“Rewards of a Shortchanged Life” encapsulates the journey of Shashank Sinha, the billionaire entrepreneur from being an unknown lawyer in Delhi to a known legal luminary in the country, an educationist who had a vision for future generation to end up in the highest office that a Finance professional can dream of in India. Not that life had always been kind to him and he was destiny’s privileged child, beyond college where he was the chocolate boy, his personal life had always in turmoil, and he kept trying to redeem himself out of the vicious circle. He kept looking for solace, but it messed up even further when the romance of the past reemerged. Will the romance sink him or with his professional acumen, he will be able to make a mark for himself. What would be Shashank Sinha’s legacy?

The first book to focus on the differences in wealth between women and men, Mariko Lin Chang draws on the most comprehensive national data on wealth and on in-depth interviews to show how differences in earnings, in saving and investing, and, most important, the demands of care-giving all contribute to the gender-wealth gap. A comprehensive portrait of where women and men stand with respect to wealth, Shortchanged not only sheds light on why women lack wealth, but also offers solutions for improving the financial situation of women, men, and families.

What values do Americans hold dear? What happens when real-world situations cause those values to conflict? To better understand the intellectual map of how American society works, Arthur G. Neal and Helen Youngelson-Neal analyze values prominent in American word and deed. These values appear in our nation's formal documents-rights and privileges prominently emphasized in the US Constitution and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. They have shaped the historical destiny and, indeed, include those values most extensively propagated by the general population. Using these criteria, the authors identify individualism, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, consumerism, materialism, equality of opportunity, technology, mastery of the environment, quality of marriage, and national unity as the core American values. Core values provide the raw materials for the construction of contemporary society as a moral community, wherever that community is located. Such values are clusters of ideas that are central to self-identities; they generate a sense of collective belonging and membership. As such, core values define the existing social order and advance a set of ideas for depicting a desirable future. The analysis presented here helps us understand contemporary conflicts inherent in the American value system and the problems confronted by Americans as they try to live within the limitations and contradictions of value systems.

Over the past few decades, East Asia developments in terms of production, population and trade have shown remarkable dynamics. Ensuing changes in these regions of non-Western civilization are commonly interpreted in terms of a successful adaptation of modernity. However, experiences such as the regional crisis in 1997 and the tragic incident of September 2001 more than ever ask for more intensive civilizational dialogues, and urge us to carefully consider the implications of capitalist development in the East Asian context(s). This book deals with the issues of Asian values, civilizational encounters between East and West, and the development of capitalism "and" its culture in East Asian countries. Its focus on inter-civilizational exchanges and the intricate interplays between civilizational and capitalist dynamics helps us to better understand our human story and history.