Sreechand's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 06 May 2025 14:40:49 -0700 60 Sreechand's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems]]> 314114 The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point, Fritjof Capra juxtaposed physics and mysticism to define a new vision of reality. Now, in The Web of Life, he takes yet another giant step forward, offering a brilliant synthesis of such recent scientific breakthroughs as the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, and chaos theory. 25 line drawings.]]> 347 Fritjof Capra 0385476760 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.19 1996 The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems
author: Fritjof Capra
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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Strong Female Character 59903149
1. I'm diagnosed with autism 20 years after telling a doctor I had it.

2. My terrible Catholic childhood.

3. My friendship with an elderly man who runs the corner shop and is definitely not trying to groom me. I get groomed.

4. Homelessness.

5. Stripping.

6. More stripping but with more nervous breakdowns.

7. I hate everyone at uni and live with a psycho etc.

8. REDACTED as too spicy.

9. After everyone tells me I don't look autistic, I try to cure my autism and get addicted to Xanax.

10. REDACTED as too embarrassing.]]>
288 Fern Brady 1914240448 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.43 2023 Strong Female Character
author: Fern Brady
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Service America!: Doing Business in the New Economy]]> 1403707 Karl Albrecht 0446390925 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.88 1985 Service America!: Doing Business in the New Economy
author: Karl Albrecht
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave]]> 698373 288 Ruth Schwartz Cowan 0465047327 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.07 1983 More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave
author: Ruth Schwartz Cowan
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/03
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<![CDATA[Keeping Finance Personal: Ditch the “Shouldsâ€� and the Shame and Rewrite Your Money Story]]> 145624806
There’s no magic formula for being “good with money.â€� The perfect budgeting spreadsheet or debt repayment plan will never address the root of your money issues. Ellyce Fulmore’s aha moment for her own financial health came when she realized that the reason she and so many others have struggled to pay off debt, stick to a budget, or build savings has little to do with being “bad at money.â€� Instead, it has everything to do with not fully understanding how their identity and lived experience affect their financial decisions.
Ìę
Now in Keeping Finance Personal ,ÌęEllyce shares outside the box advice that will help readers find the financial security and confidence they crave. With chapters focusing on the importance of finding safe spaces when dealing with your finances, personal values, relationship dynamics, vices and coping mechanisms, this is not your typical financial advice book. Ellyce asks readers to engage with how their upbringing, gender identity, culture, and mental health impact their decisions, and guides them through self-exploration exercises that will lead them to change their relationship with money.

This book is for the lesbian couple searching for a place to rent, the neurodivergent person struggling with impulse spending, the woman facing sexism at her local bank—all the people that don’t fit into the mold that traditional finance advice is aimed at.ÌęFilled with interviews from a diverse range of voices,Ìę Keep Finance PersonalÌę provides a path to develop a healthy money mindset, learn key money management skills, and understand the intersectionality of money and identity so you can take control of your financial life in authentic, empowered way.Ìę


Ìę]]>
352 Ellyce Fulmore 0306831317 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.12 Keeping Finance Personal: Ditch the “Shoulds” and the Shame and Rewrite Your Money Story
author: Ellyce Fulmore
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.12
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The People of the Indus 61349730 Why didn't they build pyramids like the Egyptians?
And ultimately what happened to them?

Supported by extensive research from a leading Indus archaeologist, this graphic novel seeks answers to precisely these questions. It is not history in the form of a dull record of dates and events but a beautifully illustrated glimpse into the lives of the people of the Indus civilization, dating all the way back to 3200 BCE.

The People of the Indus is a rare account of how one of the most unique and enigmatic civilizations of the ancient world changed the course of human history. It is sure to enthral young adults and older readers alike.]]>
192 Nikhil Gulati 014345532X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.40 The People of the Indus
author: Nikhil Gulati
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.40
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<![CDATA[The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life]]> 212806718 A groundbreaking guide to rejecting the default path and designing your dream life—a life centered around The 5 Types of Wealth. Launch your journey to fulfillment with this transformative system from inspirational writer, speaker, and entrepreneur Sahil Bloom.

Harsh You’ve been lied to. Throughout your life, you’ve been slowly indoctrinated to believe that money is the only type of wealth. The Your wealthy life may involve money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else.

In The 5 Types of Wealth, Sahil Bloom offers a transformative guide for redesigning your life around five types of wealth—Time Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth, Physical Wealth, and Financial Wealth—that will lead to a durable satisfaction and happiness you can build and maintain across the seasons of your life.
Ìę
Whether you are a recent college graduate, mid-life warrior, or a retiree, this playbook will unlock new levels of freedom and fulfillment,

� Control over how you spend your time
‱ÌęDepth of connection with those around you
‱ÌęClarity of purpose, presence, and decision making
‱ÌęImproved health and vitality
‱ÌęSimple pathways to financial independence
Ìę
Bloom’s unique blend of storytelling, questions, and actionable insights enables readers to make immediate positive change and build the joyful, balanced lives they’d previously only dreamed of.]]>
400 Sahil Bloom 059372318X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.24 The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life
author: Sahil Bloom
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Business adventures 4191136 This business classic written by longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks is an insightful and engaging look into corporate and financial life in America.

What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety.

These notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.

Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself.]]>
408 John Brooks 0575003499 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.81 1969 Business adventures
author: John Brooks
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1969
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Democracy in America 16619 Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that political commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the society of the USA. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy & the social, political & economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 & 1840. Brilliantly written, vividly illustrated with vignettes & portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one society at a particular point in time. What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of the observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races & the threats posed to democracies by consumerism & corruption. So uncanny is Tocqueville’s insight & so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as tho he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it.]]> 983 Alexis de Tocqueville 0140447601 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.03 1835 Democracy in America
author: Alexis de Tocqueville
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1835
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<![CDATA[The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence]]> 195473492
A chilling exposé of the inhumane and lucrative sharpening of borders around the globe through experimental surveillance technology

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was training “robot dogsâ€� to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border against migrants. Four-legged machines equipped with cameras and sensors would join a network of drones and automated surveillance towers—nicknamed the “smart wall.â€� This is part of a worldwide as more people are displaced by war, economic instability, and a warming planet, more countries are turning to A.I.-driven technology to “manageâ€� the influx. Based on years of reporting from borderlands across the world, lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes is a truly global story—a dystopian vision turned reality, where your body is your passport and matters of life and death are determined by algorithm. Examining how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation, Molnar also shows us how borders are now big business, with defense contractors and tech start-ups alike scrambling to capture this highly profitable market. With a foreword by former U.N. Special Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume, The Walls Have Eyes reveals the profound human stakes, foregrounding the stories of migrants and the daring forms of resistance that have emerged against the hubris and cruelty of those seeking to use technology to turn human beings into problems to be solved.]]>
304 Petra Molnar 1620978369 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.24 2024 The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
author: Petra Molnar
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
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Red Earth and Pouring Rain 129678 542 Vikram Chandra 0316132934 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.81 1995 Red Earth and Pouring Rain
author: Vikram Chandra
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Breath of a Whale: The Science and Spirit of Pacific Ocean Giants]]> 43999702 0 Leigh Calvez 1541430026 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.83 2019 The Breath of a Whale: The Science and Spirit of Pacific Ocean Giants
author: Leigh Calvez
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
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<![CDATA[An Educated Woman In Prostitution: A Memoir of Lust, Exploitation, Deceit (Calcutta, 1929)]]> 56594893
Manada, Maani didi, Feroza Bibi, Miss Mukherjee â€� the jostling identities of our beguiling and charming protagonist as she glides through a life that can be seen as exploitative yet, also, curiously, empowering and honest. Manada’s fascinating life story takes her from her wealthy cossetted upbringing to a life of debauchery and prostitution after she elopes with her married lover when in her mid-teens. She is capable, attractive and doesn’t ask for pity as she struggles with illness, poverty and abandonment, but ensures that she emerges relatively unscathed and carves a niche for herself in her profession.

Manada matures and settles into a life of prostitution, entertains barristers, doctors and other men of high society. She describes her colourful life with relish but is often introspective as she places her own position as a sex worker in the context of the times, calling out young sanctimonious patriotic men who maintain a high standing in society yet secretly fancy prostitutes. Rather tantalisingly she takes no names, only occasionally hinting at their identities, to avoid scandals and protect the double lives of men who are well-known in Calcutta in the 1920s. Weaving together multiple strands, looking beyond ideas of morality and accusations, we are presented a life of immense beauty and endurance, which is both grand in its scope and deeply intimate in its portrait.]]>
123 Manabi Devi Sreechand 0 to-read 3.62 2021 An Educated Woman In Prostitution: A Memoir of Lust, Exploitation, Deceit (Calcutta, 1929)
author: Manabi Devi
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
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<![CDATA[The New Reason to Work: How to Build a Career That Will Change the World]]> 59452871 240 Roshan Paul 1544525184 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.36 The New Reason to Work: How to Build a Career That Will Change the World
author: Roshan Paul
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.36
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Monogamy 763684
Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it—boredom, desire, and the tempting idea that erotic fulfillment might lie elsewhere. With 121 brilliant aphorisms, the witty, erudite psychoanalyst who gave us On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored distills the urgent questions and knotty paradoxes behind our mating impulse, and reveals the centrality of monogamy to our notions of marriage, family, the self—in fact, to everything that matters.

