en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 19:14:29 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 40696937
Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer.

That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too—right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues.

Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game—at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success—on and off the playing field—as well as his failures; how the man who insisted "I really didn't say everything I said!" nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star.

Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.]]> 576 Jon Pessah 0316310999 Josh 4 4.47 2020
author: Jon Pessah
name: Josh
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Josh 0 currently-reading 3.72 2023
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Josh
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 20609501
Credit for the city's turnaround since that time is often given to a select group of people, all of them men, all of them white, and most of them well off. In fact, a large group of community activists, many of them women, people of color, and not very well off, were also responsible for creating the Boston so many enjoy today. This book provides a grassroots perspective on the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, when residents of the city's neighborhoods engaged in an era of activism and protest unprecedented in Boston since the American Revolution.

Using interviews with many of those activists, contemporary news accounts, and historical sources, Jim Vrabel describes the demonstrations, sit-ins, picket lines, boycotts, and contentious negotiations through which residents exerted their influence on the city that was being rebuilt around them. He includes case histories of the fights against urban renewal, highway construction, and airport expansion; for civil rights, school desegregation, and welfare reform; and over Vietnam and busing. He also profiles a diverse group of activists from all over the city, including Ruth Batson, Anna DeFronzo, Moe Gillen, Mel King, Henry Lee, and Paula Oyola. Vrabel tallies the wins and losses of these neighborhood Davids as they took on the Goliaths of the time, including Boston's mayors. He shows how much of the legacy of that activism remains in Boston today.]]> 288 Jim Vrabel 1625340761 Josh 0 to-read 4.14 2014
author: Jim Vrabel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 1119960 312 Benjamin G. Rader 0252070135 Josh 0 to-read 3.92 1992
author: Benjamin G. Rader
name: Josh
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> 7899343 What Everyone Needs to Know , Jeffrey Wasserstrom provides cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower and offers a framework for understanding its meteoric rise.

Focusing his answers through the historical legacies--Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen Square--that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom introduces readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the
environmental fall-out of rapid Chinese industrialization. He also explains unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provides insight into how Chinese view Americans.

Wasserstrom reveals that China today shares many traits with other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century. Finally, he provides guidance on the ways we can expect China to act in the future
vis-Ă -vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbors.]]> 164 Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom 0195394127 Josh 0 to-read 3.44 2010
author: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
name: Josh
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 264827 460 Bob Woodward 0571141641 Josh 0 to-read 3.73 1984
author: Bob Woodward
name: Josh
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
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]]> 33584231
The Strange Death of Europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Douglas Murray takes a step back and explores the deeper issues behind the continent's possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks and a global refugee crisis to the steady erosion of our freedoms. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.

Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end. This sharp and incisive book ends up with two visions for a new Europe--one hopeful, one pessimistic--which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was "civilizations like humans are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die."]]> 352 Douglas Murray 1472942248 Josh 0 to-read 4.11 2017
author: Douglas Murray
name: Josh
average rating: 4.11
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]]> 44667183
We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal--and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting.]]> 293 Douglas Murray 1635579988 Josh 0 to-read 4.18 2019
author: Douglas Murray
name: Josh
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
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]]> 6025160 With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

In Lords of Finance, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation� and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard.

For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression.

As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.]]> 564 Liaquat Ahamed 159420182X Josh 0 to-read 4.01 2009
author: Liaquat Ahamed
name: Josh
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2009
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]]> 29358555 Ěý
Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years--and the presidency from Reagan to George W. Bush--in a whole new light. As the most influential economic statesman of his age, Greenspan spent a lifetime grappling with a momentous shift: the transformation of finance from the fixed and regulated system of the post-war era to the free-for-all of the past quarter century. The story of Greenspan is also the story of the making of modern finance, for good and for ill.Ěý
Ěý
Greenspan's life is a quintessential American success story: raised by a single mother in the Jewish émigré community of Washington Heights, he was a math prodigy who found a niche as a stats-crunching consultant. A master at explaining the economic weather to captains of industry, he translated that skill into advising Richard Nixon in his 1968 campaign. This led to a perch on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and then to a dazzling array of business and government roles, from which the path to the Fed was relatively clear. A fire-breathing libertarian and disciple of Ayn Rand in his youth who once called the Fed's creation a historic mistake, Mallaby shows how Greenspan reinvented himself as a pragmatist once in power. In his analysis, and in his core mission of keeping inflation in check, he was a maestro indeed, and hailed as such. At his retirement in 2006, he was lauded as the age's necessary man, the veritable God in the machine, the global economy's avatar. His memoirs sold for record sums to publishers around the world.
Ěý
But then came 2008. Mallaby's story lands with both feet on the great crash which did so much to damage Alan Greenspan's reputation. Mallaby argues that the conventional wisdom is off base: Greenspan wasn't a naĂŻve ideologue who believed greater regulation was unnecessary. He had pressed for greater regulation of some key areas of finance over the years, and had gotten nowhere. To argue that he didn't know the risks in irrational markets is to miss the point. He knew more than almost anyone; the question is why he didn't act, and whether anyone else could or would have. A close reading of Greenspan's life provides fascinating answers to these questions, answers whose lessons we would do well to heed. Because perhaps Mallaby's greatest lesson is that economic statesmanship, like political statesmanship, is the art of the possible. The Man Who Knew is a searching reckoning with what exactly comprised the art, and the possible, in the career of Alan Greenspan.]]> 800 Sebastian Mallaby 1594204845 Josh 0 to-read 4.30 2016
author: Sebastian Mallaby
name: Josh
average rating: 4.30
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]]> 1098655 244 Joseph B. Treaster 0471428124 Josh 0 to-read 3.50 2004
author: Joseph B. Treaster
name: Josh
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2004
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]]> 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Josh 5 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Josh
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> 48549702 Wall Street Journal Bestseller

New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers.

So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention?

Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,� which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas.

Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?]]> 320 Dan Heath 1982134747 Josh 0 to-read 4.14 2020
author: Dan Heath
name: Josh
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
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]]> 214151475 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Made to Stick, Switch, and The Power of Moments comes a revolutionary guide to fixing what’s not working—in systems and processes, organizations and companies, and even in our daily lives—by identifying leverage points and concentrating resources to achieve our goals.

Changing how we work can feel overwhelming. Like trying to budge an enormous boulder. We’re stifled by the gravity of the way we’ve always done things. And we spend so much time fighting fires—and fighting colleagues—that we lack the energy to shift direction.

But with the right strategy, we can move the boulder. In Reset, Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points�: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.

