Ryan's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 21 Sep 2024 01:53:55 -0700 60 Ryan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Debt: The First 5,000 Years 23814811 Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition : David Graeber’s “fresh .�.�. fascinating .�.�. thought-provoking .�.�. and exceedingly timely� (Financial Times) history of debt
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Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,� “sin,� and “redemption�) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.]]>
542 David Graeber 1612194206 Ryan 0 4.23 2011 Debt: The First 5,000 Years
author: David Graeber
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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The World of Yesterday 629429 The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled “Three Lives,� the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.

Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English.

“The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.� � Clive James

“A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942.� � The Guardian

“It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.� � The New Republic]]>
455 Stefan Zweig 0803252242 Ryan 0 currently-reading 4.49 1942 The World of Yesterday
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1942
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<![CDATA[Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power]]> 28048 Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next.

Originally published in 2004, now with a new foreword and afterword, Solnit’s influential book shines a light into the darkness of our time in an unforgettable new edition.]]>
192 Rebecca Solnit 1841956600 Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 2004 Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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Asking for Trouble 21138078 456 George King Ryan 0 5.00 2013 Asking for Trouble
author: George King
name: Ryan
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7)]]> 11227306
Roland's band of pilgrims remains united, though scattered. Susannah-Mia has been carried off to New York to give birth, Terrified of what may happen, Jake, Father Callahan and Oy follow.

Roland and Eddie are in Maine, looking for the site which will lead them to Susannah. As he finally closes in on the tower, Roland's every step is shadowed by a terrible and sinister creation. And finally, he realises, he may have to walk the last dark strait alone...

You've come this far, Come a little farther, Come all the way, The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.]]>
740 Stephen King 1529399262 Ryan 3 4.44 2004 The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7)
author: Stephen King
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/12/28
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<![CDATA[The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]>
518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Ryan 0 4.15 2014 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
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The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]>
502 Richard Powers 039335668X Ryan 5 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet]]> 23216795
If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future--why not our planet?

In Climate Shock , Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance--as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale.

Demonstrating that climate change can and should be dealt with--and what could happen if we don't do so-- Climate Shock tackles the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.]]>
264 Gernot Wagner 0691159475 Ryan 0 to-read 3.53 2015 Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet
author: Gernot Wagner
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions]]> 35067137 As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future

Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future.

Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,� from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits.

Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.

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330 Peter Brannen Ryan 0 to-read 4.41 2017 The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
author: Peter Brannen
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.41
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<![CDATA[Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid]]> 55716079 When rolling blackouts come to the electric grid, they will be old news to the grid insiders.

Only the electricity customers will be surprised.

Grid insiders know how fragile the grid is becoming. Unfortunately, they have no incentive to solve the problems because near-misses increase their profits.

Meredith Angwin describes how closed meetings, arcane auction rules, and five-minute planning horizons will topple the reliability of our electric grid. Shorting the Grid shines light on our vulnerable grid. It also suggests actions that can support the grid that supports all of us.]]>
442 Meredith Angwin 0989119092 Ryan 0 to-read 3.94 Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
author: Meredith Angwin
name: Ryan
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<![CDATA[Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism]]> 62919402
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.� He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.� But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.]]>
426 Jeffrey Toobin 1668013576 Ryan 0 to-read 4.12 2023 Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
author: Jeffrey Toobin
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average rating: 4.12
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<![CDATA[Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making]]> 2045737
Today’s superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. Nationalist critics have argued that they have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen. They have globalized more rapidly than any other group—they control globalization—but they have been accused of feeding the growing economic and social inequity that divides the world. What happens inside closed-door meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates beyond national laws?

Drawn from exclusive interviews and extensive original reporting, Superclass answers all of these questions as it draws back the curtain on a privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth examination of the connections between the global communities of leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we live. "Mr. Rothkopf's book argues that on many of the most critical issues of our time, the influence of all nation-states is waning, the system for addressing global issues among nation-states is more ineffective than ever, and therefore a power void is being created. This void is often being filled by a small group of players�'the superclass'—a new global elite, who are much better suited to operating on the global stage and influencing global outcomes than the vast majority of national political leaders." � Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times "Mr. Rothkopf's book argues that on many of the most critical issues of our time, the influence of all nation-states is waning, the system for addressing global issues among nation-states is more ineffective than ever, and therefore a power void is being created. This void is often being filled by a small group of players�'the superclass'—a new global elite, who are much better suited to operating on the global stage and influencing global outcomes than the vast majority of national political lead...]]>
400 David Rothkopf 0374272107 Ryan 0 to-read 3.57 2008 Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
author: David Rothkopf
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2008
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<![CDATA[Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming]]> 25614450 How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power.

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess?

In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.

