en-US Tue, 25 Aug 2020 06:35:14 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 25360188
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 176 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0679645985 P. R. 5 4.46 2015
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: P. R.
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/08/25
shelves:
review:
Excellent read giving a great perspective of the black male experience. A glimpse into a world and the thoughts I could never know.
]]> 34121119 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER � “A delightfully lighthearted caper ... [a] fast-moving, entertaining tale.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.

Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.

But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.]]> 290 John Grisham 0385543026 P. R. 4 3.69 2017
author: John Grisham
name: P. R.
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/19
date added: 2017/09/19
shelves:
review:
Great book all the way through until the end. I thought the ending needed some more work as it rang flat.
]]> 13533740 American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
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Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history.
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The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion.
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The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.

Advance praise for Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
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“Jon Meacham resolves the bundle of contradictions that was Thomas Jefferson by probing his love of progress and thirst for power. This is a thrilling and affecting portrait of our first philosopher-politician.”—Stacy Schiff
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“This terrific book allows us to see the political genius of Thomas Jefferson better than we have ever seen it before. In these endlessly fascinating pages, Jefferson emerges with such vitality that it seems as if he might still be alive today.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin


From the Hardcover edition.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review � The Washington Post � Entertainment Weekly � The Seattle Times � St. Louis Post-Dispatch

]]> 759 Jon Meacham 1400067669 P. R. 5 3.97 2012
author: Jon Meacham
name: P. R.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/19
date added: 2017/09/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 10813117 ROBINĚýCOOK--New York Times-best selling author and master of the medical thriller--returns with another crackling tale of unchecked greed, medical malfeasance, adn starling science.

PIA GRAZDANI is an exceptional yet aloof medical student working closely with Columbia University Medical Center's premier scientist on cutting-edge research that could revolutionize health care by creating replacement organs for critically ill patients. Thorough her work with the brilliant molecular geneticist Dr. Tobias Rothman, Pia knows she will be given the chance to fulfill her ambition to participate in medical discoveries that can help millions while bringing her a measure of personal peace that might once and for all push aside memories of her difficult and abusive childhood.But when tragedy strikes in the lab, Pia, with the help of infatuated classmate George Wilson,Ěýmust investigateĚýthe unforeseen calamity in the hospital's supposedly secure biosafety lab.

Meanwhile, two ex-Wall Street whiz kids think they have found another loadstone in the nation's multi-trillion dollar life insurance industry. They race to find ways to control actuarial data and securitize the policies of the aged and infirm to make another killing.

As Pia and George dig deeper into the events at the lab one question remains unanswered: is someone attempting to manipulate private insurance information to allow investors to benefit from the deaths of others?]]> 432 Robin Cook 0399157468 P. R. 3 3.55 2011
author: Robin Cook
name: P. R.
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2017/09/19
date added: 2017/09/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 13154933
Soon enough the house serves up a taste of its terrors, as Odd begins to unravel the darkest mystery of his curious career. What consequences await those who confront evil at its most profound? Odd only knows.]]> 464 Dean Koontz 0307990672 P. R. 3 3.94 2012
author: Dean Koontz
name: P. R.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/12/28
date added: 2013/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 5060378 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 P. R. 4 4.25 2006
author: Stieg Larsson
name: P. R.
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2013/03/07
shelves:
review:
This book was slow going at first but after about 50 pages or so I was sucked in and couldn't put it down. The movie didn't do it justice as Larsson has a great way of adding a lot of detail without slowing down the story.
]]> 16054830
From the former vice president and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes An Inconvenient Truth for everything—a frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come.
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Ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore surveys our planet’s beclouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and ultimately hopeful forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends . In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our
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� Ever-increasing economic globalization has led to the emergence of what he labels “Earth Inc.”—an integrated holistic entity with a new and different relationship to capital, labor, consumer markets, and national governments than in the past.
� The worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions have led to the emergence of “the Global Mind,� which links the thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases.
� The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting more profoundly than at any time in the last five hundred years—from a U.S.-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets.
� A deeply flawed economic compass is leading us to unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet’s strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species.
� Genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions are radically transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture, and molecular science—and are putting control of evolution in human hands.
� There has been a radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth’s ecosystems, along with the beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide.
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From his earliest days in public life, Al Gore has been warning us of the promise and peril of emergent truths—no matter how “inconvenient� they may seem to be. As absorbing as it is visionary, The Future is a map of the world to come, from a man who has looked ahead before and been proven all too right.

Praise for The Future
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“Magisterial . . . The passion is unmistakable. So is the knowledge. Practically every page offers an illumination.”—Bloomberg
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“In The Future . . . Gore takes on a subject whose scale matches that of his achievements and ambition.”� The New York Times Book Review
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“Historically grounded . . . Gore’s strengths lie in his passion for the subject and in his ability to take the long view by putting current events and trends in historical context.”� Publishers Weekly
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“Provocative, smart, densely argued . . . a tour de force of Big Picture thinking.”� Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“A luminously intelligent analysis that is packed with arresting ideas and facts.”� The Guardian]]> 592 Al Gore 0812992946 P. R. 5
I recommend this book to anybody that wants a realistic glimpse into the future.]]> 3.79 2013
author: Al Gore
name: P. R.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/02/28
date added: 2013/03/07
shelves:
review:
This was the most eye-opening book I have read in a long time. Mr. Gore analyzes 6 technology areas and really gets readers thinking past the technology. For instance, gene splicing and manipulation. He shows us where we are, what can be done with current technology, and what will be available in the future. Then he asks some questions that really get you thinking. Is manufacturing a person using this technology ethical? What if we create a new set of genes that mutates into something really bad a few generations down the road?

I recommend this book to anybody that wants a realistic glimpse into the future.
]]> 7869 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Who is Jason Bourne? Is he an assassin, a terrorist, a thief? Why has he got four million dollars in a Swiss bank account? Why has someone tried to murder him?...

Jason Bourne does not know the answer to any of these questions. Suffering from amnesia, he does not even know that he is Jason Bourne. What manner of man is he? What are his secrets? Who has he killed?]]> 566 Robert Ludlum 0752864327 P. R. 5 4.06 1980
author: Robert Ludlum
name: P. R.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 1984/03/01
date added: 2013/01/31
shelves:
review:
This was actually the book that got me back into reading. The action is non-stop, the plot takes twists and turns all over the place and Ludlum is a master when it comes to the spy game.
]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 P. R. 5 4.17 2005
author: Stieg Larsson
name: P. R.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2012/05/01
date added: 2013/01/31
shelves:
review:
It took me a little while to get use to the Swedish names but once I got past that this book just sucked me in. I wasn't too fond of one of the scenes (if you've read it or saw the movie you know what I'm talking about) but the story line was solid and you really don't know "who did it" until the very end. I like that.
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