Heath weaves together fascinating examples, ranging from a freakishly effective fast-food drive-thru to a simple trick from couples therapy to an inspirational campaign that saved a million cats.

In Reset, you’ll
-Why the feeling of progress can be your secret weapon in accelerating change
-How leaders can uncover and stop wasteful activities
-Why your team’s motivation is often squandered—and how to avoid that mistake
-How you can jumpstart your change efforts by beginning with a “burst�

The book investigates Why the middle is the roughest part of a change effort. Why inefficiency can sometimes accelerate progress. Why getting “buy-in� is the wrong way to think about change.

What if we could unlock forward movement—achieving progress on what matters most—without the need for more resources? The same people, the same assets…but dramatically better results. Yesterday, we were stuck. Today, we reset.]]> 288 Dan Heath 1668062097 Josh 0 to-read 4.17
author: Dan Heath
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
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]]> 216520753 New York Times best-selling author brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to offer a brilliant takedown of ten incredibly bad pieces of legislation that are causing way too much misery to millions.

“If it were up to me, I’d treat every law passed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as presumptively unconstitutional. The government of this country was illegitimate when it ruled over people who had no ability to choose the rules.�

—from the introduction to Bad Law

In Bad Law, the New York Times best-selling author of Allow Me to A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to a brilliant takedown of ten of what he considers the most egregiously awful laws on the books today. These are pieces of legislation that are making life worse rather than better for Americans, and that, he argues with trenchant wit and biting humor, should be repealed completely.

On topics ranging from abortion and immigration to voting rights and religious freedom, we have chosen rules to live by that do not reflect the will of most of the people. With respect to our decision to make a law that effectively grants immunity to gun manufacturers, for example, Mystal writes, “We live in the most violent, wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person-shooter video game because of the law.�

But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant� and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,� points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a marvelous and original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.]]> 256 Elie Mystal 162097858X Josh 0 to-read 4.51
author: Elie Mystal
name: Josh
average rating: 4.51
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]]> 215514806
No matter who you’re talking to, The Next Conversation gives you immediately actionable strategies and phrases that will forever change how you communicate. Jefferson Fisher, trial lawyer and one of the leading voices on real-world communication, offers a tried-and-true framework that will show you how to transform your life and your relationships by improving your next conversation.

Fisher has gained millions of followers through short, simple, practical videos teaching people how to argue less and talk more. Whether it’s handling a heated conversation, dealing with a difficult personality, or standing your ground with confidence, his down-to-earth teachings have helped countless people navigate life’s toughest situations. Now for the first time, Fisher has distilled his three-part communication system (Say it with control, Say it with confidence, Say it to connect) that can easily be applied to any situation.

You will learn:

- Why you should never “win� an argument
- How to assert yourself and communicate with intention
- How to set boundaries and frame conversations
- Why saying less is often more
- How to overcome conflict with connection

The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Your every word matters, and by controlling how you communicate every day, you will create waves of positive impact that will resonate throughout your relationships to last a lifetime.

Everything you want to say, and how you want to say it, can be found in The Next Conversation.]]> 304 Jefferson Fisher 0593718720 Josh 0 currently-reading 4.56
author: Jefferson Fisher
name: Josh
average rating: 4.56
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]]> 77920462 Arthur Ross Book Award, Council on Foreign Relations, Bronze Medal
Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize
A Responsible Statecraft best foreign policy book of 2023

A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems

America’s security state first started to weaponize these channels after 9/11, when they seemed like necessities to combat terrorism—but now they’re a matter of course. Multinational companies like AT&T and Citicorp build hubs, which they use to make money, but which the government can also deploy as choke points. Today’s headlines about trade wars, sanctions, and technology disputes are merely tremors hinting at far greater seismic shifts beneath the surface.

Slowly but surely, Washington has turned the most vital pathways of the world economy into tools of domination over foreign businesses and countries, whether they are rivals or allies, allowing the U.S. to maintain global supremacy. In the process, we have sleepwalked into a new struggle for empire. Using true stories, field-defining findings, and original reporting, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman show how the most ordinary aspects of the post–Cold War economy have become realms of subterfuge and coercion, and what we must do to ensure that this new arms race doesn’t spiral out of control.]]> 288 Henry Farrell 1250840554 Josh 0 to-read 4.01 2023
author: Henry Farrell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.01
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]]> 213034913 The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age.

The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.

Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.

Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.]]> 336 Bill Gates 059380158X Josh 0 currently-reading 4.08 2025
author: Bill Gates
name: Josh
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
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]]> 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Josh 4 4.11 2025
author: Ezra Klein
name: Josh
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
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]]> 59609818 234 Paul Mango 1645720543 Josh 0 to-read 2.76
author: Paul Mango
name: Josh
average rating: 2.76
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]]> 562407 A vivid account of the early battles, first in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “One of America’s foremost Civil War authoritiesâ€� (Kirkus Reviews). The first book in Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln’s Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan. Following the secession of the Southern states, a beleaguered President Abraham Lincoln entrusted the dashing, charismatic McClellan with the creation of the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the responsibility of leading it to a swift and decisive victory against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Although a brilliant tactician who was beloved by his troops and embraced by the hero-hungry North, McClellan’s ego and ambition ultimately put him at loggerheads with his commander in chief—a man McClellan considered unworthy of the presidency. Ěý McClellan’s weaknesses were exposed during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history, which ended in a stalemate even though the Confederate troops were greatly outnumbered. After Antietam, Lincoln ordered McClellan’s removal from command, and the Union entered the war’s next chapter having suffered thousands of casualties and with great uncertainty ahead. Ěý America’s premier chronicler of the nation’s brutal internecine conflict, Bruce Catton is renowned for his unparalleled ability to bring a detailed and vivid immediacy to Civil War battlefields and military strategy sessions. With tremendous depth and insight, he presents legendary commanders and common soldiers in all their complex and heartbreaking humanity.]]> 372 Bruce Catton Josh 0 to-read 4.31 1951
author: Bruce Catton
name: Josh
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1951
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]]> 891922 The Army of the Potomac trilogy relates the final year of the Civil War.]]> 438 Bruce Catton 0385044518 Josh 0 to-read 4.35 1951
author: Bruce Catton
name: Josh
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1951
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]]> 40121378 Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
-ĚýMake time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
-ĚýOvercome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 319 James Clear Josh 5 currently-reading 4.34 2018
author: James Clear
name: Josh
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/12
date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 23397038 36 James Clear Josh 0 to-read 4.28
author: James Clear
name: Josh
average rating: 4.28
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 20809233
- How to reverse your bad habits and stick to good ones.
- The science of how your brain processes habits.
- The common mistakes most people make (and how to avoid them).
- How to overcome a lack of motivation and willpower.
- How to develop a stronger identity and believe in yourself.
- How to make time for new habits (even when your life gets crazy).
- How to design your environment to make success easier.
- How to make big changes in your life without overwhelming yourself.
- How to get back on track when you get off course with your goals.
- And most importantly, how to put these ideas into practice in real life.]]> 45 James Clear Josh 0 to-read 4.32
author: James Clear
name: Josh
average rating: 4.32
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rating: 0
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]]> 54633172 The Promise , winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for -- not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled.

