"A top healthcare futurist and consultant shows healthcare professionals and stakeholders how to redirect resources and leverage innovation to improve wellness and lower costs. The U.S. is the wealthiest nation on earth, but it spends its money and resources pursuing the wrong goal: curing people after they get sick. In The Healthcare Mandate, Nicholas J. Webb charts a bold new path that puts the focus not on reactionary treatment but on anticipation...

"Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers has, in its latest report, given American roads and bridges a grade of D and C+, respectively, and has described roughly sixty-five thousand bridges in the United States as 'structurally deficient.' This crisis--and one need look no further than the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota to see that it is indeed a crisis--shows little sign of abating short...

"I've still got my health so what do I care?" goes a lyric in an old Cole Porter song. Most of us, in fact, assume we can't live full lives, or take on life's challenges, without also assuming that we're basically healthy and will be for the foreseeable future. But these days, our health and well-being are sorted through an ever-expanding, profit-seeking financial complex that monitors, controls, and commodifies our very existence. Given that our...

George, a newly minted quarter on his way to the bank, is in for quite a day. He's about to be traded, spent, lost, found, donated, dropped into a vending machine, washed in a washing machine, and generally passed all around town. By the time George finally ends up back at the bank, he's given readers a real run for their money. By George, what a way to practice math, learn about basic economics, and have a few laughs, too!

Offers information and instructions on living a greener, more self-sufficient lifestyle, including how to build a log cabin, how to raise livestock, and how to make candles.

"When it comes to healthcare, bigger isn't always better. The early-1990s rise of "megaproviders"-large, hospital-based healthcare systems that have become the norm in American medicine-brought promises of accessibility, cost savings, and excellence to the American healthcare experience. Today's megaproviders, following three decades of growth and consolidation, receive as much as two-thirds of healthcare spending in the United States. Big Med examines...