The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date.
There's nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.]]>
144 Adam Phillips 0679776176 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.58 1996 Monogamy
author: Adam Phillips
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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<![CDATA[Shattered Lands: A STUNNING NEW HISTORY OF FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE RESHAPING OF MODERN ASIA]]> 222717408 A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it.

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia â€� India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait â€� were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empireâ€�, or more simply as the Raj.

It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empireâ€�, and were guarded by armies garrisoned forts from the Bab el-Mandab to the Himalayas

And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile, and division.

Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.

Its legacies include civil wars in Burma and Sri Lanka, ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan and north-east India and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Sam Dalrymple’s stunning debut is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best.]]>
Sam Dalrymple 0008466831 Sreechand 0 to-read 0.0 Shattered Lands: A STUNNING NEW HISTORY OF FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE RESHAPING OF MODERN ASIA
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<![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.â€�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]>
382 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.28 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.28
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<![CDATA[The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you]]> 52283963
The Mom Test is a quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak.



They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little . As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right .



Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.

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138 Rob Fitzpatrick Sreechand 0 to-read 4.37 2013 The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
author: Rob Fitzpatrick
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
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<![CDATA[Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation]]> 228237375
But there is a way back. A way to rediscover trust in our leaders and institutions. A way to tackle the doubt.

This insightful collection of essays brings together top thinkers from across the globe in media, science, government, academia and business to examine how and why trust is disappearing, and how we might navigate these confusing times.

It explores the origins of our misinformation culture and its impact on democracy. It looks at the moral and ethical foundations our institutions are built on, and shines a light on the media and its role in sorting fact from fiction. Expert minds in business, science and law enforcement explain how to maintain trust and how easily it can be broken, and leaders on the front line of technological development describe the influence of bots, conspiracy theories and generative AI.

If we are to address the big issues facing our world, then we must have trust, because without it we have no sense of shared reality. Alone, we can’t do it. Together, we might.]]>
Tracey Kirkland 1923192159 Sreechand 0 to-read 0.0 2025 Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation
author: Tracey Kirkland
name: Sreechand
average rating: 0.0
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<![CDATA[Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity]]> 61153739 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.

This is not “biohacking,â€� it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:

â€� Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
� That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
â€� Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.â€�
� Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
� Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.

Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.]]>
496 Peter Attia 0593236599 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity
author: Peter Attia
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average rating: 4.33
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Orbital 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]>
207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.55 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
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<![CDATA[Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout]]> 197773418 Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivityâ€� is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,â€� a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.]]>
244 Cal Newport 0593544854 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.65 2024 Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
author: Cal Newport
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
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date added: 2025/02/01
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<![CDATA[Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning]]> 49829875 The best-selling author of Traffic and You May Also Like now gives us a thought-provoking, playful journey into the transformative joys that come with starting something new, no matter your age

Why do so many of us stop learning new skills as adults? Are we afraid to be bad at something? Have we forgotten the sheer pleasure of beginning from the ground up? Or is it simply a fact that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Inspired by his young daughter's insatiable need to know how to do almost everything, and stymied by his own rut of mid-career competence, Tom Vanderbilt begins a year of learning purely for the sake of learning. He tackles five main skills (and picks up a few more along the way), choosing them for their difficulty to master and their distinct lack of career marketability--chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and juggling. What he doesn't expect is that the circuitous paths he takes while learning these skills will prove even more satisfying than any knowledge he gains.

He soon finds himself having rapturous experiences singing Spice Girls songs in an amateur choir, losing games of chess to eight-year-olds, and dodging scorpions at a surf camp in Costa Rica. Along the way, he interviews dozens of experts to explore the fascinating psychology and science behind the benefits of becoming an adult beginner. Weaving comprehensive research and surprising insight gained from his year of learning dangerously, Vanderbilt shows how anyone can get better at beginning again--and, more important, why they should take those first awkward steps. Ultimately, he shares how his refreshed sense of curiosity opened him up to a profound happiness and a deeper connection to the people around him. It's about how small acts of reinvention, at any age, can make life seem magical.]]>
320 Tom Vanderbilt 1524732168 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.65 2021 Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning
author: Tom Vanderbilt
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
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<![CDATA[The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact]]> 34466952
While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children?

This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.â€� And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth.

Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?)

Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.]]>
320 Chip Heath 1501147765 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.10 2017 The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
author: Chip Heath
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<![CDATA[George Orwell's 1984: The Graphic Novel]]> 59950311 The graphic novel edition of George Orwell's bestselling dystopian classic. Illustrated by award-winning artist MatyĂĄĆĄ Namai.

Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Now, the Party is forcing the use of an invented language called Newspeak which will prevent political insurgency by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.

But a seed of dissent grows in Winston � one that will bring him into direct conflict with the Party, and with devastating consequences.

Rarely has one book ever been so rich in political and social criticism as 1984. Originally published in 1949, this new graphic novel edition of the dystopian classic, powerfully illustrated by Matyáơ Namai, reveals Winston’s fight against the Party in all its horror and futility.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.â€�]]>
284 MatyĂĄĆĄ Namai Sreechand 0 currently-reading 4.41 George Orwell's 1984: The Graphic Novel
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The Comfort Book 55825273 The new uplifting book from Matt Haig, the New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library, for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of a little encouragement.

“It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.â€�

The Comfort Book is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.]]>
272 Matt Haig 0143136666 Sreechand 0 4.07 2021 The Comfort Book
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The Feminisms Of Our Mothers 211435007 "Some of our mothers marched the streets in the 1980s, demanding the emancipation of women. Three decades later, they accompanied their daughters to Aurat March, reflecting on past formations, present collectives and feminist futures. Some made concessions in their acceptance of traditional gender roles, forming conflictual relationships with daughters that pushed the boundaries of propriety. Some may not refer to themselves as feminist, differing from their daughters about the significance and implications of labels. Yet, the subtleties of our mothersâ€� adaptabilities are centred on women’s empowerment. Situated amongst these subtleties are moments of consciousness and self-determination that we, as daughters, navigate through, as we limn the contours of our own feminist formations."

In this remarkable collection of essays about their mothers, women from Pakistan explore the many meanings of feminism and its varying interpretations through generations. How, they ask, do these meanings change, mould, attract and detract within and between generations? How do women bridge the cracks that emerge in these formations as they hold within them the joys, sorrows, conflicts and contradictions of their multiple feminisms?]]>
216 Daanika Kamal Sreechand 0 to-read 4.21 The Feminisms Of Our Mothers
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<![CDATA[Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down While Chronically Ill and Disabled]]> 201626898 A much-needed guide to dating--from apps to hooking up, sex, long-term relationships and more--from disabled essayist and author Jessica Slice and bioethicist Caroline Cupp. Disabled people date, have casual sex, marry, and parent. Yet our romantic lives are conspicuously absent from the media and cultural conversation. Sexual education does not typically address the specific information needed by disabled students. Mainstream dating apps fail to include disability as an aspect of one’s identity alongside race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The few underutilized disability-focused apps are paternalistic and unappealing. Bestselling dating books do not address disability, and the few relationship books marketed to disabled people focus on the mechanics of sex rather than the complex interactions that create the conditions for it. In Dateable, disabled authors Jessica Slice Caroline Cupp team up to address the serious gap in the dating space. DateableÌęis the first book on disabled dating and relationships; it’s a dating guide made especially for disabled and chronically ill people, that also calls in nondisabled readers. Jessica and Caroline take on everything from rom-com representation and dating apps to sex and breakups with a strong narrative underpinning and down-to-earth advice. The book is as much a practical tool as it is an empowering guide.]]> 288 Jessica Slice 0306832739 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.56 Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down While Chronically Ill and Disabled
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<![CDATA[A Passionate Cog: Adventure within the machine]]> 222960181
Explore the Kafkaesque clash between ESSS’s chaddi-centric vision, aiming to transform the nation into the glorious “Chaddi Rashtraâ€� and the relentless skepticism of morally upright college students, so called progressive and the ever-critical negative liberals. Will ESSS triumph in their quest for chaddi enlightenment, or will the utopian dream be unraveled by dissenters ?]]>
150 Krityam Jain 8196977891 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.00 A Passionate Cog: Adventure within the machine
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The Travelling Cat Chronicles 40961230
An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru's longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe...