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496 Andreas Malm 1784781290 Ryan 0 to-read 4.32 2015 Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming
author: Andreas Malm
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average rating: 4.32
book published: 2015
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Lord of All Things 18266066 Lord of All Things is also a story about love against all odds.

They are just children when they meet for the first time: Charlotte, daughter of the French ambassador, and Hiroshi, a laundress’s son. One day, Hiroshi declares that he has an idea that will change the world. An unprecedented idea of how to sweep away all differences between rich and poor.

When Hiroshi runs into Charlotte several years later, he is trying to build a brighter future through robotics. Determined to win Charlotte’s love, he resurrects his childhood dream, convinced that he can eradicate world poverty by pushing the limits of technology beyond imagination. But as Hiroshi circles ever closer to realizing his vision, he discovers that his utopian dream may contain the seeds of a nightmare—one that could obliterate life as we know it.

Crisscrossing the globe from Tokyo to the hallowed halls of MIT to desolate Arctic islands and Buenos Aires and beyond - far beyond - Lord of All Things explores not only the dizzying potential of technology but also its formidable dangers.]]>
650 Andreas Eschbach 1477849815 Ryan 0 to-read 3.96 2011 Lord of All Things
author: Andreas Eschbach
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.96
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<![CDATA[The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power]]> 169354 The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth and power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations.

The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm.]]>
928 Daniel Yergin 0671799320 Ryan 0 to-read 4.43 1991 The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
author: Daniel Yergin
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1991
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<![CDATA[The Age of Revolution, 1789�1848]]> 550840 356 Eric J. Hobsbawm 0679772537 Ryan 0 currently-reading 4.23 1962 The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848
author: Eric J. Hobsbawm
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1962
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The Age of Empire, 1875�1914 774198 —from the back cover]]> 405 Eric J. Hobsbawm 0679721754 Ryan 0 to-read 4.26 1987 The Age of Empire, 1875–1914
author: Eric J. Hobsbawm
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1987
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<![CDATA[Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice]]> 22609522
Bill Browder’s journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business School to the dog-eat-dog world of hedge fund investing in the 1990s. It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union’s collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia.

In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder’s offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund’s companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder’s attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear.

Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei’s name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world.]]>
380 Bill Browder 147675571X Ryan 0 4.39 2015 Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
author: Bill Browder
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average rating: 4.39
book published: 2015
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Seveneves 22816087
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.]]>
872 Neal Stephenson Ryan 5 4.01 2015 Seveneves
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]>
401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Ryan 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6)]]> 20062783 434 Stephen King 1529399254 Ryan 4 4.21 2004 Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6)
author: Stephen King
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5)]]> 20570622
Torn between protecting the innocent community and his urgent quest, Roland faces his most deadly perils as he journey through the Mid-World towards the Dark Tower.]]>
765 Stephen King 1848941137 Ryan 3 4.41 2003 Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5)
author: Stephen King
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The Superpower Transformation: Building Australia's Zero-Carbon Future]]> 62876007 Superpower, renowned economist Ross Garnaut showed that Australia � rich in resources for renewable energy and for capturing carbon in the landscape � could become an economic superpower of the post-carbon world. Now, in The Superpower Transformation, he turns that idea into a practical plan to reshape our nation.

Garnaut outlines new evidence that stronger and earlier action on climate change would be good for jobs and incomes, including in the old gas and coal communities and in rural and regional Australia. He looks at the challenges for the next federal how Australia can meet the objectives set at the Paris and Glasgow climate conferences � and the growing costs of not doing so. He shows that our national decisions matter greatly for the world.

With contributions from Mike Sandiford, Ligang Song, Frank Jotzo, Isabelle Grant, Susannah Powell and Malte Meinhausen, The Superpower Transformation covers electricity, hydrogen, steel, exports, carbon capture in the landscape and more. It reveals the rich endowments of five resources that give us the most to gain “The new opportunities are much larger than the old.�

Over the past nine years, Australia has consistently acted against its national interest. This compelling collection of essays shows how to change that, so that the nation becomes a confident leader of progress towards zero net emissions.

â€Our nation’s most prophetic economistâ€� —Ross Gittins]]>
386 Ross Garnaut 1743822529 Ryan 0 currently-reading 4.00 The Superpower Transformation: Building Australia's Zero-Carbon Future
author: Ross Garnaut
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<![CDATA[The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes]]> 49644992 A page-turning biography of world-changing economist John Maynard Keynes and the big ideas that outlived him.

In the spring of 1934, Virginia Woolf sketched an affectionate biographical portrait of her great friend John Maynard Keynes. Writing a full two years before Keynes would revolutionize the economics world with the publication of The General Theory, Woolf nevertheless found herself unable to condense her friend's already-extraordinary life into anything less than twenty-five themes, which she jotted down at the opening of her homage: "Politics. Art. Dancing. Letters. Economics. Youth. The Future. Glands. Genealogies. Atlantis. Mortality. Religion. Cambridge. Eton. The Drama. Society. Truth. Pigs. Sussex. The History of England. America. Optimism. Stammer. Old Books. Hume."