The narrator's eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams; deliciously lethal in its observation. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel's title.

In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.]]> 293 Damon Galgut 1784744069 Josh 0 to-read 3.81 2021
author: Damon Galgut
name: Josh
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
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]]> 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Josh 5 4.35 2017
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Josh
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> 216929077 What our failures during the pandemic cost us, and why we must do better

The Covid pandemic quickly led to the greatest mobilization of emergency powers in human history. By early April 2020, half the world’s population�3.9 billion people—were living under quarantine. People were told not to leave their homes; businesses were shuttered, employees laid off, and schools closed for months or even years. The most devastating pandemic in a century and the policies adopted in response to it upended life as we knew it. In this eye-opening book, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee examine our pandemic response and pose some provocative Why did we ignore pre-Covid plans for managing a pandemic? Were the voices of reasonable dissent treated fairly? Did we adequately consider the costs and benefits of different policy options? And, aside from vaccines, did the policies adopted work as intended?

With In Covid’s Wake, Macedo and Lee offer the first comprehensive—and candid—political assessment of how our institutions fared during the pandemic. They describe how, influenced by Wuhan’s lockdown, governments departed from their existing pandemic plans. Hard choices were obscured by slogans like “follow the science.� The policies adopted largely benefited the laptop class and left so-called essential workers unprotected; the benefits and harms were distributed unfairly. Extended school closures hit the least-privileged families the hardest. Science became politicized and dissent was driven to the margins. In the next crisis, Macedo and Lee warn, we must not forget the deepest values of liberal tolerance and open-mindedness, respect for evidence and its limits, a willingness to entertain uncertainty, and a commitment to telling the whole truth.]]> 392 Stephen Macedo 0691267138 Josh 0 to-read 4.22
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]]> 11515298
Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict.

As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself.

Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas.

While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Rickards untangles the web of failed paradigms, wishful thinking, and arrogance driving current public policy and points the way toward a more informed and effective course of action.]]> 304 James Rickards 1591844495 Josh 0 to-read 3.95 2011
author: James Rickards
name: Josh
average rating: 3.95
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]]> 18114198 “The next financial collapse will resembleĚý nothing in history... Deciding upon Ěýthe best course to follow will requireĚý comprehending a minefield of risks, whileĚý poised at a crossroads, pondering the Ěýdeath of the dollar.â€�

The international monetary system has collapsed threeĚýtimes in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971.ĚýEach collapse was followed by a period of tumult: war,Ěýcivil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of theĚýglobal economy. Now James Rickards, the acclaimedĚýauthor of Currency Wars, shows why another collapseĚýis rapidly approaching—and why this time, nothing lessĚýthan the institution of money itself is at risk.

The American dollar has been the global reserveĚýcurrency since the end of the Second World War. If theĚýdollar fails, the entire international monetary system willĚýfail with it. No other currency has the deep, liquid poolsĚýof assets needed to do the job.

Optimists have always said, in essence, that there’sĚýnothing to worry about—that confidence in the dollarĚýwill never truly be shaken, no matter how high ourĚýnational debt or how dysfunctional our government. ButĚýin the last few years, the risks have become too big toĚýignore. While Washington is gridlocked and unable toĚýmake progress on our long-term problems, our biggestĚýeconomic competitors—China, Russia, and the oilproducingĚýnations of the Middle East—are doing everythingĚýpossible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. TheĚýpotential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation.ĚýMarket collapse. Chaos.

Rickards offers a bracing analysis of these andĚýother threats to the dollar. The fundamental problem isĚýthat money and wealth have become more and moreĚýdetached. Money is transitory and ephemeral, and it mayĚýsoon be worthless if central bankers and politicians continueĚýon their current path. But true wealth is permanentĚýand tangible, and it has real value worldwide.

The author shows how everyday citizens who saveĚýand invest have become guinea pigs in the centralĚýbankersâ€� laboratory. The world’s major financial players â€� national governments, big banks, multilateralĚýinstitutions â€� will always muddle through by patchingĚýtogether new rules of the game. The real victims of theĚýnext crisis will be small investors who assumed that whatĚýworked for decades will keep working.

Fortunately, it’s not too late to prepare for the comingĚýdeath of money. Rickards explains the power ofĚýconverting unreliable money into real wealth: gold, land,Ěýfine art, and other long-term stores of value. As he writes:Ěý“The coming collapse of the dollar and the internationalĚýmonetary system is entirely foreseeable... Only nationsĚýand individuals who make provision today will surviveĚýthe maelstrom to come.â€�

]]> 368 James Rickards 1591846706 Josh 0 to-read 3.83 2015
author: James Rickards
name: Josh
average rating: 3.83
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]]> 81942 464 Michael E. Gerber 0060723238 Josh 0 to-read 4.05 2004
author: Michael E. Gerber
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
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]]> 214151245 The unputdownable first Western biography of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, financial disruptor and personification of the 21st century’s addiction to instant wealth, from the former editor of the Financial Times.

As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.

In Gambling Man, the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world’s most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond to see how Son’s firm SoftBank has defied conventional wisdom and imposing odds to push global tech and commerce into the future.

From the dizzying highs of Uber, DoorDash, and Slack to the epic lows of WeWork and tech-infused dogwalking app Wag Son and SoftBank have been at the center of cutting-edge capitalism’s absolute peaks and valleys. In the process, Son, son of a pachinko kingpin who grew up in a slum in Japan, has been a hero, a villain, and even a meme-ified hero to the internet tech- and finance-bro set all at once.

Based on in-depth research and eye-opening interviews, Gambling Man is an unforgettable character study and alarming true story of twenty-first-century commerce that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.]]> 368 Lionel Barber 166807074X Josh 3 3.95
author: Lionel Barber
name: Josh
average rating: 3.95
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]]> 61796680 � Ezra Klein, The New York Times

A bold call to reexamine how our government operates―and sometimes fails to � from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America

Just when we most need our government to work―to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats―it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get.