With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.]]>
281 Hiro Arikawa 0735235244 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.35 2012 The Travelling Cat Chronicles
author: Hiro Arikawa
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<![CDATA[AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference]]> 210319458 While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it's being built, marketed, and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance, and criminal justice. The book explains the crucial differences between types of AI, why organizations are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can't fix social media, why AI isn't an existential risk, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. The book also warns of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.
By revealing AI's limits and real risks, AI Snake Oil will help you make better decisions about whether and how to use AI at work and home.]]>
360 Arvind Narayanan 069124913X Sreechand 0 to-read 3.87 2024 AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference
author: Arvind Narayanan
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<![CDATA[The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant]]> 218319936 "The definitive look at the most remarkable business story of this era."

—Morgan Housel, New York Times best-selling author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever



"The Nvidia Way is a riveting history of Nvidia’s unexpected ascent to the top of the tech sector—and a compelling case for why cofounder Jensen Huang is one of history’s great CEOs."

—Chris Miller, New York Times best-selling author of Chip The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology



A deeply reported business history of the chip-designer Nvidia—from its founding in 1993 to its recent emergence as one of the most valuable corporations in the world—explaining how the company’s culture, overseen by cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, has powered its incredible success.


Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial its chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.


In The Nvidia Way, acclaimed tech writer Tae Kim draws on more than one hundred interviews—including Jensen (as he is known) and his cofounders, the two original venture capital investors, early former employees, and current senior executives—to show how Nvidia played the longest of long games, repeatedly creating new markets and outmaneuvering competitors, including the original semiconductor giant, Intel, which now finds itself well behind the upstart. Kim offers revelations at every step, among



An authoritative, myth-busting account of Nvidia’s founding in 1993.
How Nvidia managed to overcome early missteps that would have killed most start-ups.
The benefits of Nvidia’s flat organizational structure, which allows even low-level employees to contribute to the direction of the company.
How Jensen’s obsession with solving the Innovator’s Dilemma—the problem of an entrenched market leader falling to smaller, nimbler companies—drove him to reinvent his approach to corporate strategy.
How Nvidia saw the coming AI wave sooner than anyone else, and how it bet its future on a technology that had not yet arrived.



A rare view into Nvidia’s distinct culture and Jensen’s management principles, The Nvidia Way is a book for our moment as well as an instant classic of business history, with enduring lessons for entrepreneurs and managers alike.]]>
268 Tae Kim 1324086726 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.36 The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
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<![CDATA[Dante's Inferno: A Graphic Novel Adaptation]]> 207003533 Acclaimed French animators Paul and GaĂ«tan Brizzi adapt Dante’s literary classic Inferno in the sweeping, dramatic style that brought The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fantasia 2000 to life Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante crosses the nine circles of Hell to find his beloved, Beatrice, in Paradise. Along the way, he must recognize and reject each of the incarnations of sin. In each circle of Hell, Dante confronts both sinners and demons, from Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Achilles, and Paris, whose loves were famously their downfall, to the Greek Furies and Medusa, to heretics like Epicurus, whose teachings claimed that the soul died with the body, now forced to writhe in a flaming tomb for eternity. Each layer of Hell reveals monsters, gods, historical and mythological kings, philosophers, queens, and hordes of the miserable, faceless damned, all culminating in a confrontation with Lucifer himself. Paul and GaĂ«tan Brizzi make this famously dense literary classic accessible without distorting it and betraying the spirit of the Italian genius. They deftly translate it into comics while taking care to preserve the heart of the a taste for excess, dramatic tension, and the inevitable darkness of the subject matter. Literary aficionados will appreciate this decadent graphic novel adaptation, which does not seek to sand down the source material. Likewise, adults whose imaginations were fueled by films like Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame as children, which the Brizzi brothers animated sequences for, will be swept up in this lushly illustrated adult fable, unfettered by the demands of corporate animation studios.]]> 160 Paul Brizzi 1419776754 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.84 2023 Dante's Inferno: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
author: Paul Brizzi
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<![CDATA[BEIRUT WON'T CRY (The Fantagraphics Underground Series)]]> 35720207 264 Mazen Kerbaj 168396036X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.31 2007 BEIRUT WON'T CRY (The Fantagraphics Underground Series)
author: Mazen Kerbaj
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age]]> 20763766 Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free takes on the state of copyright and creative success in the digital age. Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today â€� about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them. An essential read for anyone with a stake in the future of the arts, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free offers a vivid guide to the ways creativity and the Internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.]]> 192 Cory Doctorow 1940450284 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.98 2014 Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age
author: Cory Doctorow
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average rating: 3.98
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]]> 10569 (back cover)]]> 320 Stephen King 0743455967 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.33 2000 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
author: Stephen King
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
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<![CDATA[The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life]]> 60151185 With 55k global sales, The Pathless Path has become a surprise best-seller. The book has received attention from major publishers, including a 6-figure offer from a Big Five publisher (which was turned down). The author is currently looking for foreign publishers to translate the work into different languages.It takes a few wrong turns to find the right way.

Paul thought he was on his way. From a small-town Connecticut kid to the most prestigious consulting firm in the world, he had everything he thought he wanted. Yet he decided to walk away and embark on the "real work" of his life - finding the things that matter and daring to create a life to make them happen.

This Pathless Path is about finding yourself in the wrong life, and the real work of figuring out how to live. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries and the goodwill of people from around the world, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to the good life and all of the existential crises in between.

The Pathless Path is not a how-to book filled with “hacksâ€�; instead, it is a vulnerable account of Paul’s journey from leaving a path centered around getting ahead and towards another, one focused on doing work that matters. This book is an ideal companion for people considering leaving their jobs, embarking on a new path, dealing with the uncertainty of an unconventional path, or searching for better models for thinking about work in a fast-changing world.

Reader

“It’s a rare book in that it is tangentially about careers and being more focused and productive, but unlike almost every other book I have read about these topics, I finished this one and felt better about myself and my career.â€�

“The themes are timeless. The content is expertly written. The advice is refreshingly non-prescriptive.â€�

“If you have questioned your own path, or a nagging lack of intention in your choices you need this book. If you have felt a gradual loss of agency in your direction you need this book. You are in the grip of an invisible script that was not written for you.â€� - Kris Abdelmessih

“The writing is fantastic - Paul's writing is approachably poetic; a quick read that weaves together his own experience moving from a 'default path' overachiever to a 'pathless path' seeker of passion and curiosity, deep research into the history of work and collections of perspectives from years of podcasting, friendship, conferences, and meetings with other 'alternative path' life-livers."]]>
222 Paul Millerd Sreechand 0 to-read 3.98 2022 The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life
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Final Cut 204316973 The beloved and award-winning author of BLACK HOLE's haunting and visually arresting story of an artist's obsessions, and the value and cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity

As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make sci-fi films in their yards, convincing their friends to star as victims of grisly murders, smearing lipstick on the "bodies" to simulate blood. Now a talented artist and aspiring filmmaker, Brian, along with Jimmy, Jimmy's friend Tina, and Laurie—his reluctant muse—sets off to a remote cabin in the woods with an old 8 millimeter camera to make a true sci-fi horror movie, an homage to Brian's favorite movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian's affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams, his damsel in distress, and his savior wrapped into one. Rife with references to classic sci-fi and horror movies and filled with panels of stunning depictions of nature, film and the surreal, Burns blurs the line between Brian's dreams and reality, imagination and perception. A master of the form at his finest, Final Cut is an astonishing look at what it means to truly express oneself through art.]]>
224 Charles Burns 0593701704 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.73 2024 Final Cut
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<![CDATA[Platformland: An Anatomy of Next-Generation Public Services]]> 218285899 296 Richard Pope 1916749119 Sreechand 0 currently-reading 4.43 Platformland: An Anatomy of Next-Generation Public Services
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<![CDATA[Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication]]> 39380381 How to speak and listen more effectively--to communicate mindfully and improve all relationships--based on the author's unique synthesis of mindfulness practice combined with the principles of nonviolent communication.

Communication is hard. Here's a proven method that makes it not only considerably easier, but also much more effective for people on both sides of the conversation. Oren Sofer's method for effective communication is a unique combination of mindfulness with the modality called nonviolent communication (NVC), a method popular since the 1960s that is based on the belief that all human beings have the capacity for compassion and resort to violence or behavior that harms others only when they don't recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs. NVC provides those peaceful strategies. Oren's unique method for fostering peaceful--and effective--communication has three "steps" or components: (1) presence: bringing mindful awareness to the interaction, (2) intention: clarifying and setting a goal for the interaction, and (3) attention: learning to really hear and understand in a way that enables you to navigate the difficulties, express yourself clearly, and listen like it really matters--which it most certainly does. The steps are accompanied by many practical exercises, and in the course of this three-part training, readers will learn how to apply these skills to personal and social relationships with romantic partners, friends, colleagues, and family.]]>
304 Oren Jay Sofer 161180583X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.13 2018 Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication
author: Oren Jay Sofer
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
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<![CDATA[Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent]]> 45153467 How rebellious colonies changed British attitudes to empire

Insurgent Empire shows how Britain’s enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom.