Keynes was not only an economist, as he is remembered today, but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the twentieth century, a man who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. A moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes immersed himself in a creative milieu filled with ballerinas and literary icons as he developed his own innovative and at times radical thought, reinventing Enlightenment liberalism for the harrowing crises of his day--which included two world wars and an economic collapse that challenged the legitimacy of democratic government itself. The Price of Peace follows Keynes from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in London's riotous Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, through stock market crashes and currency crises to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire and wartime ballet openings at Covent Garden.

In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of history's most important minds. John Maynard Keynes's vibrant, deeply human vision of democracy, art, and the good life has been obscured by technical debates, but in The Price of Peace, Carter revives a forgotten set of ideas with the power to reinvent national government and reframe the principles of international diplomacy in our own time.]]>
656 Zachary D. Carter 0525509038 Ryan 5 4.40 2020 The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
author: Zachary D. Carter
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy]]> 45731395 A New York Times Bestseller
The leading thinker and most visible public advocate of modern monetary theory -- the freshest and most important idea about economics in decades -- delivers a radically different, bold, new understanding for how to build a just and prosperous society.


Stephanie Kelton's brilliant exploration of modern monetary theory (MMT) dramatically changes our understanding of how we can best deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure. Any ambitious proposal, however, inevitably runs into the buzz saw of how to find the money to pay for it, rooted in myths about deficits that are hobbling us as a country.


Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis.


MMT, as Kelton shows, shifts the terrain from narrow budgetary questions to one of broader economic and social benefits. With its important new ways of understanding money, taxes, and the critical role of deficit spending, MMT redefines how to responsibly use our resources so that we can maximize our potential as a society. MMT gives us the power to imagine a new politics and a new economy and move from a narrative of scarcity to one of opportunity.]]>
327 Stephanie Kelton 1541736184 Ryan 5 4.02 2020 The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy
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America: The Farewell Tour 36373497
America, says Pulitzer Prize­–winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet.

Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. In his “forceful and direct� ( Publishers Weekly ) The Farewell Tour , Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will grow and ravage the country. “With a trademark blend of…sharply observed detail, Hedges writes a requiem for the American dream� ( Kirkus Reviews ) and seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.]]>
400 Chris Hedges 150115267X Ryan 3 4.22 2018 America: The Farewell Tour
author: Chris Hedges
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average rating: 4.22
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<![CDATA[Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us]]> 56898187 A look at what power is, who gets it, and what happens when they do, based on over 500 interviews with those who (temporarily, at least) have had the upper hand—from the creator of the Power Corrupts podcast and Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas.

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are tyrants made or born? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies?

To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders—from the noblest to the dirtiest—including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators. Some of the fascinating insights include: how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta� (second in command) may actually be the optimal place for health and well-being.

Corruptible also features a wealth of counterintuitive examples from history and social science: you’ll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.
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320 Brian Klaas 1982154098 Ryan 4 4.17 2021 Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
author: Brian Klaas
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<![CDATA[The Big Teal (In the National Interest)]]> 61349860 96 Simon Holmes Ă  Court 1922633569 Ryan 5 4.13 The Big Teal (In the National Interest)
author: Simon Holmes Ă  Court
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<![CDATA[Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America]]> 22104278 This book describes how.

Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han argue that the legacy of Obama for America extends beyond big data and micro-targeting; it also reinvigorated and expanded traditional models of field campaigning. Groundbreakers makes the case that the Obama campaign altered traditional ground games by adopting the principles and practices of community organizing. Drawing on in-depth interviews with OFA field staff and volunteers, this book also argues that a key achievement of the OFA's field organizing was its transformative effect on those who were a part of it. Obama the candidate might have inspired volunteers to join the campaign, but it was the fulfilling relationships that volunteers had with other people--and their deep belief that their work mattered for the work of democracy--that kept them active.

Groundbreakers documents how the Obama campaign has inspired a new way of running field campaigns, with lessons for national and international political and civic movements.]]>
272 Elizabeth McKenna 0199394601 Ryan 0 to-read 4.08 2014 Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America
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<![CDATA[The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World]]> 40921633
When The Silk Roads was published in 2015, it became an instant classic. A major reassessment of world history, it compelled us to look at the past from a different perspective. The New Silk Roads brings this story up to date, addressing the present and future of a world that is changing dramatically.

Following the Silk Roads eastwards, from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the Western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads since 2015, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.