But it’s not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Lofty goals morph unrecognizably as they cascade through a complex hierarchy. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today’s world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.]]> 336 Jennifer Pahlka 1250266777 Josh 0 to-read 4.40 2023
author: Jennifer Pahlka
name: Josh
average rating: 4.40
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]]> 215805908 How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity. Ěý

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs� efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.

Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again.]]> 320 Yoni Appelbaum 0593449290 Josh 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Yoni Appelbaum
name: Josh
average rating: 4.31
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]]> 214175076 A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government—“the best book to date on the biggest political issue that nobody is talking about� (Matthew Yglesias)

America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?

America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.� A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government. Reformers put speaking truth to power ahead of exercising that power for good. The ensuing gridlock has pummeled faith in public institutions of all sorts, stifled the movement’s ability to deliver on its promises, and, most perversely, opened the door for MAGA-style populism.

A century ago, Americans were similarly frustrated—and progressivism pointed the way out. The same can happen again. Marc J. Dunkelman vividly illustrates what progressives must do if they are going to break through today’s paralysis and restore, once again, confidence in democratically elected government. To get there, reformers will need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. Progressivism’s success moving forward hinges on the movement’s willingness to rediscover its roots.]]> 416 Marc J. Dunkelman 154170021X Josh 0 to-read 4.03
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name: Josh
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]]> 369410 Ěý
“Clearly, this is no ordinary theory. Equally clearly, it sprang from the mind of no ordinary economist.”—James Lardner, Washington Post
Ěý
The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world.
Ěý
“Schumpeter and Keynes would have hailed the insights Olson gives into the sicknesses of the modern mixed economy.”—Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ěý
“One of the really important books in social science of the past half-century.”—Scott Gordon, Canadian Journal of Economics
Ěý
“The thesis of this brilliant book is that the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special-interest lobbies that in turn make it less efficient economically.”—Charles Peters, Washington Monthly
Ěý
“Remarkable. The fundamental ideas are simple, yet they provide insight into a wide array of social and historical issues. . . . The Rise and Decline of Nations promises to be a subject of productive interdisciplinary argument for years to come.”—Robert O. Keohane, Journal of Economic Literature
Ěý
“I urgently recommend it to all economists and to a great many non-economists.”—Gordon Tullock, Public Choice
Ěý
“Olson’s theory is illuminating and there is no doubt that The Rise and Decline of Nations will exert much influence on ideas and politics for many decades to come.”—Pierre Lemieux, Reason
Ěý
Co-winner of the 1983 American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy]]> 276 Mancur Olson 0300030797 Josh 0 to-read 3.96 1982
author: Mancur Olson
name: Josh
average rating: 3.96
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]]> 5592
From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.

Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.]]> 327 Fred Turner 0226817415 Josh 0 to-read 3.95 2006
author: Fred Turner
name: Josh
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]]> 58066
After Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders to victory during the Spanish American War, he boasted of the diversity of his men's origins- from the Kentucky backwoods to the Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods of northeastern cities. Roosevelt's vision of a hybrid and superior "American race," strengthened by war, would inspire the social, diplomatic, and economic policies of American liberals for decades. And yet, for all of its appeal to the civic principles of inclusion, this liberal legacy was grounded in "Anglo-Saxon" culture, making it difficult in particular for Jews and Italians and especially for Asians and African Americans to gain acceptance.

Gerstle weaves a compelling story of events, institutions, and ideas that played on perceptions of ethnic/racial difference, from the world wars and the labor movement to the New Deal and Hollywood to the Cold War and the civil rights movement. We witness the remnants of racial thinking among such liberals as FDR and LBJ; we see how Italians and Jews from Frank Capra to the creators of Superman perpetuated the New Deal philosophy while suppressing their own ethnicity; we feel the frustrations of African-American servicemen denied the opportunity to fight for their country and the moral outrage of more recent black activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X.

Gerstle argues that the civil rights movement and Vietnam broke the liberal nation apart, and his analysis of this upheaval leads him to assess Reagan's and Clinton's attempts to resurrect nationalism. Can the United States ever live up to its civic creed? For anyone who views racism as an aberration from the liberal premises of the republic, this book is must reading.]]> 472 Gary Gerstle 0691102775 Josh 0 to-read 3.78 2001
author: Gary Gerstle
name: Josh
average rating: 3.78
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]]> 58986869
The epochal shift toward neoliberalism--a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces--that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word "neoliberal" is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world.

To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order , these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades. As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. Along with tracing how this worldview emerged in America and grew to dominate the world, Gerstle explores the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies. He is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order's fall, originating in the failed reconstruction of
Iraq and Great Recession of the Bush years and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s.

An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.]]> 432 Gary Gerstle 0197519644 Josh 0 to-read 4.19
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name: Josh
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]]> 52098718
Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, it offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Donald Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.]]> 336 Ezra Klein 147670032X Josh 0 to-read 4.19 2020
author: Ezra Klein
name: Josh
average rating: 4.19
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]]> 1539380 423 Marius B. Jansen 0231101732 Josh 0 to-read 4.15 1971
author: Marius B. Jansen
name: Josh
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> 426504 Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything else in between.

Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
Prologue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)
The Circular Ruins (1940)
The Lottery in Babylon (1941)
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941)
The Library of Babel (1941)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Part Two: Artifices
Prologue
Funes the Memorious (1942)
The Form of the Sword (1942)
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944)
Death and the Compass (1942)
The Secret Miracle (1943)
Three Versions of Judas (1944)
The End (1953, 2nd edition only)
The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only)
The South (1953, 2nd edition only)]]> 174 Jorge Luis Borges 0802130305 Josh 5 p0 4.46 1944
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Josh
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1944
rating: 5
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]]> 86189
Before you invest another dollar anywhere in the world (including the United States), read this book by the man Time magazine calls “the Indiana Jones of finance.�

Jim Rogers became a Wall Street legend when he co-founded the Quantum Fund. Investment Biker is the fascinating story of Rogers’s global motorcycle journey/investing trip, with hardheaded advice on the current state and future direction of international economies that will guide and inspire investors interested in foreign markets.]]> 448 Jim Rogers 0812968719 Josh 0 to-read 4.07 1994
author: Jim Rogers
name: Josh
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> 34962308
When facing contentious issues such as screen time, food choices, and bedtime, children often act out or shut down, responding with reactivity instead of receptivity. This is what New York Times bestselling authors Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson call a No Brain response. But our kids can be taught to approach life with openness and curiosity. When kids work from a Yes Brain, they’re more willing to take chances and explore. They’re more curious and imaginative. They’re better at relationships and handling adversity. In The Yes Brain, the authors give parents skills, scripts, and activities to bring kids of all ages into the beneficial “yes� state. You’ll learn

� the four fundamentals of the Yes Brain—balance, resilience, insight, and empathy—and how to strengthen them
� the key to knowing when kids need a gentle push out of a comfort zone vs. needing the “cushion� of safety and familiarity
� strategies for navigating away from negative behavioral and emotional states (aggression and withdrawal) and expanding your child’s capacity for positivity

The Yes Brain is an essential tool for nurturing positive potential and keeping your child’s inner spark glowing and growing strong.