Priyamvada Gopal examines a century of dissent on the question of empire and shows how British critics of empire were influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies, from the West Indies and East Africa to Egypt and India. In addition, a pivotal role in fomenting resistance was played by anticolonial campaigners based in London, right at the heart of empire.

Much has been written on how colonized peoples took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. Insurgent Empire sets the record straight in demonstrating that these people were much more than victims of imperialism or, subsequently, the passive beneficiaries of an enlightened British conscience—they were insurgents whose legacies shaped and benefited the nation that once oppressed them.]]>
631 Priyamvada Gopal 1784784125 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.16 2019 Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent
author: Priyamvada Gopal
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<![CDATA[Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences]]> 169699 A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions.

What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification—the scaffolding of information infrastructures.

In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis.

The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.]]>
392 Geoffrey C. Bowker 0262522950 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.95 1999 Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
author: Geoffrey C. Bowker
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book published: 1999
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<![CDATA[Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope]]> 56709894
This is a tale of India’s states, of why they build schools but do not staff them with teachers; favour a handful of companies so much that others slip into losses; wage water wars with their neighbours while allowing rampant sand mining and groundwater extraction; harness citizensâ€� right to vote but brutally crack down on their right to dissent.

Reporting from six states over thirty-three months, award-winning investigative journalist M. Rajshekhar delivers a necessary account of a deep crisis that has gone largely unexamined.]]>
296 M. Rajshekhar Sreechand 0 to-read 4.35 Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope
author: M. Rajshekhar
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<![CDATA[The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World]]> 203633028 A timely and urgent argument for preserving the work that connects us in the age of automation

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.

Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Allison Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,â€� a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works.

Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.]]>
375 Allison J. Pugh 0691240825 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.82 The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World
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The Ten Percent Thief 61273436 A bold, bitingly satirical near-future mosaic novel about a city run along 'meritocratic' lines, the injustice it creates, and the revolution that will destroy it.

We are the future of the human race.

Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore. Here, technology is the key to survival, productivity is power, and even the self must be engineered, for the only noble goal in life: success.

Everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve. With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Ten Percent � the Virtual elite � and have the world at your feet. The less-fortunate struggle among the workaday Seventy Percent, or fall to the precarious Twenty Percent; and below that lies deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.

The system has no flaws, and cannot be questioned. Until a single daring theft sets events in motion that will change the city forever...

Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten-Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.]]>
368 Lavanya Lakshminarayan 1786188538 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.71 2020 The Ten Percent Thief
author: Lavanya Lakshminarayan
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
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<![CDATA[Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You]]> 26046333 *** The #1 New York Times Bestseller ***

Whether we’re 20, 40, 60 or older, many of us are still looking for an answer to that perennial question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?â€� In Designing Your Life, Silicon Valley design innovators Bill Burnett and Dave Evans use their expertise to help you work out what you want â€� and how to get it.

Their phenomenally successful Life Design course has been tried and tested by thousands of people, from students to mid-career professionals to retirees contemplating a whole new future. Now in book form for the first time, their simple method will teach you how to use basic design tools to create a life that will work for you.

Using real-life stories and proven techniques like reframing, prototyping and mind-mapping, you will learn how to build your way forwards, step-by-positive-step, to a life that’s better by a design of your own making.

Because a well-designed life means a life well-lived.]]>
240 Bill Burnett 1784740241 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.85 2016 Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You
author: Bill Burnett
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics]]> 11612989 321 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita 161039044X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.25 2011 The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet]]> 211147362 205 Yancey Strickler Sreechand 0 to-read 3.86 The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
author: Yancey Strickler
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.86
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<![CDATA[The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety]]> 551520 152 Alan W. Watts 0394704681 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.14 1951 The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
author: Alan W. Watts
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences]]> 7970507 Reveals the underlying story form of all great presentations that will not only create impact, but will move people to action Presentations are meant to inform, inspire, and persuade audiences. So why then do so many audiences leave feeling like they've wasted their time? All too often, presentations don't resonate with the audience and move them to transformative action.

Just as the author's first book helped presenters become visual communicators, Resonate helps you make a strong connection with your audience and lead them to purposeful action. The author's approach is simple: building a presentation today is a bit like writing a documentary. Using this approach, you'll convey your content with passion, persuasion, and impact.

Author has a proven track record, including having created the slides in Al Gore's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth
Focuses on content development methodologies that are not only fundamental but will move people to action Upends the usual paradigm by making the audience the hero and the presenter the mentor Shows how to use story techniques of conflict and resolution Presentations don't have to be boring ordeals. You can make them fun, exciting, and full of meaning. Leave your audiences energized and ready to take action with Resonate.]]>
272 Nancy Duarte 0470632011 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.11 2010 Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences
author: Nancy Duarte
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
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<![CDATA[15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership]]> 23275060 Jim Dethmer Sreechand 0 to-read 4.19 2015 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
author: Jim Dethmer
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech]]> 203162194 A radical paradigm shift in the way we think about AI and tech, taking hope and inspiration from the aspirational users of new technologies around the world.


When it comes to tech, the mainstream headlines are Algorithms control and oppress. AI will destroy democracy and our social fabric, and possibly even drive us to extinction. While legitimate concerns drive these fears, we need to equally account for the fact that tech affords young people something incredibly valuable—a rare space for self-actualization. In From Pessimism to Promise, award-winning author Payal Arora explains that, outside the West, where most of the world’s youth reside, there is a significant different outlook on in fact, there is a contagion of optimism toward all things digital. These users, especially those in marginalized contexts, are full of hope for new tech.

As AI disrupts sectors across industries, education, and beyond, who better to shine the light forward, Arora argues, than the Global South, the navigator of all manner of forced disruptions, leapfrogging obstructive systems, norms, and practices to rapidly reinvent itself? Drawing on field insights in diverse global contexts such as Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, Payal describes what drives Gen Z to embrace new technologies. From Pessimism to Promise discusses the shift to relationally-driven approaches to design; how to create “algorithms of aspirationâ€�; how to reimagine the digital space for sex, pleasure, and care; and, what we can learn from feminist digital activists and women’s collectives in the Global South on shared digital provenance and value, as well as indigenous approaches to sustainability, that challenges sacred ideas on degrowth, circular economy, and the doughnut economy. Arora also takes heart in the power in numbers, as the users from the majority world infuse algorithms with everyday aspirations, pushing for a new digital order.

Timely and urgent, From Pessimism to Promise makes a deeply compelling case that it is not naĂŻve to be optimistic about our digital future. On the contrary, it is our moral imperative to design with hope.]]>
198 Payal Arora 0262380137 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.50 From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech
author: Payal Arora
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Code Swaraj 38799668 214 Carl Malamud 189262804X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.50 Code Swaraj
author: Carl Malamud
name: Sreechand
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<![CDATA[Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV]]> 203020280 Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.

Nussbaum traces four paths of reality innovation—game shows, prank shows, soap operas, and clip shows—that united in the Survivor format, sparking a tumultuous Hollywood gold-rush. Along the way, we meet tricksters and innovators—from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; Bachelor mastermind Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray, the visionary behind The Real World—along with dozens of crew members and ordinary people whose lives became fodder for the reality revolution. We learn about the tools of the trade—like Candid Camera’s brilliant “revealâ€� and the notorious Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and the moral outrage that reality shows provoked. But Cue The Sun! also celebrates what made the genre so powerful: a jolt of authentic emotion.

Through broad-ranging reporting, Nussbaum examines seven tumultuous decades, exploring the celebreality boom, reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, and the dark truth behind The Apprentice. A shrewd observer who cares about television, she is the ideal voice for the first substantive cultural history of the genre that has, for better or worse, made America what it is today.]]>
464 Emily Nussbaum 0525508996 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.94 2024 Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV
author: Emily Nussbaum
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.94
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<![CDATA[The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing]]> 18507827
When brain surgeon Thomas Eapen decides to cut short a visit to his mother's home in India in 1979, he sets into motion a series of events that will forever haunt him and his wife, Kamala; their intellectually precocious son, Akhil; and their watchful daughter, Amina. Now, twenty years later, in the heat of a New Mexican summer, Thomas has begun having bizarre conversations with his dead relatives and it's up to Amina-a photographer in the midst of her own career crisis-to figure out what is really going on. But getting to the truth is far harder than it seems. From Thomas's unwillingness to talk, to Kamala's Born Again convictions, to run-ins with a hospital staff that seems to know much more than they let on, Amina finds herself at the center of a mystery so thick with disasters that to make any headway at all, she has to unravel the family's painful past.]]>
512 Mira Jacob 0812994787 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.98 2014 The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing
author: Mira Jacob
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations]]> 36700347 Good Talk delves into the difficult conversations about race, sex, love, and family that seem to be unavoidable these days.