With brilliant insight, Peter Frankopan takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today, assessing the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power - all too often absent from headlines in the West. This important - and ultimately hopeful - book asks us to reassess who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihood depend.]]>
313 Peter Frankopan 1526607425 Ryan 0 to-read 3.56 2018 The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World
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<![CDATA[Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith]]> 10847
A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.]]>
400 Jon Krakauer 0330419129 Ryan 0 4.01 2003 Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
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Into the Wild 1845 Librarian's Note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

In April, 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, a party of moose hunters found his decomposed body. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw away the maps. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.]]>
207 Jon Krakauer 0385486804 Ryan 0 4.01 1996 Into the Wild
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Fight Club 36236124 Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.]]> 224 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355942 Ryan 0 4.18 1996 Fight Club
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<![CDATA[Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space]]> 61663 384 Carl Sagan 0345376595 Ryan 0 4.33 1994 Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
author: Carl Sagan
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average rating: 4.33
book published: 1994
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<![CDATA[The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]]> 17349
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.]]>
459 Carl Sagan 0345409469 Ryan 0 4.28 1995 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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Siddartha 30141085 131 Hermann Hesse Ryan 0 4.13 1922 Siddartha
author: Hermann Hesse
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average rating: 4.13
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Meditations 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 Ryan 0 4.29 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
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<![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Ryan 0 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
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average rating: 4.12
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The Fall 11991
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth. In a eulogy to Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described the novel as "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books.]]>
147 Albert Camus 0679720227 Ryan 0 4.07 1956 The Fall
author: Albert Camus
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The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Ryan 0 4.04 1942 The Stranger
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<![CDATA[The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation]]> 853648 The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest. In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.

Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…]]>
457 Drew Westen 1586484257 Ryan 0 4.01 2007 The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
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<![CDATA[Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think]]> 19134 ]]> 471 George Lakoff 0226467716 Ryan 0 4.00 1996 Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think
author: George Lakoff
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<![CDATA[The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
Ěý
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]>
419 Jonathan Haidt Ryan 0 4.18 2012 The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
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<![CDATA[Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow]]> 31138556 Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo DeusĚýexplores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This isĚýHomo Deus.

With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.

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450 Yuval Noah Harari Ryan 0 4.19 2015 Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
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<![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Ryan 5 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
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average rating: 4.39
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<![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Ryan 5 4.07 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
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average rating: 4.07
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Men Without Women 108218 “Hills Like White Elephants� and “Fifty Grand,� which a Cosmopolitan editor praised as “one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands.� Read by an Earphones Award–winning narrator.

Originally published in October 1927, the second short-story collection published by Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway contains the following fourteen stories:
The Undefeated, In Another Country, Hills Like White Elephants, The Killers, Che Ti Dice La Patria?, Fifty Grand, A Simple Enquiry, Ten Indians, A Canary for One, An Alpine Idyll, A Pursuit Race, Today is Friday, Banal Story, Now I Lay Me. Themes and subject matter range from bullfighting, boxing, and prizefighting to divorce, infidelity, and death. Critics at the time praised Hemingway’s concise language and powerful prose.

Content Warning: As a part of the public domain, Men Without Women is a literary work that reflects the time in which it was published—both its good and its ill. The original text of Men Without Women contains slurs and depictions that represent prejudiced and harmful beliefs regarding race, ethnicity, and religion. To erase or bury this representation of inequity and prejudice would be akin to pretending it never existed, a denial that only perpetuates and extends the original harm done. Thus, in the interest of preserving and documenting both the faults and highlights of literary history—an instrumental, crucial function of works entering the public domain—this text is unedited and uncensored in this audiobook recording. Please proceed with discretion.]]>
153 Ernest Hemingway Ryan 0 to-read 3.62 1927 Men Without Women
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<![CDATA[Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)]]> 15839976 "I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]>
382 Pierce Brown 0345539788 Ryan 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)
author: Pierce Brown
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Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]>
476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Ryan 0 to-read 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
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Solaris 95558
When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts.]]>
204 Stanisław Lem Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 1961 Solaris
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Axiom's End (Noumena, #1) 51171377
It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.]]>
384 Lindsay Ellis 1250256739 Ryan 0 to-read 3.68 2020 Axiom's End (Noumena, #1)
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A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]>
720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Ryan 0 to-read 4.27 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
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average rating: 4.27
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The Echo Maker 19794
Set against the Platte River’s massive spring migrations � one of the greatest spectacles in nature � The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation.]]>
451 Richard Powers 0374146357 Ryan 0 to-read 3.42 2006 The Echo Maker
author: Richard Powers
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Bewilderment 56404444 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain�

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?]]>
278 Richard Powers 0393881148 Ryan 0 to-read 3.87 2021 Bewilderment
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<![CDATA[The Invention of the Jewish People]]> 6476509
Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.