Praise for The Yes Brain

“This unique and exciting book shows us how to help children embrace life with all of its challenges and thrive in the modern world. Integrating research from social development, clinical psychology, and neuroscience, it’s a veritable treasure chest of parenting insights and techniques.â€� —Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., author ofĚý Mindset Ěý

“I have never read a better, clearer explanation of the impact parenting can have on a child’s brain and personality.� —Michael Thompson, Ph.D.

“Easily assimilated and informative, the book will help adults enable children to lead physically and emotionally satisfying and well-rounded lives filled with purpose and meaningful relationships. Edifying, easy-to-understand scientific research that shows the benefits that accrue when a child is encouraged to be inquisitive, spirited, and intrepid.� —Kirkus Reviews]]> 208 Daniel J. Siegel 0399594663 Josh 4 4.17 2018
author: Daniel J. Siegel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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]]> 25898135
As Lawrence Freedman shows, the future of war has a past and a present. Ideas of war, strategies for warfare and its practice, and organizing principles of war all have rich and varied origins which have shaped the minds of those who conceive the next war. Freedman shows how war can be studied systematically and empirically to provide a firm foundation for enlightened policy.

The Future of War—which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn’t)—is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.]]> 400 Lawrence Freedman 1610393058 Josh 0 to-read 3.73
author: Lawrence Freedman
name: Josh
average rating: 3.73
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]]> 38840
Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever altered the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. And in one of the most startling and unknown stories of modern military history, the Air Force fighter pilot taught the U.S. Marine Corps how to fight war on the ground. His ideas led to America's swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War and foretold the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn't offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes -- a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country. He was a true patriot, a man who made a career of challenging the shortsighted and self-serving Pentagon bureaucracy. America owes Boyd and his disciples -- the six men known as the "Acolytes" -- a great debt.

Robert Coram finally brings to light the remarkable story of a man who polarized all who knew him, but who left a legacy that will influence the military -- and all of America -- for decades to come . . .]]> 504 Robert Coram 0316796883 Josh 5 4.12
author: Robert Coram
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
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rating: 5
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]]> 21686 369 Dennis Lehane 038073186X Josh 4 4.12 2003
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 60850767
Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.

Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology � and they've arrived from another world to help humanity’s colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself.

Children of Memory by Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky is a far-reaching space opera spanning generations, species and galaxies.]]> 486 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1529087201 Josh 4 3.97 2022
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Josh
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> 63946909
Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system—that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps.

Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there� and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself.

As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has a fundamentally incomplete picture of the world. But this is to be expected. Only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in all its richness and breathtaking majesty. We are stranded in a gulf of vast extremes, between the astronomical and the quantum, an abyss of freedom and absolute determinism, and it is in that center where we must make our home. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.]]> 368 William Egginton 0593316304 Josh 5 4.23 2023
author: William Egginton
name: Josh
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
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]]> 29324861 350 Alex Banks 1491954620 Josh 0 to-read 4.01 2017
author: Alex Banks
name: Josh
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40376072
Long ago, Earth's terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.

Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.]]> 597 Adrian Tchaikovsky Josh 4 4.02 2019
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Josh
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> 209455833 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"...refreshing...concentrates on small �boring� businesses... serves up a recipe to bypass the challenges of a founder by creatively financing smart deals." � Forbes


Rich people know a secret. In this book, former Wall Street investor Codie Sanchez pulls back the curtain.

Most people look for wealth in all the wrong places. From dropshipping and startups to grinding for promotions, you might believe you have to trade your life to be one of the few who win. But the truly rich know these paths are paved with delusion and false promises.

In Main Street Millionaire, Codie Sanchez teaches you the path the wealthy really walk. Instead of risking it all with little chance of success, she shows you how to acquire cash-flowing businesses that are winning right now.

Sanchez, one of the world’s leading small business experts, reveals the dealmaking framework she’s taught to tens of thousands, and that she’s used to build her own 9-figure holding company. Her secret? She acquires overlooked “Main Street� businesses. We’re talking about the unsexy but reliably profitable industries � like plumbing, construction, cleaning, electrical � that white collar workers have overlooked.

In this book, you’ll see practical strategies and step by step processes to acquire cash flow and freedom. You’ll meet humans just like you who have changed their life through ownership.

You will learn:
Why today’s market is ripe for generational wealth creation
How to identify and close amazing business deals, without being wealthy
How to 10x your growth after acquiring a small business
The 7 businesses you should never buy, and why
How to own multiple businesses at once (without losing your mind)

Main Street Millionaire will reshape the way you think about your wealth and ownership forever. However, it’s not for slackers. It’s for those who want meaning and fulfillment while building their community. Codie's no-BS, out-of-the-box wisdom is the antidote to a complacent life of making other people rich. In summary: Your money, and meaning, is on Main Street.]]> 272 Codie Sanchez 0593718615 Josh 0 to-read 4.44 2024
author: Codie Sanchez
name: Josh
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 135530440 232 Cansu Hizli 1663243484 Josh 0 to-read 3.67
author: Cansu Hizli
name: Josh
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 26029284
For fans of Principles , Grit , and The Power of Habit , Primary Greatness outlines the twelve levers of success—a set of principles for achieving a happy and fulfilling life.

Many of us are hurting. We have chronic problems, dissatisfactions, and disappointments. We feel overwhelmed by burdens we carry. The idea of living a “great life� can seem like a distant dream.