Inspired by her popular BuzzFeed piece "37 Difficult Questions from My Mixed-Raced Son," here are Jacob's responses to her six-year-old, Zakir, who asks if the new president hates brown boys like him; uncomfortable relationship advice from her parents, who came to the United States from India one month into their arranged marriage; and the imaginary therapy sessions she has with celebrities from Bill Murray to Madonna. Jacob also investigates her own past, from her memories of being the only non-white fifth grader to win a Daughters of the American Revolution essay contest to how it felt to be a brown-skinned New Yorker on 9/11. As earnest and moving as they are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, these are the stories that have formed one American life.]]>
349 Mira Jacob 039958904X Sreechand 4 4.45 2019 Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
author: Mira Jacob
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Astrophysics for People in a Hurry]]> 32191710
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]>
223 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393609391 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.07 2017 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.07
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<![CDATA[Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples]]> 58165477 Are you an academic, author, or blogger or anyone else who wants to make writing a breeze?

The Zettelkasten method is the perfect way to harness the power of technology to remember what you read and boost creativity. Invented in the 16th century, and practiced to its fullest extent by a German sociologist who wrote seventy books and hundreds of articles, the Zettelkasten method is exploding in popularity. Writers of all types are discovering that digital tools make the method more powerful than ever, turning your digital life into an “external brain,â€� or “bicycle for the mind.â€�

In Digital Principles, Methods, & Examples, blogger and nonfiction author David Kadavy shares a first-principles approach on how to adapt the Zettelkasten method to simple digital tools of your choice.

How to structure your Zettelkasten? Kadavy borrows an element of the Getting Things Done framework to make sure nothing you want to read falls through the cracks.Naming convention pros/cons. Should you adopt the classic “Folgezettelâ€� technique, or do digital tools make it irrelevant for your workflow?Reading workflow. The exact steps to follow to turn what you read into detailed notes you can mix and match to produce writing.Staying comfortable. Build a workflow to maintain your Zettelkasten without being chained to your computer.Examples, examples, examples. See real examples of notes that illustrate concepts, so you can build a Zettelkasten that fits your workflow and tools.

Digital Principles, Methods, & Examples is short, to the point, with no fluff, so it won’t keep you from what you want â€� to build your Zettelkasten!]]>
79 David Kadavy Sreechand 0 to-read 3.72 Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples
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<![CDATA[Ethics in a Nutshell: The Philosopher's Approach to Morality in 100 Pages]]> 34702323
Ethics in a Nutshell covers the basics of any good introductory college ethics course: what academic philosophy is, why philosophical ethics is compatible with religious moral reasoning, problems with moral subjectivism (or the view that morality is a mere matter of personal opinion), the four dominant ethical theories of Kantianism, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics and Feminist Care Ethics, the role of our moral intuitions, how to construct and evaluate moral arguments (especially moral arguments by analogy), how careful moral reflection can produce a more coherent and logically defensible set of moral views, and how to arrive at an -All-Things-Considered- view that balances and takes into account all of the above.

All this in 100 quick pages plus complementary lecture videos on each chapter make Ethics in a Nutshell THE go-to companion for every busy ethics student.

Don't be confused, don't be frustrated -- read the book, watch the vids, and see how the philosopher's approach to morality can be both understandable useful after all.]]>
126 Matt Deaton 0989254240 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.16 Ethics in a Nutshell: The Philosopher's Approach to Morality in 100 Pages
author: Matt Deaton
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<![CDATA[Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy]]> 24526250 384 Mihir S. Sharma 8184006799 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.88 2015 Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy
author: Mihir S. Sharma
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography]]> 56645907 An unprecedented behind-the-scenes view into the life of Anthony Bourdain from the people who knew him bestÌę

When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. His impact was outsized and his legacy has only grown since his death.

Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain’s life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s longtime assistant and confidante, interviewed nearly a hundred of the people who shared Tony’s orbit—from members of his kitchen crews to his writing, publishing, and television partners, to his daughter and his closest friends—in order to piece together a remarkably full, vivid, and nuanced vision of Tony’s life and work.Ìę

From his childhood and teenage days, to his early years in New York, through the genesis of his game-changing memoirÌęKitchen ConfidentialÌęto his emergence as a writing and television personality, and in the words of friends and colleagues including Eric Ripert,ÌęJosĂ© AndrĂ©s, Nigella Lawson, and W. Kamau Bell, as well as family members including his brother and his late mother, we see the many sides of Tony—his motivations, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance.

Unparalleled in scope and deeply intimate in its execution, with a treasure trove of photos from Tony's life,ÌęBourdain: The Definitive Oral BiographyÌęis a testament to the life of a remarkable man in the words of the people who shared his world.]]>
442 Laurie Woolever 006290910X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.18 2021 Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
author: Laurie Woolever
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<![CDATA[The Personal Is Political: An Activist's Memoir]]> 212000447 'Aruna Roy reflects on [a] life of deep engagement, weaving the personal and [the] political. A great inspiration.' - Amartya Sen & Jean Dreze

'A brilliant and riveting feminist manifesta for social change.' - V (Formerly Eve Ensler)

'There are many who speak, but very few who act. This book is a testimonial to the fact that change comes only with action and reinforces the proverb "Actions are the best words spoken".' - Perumal Murugan

Magsaysay Award-winning social activist Aruna Roy's remarkably forthright memoir is the story of two parallel journeys---a fifty-year-long engagement with public action in India, and a personal narrative that traces how the author has striven to convert her ideological convictions into practice.

For long decades, Aruna Roy has lived with and worked for the benefit of marginalized communities in rural India, fighting for the right to survive in a hostile environment. Alongside accounts of the plight of the vulnerable and the transformative power of mass-based grassroot social movements, her recollections are marked with stories of resilient individuals and communities and their extraordinary resistance to oppression.

Roy recounts a powerful lesson learnt from her extraordinary that every issue, whether it is poverty, discrimination, inequality or corruption, has personal as well as political ramifications. It is only by connecting the personal and the political, Roy says, that each one of us can make a difference.]]>
362 Aruna Roy 9356996520 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.00 The Personal Is Political: An Activist's Memoir
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<![CDATA[Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve]]> 218310355
Courage and a pioneering spirit continued to be her hallmarks on her return to India. At a time when such field trips were difficult if not dangerous, she travelled to the Adivasi areas in Coorg, Western Maharashtra, Assam, Kerala and Bihar. Her research resulted in two seminal works, Kinship Organisation in India and Hindu Society.

In 1968, she won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her book of essays on the Mahabharata, Yuganta. Irawati’s belief that the Mahabharata was not just an epic, but a historical record, earned her some criticism from her peers at the time, but Yuganta remains a classic to this day.

As the daughter-in-law of the reformist and feminist thinker, Maharshi Dhondo Karve, adored wife of Dinkar Karve, and privileged daughter of two families—her own parents, Ganesh and Bhagirathi Karmarkar, and her adoptive family, R.P. Paranjpye and his wife, Saitai—Irawati’s personal life was as rich and colourful as her professional one.

In this biography like none other, writer Urmilla Deshpande, Irawati’s granddaughter, and academic researcher Thiago Pinto Barbosa, have created an intimate, captivating portrait of Irawati Karve, the anthropologist and philosopher, and Irawati, the woman, wife and mother.

As author and Joint Director, JLF, Namita Gokhale says, ‘Irawati Karve stood tall with the tallest of her generation. This biography is a beacon for those who want to understand the Indian way—an inspirational story of an iconic figure.’]]>
292 Urmilla Deshpande 9354479596 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.02 Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve
author: Urmilla Deshpande
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Urban Dynamics 1427815 Jay Wright Forrester 1883823390 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.71 1969 Urban Dynamics
author: Jay Wright Forrester
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1969
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<![CDATA[Get Together: How to build a community with your people]]> 49766350 "With no jargon and no nonsense, Bailey, Kevin and Kai lay out simple, practical steps for helping people come together in meaningful and powerful ways."
--Dave Isay, Founder of StoryCorps and winner of the TED Prize

Although communities feel magical, they don't come together by magic.

Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K-12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them.

In Get Together, Bailey, Kevin and Kai share true stories of everyday people who created thriving communities, both in-person and online. They untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together into clear steps, helping individuals and organizations navigate the intricacies of leading a community, including:
-- How to rally the first people
-- How to get people talking
-- How to attract new, authentic folks
-- How to develop leaders and expand globally

The People & Company team reminds us that we each hold the potential to spark a community. Get Together shows readers how if we join forces--as company and customers, artist and fans, organizer and advocates--we'll do more together than we ever could alone.