After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.]]>
332 Shlomo Sand 1844674223 Ryan 0 to-read 4.11 2008 The Invention of the Jewish People
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<![CDATA[Whatever Happened to Tradition?: History, Belonging and the Future of the West]]> 55623263
In this wide-ranging book, we see how tradition can be both beautiful and useful, from the deserts of Australia to the court of nineteenth-century Japan. Some of the concepts defended here are highly controversial in the modern West: authority, nostalgia, rejection of self and the hunt for spiritual transcendence. We'll even meet a tribe who dress up their dead relatives and invite them to tea.

Stanley illustrates how apparently eccentric yet universal principles can nurture the individual from birth to death, plugging them into the wider community, and creating a bond between generations. He also demonstrates that tradition, far from being pretentious or rigid, survives through clever adaptation, that it can be surprisingly egalitarian.

The good news, he argues, is that it can also be rebuilt. It's been done before. The process is fraught with danger, but the ultimate prize of rediscovering tradition is self-knowledge and freedom.]]>
272 Tim Stanley 1472974123 Ryan 0 to-read 3.75 Whatever Happened to Tradition?: History, Belonging and the Future of the West
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<![CDATA[Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail]]> 52962238
A few years ago, Ray Dalio noticed a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before. They included huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political, and values disparities in more than 100 years; and the rising of a world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (US) and the existing world order. The last time that this confluence occurred was between 1930 and 1945. This realization sent Dalio on a search for the repeating patterns and cause/effect relationships underlying all major changes in wealth and power over the last 500 years.

In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings readers along for his study of the major empires—including the Dutch, the British, and the American—putting into perspective the “Big Cycle� that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. He reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.]]>
576 Ray Dalio 1982160276 Ryan 0 to-read 4.26 2021 Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
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The Age of Capital, 1848�1875 308059 354 Eric J. Hobsbawm 0679772545 Ryan 0 to-read 4.26 1975 The Age of Capital, 1848–1875
author: Eric J. Hobsbawm
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average rating: 4.26
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<![CDATA[The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991]]> 308060 627 Eric J. Hobsbawm 0679730052 Ryan 0 to-read 4.30 1994 The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991
author: Eric J. Hobsbawm
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average rating: 4.30
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Socialism: Past and Future 425648 384 Michael Harrington 0451628543 Ryan 0 to-read 3.84 1989 Socialism: Past and Future
author: Michael Harrington
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average rating: 3.84
book published: 1989
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<![CDATA[Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard]]> 60018587 "The rare book that has the potential to make you smarter--and everyone around you wiser." --Adam Grant

Two-time world champion debater and former coach of the Harvard debate team, Bo Seo tells the inspiring story of his life in competitive debating and reveals the timeless secrets of effective communication and persuasion

When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in fifth grade, something happened to change his life: he discovered competitive debate. Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. And he's not the only one. Far from it: presidents, Supreme Court justices, and CEOs are all disproportionally debaters. This is hardly a coincidence. By tracing his own journey from immigrant kid to world champion, Seo shows how the skills of debating--information gathering, truth finding, lucidity, organization, and persuasion--are often the cornerstone of successful careers and happy lives.

Drawing insights from its strategies, structure, and history, Seo teaches readers the skills of competitive debate, and in doing so shows how they can improve their communication with friends, family, and colleagues alike. He takes readers on a thrilling intellectual adventure into the eccentric and brilliant subculture of competitive debate, touching on everything from the radical politics of Malcom X to Artificial Intelligence. Seo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, far from being a source of conflict, good-faith debate can enrich our daily lives. Indeed, these good arguments are essential to a flourishing democracy, and are more important than ever at time when bad faith is all around, and our democracy seems so imperiled.]]>
352 Bo Seo 0593299515 Ryan 0 to-read 3.63 Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard
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<![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era]]> 58986869
The epochal shift toward neoliberalism--a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces--that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word "neoliberal" is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world.

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

An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.]]>
432 Gary Gerstle 0197519644 Ryan 0 to-read 4.18 The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
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<![CDATA[The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939�1950]]> 32025425 How competing visions of world order in the 1940s gave rise to the modern concept of globalism

During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term "globalization," they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a "globalist" ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the development of globalism as a modern political concept.

Shedding critical light on this neglected chapter in the history of political thought, Or Rosenboim describes how a transnational network of globalist thinkers emerged from the traumas of war and expatriation in the 1940s and how their ideas drew widely from political philosophy, geopolitics, economics, imperial thought, constitutional law, theology, and philosophy of science. She presents compelling portraits of Raymond Aron, Owen Lattimore, Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Curtis, Richard McKeon, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. G. Wells, and others. Rosenboim shows how the globalist debate they embarked on sought to balance the tensions between a growing recognition of pluralism on the one hand and an appreciation of the unity of humankind on the other.