Stephen R. Covey—the late, legendary author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People —believed there were only two ways to experience primary greatness or secondary greatness. Through his books and speaking, he taught that the intrinsic rewards of primary greatness—integrity, responsibility, and contribution—far outweighed the extrinsic rewards of secondary money, popularity, and the self-absorbed, pleasure-ridden life that some people consider “success.�

In this posthumous work, Covey lays out clearly the 12 levers of success that will lead to a life of primary Integrity, Contribution, Priority, Sacrifice, Service, Responsibility, Loyalty, Reciprocity, Diversity, Learning, Teaching, and Renewal. For the first time, Covey defines each of these 12 qualities and how they can be leveraged in your daily life to lead you to both professional success and personal happiness. Featuring his trademarked wisdom that has inspired countless readers and leaders, Primary Greatness once again delivers classic Covey advice in a concise and reader-friendly way.]]> 224 Stephen R. Covey 1501106570 Josh 0 to-read 3.92
author: Stephen R. Covey
name: Josh
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 15857716 406 Mark S. Foster 0292742266 Josh 0 to-read 3.94 1989
author: Mark S. Foster
name: Josh
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25499718
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]> 608 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1447273281 Josh 4 marthas-vinyard 4.29 2015
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Josh
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: marthas-vinyard
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]]> 2595763
A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.
Ěý
In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness.ĚýDespite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 yearsâ€� worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness.

American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella’s hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a “bone charcoal� plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel.

ĚýRinella’s erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.]]> 288 Steven Rinella 0385521685 Josh 3 4.27 2008
author: Steven Rinella
name: Josh
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> 50232268 Parenting isn't easy. Showing up is. Your greatest impact begins right where you are. Now the bestselling authors of The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline explain what this means over the course of childhood.

"There is parenting magic in this book."--Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of the New York Times bestselling classic Raising Cain

One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out--in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships--is whether at least one adult in their life has consistently shown up for them. In an age of scheduling demands and digital distractions, showing up for your child might sound like a tall order. But as bestselling authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson reassuringly explain, it doesn't take a lot of time, energy, or money. Instead, showing up means offering a quality of presence. And it's simple to provide once you understand the four building blocks of a child's healthy development. Every child needs to feel what Siegel and Bryson call the Four S's:

- Safe: We can't always insulate a child from injury or avoid doing something that leads to hurt feelings. But when we give a child a sense of safe harbor, she will be able to take the needed risks for growth and change.
- Seen: Truly seeing a child means we pay attention to his emotions--both positive and negative--and strive to attune to what's happening in his mind beneath his behavior.
- Soothed: Soothing isn't about providing a life of ease; it's about teaching your child how to cope when life gets hard, and showing him that you'll be there with him along the way. A soothed child knows that he'll never have to suffer alone.
- Secure: When a child knows she can count on you, time and again, to show up--when you reliably provide safety, focus on seeing her, and soothe her in times of need, she will trust in a feeling of secure attachment. And thrive!

Based on the latest brain and attachment research, The Power of Showing Up shares stories, scripts, simple strategies, illustrations, and tips for honoring the Four S's effectively in all kinds of situations--when our kids are struggling or when they are enjoying success; when we are consoling, disciplining, or arguing with them; and even when we are apologizing for the times we don't show up for them. Demonstrating that mistakes and missteps are repairable and that it's never too late to mend broken trust, this book is a powerful guide to cultivating your child's healthy emotional landscape.]]> 256 Daniel J. Siegel 1524797715 Josh 5 4.28 2020
author: Daniel J. Siegel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> 75665931 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 BenjamĂ­n Labatut 0593654471 Josh 5 4.33 2023
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Josh
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> 101425 National BestsellerĚý

In this, the first major single-volume biography of Andrew Jackson in decades, H.W. Brands reshapes our understanding of this fascinating man, and of the Age of Democracy that he ushered in.


An orphan at a young age and without formal education or the family lineage of the Founding Fathers, Jackson showed that the Presidency was not the exclusive province of the wealthy and the well-born but could truly be held by a man of the people. On a majestic, sweeping scale Brands re-creates Jackson’s rise from his hardscrabble roots to his days as frontier lawyer, then on to his heroic victory in the Battle of New Orleans, and finally to the White House. Capturing Jackson’s outsized life and deep impact on American history, Brands also explores his controversial actions, from his unapologetic expansionism to the disgraceful Trail of Tears. This is a thrilling portrait, in full, of the president who defined American democracy.]]> 656 H.W. Brands 1400030722 Josh 0 to-read 3.93 2005
author: H.W. Brands
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 374233 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration�"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."]]> 260 Italo Calvino Josh 0 to-read 4.05 1979
author: Italo Calvino
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 50998056
From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined.

Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.

Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us—and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.]]> 563 Kim Stanley Robinson 0316300136 Josh 0 to-read 3.84 2020
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Josh
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 95777 Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history.]]> 1039 Taylor Branch 0684857138 Josh 0 to-read 4.41 2006
author: Taylor Branch
name: Josh
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> 79356
In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.]]> 768 Taylor Branch 0684848090 Josh 0 to-read 4.34 1998
author: Taylor Branch
name: Josh
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62069739
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.Ěý

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 193 BenjamĂ­n Labatut Josh 5 4.10 2020
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Josh
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
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]]> 38103723
I felt the same way when my children were small and I was struggling to get them to do things. I felt enormous empathy for them, but wasn’t sure what the alternative was to threatening, bribing or putting them into time out.

It’s been my mission since then to find another way. I’ve now been working in Montessori education for nearly 15 years and love to learn from the 100 toddlers and parents I see every week in my classroom. I am so happy to share with you what I have learned and help you understand your toddler better too.

This book is the result. Your comprehensive guide to raising toddlers in a Montessori way.

A quick aside for those of you that don't know Montessori. It is an alternative education system where, instead of the teacher standing at the front of the classroom telling the kids what they need to know, the children are free to explore a classroom of well-designed materials covering language, mathematics, daily life skills and more. The result is that the children are able to follow their unique natural rhythm and development as well as learn with concrete learning materials to make discoveries for themselves. But that's it. It's not just for school aged children - you can apply exactly the same ideas in your home and with your toddler.

And when I say toddler, I'm talking about children around 1 to 3 years, give or take a few months.

Each section of the book is super practical and it is beautifully designed to make it even easier to read. It’s perfect if you are a busy parent, carer or even grandparent. And it doesn't matter if you are brand new to Montessori or have been using Montessori for a while - or even if you aren't planning to send your children to Montessori school. You can read it from cover to cover. Or just open up the book at a page that interests you and you will find something practical you can try today.

You’ll learn how to set up your home to get rid of the chaos and bring back some calm into your lives. You will get the tools to work together with your child. How you can lead, guide and support them, especially when they are having a hard time (and throwing themselves on the ground in the most inconvenient of places). You’ll also get ideas to create Montessori activities at home that are just right for your toddler.

