering liberation but delivering death. On the other, the Indian world, with its sensuality, its harmony, its sense of the sacred, its continual call to happiness.

As a thrilling, magnificent story of the backgrounds of our country, of those rough pioneers who build that we might live, of the struggle to preserve our unity and our happiness, and of those modern circumstances that shape our present lives this chronicle is unequaled.

H. G. Wells's "My First Aeroplane" hilariously evokes the days when a flying machine was a proper toy for a gentleman. "The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall" by Edgar Allan Poe is a weird fantasy-part Baron Munchhausen and part Rip Van Winkle. W. E. Johns's "Spads and Spandaus" recounts an American flier's baptism by fire at the hands of the famed Baron Richthofen. H. E. Bates, "Flying Officer X," contributes "How Sleep the Brave," the adventures of a bomber crew shot down over the North Sea and their struggle to survive in a pitching dinghy. Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is represented by "Cat," in which a strange Persian cat keeps watch over the comings and goings of a USAF squadron. In "They Will Never Grow Old," Roald Dahl takes us into the tight circle of a British air squadron in the Middle East in World War II and spins the haunting story of a pilot who is given up for lost and returns, under the most mysterious circumstances, to describe a flight beyond this world. Rounding out the collection are tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Len Deighton, J. G. Ballard, F. Britten Austin, and John Buchan. In the words of Frederick Forsyth's stirring introduction, "The last of the lonely places is the sky, a trackless void where nothing lives or grows, and above it, space itself. Man may have been destined to walk upon ice or sand, or climb the mountains or take a craft upon the sea. But surely he was never meant to fly? But he does, and finding out how to do it was his last great adventure."

"I begged, and often my brother obliged. In the dark of night, when I couldn't sleep, Ivan told me fairy tales in a whisper. All the stories began, in the traditional Hungarian manner, `Once there was / where there wasn't / there was once a Castle / that twirled on the foot of a duck.'"There are few female figures in literature as riveting as the precocious nine-year-old Magda Denes who narrates this story. Her stubborn self-command and irrepressible awareness of the absurd make her, in her mother's eyes, "impossibly sarcastic, bigmouthed, insolent, and far too smart" for her own good. When her family goes into hiding from the fascist Arrow-Cross, she is torn from the "castle" of intimacies shared with her adored and adoring older brother and plunged into a world of incomprehensible deprivation, separation, and loss. Her rage, and her ability to feel devastating sorrow and still insist on life, will reach every reader at the core.

In a corner of the Big Cypress Swamp, to the north of the Florida Everglades, lives Charlie Jumper, and eighty-six-year-old Seminole man. Unlike the younger American Indians who have adopted white civilization, Charlie and his wife cling to the old ways, hunting and fishing in the great swamp and farming a tiny plot of higher ground. Charlie has been diligently teaching his grandson, Timmy, about the swamp and its creatures.But their simple existence is suddenly threatened when a large tract of swamp is bought by a corporation, and Charlie is told that he will have to leave. From his youth, Charlie remembers the slaughter of egrets and alligators by the white man and the logging of the giant cypress. Rather than surrender the land that is his life to this final indignity, Charlie decides to fight back.It is an uneven contest. First come the great machines that silt up the streams; then the workmen inadvertently poison the marsh; and, attempting to sabotage the construction equipment, Charlie's best friend is killed. Realizing that there can be no compromise with the white man who destroys all he touches, Charlie leaves his family and feels into the swamp, seeking the lost island known in the Seminole legends as Forever Island.

After serving as a Naval Japanese language officer in the twenties and as a practicing attorney in Kobe for nearly ten years, Sebald returned to Japan after the war as a member of the staff of the U.S. Political Advisor. In 1947 he was appointed Acting U.S. Political Advisor to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces.In this book, Ambassador Sebald explains the major problems and policy shifts with clarity and a fresh approach. For the first time we are told the complete story of his efforts as Chairman of the Allied Council for Japan to repatriate the 650,000 Japanese POW's held by the Soviets. The Korean War, as seen from Tokyo, also takes on a new dimension. Sebald examines the failures on all sides which led to MacArthur's quarrel with Truman. In a highly dramatic scene, Ambassador Sebald records his interview with the General on the day he was dismissed by the President.This is the story of the incredibly busy years of one of America's new-style diplomats. It is a contribution of lasting importance to history, thoroughly documented and eminently readable.Mr. Sebald's co-author, Russell Brines, served in Tokyo and Manila as a correspondent prior to the war and was interned in Manila by the Japanese. He was Chief of the AP's Tokyo Bureau during most of the Occupation.

Few figures have influenced 20th-century music as much as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Their letters, one of the most important sources of information about the background to their music, are here published for the first time. The editors have transcribed, translated and annotated more than 800 letters and from this vast body of material have selected 370 that reflect the lives and times of these two great composers. The letters reveal much about the relationship between Berg and Schoenberg: first as pupil and teacher, then as friends and finally, after the premier of Wozzeck, as colleagues and peers. They also shed light on the reasons for Schoenberg's move to Berlin in 1911, the intrigue behind the early demise of the Society for Private Musical Performance, and Schoenberg's feigned indifference to the success of Wozzeck. Schoenberg describes his first years in America and the correspondence ends with Berg's death in 1935. The letters are fully annotated and supplemented with appendices, facsimiles and many photographs.