An engaging look at the ideas that have shaped today's world, The Emergence of Globalism is a major work of intellectual history that is certain to fundamentally transform our understanding of the globalist ideal and its origins.]]>
352 Or Rosenboim 0691168725 Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950
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<![CDATA[The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property]]> 28602959
As Rafe Blaufarb demonstrates in this ambitious work, the French Revolution remade the system of property-holding that had existed in France before 1789. The revolutionary changes aimed at two fundamental goals: the removal of formal public power from the sphere of property and the excision of property from the realm of sovereignty. The revolutionaries accomplished these two aims by abolishing privately-owned forms of power, such as jurisdictional lordship and venal public office, and by dismantling the Crown domain, thus making the state purely sovereign. This brought about a Great Demarcation: a radical distinction between property and power from which flowed the critical distinctions between the political and the social, state and society, sovereignty and ownership, the public and private. It destroyed the conceptual basis of the Old Regime, laid the foundation of France's new constitutional order, and crystallized modern ways of thinking about polities and societies.

By tracing how the French Revolution created a new legal and institutional reality, The Great Demarcation shows how the revolutionary transformation of Old Regime property helped inaugurate political modernity
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304 Rafe Blaufarb 0199778795 Ryan 0 to-read 3.75 The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property
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<![CDATA[A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca]]> 2016127
They journeyed for almost ten years in search of the Pacific Ocean that would guide them home, and they were forever changed by their experience. The men lived with a variety of nomadic Indians and learned several indigenous languages. They saw lands, peoples, plants, and animals that no outsider had ever before seen. In this enthralling tale of four castaways wandering in an unknown land, Andrés Reséndez brings to life the vast, dynamic world of North America just a few years before European settlers would transform it forever.]]>
336 Andrés Reséndez 0465068405 Ryan 0 to-read 4.09 2007 A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
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Empire of the Summer Moon 7648269 In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.

S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun.

The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being.

Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend.

S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told.

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371 S.C. Gwynne 1416591052 Ryan 0 to-read 4.22 2010 Empire of the Summer Moon
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<![CDATA[Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]]> 6572270
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

From Booklist
If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.]]>
524 Timothy Snyder 0465002390 Ryan 0 to-read 4.37 2010 Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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<![CDATA[What It Takes: The Way to the White House]]> 380057 1051 Richard Ben Cramer 0679746498 Ryan 0 to-read 4.42 1992 What It Takes: The Way to the White House
author: Richard Ben Cramer
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<![CDATA[Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity]]> 36100653 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
With Uncivil Agreement , Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly “social� type of polarization in American politics and will add much to our understanding of contemporary politics.]]>
192 Lilliana Mason 022652454X Ryan 0 to-read 3.84 2018 Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
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<![CDATA[Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right]]> 28695425 Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country � a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Russell Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets � among them a Tea Party activist whose town has been swallowed by a sinkhole caused by a drilling accident � people whose concerns are actually ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children.

Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests. Instead, Russell Hochschild finds lives ripped apart by stagnant wages, a loss of home, an elusive American dream � and political choices and views that make sense in the context of their lives. Russell Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help us understand what it feels like to live in "red" America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seem to benefit most from "liberal" government intervention abhor the very idea?]]>
242 Arlie Russell Hochschild 1620972255 Ryan 0 to-read 4.11 2016 Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
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<![CDATA[The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic]]> 34184069
But the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing. The republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome ruled. Bankrolled by mountains of imperial wealth and without a foreign enemy to keep them united, ambitious Roman leaders began to stray from the republican austerity of their ancestors. Almost as soon as they had conquered the Mediterranean, Rome would become engulfed in violent political conflicts and civil wars that would destroy the Republic less than a century later.

The Storm Before the Storm tells the story of the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic--the story of the first generation that had to cope with the dangerous new political environment made possible by Rome's unrivaled domination over the known world. The tumultuous years from 133-80 BCE set the stage for the fall of the Republic.

The Republic faced issues like rising economic inequality, increasing political polarization, the privatization of the military, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, rampant corruption, ongoing military quagmires, and the ruthless ambition and unwillingness of elites to do anything to reform the system in time to save it--a situation that draws many parallels to present-day America. These issues are among the reasons why the Roman Republic would fall. And as we all know, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.]]>
327 Mike Duncan 1610397215 Ryan 0 to-read 4.23 2017 The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
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<![CDATA[Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4)]]> 5096 845 Stephen King 0340829788 Ryan 4 4.26 1997 Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4)
author: Stephen King
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Ryan 0 to-read 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.18
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When Species Meet 971320 In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters.

In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,� she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending—socially, ecologically, orscientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.�

Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.

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423 Donna J. Haraway 0816650462 Ryan 0 to-read 3.85 2007 When Species Meet
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The Plague 11989
It tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

The book tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to affect their destinies. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, whose individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings; the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition.]]>
308 Albert Camus Ryan 0 to-read 4.05 1947 The Plague
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<![CDATA[Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunity]]> 45420493 The fog of Australian politics on climate change has obscured a fateful reality: Australia has the potential to be an economic superpower of the future post-carbon world.

