A veteran New York Times reporter dissects the most spectacular failure in real estate history. Real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of dollars when their much-vaunted purchase of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in New York City failed to deliver the expected profits. But how did Tishman Speyer walk away from the deal unscathed, while others took the financial hit-and MetLife scored a $3 billion profit? Illuminating the world of big real estate the way Too Big to Fail did for banks, Other People's Money is a riveting account of politics, high finance, and the hubris that ultimately led to the nationwide real estate meltdown. "-- "The New York Times reporter who first broke the story of the sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village takes readers inside the most spectacular failure in real estate history, using this single deal as a lens to see how and why the real estate crisis happened. How did the smartest people in real estate lose billions in one single deal? How did the Church of England, the California public employees' pension fund, and the Singapore government lose more than one billion dollars combined investing in a middle-class housing complex in New York City? How did MetLife make three billion dollars on the deal without any repercussions from a historically racist policy of housing segregation? And how did nine residents of a sleepy enclave in New York City win one of the most unlikely lawsuits in the history of real estate law? Not only does Other People's Money answer those questions, it also explains the current recession in stark, clear detail while providing riveting first-person accounts of the titanic failure of the real estate industry to see that a recession was coming. It's the definitive book on real estate during the bubble years--and what happened when that enormous bubble exploded

"Wi-Fi has become the preferred means for connecting to the internet - at home, in the office, in hotels and at airports. Increasingly, Wi-Fi also provides internet access for remote communities where it is deployed by volunteers in community-based networks, by operators in 'hotspots' and by municipalities in 'hotzones'. This book traces the global success of Wi-Fi to the landmark change in radio spectrum policy by the US FCC in 1985, the initiative by NCR Corporation to start development of Wireless-LANs and the drive for an open standard IEEE 802.11, released in 1997. It also singles out and explains the significance of the initiative by Steve Jobs at Apple to include Wireless-LAN in the iBook, which moved the product from the early adopters to the mass market. The book explains these developments through first-hand accounts by industry practitioners and concludes with reflections and implications for government policy and firm strategy"--

A comprehensive understanding of food and agriculture security is best wrought through multidisciplinary analysis. Indeed, multiple academic disciplines provide lenses through which the multiple dimensions of food and agriculture security may be comprehensively examined. Food and agriculture security-- a stated priority research area of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-- concerns the safety, security, and ongoing operation of the agricultural and food system in a global society that values both trade and security. Any attempt to understand the food system must involve multidisciplinary, multidimensional study. This book offers a bona fide multidisciplinary as well as historical approach to help students appreciate such a complex and multifaceted subject. Authored by scholars within the Frontier program for the historical studies of border security, food security, and trade policy, the book reviews some of the most salient and trade-related food and agriculture security concerns of the 19th century, describes the modern-day policy and industry contexts in which food and agriculture security issues arise, provides historical and contemporary illustrations of the vulnerability in the food and agriculture sector, identifies modern-day domestic (United States) as well as international (e.g., China) challenges, and highlights the role that public-private partnerships and cross-border cooperation must play in ensuring food and agriculture security in a globalized world.