"I highly recommend Get Together for anyone who's looking to crack the code on building a community."
--Alisha Ramos, Founder of Girls' Night In


More advance praise for Get Together:
"Get Together tells the stories and reveals the insights of community building. Don't start one without reading this book."
--Robert Wang, Founder of Instant Pot

"As a leader of a social impact organization, I found Get Together to be helpful in thinking about how we could do better at building and cultivating the community around IDEO.org. I'd recommend Get Together to anyone organizing or participating in communities, personally or professionally."
--Jocelyn Wyatt, CEO of IDEO.org

"Get Together is a book about our most valuable resource--people--and how to get them together. Sounds simple; but then all great ideas are."
--Craig Pearce, Co-writer of Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, and The Great Gatsby

"In a time of growing social isolation and disconnection from what matters most, Bailey, Kevin and Kai offer a vision for how the world could be. Read it!"
--Casper ter Kuile, Co-author of the How We Gather report

"This book encapsulates what took me 20 years to learn at Surfrider in a 90 minute read. It provides clear guidance on how to methodically build a thriving community."
--Dr. Chad Nelsen, CEO of Surfrider Foundation

"Get Together is a must-read. As a community builder, I have an immense appreciation for the way Bailey, Kai and Kevin broke things down."
--Claire Wasserman, Founder of Ladies Get Paid

"As the producer of the first Star Wars Celebration, I had to work with my team and Lucasfilm to build an event that was worthy of the worldwide Star Wars community.]]>
193 Bailey Richardson 1953953328 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.78 Get Together: How to build a community with your people
author: Bailey Richardson
name: Sreechand
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Acts of God 203094595 Channelling the craft of Neil Gaiman, the humour of Douglas Adams and the genius of Terry Pratchett, Kanan Gill weaves a story that will surprise you. It refuses to take itself seriously, yet raises the most serious of questions - what does it mean to be human?

In a post-nuclear winter world, now free from borders, war, poverty and overpopulation, the smartest man on the planet is working on the most illegal thing imaginable. Once a celebrated scientist for whom the Authority had to come up with an entirely new 'Genius Category 3', Dr K has resigned as the head of the Scientific Institute and now spends his days in a hungover, crotchety haze, relegated to working on a trifling project. But unknown to everyone else, he is obsessively simulating universes, intervening in these simulations, and when they fail to achieve what he wants, terminating them.

But all of his delicate interferences to nudge these simulated realities in the right direction inevitably come up short against the most unlikely spanner in the works - bumbling private detective P. Manjunath.

In Kanan Gill's wildly entertaining and unexpectedly moving debut novel, a Danish policeman accidentally becomes a clothing-optional leader of a worldwide group of science haters, a sentient piece of wall struggles with the limits of its artistic expression and a lapel pin's habit of always giving truthful advice causes chaos. Blending vivid inventiveness and uproarious storytelling, with an intriguing interrogation of the very nature of existence, Acts of God marks the evolution of one of our finest comedic voices.]]>
435 Kanan Gill 9356996997 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.91 Acts of God
author: Kanan Gill
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.91
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Mother India: A Novel 214627952 FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE AWARD-WINNING LEILA

Mother India is the story of two young people living in contemporary Delhi. Plodding away to make a decent living despite a middling education, Mayank is employed in a right-wing content creator's dingy basement studio. Nisha, recently moved to the city from her small town in the hills, works as a salesgirl for expensive Japanese chocolate in an upscale mall.

When Mayank discovers Nisha beaming off her Instagram like a beacon, he is smitten, and the video clip he devises for his studio ends up having significant consequences for them both.

Sparkling and unexpected, Prayaag Akbar's new novel brilliantly captures what it means to be young and alive in today's India.

'Powerful' - Vivek Shanbhag

'Brilliant' - Avni Doshi]]>
144 Prayaag Akbar 9362138123 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.67 Mother India: A Novel
author: Prayaag Akbar
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The Return of Faraz Ali 58542844 "Stunning not only on account of the author's talent, of which there is clearly plenty, but also in its humanity." --New York Times Book Review (cover)

Sent back to his birthplace--Lahore's notorious red-light district--to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past.

Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore's walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl.

It should be a simple assignment to carry out in a marginalized community, but for the first time in his career, Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails him with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city's labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets--his family's and his own--that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence.

Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect, and at what price?]]>
352 Aamina Ahmad 0593330188 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.86 2022 The Return of Faraz Ali
author: Aamina Ahmad
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.86
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Talashnama: The Quest 213572196 Talashnama is the story of Riziya, an educated and headstrong woman with an anguished past.

Hounded by a devastating secret, Riziya elopes with her tutor, Suman Nath, a Hindu, although it is Tahirul - the local Imam torn between duty and desire - who is her true love. On the day she leaves, she allegedly writes anti-Islamic graffiti on the wall of the village mosque - an incident that both baffles and enrages the villagers. Ten years later, Suman Nath takes his own life, and Riziya must return to a Sadnahati fraught with disapproval and condemnation...

Ismail Darbesh's debut novel, Talashnama, is a thrilling literary tour de force, where love, religion, modernity and politics collide. A bestseller in the original Bangla and translated brilliantly by V. Ramaswamy, it is also an evocative inquiry into the uncertainties and challenges of being Muslim in today's India.]]>
609 Ismail Darbesh 9354899838 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.11 Talashnama: The Quest
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<![CDATA[The Dangerous Dozen: Hitmen of the Mumbai Underworld]]> 216661367 Munna Jhingada, Farid Tanasha, Baba Reddy� hitmen and executioners all. Each with haunting tales to tell.
Ìę
The executioner has no remorse. He is the man who strikes the fear of his boss in everybody’s heart. While he has no criminal empire of his own, his barbaric bio-sketch could fill several police case diaries. Those who live by the bullet die by the bullet â€� almost every last one of them. But in their short reign of terror, they leave a trail of devastation in their wake. In this no-holds-barred book, India’s No. 1 crime writer, S. Hussain Zaidi, backed by years of behind-the-scenes work, provides an insight into the lives of twelve of the most vicious and fearless hitmen of Mumbai, giving readers a first-hand insight into what fuels the men behind some of the bloodiest battles and showdowns in the city.
Ìę]]>
202 S. Hussain Zaidi 819727892X Sreechand 0 to-read 3.89 The Dangerous Dozen: Hitmen of the Mumbai Underworld
author: S. Hussain Zaidi
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<![CDATA[Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir]]> 200721265 From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one woman's peripatetic search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles.

Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoo's community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir—because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments. She takes us from her grandparents' sprawling home in Srinagar, where her boisterous aunties raced through the halls; to Saudi Arabia, where friendships were gained and lost behind the sandstone walls of a foreigners' compound. We witness her courtship with a nice Jewish boy, now her husband, and her efforts to replicate her mother's Rogan Josh recipe via Zoom. And we are with her as she settles into herÌęunlikely new homeland, Los Angeles, where she sets off on what is perhaps her most meaningful journey, that of becoming a writer.

Through these astonishingly poignant and often laugh-out-loud stories, Mattoo has given us an open-hearted, frank, revealing glimpse intoÌęa journey of almost constant motion, as well as a journey of self-discovery.]]>
304 Priyanka Mattoo 0593320387 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir
author: Priyanka Mattoo
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.88
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<![CDATA[Coffee Can Investing: The Low Risk Road to Stupendous Wealth]]> 38602142 288 Saurabh Mukherjea 067009045X Sreechand 0 to-read 3.97 Coffee Can Investing: The Low Risk Road to Stupendous Wealth
author: Saurabh Mukherjea
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.97
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<![CDATA[How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain]]> 200298038 Part Michael Lewis, part The Way Things Work: From the New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent, an extraordinary journey revealing the worldwide supply chain—exposing both the fascinating pathways of manufacturing and transportation that bring products to your doorstep, and the ruthless business logic that has left local communities at the mercy of a complex and fragile network for their basic necessities.

How does the wealthiest country on earth run out of protective gear in the middle of a public health catastrophe? How do its parents find themselves unable to locate crucially needed infant formula? How do its largest companies spend billions of dollars making cars that no one can drive for a lack of chips?

The last few years have radically highlighted the intricacy and fragility of the global supply chain. Enormous ships were stuck at sea, warehouses overflowed, and delivery trucks stalled. The result was a scarcity of everything from breakfast cereal to medical devices, from frivolous goods to lifesaving necessities. And while the scale of the pandemic shock was unprecedented, it underscored the troubling reality that the system was fundamentally at risk of descending into chaos all along. And it still is. Sabotaged by financial interests, loss of transparency in markets, and worsening working conditions for the people tasked with keeping the gears turning, our global supply chain has become perpetually on the brink of collapse.

In How the World Ran Out of Everything, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman reveals the fascinating innerworkings of our supply chain and the factors that have led to its constant, dangerous vulnerability. His reporting takes readers deep into the elaborate system, showcasing the triumphs and struggles of the human players who operate it—from factories in Asia and an almond grower in Northern California, to a group of striking railroad workers in Texas, to a truck driver who Goodman accompanies across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains. Through their stories, Goodman weaves a powerful argument for reforming a supply chain to become truly reliable and resilient, demanding a radical redrawing of the bargain between labor and shareholders, and deeper attention paid to how we get the things we need.