We have unparalleled renewable energy resources. We also have the necessary scientific skills. Australia could be the natural home for an increasing proportion of global industry. But how do we make this happen?

In this crisp, compelling book, Australia’s leading thinker about climate and energy policy offers a road map for progress, covering energy, transport, agriculture, the international scene and more. Rich in ideas and practical optimism, Superpower is a crucial, timely contribution to this country’s future.]]>
192 Ross Garnaut 176064174X Ryan 0 to-read 4.03 2019 Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunity
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average rating: 4.03
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To Kill a Mockingbird 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]>
323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Ryan 0 to-read 4.25 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
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Good Old Neon 49766169 40 David Foster Wallace Ryan 0 to-read 4.53 Good Old Neon
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The Elementary Particles 58314 The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.]]>
272 Michel Houellebecq 0375727019 Ryan 0 to-read 3.91 1998 The Elementary Particles
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name: Ryan
average rating: 3.91
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East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]>
601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Ryan 0 to-read 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
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Bridge of Clay 7767276
At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.

The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?]]>
464 Markus Zusak 0385614292 Ryan 0 to-read 3.76 2018 Bridge of Clay
author: Markus Zusak
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
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<![CDATA[Everything is Fucked. Ein Buch über Hoffnung]]> 45443399 In Everything is Fucked wirft Bestsellerautor Mark Manson einen Blick auf dieses Paradox. Humorvoll stellt er unsere gängigen Definitionen von Glück, Hoffnung und Freiheit auf den Prüfstand. Ausgehend von den Erkenntnissen der Psychologie sowie der zeitlosen Weisheit großer Philosophen hinterfragt er unsere Beziehung zu Geld, Vergnügungen und dem Internet. Er beweist: Zu viel von einer guten Sache überfordert und macht uns schlicht fertig � aber es gibt Hoffnung.
Mit seinem gewohnten Mix aus Ernsthaftigkeit und lockerem Humor fordert er uns auf, ehrlicher mit uns selbst zu sein und uns auf eine ganz neue Weise mit der Welt zu verbinden. Denn noch ist nicht alles im Arsch.]]>
272 Mark Manson 3745307445 Ryan 0 to-read 3.59 2019 Everything is Fucked. Ein Buch ĂĽber Hoffnung
author: Mark Manson
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
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<![CDATA[The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities]]> 369410 Ěý
“Clearly, this is no ordinary theory. Equally clearly, it sprang from the mind of no ordinary economist.”—James Lardner, Washington Post
Ěý
The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world.
Ěý
“Schumpeter and Keynes would have hailed the insights Olson gives into the sicknesses of the modern mixed economy.”—Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ěý
“One of the really important books in social science of the past half-century.”—Scott Gordon, Canadian Journal of Economics
Ěý
“The thesis of this brilliant book is that the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special-interest lobbies that in turn make it less efficient economically.”—Charles Peters, Washington Monthly
Ěý
“Remarkable. The fundamental ideas are simple, yet they provide insight into a wide array of social and historical issues. . . . The Rise and Decline of Nations promises to be a subject of productive interdisciplinary argument for years to come.”—Robert O. Keohane, Journal of Economic Literature
Ěý
“I urgently recommend it to all economists and to a great many non-economists.”—Gordon Tullock, Public Choice
Ěý
“Olson’s theory is illuminating and there is no doubt that The Rise and Decline of Nations will exert much influence on ideas and politics for many decades to come.”—Pierre Lemieux, Reason
Ěý
Co-winner of the 1983 American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy]]>
276 Mancur Olson 0300030797 Ryan 0 to-read 3.97 1982 The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities
author: Mancur Olson
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1982
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<![CDATA[1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created]]> 9862761
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination]]>
557 Charles C. Mann 0307265722 Ryan 0 to-read 4.12 2011 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
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<![CDATA[In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)]]> 2459785
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.]]>
448 Tana French Ryan 0 to-read 3.82 2007 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)
author: Tana French
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future]]> 36147818 Alternate Cover Edition for B00KVI76ZS.

In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs, Elon Musk—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new “makers�

Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk—one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history—is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.

Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.]]>
392 Ashlee Vance Ryan 3 4.35 2015 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
author: Ashlee Vance
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power]]> 37133029 Exploring how neoliberalism has discovered the productive force of the psyche

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.

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96 Byung-Chul Han 1784785784 Ryan 0 to-read 4.09 2014 Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
author: Byung-Chul Han
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence]]> 34272565 How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology--and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today's kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?