You will find answers to your questions. To see there is another more peaceful way to be with your toddler. To help you plant the seeds to raise a respectful and responsible human being. To work on a relationship with your toddler which you will be building on for years.

So are you ready to say goodbye to frustration and hello to peace and calm? It’s time for us to learn to see through our toddler’s eyes - The Montessori Toddler.]]> 245 Simone Davies 9082796902 Josh 0 currently-reading 4.28 2018
author: Simone Davies
name: Josh
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 7954936
Gilbert Taylor, Booklist]]> 416 Kevin Kelly 0670022152 Josh 5 3.72 2010
author: Kevin Kelly
name: Josh
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
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]]> 214151981 For readers of Empire of Pain and Dopesick, an arresting deep dive into how Alzheimer’s disease treatment has been set back by corrupt researchers, negligent regulators, and the profit motives of Big Pharma.

Nearly seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a tragedy that is already projected to grow into a $1 trillion crisis by 2050. While families suffer and promises of pharmaceutical breakthroughs keep coming up short, investigative journalist Charles Piller’s Doctored shows that we’ve quite likely been walking the wrong path to finding a cure all along—led astray by a cabal of self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed.

Piller begins with a whistleblower—Vanderbilt professor Matthew Schrag—whose work exposed a massive scandal. Schrag found that a University of Minnesota lab led by a precocious young scientist and a Nobel Prize–rumored director delivered apparently falsified data at the heart of the leading hypothesis about the disease. Piller’s revelations of Schrag’s findings stunned the field and the public.

From there, based on years of investigative reporting, Doctored exposes a vast network of deceit and its players, all the way up to the FDA. Piller uncovers evidence that hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers are based on false data. In the process, he reveals how even against a flood of money and influence, a determined cadre of scientific renegades have fought back to challenge the field’s institutional powers in service to science and the tens of thousands of patients who have been drawn into trials to test dubious drugs. It is a shocking tale with huge ramifications not only for Alzheimer’s disease, but for scientific research, funding, and oversight at large.]]> 352 Charles Piller 1668031248 Josh 0 to-read 3.94
author: Charles Piller
name: Josh
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195443798
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history � yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free . . .]]> 396 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1035013770 Josh 4 3.98 2024
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Josh
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 Josh 4 4.10 2010
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Josh
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Josh 4 4.34 2009
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Josh
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
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]]> 1120192 362 Christian de Duve 0465090451 Josh 0 to-read 3.96 1995
author: Christian de Duve
name: Josh
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Josh 4 4.34 2008
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Josh
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
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]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum Josh 0 to-read 3.94 2022
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Josh
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213458886 An essential guide to thinking strategically in a complex, ever-changing world.

From Seth Godin, one of the world's most influential business thinkers and bestselling author of This is Marketing, comes a groundbreaking guide to creating meaningful change in a complex world.

Are you tired of quick fixes and short-term thinking? Do you want to make a lasting impact but feel stuck in outdated systems? This is Strategy is a modern classic � a must-read for anyone seeking to drive positive change, whether you’re revolutionizing an industry, sparking a movement, or building a career.

Godin challenges you
- Identify your "smallest viable audience" and make remarkable work they can't ignore
- Understand and influence the systems shaping our world
- Prioritize long-term thinking over instant gratification
- Make smart, purposeful choices that shape a better tomorrow

With Godin's trademark clarity and insight, This is Strategy provides a framework for effective and elegant strategic thinking, offering essential building blocks to turn vision into reality. It’s a rallying cry for doing work that matters.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a leader, or an individual with big dreams, this book will inspire you to think bigger, act bolder and make a difference.

Strategy turns our effort into impact. Your journey starts here]]> 256 Seth Godin Josh 5 3.49
author: Seth Godin
name: Josh
average rating: 3.49
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> 112976320 NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Revelatory, superbly written,Ěýand pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece.”Ěý—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us

Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.

A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.

Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late.]]> 320 Deb Chachra 0593086597 Josh 0 to-read 3.64
author: Deb Chachra
name: Josh
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43889703 Gregory Zuckerman, the bestselling author of The Greatest Trade Ever and The Frackers, answers the question investors have been asking for decades: How did Jim Simons do it?

Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history. No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.

Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world.

As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit.

The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.]]> 359 Gregory Zuckerman 0241309727 Josh 0 to-read 4.01 2019
author: Gregory Zuckerman
name: Josh
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 509784 192 Isaac Asimov 0449016196 Josh 5 to-buy 4.22 1955
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-buy
review:

]]> 29582
But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know.

Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity's roots: fabled Earth . . . if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia's first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the Galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia's vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve, and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.

[ Original description here:
Гор�тка �мельчаков пытает�я найти прародин� человече�тва - Землю, чтобы пол�чить разгадк� тайн и�тории Галактики.
= A handful of brave souls trying to find humanity's ancestral home—the Earth, to get answers to the mysteries of the history of the Galaxy.]]]> 499 Isaac Asimov 0553587579 Josh 2 4.06 1986
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1986
rating: 2
read at: 2016/12/23
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: science-fiction, to-buy, currently-reading
review:

]]> 76683
Meanwhile someone—or something—outside of both Foundations seems to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!]]> 450 Isaac Asimov 0553293389 Josh 3 science-fiction, to-buy 4.16 1982
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: science-fiction, to-buy
review:

]]> 66088900
It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, had been inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, the affable flier and the notoriously tempestuous left fielder soared into North Korea, creating a death-defying bond. Although, over the next half century, their contrasting lives were challenged by exhilarating highs and devastating lows, that bond would endure.

Through unpublished letters, unit diaries, declassified military records, manuscripts, and new and illuminating interviews, The Wingmen reveals an epic and intimate portrait of two heroes—larger-than-life and yet ineffably human, ordinary men who accomplished the extraordinary. At its heart, this was a conflicted friendship that found commonality in mutual respect—throughout the perils of war, sports dominance, scientific innovation, cutthroat national politics, the burden of celebrity, and the meaning of bravery. Now, author Adam Lazarus sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter in these legends� lives—as singular individuals, inspiring patriots, and eventually, however improbable, profoundly close friends.]]> 304 Adam Lazarus 0806542500 Josh 3 3.80 2023
author: Adam Lazarus
name: Josh
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves:
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]]> 29580 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803735 Josh 4 science-fiction, to-buy 4.27 1953
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: science-fiction, to-buy
review:

]]> 50255546
A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill

Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads , has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change.

What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone.

Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now.

The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before.

