Shivam's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 08 Aug 2013 06:25:40 -0700 60 Shivam's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (The ^AOxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)]]> 471471 various chapters utilized for an introduction to circuits course, a first electronics course, or for a course on digital electronics and logic design.]]> 1163 Leonard S. Bobrow 0195105095 Shivam 0 4.10 1995 Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (The ^AOxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
author: Leonard S. Bobrow
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay]]> 368887
Ěý

For decades, William Warner's exploration of the Atlantic blue crab and the Chesapeake Bay has delighted thousands of readers and become a modern American classic. Nature enthusiasts and fans of fine literature alike will find Beautiful Swimmers a timeless and enchanting study in the tradition of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard.

Ěý

In these pages, we are immersed not only in the world of the Chesapeake's most intriguing crustaceans, but in the winds and tides of the Bay itself and the struggles of the watermen who make their living in pursuit of the succulent, pugnacious blue crab.

Ěý

"This is a book of rare grace and meditation, one that ranges from adventure to zoology, with no small measure of mystery and history." -- Miami Herald

Ěý

" Beautiful Swimmers is wonderful to read and a distinguished addition to our literature." --Larry McMurtry]]>
304 William W. Warner 0316923354 Shivam 5 4.13 1976 Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay
author: William W. Warner
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1976
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan]]> 93803
In Dogs and Demons , Alex Kerr chronicles the many facets of Japan's recent, and chronic, crises -- from the failure of its banks and pension funds to the decline of its once magnificent modern cinema. He is the first to give a full report on the nation's endangered environment -- its seashores lined with concrete, its roads leading to nowhere in the mountains -- as well as its "monument frenzy," the destruction of old cities such as Kyoto and construction of drab new ones, and the attendant collapse of its tourist industry. Kerr writes with humor and passion, for "passion," he says, "is part of the story. Millions of Japanese feel as heartbroken at what is going on as I do. My Japanese friends tell me, 'Please write this -- for us.'"]]>
320 Alex Kerr 0809039435 Shivam 5 3.76 2001 Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
author: Alex Kerr
name: Shivam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan]]> 685245
This “superbly readable, insightful, gripping� ( Washington Post Book World ) contribution to WWII history combines impeccable research with electrifying detail and offers provocative interpretations of this brutal forty-four-month struggle. Author and historian Ronald H. Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy than a strategic calculation. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.

Spector skillfully takes us from top-secret strategy meetings in Washington, London, and Tokyo to distant beaches and remote Asian jungles with battle-weary GIs. He reveals that the US had secret plans to wage unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan months before Pearl Harbor and shows that MacArthur and his commanders ignored important intercepts of Japanese messages that would have saved thousands of lives in Papua and Leyte. Throughout, Spector contends that American decisions in the Pacific War were shaped more often by the struggles between the British and the Americans, and between the Army and the Navy, than by strategic considerations.

Spector vividly recreates the major battles, little-known campaigns, and unfamiliar events leading up to the deadliest air raid ever, adding a new dimension to our understanding of the American war in the Pacific and the people and forces that determined its outcome.]]>
624 Ronald H. Spector 0394741013 Shivam 5 4.06 1985 Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan
author: Ronald H. Spector
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan]]> 411477 into that mysterious closed-off land. Drawing upon the journals and letters of Adams as well as the other Englishmen who came looking for him, Samurai William presents a unique glimpse of Japan before it once again closed itself off from the world
for another two hundred years.]]>
368 Giles Milton 0142003786 Shivam 5 3.90 2002 Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan
author: Giles Milton
name: Shivam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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Annals of the Former World 78
Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World.

Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction.

Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.]]>
720 John McPhee 0374518734 Shivam 5 4.35 1998 Annals of the Former World
author: John McPhee
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan]]> 93959
Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past.

Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.]]>
832 Herbert P. Bix 0060931302 Shivam 5 3.85 2000 Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
author: Herbert P. Bix
name: Shivam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam]]> 565319
This magisterial work, based on Frances FitzGerald's many years of research and travels, takes us inside the history of Vietnam -- the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages, the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks, the disruption created by French colonialism, and America's ill-fated intervention -- and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes.Ěý

Originally published in 1972,Ěý Fire in the Lake Ěýwas the first history of Vietnam written by an American and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award. With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.]]>
500 Frances FitzGerald 0316159190 Shivam 5 4.07 1972 Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
author: Frances FitzGerald
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families]]> 25109 688 J. Anthony Lukas 0394746163 Shivam 5 4.31 1985 Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
author: J. Anthony Lukas
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945]]> 106317
The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike.

Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could.

Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.]]>
936 David M. Kennedy 0195144031 Shivam 5 4.19 1999 Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
author: David M. Kennedy
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848]]> 1102243 The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. In this Pulitzer prize-winning, critically acclaimed addition to the series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent.

A panoramic narrative, What Hath God Wrought portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America's economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. Howe examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs--advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans--were the true prophets of America's future. In addition, Howe reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women's rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe's story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.

Winner of the New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize

Finalist, 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

The Oxford History of the United States
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. The Atlantic Monthly has praised it as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book." Conceived under the general editorship of C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, and now under the editorship of David M. Kennedy, this renowned series blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative.
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904 Daniel Walker Howe 0195078942 Shivam 5 4.14 2007 What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848
author: Daniel Walker Howe
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II]]> 273197 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II.

Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order.]]>
676 John W. Dower 0393320278 Shivam 5 4.14 1999 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
author: John W. Dower
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire]]> 113206 One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York TimesĚý

From the editor of The New Yorker : a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.Ěý
Ěý]]>
588 David Remnick 0679751254 Shivam 5 4.24 1994 Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
author: David Remnick
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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Shake Hands with the Devil 215758
When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was called to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in '93, he thought he was heading off on a straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned & suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.

In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes readers with him on a return voyage into hell, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven thru the story of this disastrous mission is his own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, hope & reconciliation.

This book is a personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth & secure in his assumptions to one conscious of his own weaknesses & failures & critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to him & his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into dirty wars.]]>
562 Roméo Dallaire 0786715103 Shivam 5 4.24 2003 Shake Hands with the Devil
author: Roméo Dallaire
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11]]> 110890
The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.

As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life--he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence--and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.

Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.]]>
469 Lawrence Wright 037541486X Shivam 5 4.34 2006 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
author: Lawrence Wright
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families]]> 11472 356 Philip Gourevitch 0312243359 Shivam 5 4.21 1998 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
author: Philip Gourevitch
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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<![CDATA["A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide]]> 368731 Former UN Ambassador Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis of America's repeated failure to stop genocides around the world

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act. A modern classic, "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy.]]>
620 Samantha Power 0060541644 Shivam 5 4.24 2002 "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide
author: Samantha Power
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average rating: 4.24
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media]]> 12617
Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy� versus “unworthy� victims, “legitimizing� and “meaningless� Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.]]>
412 Edward S. Herman 0375714499 Shivam 5 4.25 1988 Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
author: Edward S. Herman
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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The Wretched of the Earth 66933 Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.

The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other.

Fanon's analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world, and this bold new translation by Richard Philcox reaffirms it as a landmark.]]>
251 Frantz Fanon 0802141323 Shivam 5 4.35 1961 The Wretched of the Earth
author: Frantz Fanon
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1961
rating: 5
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Pedagogy of the Oppressed 72657 Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.]]> 183 Paulo Freire 0826412769 Shivam 5 4.30 1968 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
author: Paulo Freire
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1968
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 Shivam 5 4.27 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]>
729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Shivam 5 4.07 1980 A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
author: Howard Zinn
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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The Devil in the White City 21996
Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.]]>
496 Erik Larson 0739303406 Shivam 5 3.99 2003 The Devil in the White City
author: Erik Larson
name: Shivam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin]]> 9938498
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.]]>
448 Erik Larson 0307408841 Shivam 5 3.87 2011 In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
author: Erik Larson
name: Shivam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies]]> 1842
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal]]>
498 Jared Diamond 0739467352 Shivam 5 4.04 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
author: Jared Diamond
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/05/10
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1776 1067 386 David McCullough 0743226720 Shivam 5 4.10 2005 1776
author: David McCullough
name: Shivam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/05/10
shelves:
review:

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