What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn't shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues--from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.]]>
384 Max Tegmark 0451485076 Ryan 0 to-read 4.02 2017 Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
author: Max Tegmark
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average rating: 4.02
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Killing for Profit 16179801
On the black markets of Southeast Asia, rhino horn is worth more than gold, cocaine and heroin. This is the chilling story of a two-year-long investigation into a dangerous criminal underworld and the merciless syndicates that will stop at nothing to obtain their prize. It is a tale of greed, folly and corruption, and of an increasingly desperate battle to save the rhino - which has existed for more than 50 million years - from extinction.

Killing for Profit is a meticulous, devastating and revelatory account of one of the world’s most secretive trades. It exposes poachers, scoundrels, gangsters, conmen, mercenaries, killers, gun-runners, diplomats, government officials and kingpins behind the slaughter. And it follows the bloody trail from the frontlines of the rhino wars in south Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to the medicine markets of Vietnam and the lair of a wildlife-trafficking kingpin on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos …]]>
332 Julian Rademeyer 1770223347 Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 2012 Killing for Profit
author: Julian Rademeyer
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
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<![CDATA[Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People]]> 25666062 From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?

It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course.

But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.

With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.]]>
320 Thomas Frank 1627795391 Ryan 0 to-read 4.17 2016 Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People
author: Thomas Frank
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
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The City and the Stars 250024
Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar. For millennia its protective dome shut out the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rule the stars.

But then, as legend has it, the invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique, to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.]]>
255 Arthur C. Clarke Ryan 0 to-read 4.08 1956 The City and the Stars
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1956
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<![CDATA[Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered]]> 1117634 �Newsweek

One the 100 most influential books published since World War II
�The Times Literary Supplement

Hailed as an "eco-bible" by Time magazine, E.F. Schumacher's riveting, richly researched statement on sustainability has become more relevant and vital with each year since its initial groundbreaking publication during the 1973 energy crisis. A landmark statement against "bigger is better" industrialism, Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful paved the way for twenty-first century books on environmentalism and economics, like Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty, Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism, Mohammad Yunis's Banker to the Poor, and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy. This timely reissue offers a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalization.]]>
352 Ernst F. Schumacher 0060916303 Ryan 0 to-read 4.10 1973 Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
author: Ernst F. Schumacher
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1973
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On Bullshit 385
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.]]>
67 Harry G. Frankfurt 0691122946 Ryan 0 to-read 3.58 2005 On Bullshit
author: Harry G. Frankfurt
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average rating: 3.58
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<![CDATA[Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed]]> 475 Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?

As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?]]>
608 Jared Diamond 0143036556 Ryan 0 to-read 3.93 2004 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
author: Jared Diamond
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average rating: 3.93
book published: 2004
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<![CDATA[Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human]]> 7598525
Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in myriad different ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher rate of interest when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find the most despised aliens were ones from a group that did not exist? What made four of the air force's best pilots fly their planes, in formation, straight into the ground? Why does giving someone power make him more likely to chew with his mouth open and pick his nose? And why is your sister going out with that biker dude?

In fact, our cognitive, logical, and romantic failures may be a fair price for our extraordinary success as a species; they are the necessary cost of our adaptability. Michael and Ellen Kaplan swoop effortlessly across neurochemistry, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, among other disciplines, to answer, with both clarity and wit, the questions above, and larger ones about what it means to be human.

Michael and Ellen Kaplan are mother and son, and coauthors of the bestselling Chances Are: Adventures in Probability. Michael is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker who resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ellen is an archaeologist and cofounder of the Math Circle, a program for the exploration and enjoyment of mathematics. She is coauthor of The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics and Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free. She lives in central Massachusetts.]]>
294 Michael Kaplan 1608190919 Ryan 0 to-read 3.38 2009 Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human
author: Michael Kaplan
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average rating: 3.38
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<![CDATA[Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies]]> 20527133 Superintelligence asks the questions: what happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful—possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?]]>
352 Nick Bostrom 0199678111 Ryan 0 to-read 3.85 2014 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
author: Nick Bostrom
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average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World]]> 24612233 In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm , Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.]]> 352 Pedro Domingos 0465065708 Ryan 0 to-read 3.72 2015 The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
author: Pedro Domingos
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change]]> 36072 372 Stephen R. Covey 0743269519 Ryan 0 to-read 4.16 1989 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
author: Stephen R. Covey
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1989
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<![CDATA[Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences]]> 25741189
Sacred Knowledge enriches humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies, as well as in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology. Richards's analysis also contributes to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society. His book is an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our concepts of reality and advances new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being.]]>
256 William A. Richards 0231174063 Ryan 0 to-read 4.19 2015 Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences
author: William A. Richards
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3)]]> 19669842 612 Stephen King 1848941110 Ryan 4 4.36 1991 The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3)
author: Stephen King
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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