From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.]]> 366 Bruce Feiler Josh 5 3.90 2020
author: Bruce Feiler
name: Josh
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
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]]> 615570 The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for a new century.]]> 237 Julia Cameron 1585421464 Josh 0 to-read 3.93 2002
author: Julia Cameron
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29581 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803727 Josh 4 science-fiction, to-buy 4.23 1952
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: science-fiction, to-buy
review:

]]> 26073005 A revelatory look at our national power grid--how it developed, its current flaws, and how it must be completely reimagined for our fast-approaching energy future.

America's electrical grid, an engineering triumph of the twentieth century, is turning out to be a poor fit for the present. It's not just that the grid has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind, and other alternatives--the grid is what stands most firmly in the way of a brighter energy future. If we hope to realize this future, we need to reimagine the grid according to twenty-first-century values. It's a project which forces visionaries to work with bureaucrats, legislators with storm-flattened communities, moneymen with hippies, and the left with the right. And though it might not yet be obvious, this revolution is already well under way.

Cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke unveils the many facets of America's energy infrastructure, its most dynamic moments and its most stable ones, and its essential role in personal and national life. The grid, she argues, is an essentially American artifact, one which developed with us: a product of bold expansion, the occasional foolhardy vision, some genius technologies, and constant improvisation. Most of all, her focus is on how Americans are changing the grid right now, sometimes with gumption and big dreams and sometimes with legislation or the brandishing of guns.

The Grid tells--entertainingly, perceptively--the story of what has been called "the largest machine in the world": its fascinating history, its problematic present, and its potential role in a brighter, cleaner future.]]> 384 Gretchen Bakke 1608196100 Josh 4 3.83 2016
author: Gretchen Bakke
name: Josh
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
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]]> 13425570
The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father's life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question "How do you measure your life?" became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I'll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personal relationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity—and stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.

How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.]]> 240 Clayton M. Christensen 0062102427 Josh 5 4.03 2012
author: Clayton M. Christensen
name: Josh
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
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]]> 58100575
Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs.

What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success?

At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life.

Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.

Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.]]> 270 Arthur C. Brooks 0593191498 Josh 4 3.93 2022
author: Arthur C. Brooks
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> 4898 240 W. Chan Kim 1591396190 Josh 4 4.01 2004
author: W. Chan Kim
name: Josh
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
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]]> 63365317 384 Simon Shuster 0063307421 Josh 0 to-read 4.18
author: Simon Shuster
name: Josh
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 304444
From the composition of the brains and bodies of artificial life forms to the philosophical guidelines and computational frameworks that define them, Creation plumbs the practical, social, and ethical aspects and implications of the state of the art. But more than that, the book gives readers access to the insights Grand acquired in writing Creatures ―insights that yield a view of the world that is surprisingly antireductionist, antimaterialist, and (to a degree) antimechanistic, a view that sees matter, life, mind, and society as simply different levels of the same thing. Such a hierarchy, Grand suggests, can be mirrored by an equivalent one that exists inside a parallel universe called cyberspace.]]> 240 Steve Grand 0674011139 Josh 0 to-read 4.08 2000
author: Steve Grand
name: Josh
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 Josh 4 science-fiction, to-buy 4.18 1951
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Josh
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: science-fiction, to-buy
review:

]]> 169354 The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth and power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations.

The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm.]]> 928 Daniel Yergin 0671799320 Josh 5 4.43 1991
author: Daniel Yergin
name: Josh
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: economic-history, business-histories, history-of-technology
review:

]]> 18886376
Don't let common problems and frustrations run you and your business. Get a grip and gain control with the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Inside Traction, you'll learn the secrets of strengthening the Six Key Components of your business. You'll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment.

Based on years of real-world implementation in over 100 companies, the Entrepreneurial Operating System is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. Successful organizations are applying it every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses -- and you can too.]]> 246 Gino Wickman Josh 4 4.16 2007
author: Gino Wickman
name: Josh
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
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]]> 218756156
As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI � the French counter-terrorism agency � scrambling for answers.

An advisor to the country’s Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.]]> 544 Michel Houellebecq 1035026392 Josh 0 to-read 3.65 2022
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Josh
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8694
“Wild satire . . . The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes.”� Chicago Tribune

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads—so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.

They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galaxy; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.

How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert “universal� Armageddon and save life as we know it—and don’t know it!

“Adams is one of those rare an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading.”� Arizona Daily Star]]> 224 Douglas Adams 0345418905 Josh 3 fiction, philosophy, to-buy 4.20 1982
author: Douglas Adams
name: Josh
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: fiction, philosophy, to-buy
review:

]]> 8695 alternate edition for ISBN 0345418921/9780345418920

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle through space powered by pure improbability - and desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a long-time friend and contributor to the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMilan, a fellow Earth refuge who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, who suffers nothing and no one gladly.

Source: douglasadams.com]]> 250 Douglas Adams Josh 4 philosophy, fiction, to-buy 4.22 1980
author: Douglas Adams
name: Josh
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: philosophy, fiction, to-buy
review:

]]> 6739077
The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, he writes, but information--and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena. This view allows Vedral to address a host of seemingly unrelated Why does DNA bind like it does? What is the ideal diet for longevity? How do you make your first million dollars? We can unify all through the understanding that everything consists of bits of information, he writes, though that raises the question of where these bits come from. To find the answer, he takes us on a guided tour through the bizarre realm of quantum physics. At this sub-sub-subatomic level, we find such things as the interaction of separated quantum particles--what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." In fact, Vedral notes, recent evidence suggests that quantum weirdness, once thought to be limited to the tiniest scale, may actually reach into the macro world and make teleportation a real possibility. It is in quantum physics, he writes, that we really can find the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Vlatko Vedral is one of the key researchers in quantum science. In this book, he offers a mind-bending account of this leading-edge field.]]> 240 Vlatko Vedral 0199237697 Josh 0 to-read 3.77 2010
author: Vlatko Vedral
name: Josh
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11
Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!]]> 216 Douglas Adams Josh 5 fiction, philosophy, to-buy 4.21 1979
author: Douglas Adams
name: Josh
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: fiction, philosophy, to-buy
review:
What a fun book! I don't remember being so enthralled in a novel in quite some time! While the plot is engaging, what really makes this book fun are the steady interjections of the narrator - adding literary, philosophical and absurd commentary - and the author's playful take on some of the whacky theories coming out of the last century of theoretical physics. I think that to truly appreciate this book, one should pair it with a popular physics books such as Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos or Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe.
]]> 177068 390 David Deutsch 014027541X Josh 5 turing-principle 4.12 1996
author: David Deutsch
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: turing-principle
review:

]]>