David A. Singer - Böcker

GEOMETRY: Plane and Fancy offers students a fascinating tour through parts of geometry they are unlikely to see in the rest of their studies while, at the same time, anchoring their excursions to the well known parallel postulate of Euclid. The author shows how alternatives to Euclid's fifth postulate lead to interesting and different patterns and symmetries. In the process of examining geometric objects, the author incorporates the algebra of complex (and hypercomplex) numbers, some graph theory, and some topology. Nevertheless, the book has only mild prerequisites. Readers are assumed to have had a course in Euclidean geometry (including some analytic geometry and some algebra) at the high school level. While many concepts introduced are advanced, the mathematical techniques are not. Singer's lively exposition and off-beat approach will greatly appeal both to students and mathematicians. Interesting problems are nicely scattered throughout the text. The contents of the book can be covered in a one-semester course, perhaps as a sequel to a Euclidean geometry course.

This innovative analysis investigates a complex issue of tremendous economic and political importance: what makes some countries vulnerable to banking crises, while others emerge unscathed? Banks on the Brink explains why some countries are more vulnerable to banking crises than others. Copelovitch and Singer highlight the effects of two variables in combination: foreign capital inflows and the relative prominence of securities markets in the domestic financial system. Foreign capital is the fuel for banks' potentially dangerous behavior, and banks are more likely to take on excessive risks when operating in a financial system with large securities markets. The book analyzes over thirty years of data and provides historical case studies of two key countries, Canada and Germany, each of which explores how political decisions in the 19th and early-20th centuries continue to affect financial stability today. The analyses in this book have crucial policy implications, identifying potential regulations and policies that can work to protect banking systems against future crises.