From one of the most respected economic journalists working today, How the World Ran Out of Everything is a fiercely smart, deeply informative look at how our supply chain operates, and why its reform is crucial—not only to avoid dysfunction in our day to day lives, but to protect the fate of our global fortunes.]]>
416 Peter S. Goodman 0063257920 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.08 How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
author: Peter S. Goodman
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average rating: 4.08
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<![CDATA[Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don't]]> 8562119 288 Jeffrey Pfeffer 0061789089 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.85 2010 Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don't
author: Jeffrey Pfeffer
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains]]> 62050269 Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughsâ€� in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow. In the last decade, capabilities of artificial intelligence that had long been the realm of science fiction have, for the first time, become our reality. AI is now able to produce original art, identify tumors in pictures, and even steer our cars. And yet, large gaps remain in what modern AI systems can achieve—indeed, human brains still easily perform intellectual feats that we can’t replicate in AI systems. How is it possible that AI can beat a grandmaster at chess but can’t effectively load a dishwasher? As AI entrepreneur Max Bennett compellingly argues, finding the answer requires diving into the billion-year history of how the human brain evolved; a history filled with countless half-starts, calamities, and clever innovations. Not only do our brains have a story to tell—the future of AI may depend on it. Now, inÌęA Brief History of Intelligence, Bennett bridges the gap between neuroscience and AI to tell the brain’s evolutionary story, revealing how understanding that story can help shape the next generation of AI breakthroughs. Deploying a fresh perspective and working with the support of many top minds in neuroscience, Bennett consolidates this immense history into an approachable new framework, identifying the “Five Breakthroughsâ€� that mark the brain’s most important evolutionary leaps forward. Each breakthrough brings new insight into the biggest mysteries of human intelligence. Containing fascinating corollaries to developments in AI, A Brief History of Intelligence shows where current AI systems have matched or surpassed our brains, as well as where AI systems still fall short. Simply put, until AI systems successfully replicate each part of our brain’s long journey, AI systems will fail to exhibit human-like intelligence. Endorsed and lauded by many of the top neuroscientists in the field today, Bennett’s work synthesizes the most relevant scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research into an easy-to-understand and riveting evolutionary story. With sweeping scope and stunning insights,ÌęA Brief History of IntelligenceÌę proves that understanding the arc of our brain’s history can unlock the tools for successfully navigating our technological future.Ìę]]> 432 Max Solomon Bennett Sreechand 0 to-read 4.44 A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
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<![CDATA[A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Places Books)]]> 57423838 A bold reassessment of smart cities that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers

Computational models of urbanism--smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration--promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. A City Is Not a Computer reveals how cities encompass myriad forms of local and indigenous intelligences and knowledge institutions, arguing that these resources are a vital supplement and corrective to increasingly prevalent algorithmic models.

Shannon Mattern begins by examining the ethical and ontological implications of urban technologies and computational models, discussing how they shape and in many cases profoundly limit our engagement with cities. She looks at the methods and underlying assumptions of data-driven urbanism, and demonstrates how the city-as-computer metaphor, which undergirds much of today's urban policy and design, reduces place-based knowledge to information processing. Mattern then imagines how we might sustain institutions and infrastructures that constitute more diverse, open, inclusive urban forms. She shows how the public library functions as a steward of urban intelligence, and describes the scales of upkeep needed to sustain a city's many moving parts, from spinning hard drives to bridge repairs.

Incorporating insights from urban studies, data science, and media and information studies, A City Is Not a Computer offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design.]]>
187 Shannon Mattern 0691208050 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.81 A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Places Books)
author: Shannon Mattern
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.81
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<![CDATA[What Happens When You Get What You Want?: Success and the Challenge of Choice]]> 25155004 94 Rick Eigenbrod 0990021939 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.10 2014 What Happens When You Get What You Want?: Success and the Challenge of Choice
author: Rick Eigenbrod
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship]]> 42976058
Ece Temelkuran heard reasonable people in Britain say it the night of the Brexit vote.

She heard reasonable people in America say it the night Trump’s election was soundtracked by chants of ‘Build that wall.â€�

She heard reasonable people in Turkey say it as Erdoğan rigged elections, rebuilt the economy around cronyism, and labelled his opposition as terrorists.

How to Lose a Country is an impassioned plea, a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don’t march fully-formed into government; they creep. Award winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early-warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world, in order to define a global pattern, and arm the reader with the tools to root it out.

Proposing alternative, global answers to the pressing â€� and too often paralysing â€� political questions of our time, Temelkuran explores the insidious idea of ‘real peopleâ€�, the infantilisation of language and debate, the way laughter can prove a false friend, and the dangers of underestimating one’s opponent. She weaves memoir, history and clear-sighted argument into an urgent and eloquent defence of democracy.

No longer can the reasonable comfort themselves with ‘it couldn’t happen here.â€� It is happening. And soon it may be too late.]]>
289 Ece Temelkuran 000829402X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.06 2019 How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
author: Ece Temelkuran
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.06
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Bad Science 4605017
Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window. But he's not here just to tell you what's wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample sizes, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You're about to feel a whole lot better.]]>
370 Ben Goldacre 000728487X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.13 2008 Bad Science
author: Ben Goldacre
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
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<![CDATA[How to be Well Read: A Guide to 500 Great Novels and a Handful of Literary Curiosities]]> 59350165 Aaron's Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written.

He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid ÂŁ20 for Black Beauty? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces.

Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate.]]>
576 John Sutherland 1529157293 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.79 2012 How to be Well Read: A Guide to 500 Great Novels and a Handful of Literary Curiosities
author: John Sutherland
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.79
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<![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]>
209 Amal El-Mohtar Sreechand 0 to-read 3.86 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
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<![CDATA[Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?]]> 6763725 81 Mark Fisher 1846943175 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.20 2009 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
author: Mark Fisher
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
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<![CDATA[Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life]]> 198493703
Too often, we don’t find out what others think because we don’t know how to ask the right questions in the right ways.Ìę Co-founder ofÌęTranscend and former Teach for America executive Jeff Wetzler wants to show you how to fix that.Ìę In Ask,Ìę he brings you a conversation guide based on a simple that learning how to ask other people what they truly think, know, and feeling is game-changing.Ìę Wetzler reveals Five Practices, each answering an essential The skills and messages of Ask could not be timelier.Ìę Whether the setting is in large corporation, a nonprofit, a school district, or a small business, people inside organizations need help learning to communicate and extract information in a more productive way.]]>
304 Jeff Wetzler 0306832690 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.82 Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life
author: Jeff Wetzler
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<![CDATA[Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy]]> 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 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.01 2023 Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
author: Henry Farrell
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<![CDATA[Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup]]> 37976541 The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors.

Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.]]>
339 John Carreyrou Sreechand 0 to-read 4.38 2018 Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
author: John Carreyrou
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
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Legend of Pradeep Mathew 13166688
* Winner of the $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature *
* A Publishers Weekly "First Fiction" Pick for Spring 2012 *

"A crazy ambidextrous delight. A drunk and totally unreliable narrator runs alongside the reader insisting him or her into the great fictional possibilities of cricket."--Michael Ondaatje

Aging sportswriter W.G. Karunasena's liver is shot. Years of drinking have seen to that. As his health fades, he embarks with his friend Ari on a madcap search for legendary cricket bowler Pradeep Mathew. En route they discover a mysterious six-fingered coach, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about their beloved sport and country. A prizewinner in Sri Lanka, and a sensation in India and Britain, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka is a nimble and original debut that blends cricket and the history of modern Sri Lanka into a vivid and comedic swirl.]]>
414 Shehan Karunatilaka 1555976115 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.96 2010 Legend of Pradeep Mathew
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Sreechand
average rating: 3.96
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<![CDATA[On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction]]> 53343 On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.]]> 321 William Zinsser 0060891548 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.23 1976 On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
author: William Zinsser
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1976
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H For Heritage: Mumbai 134155659 124 Fiona Fernandez 9356997926 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.00 H For Heritage: Mumbai
author: Fiona Fernandez
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.00
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<![CDATA[Glucose Revolution: The life-changing power of balancing your blood sugar]]> 59639788 Uma abordagem original e fascinante para entender como a glicose afeta os mais diversos aspectos da nossa saĂșde â€� do peso ao humor â€�, e como Ă© transformador manter seu nĂ­vel em equilĂ­brio.
Best-seller internacional da fundadora da popular conta do Instagram GlucoseGoddess.

