"Disruption" is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive – or, if they aren't disruptive yet, it's only a matter of time before they become so. In this book, Joshua Gans cuts through the chatter to focus on disruption in its initial use as a business term, identifying new ways to understand it and suggesting new tools to manage it.

A call to reboot capitalism and preserve $85 trillion in retirement savings for their owners-not for use as the financial industry's ATM. Each year we pay billions in fees to those who run our financial system. The money comes from our bank accounts, our pensions, our borrowing, and often we aren't told that the money has been taken. These billions may be justified if the finance industry does a good job, but as this book shows, it too often fails us.

From 1716 to 1845 Scotland's banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability.

How do the one percent keep getting richer despite financial crises and the myriad of taxes on income, capital gains, and inheritance? Brooke Harrington interviewed professionals who specialize in protecting the fortunes of the world’s richest people: wealth managers. To gain access to their tactics and mentality, she trained to become one of them.

The Market has deified itself, according to Harvey Cox’s brilliant exegesis. And all of the world’s problems—widening inequality, a rapidly warming planet, the injustices of global poverty—are consequently harder to solve. Only by tracing how the Market reached its divine status can we hope to restore it to its proper place as servant of humanity.

The sharing economy’s unique customer to company exchange is possible because of the evolution of money. These transactions haven’t always been as fluid as they are today, but they are likely to become even more so in the future. It is therefore critical that we learn to appreciate money’s elastic nature as deeply as do Uber, Airbnb, Kickstarter, and other leading innovators, and that we better comprehend money’s transition from hard currencies to cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to access their cooperative potential. The Evolution of Money illuminates this fascinating reality, focusing on the tension between currency’s real and abstract properties and advancing a vital theory of money rooted in this dual exchange.

In The New Case for Gold, James Rickards explains why gold is one of the safest assets for investors in times of political instability and market volatility, and how every investor should look to add gold to his or her portfolio.

Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his ten years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.

What will economic policy look like once the global financial crisis is finally over? Will it resume the pre-crisis consensus, or will it be forced to contend with a post-crisis "new normal"? Have we made progress in addressing these issues, or does confusion remain? In April of 2015, the International Monetary Fund gathered leading economists, both academics and policymakers, to address the shape of future macroeconomic policy. This book is the result, with prominent figures – including Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers, and Paul Volcker – offering essays that address topics that range from the measurement of systemic risk to foreign exchange intervention.