Free now: Public Financial Management and Its Emerging Architecture - A public policy book from the International Monetary Fund
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The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed an influx of innovations and reforms in public financial management. The current wave of reforms is markedly different from those in the past, owing to the sheer number of innovations, their widespread adoption, and the sense that they add up to a fundamental change in the way governments manage public money.
This book takes stock of the most important innovations that have emerged over the past two decades, including fiscal responsibility legislation, fiscal rules, medium-term budget frameworks, fiscal councils, fiscal risk management techniques, performance budgeting, and accrual reporting and accounting. Not merely a handbook or manual describing practices in the field, the volume instead poses critical questions about innovations; the issues and challenges that have appeared along the way, including those associated with the global economic crisis; and how the ground can be prepared for the next generation of public financial management reforms.
Click here to purchase Public Financial Management and Its Emerging Architecture

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the hundreds of books about Ronald Reagan, but this short monograph stands out from the rest by providing a clear, accessible, and engaging “Basic Introduction” to the accomplishments of the President who defined an age.Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at The Heritage Foundation, explains how Reagan restored the confidence of the American people in themselves and in the future, how he set in motion the forces that produced the longest peacetime economic expansion in the 20th century, and how he won the Cold War “without firing a shot,” as Margaret Thatcher remarked.
Buy this book today for $2.99 as it is the B&N price match.
Click here to purchase Ronald Reagan: A Basic Introduction

For decades, while America obsessed over Soviet spies, China quietly penetrated the highest levels of government. Now, for the first time, based on numerous interviews with key insiders at the FBI and CIA as well as with Chinese agents and people close to them, David Wise tells the full story of China’s many victories and defeats in its American spy wars.
Two key cases interweave throughout: Katrina Leung, code-named Parlor Maid, worked for the FBI for years and Tiger Trap, of a key Chinese-American scientist suspected of stealing nuclear weapons secrets.
These two cases led to many others, involving famous names from Wen Ho Lee to Richard Nixon, stunning national security leaks, and sophisticated cyberspying. The story takes us up to the present, with a West Coast spy ring whose members were sentenced in 2010—but it surely will continue for years to come, as China faces off against America. David Wise’s history of China’s spy wars in America is packed with eye-popping revelations.
Buy the book today for $2.99.
Click here to purchase Tiger Trap

From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the ‘Ace of Spies’, by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the ‘Redhead under the Bed’, in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century.
In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall.
It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War, providing the background to the new world of industrial and political espionage. To tell the story of post-Soviet espionage, Lucas draws on exclusive interviews with Russia’s top NATO spy, Herman Simm, and unveils the horrific treatment of a Moscow lawyer who dared to challenge the ruling criminal syndicate there.
Buy this book of history for $3.99 today.
Click here to purchase Deception

How powerful is integrity? Just ask minister-turned-statesman, Mike Huckabee. As lieutenant governor of Arkansas in 1996, he was publicly cast between the ultimate rock and hard place when his boss, governor Jim Guy Tucker, refused to resign despite his felony convictions in the Whitewater scandal. Holding fast to the tenets of honor and faith, and his concern over what was best for the state’s people, Huckabee led the impeachment charge against his superior before a televised audience. That same day, Tucker resigned, and Huckabee would serve as governor of Arkansas until 2007, winning many national honors along the way.
Character Makes a Difference is Mike Huckabee’s biographical account of how he handled that potentially major constitutional crisis and why he believes character is the key issue in everyone’s life, “in the work you do, the candidates you vote for, the people who look to you for leadership.”
You can purchase this memoir of Governor Huckabee’s political career in Arkansas for only $1.99 today.
Click here to purchase Character Makes a Difference