Como principal fonte de energia, a glicose impacta de maneira surpreendente o nosso corpo. Se a concentração no sangue fica muito alta, ocorrem respostas das mais variadas: compulsĂ”es alimentares, espinhas, enxaqueca, nĂ©voa mental, oscilaçÔes de humor, ganho de peso, sonolĂȘncia e infertilidade. E, com o passar do tempo, esse desequilĂ­brio pode contribuir para o desenvolvimento de doenças como diabetes tipo 2, sĂ­ndrome do ovĂĄrio policĂ­stico, cĂąncer, demĂȘncia e cardiopatias.
Com base nas mais recentes pesquisas, em observaçÔes prĂĄticas e testes de alimentos especĂ­ficos â€� inclusive nosso açaĂ­ â€�, Jessie InchauspĂ© nos mostra quais opçÔes de cafĂ© da manhĂŁ podem causar compulsĂ”es, em que ordem devemos comer cada tipo de alimento, o que nĂŁo ingerir de estĂŽmago vazio, quais alimentos levam a mudanças de humor e como evitar aquele incĂŽmodo sono do meio da tarde. A revolução da glicose oferece estratĂ©gias simples e cientificamente comprovadas para achatar a curva de glicemia de forma rĂĄpida e sustentĂĄvel, em uma nova abordagem para melhorar nossa vida, quaisquer que sejam as preferĂȘncias alimentares.

“Uma revolução alimentar.â€� â€� The Daily Mail

“O melhor guia prĂĄtico para controlar a glicose e melhorar a saĂșde e a longevidade.â€� â€� David Sinclair, autor do best-seller Tempo de vida]]>
320 Jessie Inchauspé 178072523X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.40 2022 Glucose Revolution: The life-changing power of balancing your blood sugar
author: Jessie Inchauspé
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
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<![CDATA[The Illicit Happiness of Other People]]> 13707645 The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story.]]> 352 Manu Joseph 0393338622 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.10 2012 The Illicit Happiness of Other People
author: Manu Joseph
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
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<![CDATA[The Last Courtesan : Writing My Mother's Memoir]]> 177284128 192 Manish Gaekwad 9356993122 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.08 The Last Courtesan : Writing My Mother's Memoir
author: Manish Gaekwad
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.08
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The Wandering Earth 13554058
I’ve never seen the night, nor seen a star; I’ve seen neither spring, nor fall, nor winter. I was born at the end of the Reining Age, just as the Earth’s rotation was coming to a final halt.

The Sun is about to unleash a helium flash, threatening to swallow all terrestrial planets in the solar system. On Earth, the Unity Government has erected Earth Engines. With them it plans to propel our planet out of the solar system, setting it on a journey into outer space in search of a new sun. The Earth begins its centuries-long, wandering travels through outer space.

Just as we began our journey, my grandfather passed away, his burnt body ravaged by infection. In his final moments, he repeated over and over, “Oh, Earth, my wandering Earth...â€�

China Galaxy Science Fiction Award of Year 2000.]]>
440 Liu Cixin Sreechand 0 to-read 4.08 2000 The Wandering Earth
author: Liu Cixin
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]>
796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.36 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink]]> 151379978
'Some of the best environmental writing I have read' � Amitav Ghosh

'Brilliant and evocative' � Pradip Krishen

'Luminously written' � Paul Salopek

'A book for the ages' � Ed Kashi

AN ENVIRONMENTALIST’S JOURNEY THROUGH INDIA’S PRECIOUS YET VULNERABLE LANDSCAPES.

In the boundless Thar, deemed a ‘wastelandâ€� by the authorities, miners bulldoze sand dunes guarding life-sustaining water. The Gangetic dolphin, once a thriving apex predator, struggles for survival as its riverine habitat is fragmented by dams and roiled by incessant shipping. Deep in the mangrove forests of the Sunderban, tigers prey on desperate crab-catchers. Encroachments on the Mumbai coastline unleash cataclysmic floods. Along the eroding beaches of Kerala, fishers live in fear of the sea swallowing them whole. As the spectre of climate change compounds these natural and human-induced disasters, India’s most endangered landscapes are pushed to the precipice of destruction.

Arati Kumar-Rao journeys to these marginlands, listening intently to their inhabitants, paying close attention to each fissure, fold and ripple, as she documents the misguided decisions, wilfully ignored warnings and disregarded evidence that have brought us almost to a point of no return. But the land is still rich in ancient wisdom, and its cracks hold lessons that may yet aid us in undoing centuries of slow violence � so long as one is willing to attune their senses.

Combining enthralling nature writing and journalism with immersive art and photography, Marginlands is an urgent, vital work by a passionate chronicler of our environment.]]>
260 Arati Kumar-Rao 9395624442 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.52 Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink
author: Arati Kumar-Rao
name: Sreechand
average rating: 4.52
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<![CDATA[Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts]]> 63083005 Written is a transformative guide that anyone can use to overcome their blocks and build a successful writing habit.

Many people think that there's only one 'right' way to get the writing done - or that trying harder is the key. Award-winning writers, productivity coaches and co-founders of Prolifiko Bec Evans and Chris Smith know this isn't true. Having coached over 10,000 writers, they've learned that productivity is personal. Their unique, results-driven approach is designed to help you find a realistic and sustainable practice that will get you to the end of any writing project, no matter how stuck you feel.

Applying research from neuroscience and psychology, and based on the authors' own practice and findings, Written will show you how to manage your time effectively, how to visualise and set successful goals, how to recover from setbacks, and ultimately how to create writing habits that work for you. Along the way, you'll hear inspiring and relatable stories from other writers who have overcome their struggles to find success. Each chapter ends with practical coaching exercises that you can start implementing right now.

For anyone with a project they need to get written - whether a business book, thesis or work of fiction - this inspiring book offers practical strategies to beat the inner critic, find time, keep motivated and write.]]>
280 Bec Evans 178578904X Sreechand 0 to-read 4.10 Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts
author: Bec Evans
name: Sreechand
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<![CDATA[Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)]]> 196848520
Whether we like it or not, the AI revolution is coming to education. In Brave New Words , Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology will transform learning, offering a roadmap for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting (and sometimes intimidating) new world.

An insider in the world of education technology, Khan explains the ins and outs of these cutting-edge tools and how they will revolutionize the way we learn and teach. Rather than approaching the sea of change brought on by ChatGPT with white-knuckled fear, Khan wants parents and teachers to embrace AI and adapt to it (while acknowledging its imperfections and limitations), so that every student can complement the work they're already doing in profoundly new and creative ways, to personalize learning, adapt assessments, and support success in the classroom.

But Brave New Words is not just about technology—it's about what this technology means for our society, and the practical implications for administrators, guidance counselors, and hiring managers who can harness the power of AI in education and the workplace. Khan also delves into the ethical and social implications of AI and GPT, offering thoughtful insights into how we can use these tools to build a more accessible education system for students around the world.]]>
272 Salman Khan 0593656954 Sreechand 0 to-read 3.57 Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)
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The Colonial Constitution 198934895
While during the freedom movement, the Government of India Act 1935 had been reviled as a ‘charter of slaveryâ€�, now more than a third of the Constitution was directly borrowed from that hated law. While many members of the Constituent Assembly had personally experienced the brutality of preventive detention and the law against sedition, the Assembly didn’t outlaw either. While Gandhiji had talked about keeping sovereign power close to the people by vesting a large part of it in the gram panchayat, the Constitution gave Indians a powerful, remote Union government ‘perched on Mt Everestâ€� that towered over the people like an imperial lord. Though citizens had some important fundamental rights, the government could suspend these rights at will using its wide emergency powers, wider than even what the British had when they left India. What we got then was a colonial constitution that fundamentally did not trust its own people.

In this brilliantly argued and profound book, the scholar Arghya Sengupta shows us how we got here. Neither a critique nor a celebration, this is an origin story. It is a meditation on the nature of constitution making and of moments of great change. An instant classic, The Colonial Constitution is the perfect antidote to the gushing accounts of the Constitution that abound. In the end, this book raises an unsettling does India need a new constitution?]]>
201 Arghya SenGupta 9353451795 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.02 The Colonial Constitution
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<![CDATA[The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together]]> 53231851
McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.

But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own.

McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.]]>
415 Heather McGhee 0525509569 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.62 2021 The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
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Ambedkar's Preamble 50705423
In a radical shift from mainstream constitutional history, this book establishes Dr B.R. Ambedkar's irrefutable authorship of the preamble by uncovering the intellectual origins of its six most central concepts—justice, liberty, equality, fraternity, dignity, and nation.

Although Dr Ambedkar is universally regarded as the chief architect of the Constitution, the specifics of his role as chairman of the Drafting Committee are not widely discussed. Totally neglected is his almost single-handed authorship of the Constitution's Preamble, which is frequently and mistakenly attributed to B.N. Rau rather than to Ambedkar.

This book establishes how and why the Preamble to the Constitution of India is essentially an Ambedkarite preamble. It is clear that its central concepts have their provenance in Ambedkar's writings and speeches. Through six eponymous chapters, this book unfolds the story of the six constitutional concepts. In doing so, it spotlights fundamental facts about modern Indian history, as well as Ambedkar's revolutionary political thought, hitherto ignored in conventional accounts.]]>
256 Aakash Singh Rathore 0670093246 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.09 Ambedkar's Preamble
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The Maniac 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

BenjamĂ­n 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 Timesâ€� 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 Sreechand 0 to-read 4.33 2023 The Maniac
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
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average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
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