Localization is a manifesto to unite all those who recognize the importance of cultural, social and ecological diversity for our future - and who do not aspire to a monolithic global consumer culture. It is a passionate and persuasive polemic, challenging the claims that we have to be 'internationally competitive' to survive and describing the destructive consequences of globalization. This book is unique in going beyond simply criticizing free trade and globalization trends. It details self-reinforcing policies to create local self-sufficiency and shows clearly that there is an alternative to globalization - to protect the local, globally.

Localization is a manifesto to unite all those who recognize the importance of cultural, social and ecological diversity for our future - and who do not aspire to a monolithic global consumer culture. It is a passionate and persuasive polemic, challenging the claims that we have to be 'internationally competitive' to survive and describing the destructive consequences of globalization. This book is unique in going beyond simply criticizing free trade and globalization trends. It details self-reinforcing policies to create local self-sufficiency and shows clearly that there is an alternative to globalization - to protect the local, globally.

Laureen Fortune, still foxy at forty, visits the Arecibo Observatory as guest of former lover Kelly Collins, an astronomer from the University of Chicago. The Observatory's spectacular radio/radar telescope, comprising a twenty-acre reflecting dish of exquisitely shaped aluminum sheeting, a 600-ton cat's cradle of steel girders suspended fifty stories above to hold its radio feeds, and cutting-edge radio and computing equipment, has drawn a number of other scientific investigators and hangers-on to its site in north-west Puerto Rico. Laureen knows several of these as long-ago friends and/or lovers, brought together by the Observatory's unique attractions.

Laureen inhales the tortured history and mixed-up culture of the Isle of Enchantment until the idyll is broken one day by the discovery at dawn of a body that has fallen from the suspended structure, pierced the dish, and been disemboweled in the process. Finding herself and Kelly quite reasonably under suspicion of murder, she converts from pseudo-scientist to amateur crime investigator and, by her naturally contrarian processes of thought, identifies the true culprit and obtains a confession. She chooses not to reveal her solution to the investigating authorities, which, for their own reasons, would prefer not to be told.

Once upon a time, before people's ears grew cell-phones and their hands grew blackberries, before stock-market orders were filled electronically in less than a second or the commission was waived, ordinary mortals who wished to dabble in stocks or options did so by phoning a real person, commonly (but erroneously) known as a "broker," who wrote the requested order on a paper form and relayed it via an "order desk" to a real "floor trader," who arranged with a human counterpart to fill the order, if possible. In "Long and Shortt, Brokers," we can enter and relive that quaint era, being guided by Laureen Fortune, the breezy nymphomaniac who recently entered the world's fictional literature through "The Croesus Club," and who here seeks a new life in the brokering business and must learn what retail brokering is all about. Though the regimens she pursues are now largely outdated, the corporate culture she finds is not. If the scams and subterfuges she uncovers have changed by now (and many have not), the underlying motivations and attitudes of the participants, from novice client to senior management, reveal a warren of human frailties that echo through the ages and are with us still.

What's this? Crap and corruption at the University of Toronto? Ah, but that was a generation ago. Surely we can bask in the belief that nothing like the events reported here might recur today, or in the future, or at other universities? Whether or not they did happen in Toronto, as they did, so long ago?

But this story is not just a recounting of academic perfidy, of gentlemanly agreements trashed, of student welfare thrown to the winds by delusional professors. It follows, as well, the attempts of Kelly Collins, Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics, as he tries to surface from the devastating loss of his young wife and unborn child some years before. These attempts lead him to the purchase of a house, its rental to a variety of students and friends, and the establishment of an investment club-"The Croesus Club." All of these initiatives take on lives of their own when he goes on sabbatical to the antipodes. He is forced, by inexplicable charges of his own moral turpitude, to make an early return. A mind-boggling romp through what the house has become explains Kelly's predicament, then culminates in a startling resolution of all.