Timothy Goeglein spent nearly eight years in the White House as President George W. Bush’s key point of contact to American conservatives and the faith-based world and was frequently profiled in the national news media. But when a plagiarism scandal prompted his resignation, Goeglein chose not to dodge it but confront it, and was shown remarkable grace by the president. In fact, Bush showed more concern for Goeglein and his family than any personal political standing.
So begins The Man in the Middle, Goeglein’s unique insider account of why he believes most of the 43rd president’s in-office decisions were made for the greater good, and how many of those decisions could serve as a blueprint for the emergence of a thoughtful, confident conservatism.
In all, The Man in the Middle backs historians who view the legacy of President George W. Bush in a favorable light, recognizing his conservative ideas worth upholding in order to better shape our nation and change the world.
You can purchase this book today for only 99 cents.
Click here to purchase The Man in the Middle

Your credit is on its way
Remember this?
Good news! Nearly a year later, the settlement agreed to by the major publishing houses may finally be settled. According to this article from Publishers Weekly.com more than $166 million dollars will be distributed to just over 23 million consumers.
An earlier e-mail from Amazon informed eligible e-book buyers that the credit due to customers “who purchased e-books from an ‘Agency Five’ publisher from April 1, 2010 to May 21, 2012″ would be applied directly to their accounts and could be used for future purchases of e-books or print books.
The settlement website states that “consumers are tentatively set to receive $1.32 for each book on the New York Times bestseller list purchased during the claims period, and 30 cents for non-bestsellers.”
More good news: The publishers are paying for the administration of the settlement agreement, thus maximizing the amount being distributed to consumers.
 
The “go to” button has gone live!
A few weeks ago we wrote about a bug with in which the go to button in the navigation panel for books did not work on the Kindle Fire HD 7″. Several you responded about the frustration this causes you.
The button is now fixed on my device through a live update. The update also included some changes to the highlight button. Now, when highlighting a passage, I have a choice of four colors – blue, pink, yellow and orange. The buttons have been streamlined, as well. Color coding highlights will be especially useful for those reading textbooks on the Kindle.
Speaking of textbooks, I ordered a book – the old-fashioned, paper kind – and got a $3 promotional credit for mp3. I didn’t even realize my purchase would qualify as a textbook. If you’ve been eyeing reference materials, this would be a good time to pick them up. And get some tunes to study by out of the deal.
 
Cheap Reads
These three biographies of the Kennedy family are selling today for only 99 cents each:
 

The U.S. military detention center at Guantánamo Bay—known to the public as Gitmo—has been called the American Gulag, a scene of medieval horrors where innocent farmers and goat herders swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sequestered, tortured, and abused for years on end without access to legal counsel or basic medical services.
While some prisoners were indeed treated harshly in the early days, when the hastily built camp was flooded with battlefield captures and fears ran high of another 9/11-style attack, Cucullu finds that these excesses were quickly corrected. Current treatment and oversight routines exceed the standards of any maximum-security prison in the world.
Despite what the public has heard, these are not innocent goatherds but dedicated jihadists whose overriding goal—as they themselves candidly say—is to kill Americans. Should they now be released to return to the fight, perhaps on American soil? Read this book and decide for yourself. Buy it today for only 99 cents.
Click here to purchase Inside Gitmo

A riveting portrait of President Bush as he broadens the war on terror overseas—and plunges into high-stakes political battles at home.
“They misunderestimated me,” George W. Bush famously remarked on the eve of his historic presidency. Fractured syntax aside, Bush was right: his detractors misunderstood his appeal to the American public, and underestimated his considerable political skills. In this compelling new book, Bill Sammon reveals how the president is turning these misperceptions to his advantage in the looming showdown with John Kerry and the Bush haters.
In Misunderestimated, Sammon takes readers inside the Oval Office for historic decisions of war and peace, aboard Air Force One for a daring, surprise descent into Baghdad, and even on an intimate tour of Bush’s beloved Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. It’s a mesmerizing account of a president determined not to repeat his father’s two fundamental mistakes—abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.
Buy this political history for only 99 cents today.
Click here to purchase Misunderestimated

The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger.
In Top Secret America, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission, and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors; and more than 850,000 people granted “Top Secret” security clearance.
A landmark exposé of a new, secret “Fourth Branch” of American government, Top Secret America is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm. Buy this book today for $3.79.
Click here to purchase Top Secret America