The book offers an overview of the main financial and operational risks in cryptocurrency markets and Decentralized Finance. It outlines the role of stablecoins, crypto-investment products, and multi-function ecosystems, highlighting vulnerabilities linked to reserves, leverage, and protocol interdependencies. The book distinguishes traditional risks from those rooted in smart-contract logic, oracle manipulation, governance failures, and cross-chain bridges. An empirical section analyzes attack frequency, stolen amounts, and evolving exploit techniques, showing a shift toward complex schemes using flash loans and oracle distortions. The book also examines mixers and presents the Ronin case. The final chapters discuss technical and governance measures to mitigate risks and provide regulatory recommendations.

Economic competition between the United States and China has been a defining issue of the twenty-first century. But after years of rapid growth, China's economy has faltered. How did its long-term economic outlook change so quickly? And can Beijing change course and preserve China's political ambition for global economic primacy?

In Broken China, Logan Wright offers an unflinching account of how China's economy hit the wall. Drawing on extensive experience analyzing the Chinese financial sector on the ground, he argues that China's economic slowdown is rooted in its financial system, and an unprecedented credit expansion finally coming to an end. Opposing the prevailing myth that its leaders think and plan many years ahead, this book posits that there was no long-term plan that included the credit boom and bust that now constrains Beijing's options. Rather than crisis or collapse, Wright argues, China is suffering from a decay of its economic policy tools. As its domestic and foreign sectors face increasing pressure, the last thing Beijing needs is global pushback against Chinese exports. With no clear path to recovery, China's economy is broken, the consequences of which will reverberate around the world.

This book, the first of two volumes, offers a comprehensive guide to the blue economy and the economic activity of African coastal communities. It brings together a broad range of topics, from local policymaking to marine conservation activities, that enable sustainable growth within African marine economies. The requirements for sustainable development in Africa are outlined, with a particular focus on economic resilience, climate change mitigation, and practical policymaking. Case studies from Ghana, Namibia, Mauritius, Kenya, Cameroon, Tanzania, Cabo Verde, and other sub-Saharan African countries highlight how the circular economy, the blue economy, and gender equality can be implemented and promoted within Africa, particularly coastal states.

This book presents a practical framework for understanding and maximising the long-term economic development of coastal communities. It will be relevant to students, researchers, academicians, and policymakers interested in development, resources, maritime, and African economics.

In Buenos Aires' garment industry, workers reshape precarious working conditions through collective organization and throughout their trajectories of migration and garment work. Moving beyond victimizing or criminalizing narratives, Karlotta Jule Bahnsen offers an ethnographic view of migrant workers' negotiations of intersectional inequalities across migration, gender, and labor, highlighting processes of transformation, transnational networks, and the hidden structures sustaining Buenos Aires' urban fashion industry. This unique perspective speaks to scholars of Latin America, informal labor in global industries, migration, and gender, while offering a vivid account of agency that resonates beyond academia.

Explores how Japan navigated its alliance with the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, balancing its pacifist constitution with evolving global security demands through newly revealed diplomatic documents and high-level policy analysis.

After Terrorism offers a groundbreaking analysis of how Japan navigated its alliance with the United States in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Drawing from newly declassified diplomatic documents, Ryuji Hattori challenges conventional narratives and introduces the concept of the global alliance security dilemma, illustrating how Japan struggled to balance its pacifist constitution with growing international security demands. Providing a rare, document-based perspective on the Bush-Koizumi era, Hattori offers insights into high-level negotiations, security policymaking, and the shifting geopolitical landscape of East Asia. Through a meticulous analysis of primary sources and interviews with key policymakers, he reveals how Japan's foreign policy was shaped by both alliance asymmetries and domestic constraints. Ideal for scholars of international relations, security studies, and Asian diplomacy, After Terrorism is an essential resource for understanding the long-term impact of post-9/11 security decisions on US-Japan relations and the broader Indo-Pacific order.

The open access version of this book has been made available thanks to the generosity of Ryuji Hattori.

Offering an in-depth examination of the political philosophy of Plato's Republic, Stephen O. Peprah challenges the prevalent scholarly interpretation that misreads and underestimates Plato's view of the status and role of non-philosophical citizens. Rather than seeing the ordinary human beings who make up the civic population as servile to the select philosophical elite, the argument is not only that they make an important contribution to the polis based on their moral, epistemic, and somatic competences, but that the political community serves their well-being.

Grounded in recent work on Plato's political philosophy and within Plato's contractarian commitment (koinonia) in Book II of Republic, this study shows that the individual and the polis have positive, if not equal, standing. Each is positively dependent on the other, and political authority of the philosopher-rulers is justified to create enabling conditions to facilitate this mutual interdependence. And so, by arguing that Plato's just society - Kallipolis - evolves from the collaborative efforts of individuals who aim to deal with a common human predicament (insufficiency), Peprah reveals that Platonic political theory is engineered to be a more inclusive system than previously thought. This study is an important reassessment that shows the artisans of Republic as possessing individual and political agency.

Does artificial intelligence replicate human thinking, or just imitate it? How should academia, the epitome of intellectualism, respond to that question and its ramifications for the teaching profession? Veteran educator Jo Renee Formicola argues that if higher education is to survive the challenge of artificial intelligence then administrators, staff, faculty, and students have little choice but to cautiously adapt by merging traditional pedagogy with innovative digital tools.

In an age of lucrative business deals, government policies, and pedagogical reforms that hasten institutional change, the value and impact of AI is as easy to overlook as it is to overstate. Amid these conflicting assessments of AI's role in the teaching-learning continuum, Formicola weighs its value against the power of personal human interaction in the classroom. She examines AI as a worthwhile system to aggregate information and answer difficult research questions, but at the same time a step towards singularity of thought that can circumvent rigorous intellectual questioning and creativity.

Blending philosophical insight, pedagogical experience, and timely analysis, Formicola introduces a new framework for teaching that balances technological innovation with emotional intelligence.
This book challenges educators and institutions to rethink their reliance on AI and embrace a more relational, student-centered approach to learning.

A firsthand account of the experiences of elementary and middle school students' daily lives at an underserved urban public school.

A Curriculum of Control illuminates the often-overlooked daily experiences of elementary and middle school students at Baker School, a K-8 urban public school. Based on two years of ethnographic research and the author's prior teaching experience in a similar setting, this book offers a vivid portrayal of students' routines, the messages they receive from educators and the broader community, and the ways they navigate a complex and frequently challenging environment. Unlike most studies, this book centers students as the primary actors in education and by doing so compels readers to confront how students' experiences at Baker School compare with the goals of public education. Focusing on a core group of fourth- and eighth-grade students-Nyeisha, Jayalya, Rashanna, Bianca, and Renee-along with their teachers and families, the book reveals how students navigate, experience, respond to, and resist the school's curriculum of control.

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