Building local currency bond markets has become an increasingly important topic for emerging market countries, particularly since the Asian financial crisis. This book reviews why countries should consider building local currency corporate bond markets and how to evaluate what is needed and what might be developed.

Doing Business 2008 is the fifth in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 178 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

William Pickering first came to the attention of the world in 1958 when the media triumphantly announced the successful launch of Explorer 1, the American response to the Soviet deployment a few months earlier of the first Earth-orbiting satellite Sputnik. Along with Wernher von Braun and James Van Allen, William Pickering shared the limelight and the accolades. In that instant of time the Space Age was born, and with it the professional reputation of William H. Pickering.

The NASA History Division is pleased to announce the availability of a landmark new book, "Rockets and People" by Boris Chertok. This memoir by a towering figure in Soviet/Russian space history was originally published in Russian and has now been specially translated and edited for publication in the NASA History Series. This book is the second of four volumes of Chertok's insightful reminiscences on his 60-year career in aviation and space.

One of the most memorable gifts was a toy helicopter that was designed by the French aeronautical experimenter Alphonse Pénaud. Milton gave his sons this gift in 1878, and, though it was a simple device with a stick bound to a four-blade rotor set in a spindle, it had the intended effect—it caused them to dream.

The vulnerabilities of men have received limited attention in development research and programming. In Liberia, men’s lack of access to employment and land and their loss of traditional power and authority lay at the heart of the violence and conflict that led to the near destruction of the country. It is thus important that men’s concerns, in addition to women’s, be brought into focus in the development literature and practice.This book by the World Bank makes an important contribution to this end.

This economic manifesto by Ron Paul (484 pages!) collects his greatest speeches and debates over the last 30 years, and provides documentary evidence that he is not only a master of the topic; he has provided a coherent explanation of nearly everything the government has done wrong in this area since he first entered public office. He also provides a way out, as implied by the subtitle: free market, honest money, and private property.