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Basic Books
Basic Books
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BB
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Since its founding in 1952, Basic Books has shaped public debate by publishing award-winning books in history, science, sociology, psychology, politics, and current affairs. Basic Books also publishes new works in African and African-American studies under the Basic Civitas imprint.  Basic's list of influential authors includes Isaac Asimov, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William F. Buckley, Stephen Carter, Iris Chang, Dinesh D’Souza, Richard Dawkins, Hernando de Soto, Jared Diamond, Michael Eric Dyson, Niall Ferguson, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, Sigmund Freud, Howard Gardner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Hofstadter, Leszek Kolakowski, Lawrence Lessig, Claude Levi-Strauss, Nelson Mandela, Alice Miller, Walter Mosley, James T. Patterson, Steven Pinker, Samantha Power, Diane Ravitch, Thomas Sowell, Ian Stewart, Cass Sunstein, Sherry Turkle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, George Weigel, Cornel West, A.N. Wilson, James Q. Wilson, Irvin Yalom, Shing-Tung Yau, and Fareed Zakaria.  Basic Books is a proud member of the Perseus Books Group.

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The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Journal Articles & Books
December, 2000
Global

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights.