From bce26fbdbd8280b35cd265e9280daa4ab640dafa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Cory Dransfeldt Date: Wed, 1 May 2024 20:02:04 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?=F0=9F=93=9A=20=E2=80=9CThe=20Last=20Arrow?= =?UTF-8?q?=E2=80=9D=20(finished)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit --- src/_data/json/read.json | 12309 +++++++++++++++++++------------------ 1 file changed, 6168 insertions(+), 6141 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/_data/json/read.json b/src/_data/json/read.json index a631f585..02956a2e 100644 --- a/src/_data/json/read.json +++ b/src/_data/json/read.json @@ -1,6051 +1,76 @@ [ { - "isbn": "9780063251281", - "dateFinished": "2023-08-11", + "isbn": "9780132119177", + "dateFinished": "2018-02-23", "status": "finished", "rating": "unrated", "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Where Are Your Boys Tonight?", - "authors": [ - "Chris Payne" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-11", - "description": "An energetic and explosive oral history examining the mainstream emo explosion from 1999-2008 and how it reversed expectations of what was possible in popular music, featuring exclusive interviews with the bands, managers, journalists, photographers, and awe-struck fans that defined the genre and a \"scene\" that would one day sweep across the entire country. If Meet Me in the Bathroom traced New York City's underground Indie scene, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? draws a wide circle around an emo culture that would grace the stages of the mainstream and become bigger than anyone ever thought possible. There was Pete Wentz, the Fall Out Boy leader who launched a litany of scene-stealing bands and preposterous side hustles, and Gerard Way, the wizard behind My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade. Panic! at the Disco and Paramore exploded soon after--a pair of intrepid outsiders who got massive playing by rules uniquely their own. Told from within the scenes that created this big bang, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? follows first-hand accounts of New Jersey basement shows and Long Island VFW hall gigs, where bands like Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, Lifetime, and Taking Back Sunday laid the foundation for the explosion of rock's most polarizing (and addictive) sub-genre. New Jersey native and former Billboard staff writer Chris Payne experienced much of emo's mainstream moment from sweaty crowds and mosh pits, and in Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, he reexamines these bands as they come of age and sky-rocket to fame within a genre rife with contradictions: avowing punk ethos while walking the VMAs red carpet; creating outlets for mental health struggles while perhaps inadvertently turning them into a crucial part of belonging; building fandoms significantly comprising young women and LGBTQ+ kids in an environment that was often toxic and unsafe. Set at the unique intersection of regional emo scenes and the rise of worldwide social media communities like MySpace and Tumblr, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? is a deeply personal, uncompromisingly emotional, and occasionally absurd account--featuring interviews with musicians like Pete Wentz, Chris Carrabba, and Jim Adkins; journalists like Leslie Simon, Andy Greenwald, and Hanif Abdurraqib; and the managers, idolizing scenesters, and won-over fans that made this all possible.", - "pageCount": 480, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BSvtzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Where_Are_Your_Boys_Tonight.html?hl=&id=BSvtzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0306818795", - "dateFinished": "2023-08-19", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction", - "biography" - ], - "title": "Trouble Boys", - "authors": [ - "Bob Mehr" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-03-01", - "description": "Trouble Boys is the first definitive, no-holds-barred biography of one of the last great bands of the twentieth century: The Replacements. With full participation from reclusive singer and chief songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, guitarist Slim Dunlap, and the family of late band co-founder Bob Stinson, author Bob Mehr is able to tell the real story of this highly influential group, capturing their chaotic, tragic journey from the basements of Minneapolis to rock legend. Drawing on years of research and access to the band's archives at Twin/Tone Records and Warner Bros. Mehr also discovers previously unrevealed details from those in the group's inner circle, including family, managers, musical friends and collaborators.", - "pageCount": 521, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Music" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xQ9SCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Trouble_Boys.html?hl=&id=xQ9SCwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316787536", - "dateFinished": "2023-08-27", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Our Band Could Be Your Life", - "authors": [ - "Michael Azerrad" - ], - "publishedDate": "2002-07-02", - "description": "\"This book will be fresh even for those whose lives these bands were...All thirteen profiles are page-turners.\" --Robert Christgau, Village Voice This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties--when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rock's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. Among the bands profiled: Mission of Burma, Butthole Surfers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, The Replacements, Beat Happening, and Dinosaur Jr.", - "pageCount": 532, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Music" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=suH3q3OJ3qoC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life.html?hl=&id=suH3q3OJ3qoC" - }, - { - "isbn": "1952616603", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "labor" - ], - "title": "You Deserve a Tech Union", - "authors": [ - "Ethan Marcotte" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-08-15", - "description": "There's a resurgent labor movement in the tech industry. Tech workers-designers, engineers, writers, and many others-have learned that when they stand together, they're poised to build a better version of the tech industry. They haven't stopped there: at companies from Kickstarter to Google, workers have formed unions. And you should, too. But what are unions? And why do they matter? Ethan Marcotte answers these questions through extensive research and by interviewing tech workers with real-world union-building experience. Ethan shares these workers' insights and stories, weaving them together to outline the process for forming a union of your very own. Because you-yes, you-deserve a tech union. THIS BOOK EXPLORES: What it means to be a \"tech worker,\" and what it means to do tech work A brief history of worker-led activism, inside and outside the tech industry What unions are, why they matter, and how they function An overview of how to form a union in the United States How to use unions to build a more sustainable future for tech work and tech workers", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CQoX0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/You_Deserve_a_Tech_Union.html?hl=&id=CQoX0AEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781804291245", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-13", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Internet Con", - "authors": [ - "Cory Doctorow" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", - "description": "A detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle Big Tech We have recently seen the enshittification of the internet. The tech platforms have created monopolies whose high walls make it expensive to move freely online. They built self-serving, artificial barriers to maintaining connections across platforms. The cost of leaving X or Facebook grew higher, holding hostage the people you love, the communities that matter to you, and the audiences and customers you rely on. None of this is caused by technological limitations: it was a business decision, intended to commodify every part of your personal life. We can choose otherwise: we can dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation. We must force upon Silicon Valley the thing it fears most: interoperability. That means tearing down the walls between platforms, allowing users to mix, match, plug in, and repair without restrictions. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and total annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to fix tech for good, and take back our Internet.", - "pageCount": 193, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pbetEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Internet_Con.html?hl=&id=pbetEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780393322231", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders", - "authors": [ - "Vincent Bugliosi", - "Curt Gentry" - ], - "publishedDate": "2001-12-04", - "description": "The inside story behind the Manson killings explains how Charles Manson was able to make his \"family\" murder for him, chronicles the investigation, and describes in detail the court trial that brought him and his accomplices to justice. Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Reprint.", - "pageCount": 698, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Fiyw_LeL51MC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Helter_Skelter_The_True_Story_of_the_Man.html?hl=&id=Fiyw_LeL51MC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781952616624", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-15", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "labor" - ], - "title": "Surviving Change at Work", - "authors": [ - "Vanessa Gennarelli" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", - "description": "Good design systems can help you create digital products with efficiency and consistency. But great design systems will support and strengthen your team's creativity at the same time. In Expressive Design Systems, Yesenia Perez-Cruz shows you how to build useful, dependable systems that not only maintain harmony across your products, but also flex to accommodate inspiration and experimentation. Learn to communicate your brand, collaborate across teams-and do so much more than standardize components.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dqMn0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Surviving_Change_at_Work.html?hl=&id=dqMn0AEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781620975411", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-19", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "economics", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Monopolized", - "authors": [ - "David Dayen" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020", - "description": "\"David Dayen explains how a narrow interpretation of the Sherman Act four decades ago spawned an age of unprecedented deregulation and corporate dominance. Dayen offers a riveting account of what it means to live in this period--and how we might resist this corporate hegemony.\"--Dust jacket flap.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KN5OxwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Monopolized.html?hl=&id=KN5OxwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593443811", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-24", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Number Go Up", - "authors": [ - "Zeke Faux" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", - "description": "The “endlessly entertaining” (Matt Levine) and “ludicrously compelling” (Evan Osnos) account of the crypto delusion, and how Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers turned useless virtual coins into trillions of dollars “One of the greatest business stories of all time.”—A.J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring. When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” (Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine), Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.", - "pageCount": 313, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=7pu1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Number_Go_Up.html?hl=&id=7pu1EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780062295897", - "dateFinished": "2023-09-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Girl in a Band", - "authors": [ - "Kim Gordon" - ], - "publishedDate": "2015-02-24", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids. Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gK6SrgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Girl_in_a_Band.html?hl=&id=gK6SrgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316487740", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-04", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Blood in the Machine", - "authors": [ - "Brian Merchant" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", - "description": "The true story of what happened the first time machines came for human jobs, when an underground network of 19th century rebels, the Luddites, took up arms against the industrialists that were automating their work--and how it explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech today. The most pressing story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or even Shenzhen. It begins two hundred years ago in rural England, when working men and women rose up en masse rather than starve at the hands of the factory owners who were using machines to erase and degrade their livelihoods. They organized guerilla raids, smashed those machines, and embarked on full-scale assaults against the wealthy machine owners. They won the support of Lord Byron, inspired Mary Shelley, and enraged the Prince Regent and his bloodthirsty government. Before it was over, much blood would be spilled--of rich and poor, of the invisible and of the powerful. This all-but-forgotten and deeply misunderstood class struggle nearly brought 19th century England to its knees. We live now in the second machine age, when similar fears that big tech is dominating our lives and machines replacing human labor run high. We worry that technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are ousting workers from factories, and artificial intelligence will soon remove drivers from cars. How will this all reshape our economy and the way we live? And what can we do about it? The answers lie in the story of our first machine age, when mechanization first came to British factories at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Intertwined with a lucid examination of our current age, the story of the Luddites, the working-class insurgency that took up arms against automation (at a time when it was punishable by death to break a machine), Blood in the Machine reaches through time and space to tell a story about how technology changed our world--and how it's already changing our future.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QvPDzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blood_in_the_Machine.html?hl=&id=QvPDzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982146863", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-08", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Extremely Online", - "authors": [ - "Taylor Lorenz" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-10-03", - "description": "For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on Internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism. By tracing how the Internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms' power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It's the real social history of the Internet. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the Internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century. Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the Internet, and what it has done to us…", - "pageCount": 384, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aHDVEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Extremely_Online.html?hl=&id=aHDVEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781847926258", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-13", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "When Mckinsey Comes to Town", - "authors": [ - "Walt Bogdanich", - "Michael Forsythe" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-10-06", - "description": "McKinsey & Co. earns billions of dollars in fees from major corporations and governments who turn to them to maximize their profits and enhance efficiency. Their vaunted statement of values asserts their role is to make the world a better place, and their reputation for excellence and discretion attracts top talent from universities around the world. McKinsey's network is immense- almost 80% of the Fortune 500 and every government, as well as countless militaries, institutions and charities, including the NHS, have paid for and implemented their top secret and world-shaping advice. So what is that advice? And what effect has it actually had? In WHEN MCKINSEY COMES TO TOWN, two prize-winning investigative journalists reveal the truth behind the public image. Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short term profits, thereby boosting the stock price and the wealth of the executives who hire them, at the expense of workers, and safety measures. They frequently recommend steering contracts from governments to their own clients, and just as frequently advise companies in the same industries. Shielded by NDAs, McKinsey has escaped public scrutiny despite their role in advising tobacco companies, purveyors of opioids, repressive governments and oil companies. McKinsey helped insurance companies boost their profits by essentially making it impossible for accident victims to get payments; worked their U.S. government contacts to let Wall Street firms evade scrutiny; enabled massive theft in developing countries such as South Africa; reshaped the NHS. Their work has helped destabilize the global economy and divided society, and has been at the heart of some of the worst corporate scandals in history- from Enron to the Opioid Crisis. Bognadich and Forsythe have managed to penetrate the veil of secrecy McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting- Follow the money. WHEN MCKINSEY COMES TO TOWN is a landmark work of investigative reporting that amounts to a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous. A gripping narrative of secrecy, greed and corruption, this is the story of where and how business went wrong in the modern era.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Industrial management" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YIQAzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/When_Mckinsey_Comes_to_Town.html?hl=&id=YIQAzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781631497513", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-17", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "television", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Mcu", - "authors": [ - "Joanna Robinson", - "Dave Gonzales", - "Gavin Edwards" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", - "description": "The unauthorized, behind-the-scenes story of the stunning rise--and suddenly uncertain reign--of the most transformative cultural phenomenon of our time: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Comics & Graphic Novels" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xs2czwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Mcu.html?hl=&id=xs2czwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593492673", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "The Big Con", - "authors": [ - "Mariana Mazzucato", - "Rosie Collington" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-03-07", - "description": "A vital and timely investigation into the opaque and powerful consulting industry—and what to do about it There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today that must change. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies’ reliance on companies such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability, and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. The “Big Con” describes the confidence trick the consulting industry performs in contracts with hollowed-out and risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. It grew from the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of reforms by the neoliberal right and Third Way progressives, and it thrives on the ills of modern capitalism, from financialization and privatization to the climate crisis. It is possible because of the unique power that big consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks—as advisors, legitimators, and outsourcers—and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. In the end, the Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments, and warps our economies. In The Big Con, Mazzucato and Collington throw back the curtain on the consulting industry. They dive deep into important case studies of consultants taking the reins with disastrous results, such as the debacle of the roll out of HealthCare.gov and the tragic failures of governments to respond adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is an important and exhilarating intellectual journey into the modern economy’s beating heart. With peerless scholarship, and a wealth of original research, Mazzucato and Collington argue brilliantly for building a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.", - "pageCount": 353, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PAmBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Con.html?hl=&id=PAmBEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780679745587", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-22", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "In Cold Blood", - "authors": [ - "Truman Capote" - ], - "publishedDate": "1994-02-01", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time \"chills the blood and exercises the intelligence\" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. In one of the first non-fiction novels ever written, Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, generating both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.", - "pageCount": 370, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mYC3yRvvXxMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/In_Cold_Blood.html?hl=&id=mYC3yRvvXxMC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781324005896", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "science" - ], - "title": "Crossings", - "authors": [ - "Ben Goldfarb" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", - "description": "An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Nature" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xuKczwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Crossings.html?hl=&id=xuKczwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316555678", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-02", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Elysium Fire", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-01-23", - "description": "Elysium Fire is a smoldering tale of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power, of bottomless corruption and overpowering idealism from the king of modern space opera. Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these \"melters\" leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths... As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies. For more from Alastair Reynolds, check out: Revenger", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PnLhswEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Elysium_Fire.html?hl=&id=PnLhswEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780063099951", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-08", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Deepest Map", - "authors": [ - "Laura Trethewey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", - "description": "The dramatic and action-packed story of the last mysterious place on earth--the world's seafloor--and the deep-sea divers, ocean mappers, marine biologists, entrepreneurs, and adventurers involved in the historic push to chart it, as well as the opportunities, challenges, and perils this exploration holds now and for the future. Five oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern--cover approximately 70 percent of the earth. Yet we know little about what lies beneath them. By the early 2020s, less than twenty-five percent of the ocean's floor has been charted, most close to shorelines, and over three quarters of the ocean lies in in what is called the Deep Sea, depths below a thousand meters. Now, the race is on to completely map the ocean's floor by 2030--an epic project involving scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers who are cooperating and competing to get an accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and environment. In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey documents this race to the bottom, following global efforts around the world, from crowdsourcing to advances in technology, recent scientific discoveries to tales of dangerous dives in untested and costly submersibles. The lure of ocean exploration has attracted many, including the likes of James Cameron, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, and Eric Schmidt. The Deepest Map follows a cast of intriguing characters, from early mappers such as Marie Tharp, a woman working in the male-dominated fields of oceanography and geology whose discoveries have added significantly to our knowledge; Victor Vescovo, a man obsessed with reaching the deepest depths of each of the five oceans, and his young, brilliant, and fearless mapper Cassie Bongiovanni; and the diverse entrepreneurs looking to explore and exploit this uncharted territory and its resources. In The Deepest Map, ocean discovery converges with humanity's origin story; in mapping the ocean floor, scientists are actively tracing our roots back to the most inhospitable places on earth where life began--and flourished. But for every conservationist looking to protect the seafloor, there are others who see its commercial potential. Will a new map exacerbate pollution and the degradation of this natural resource? How will the race remake political power structures in years to come? Trethewey probes these questions as countries and conglomerates wrestle over the riches that may lie at the bottom of the sea. The future of humanity depends on our ability to protect this vast, precious, and often ignored resource. A true tale of science, nature, technology, and an extreme outdoor adventure The Deepest Map illuminates why we love--and fear--the earth's final frontier and is a crucial addition to the increasingly urgent conversation about climate change.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=E3p3zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Deepest_Map.html?hl=&id=E3p3zwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982186104", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Waco", - "authors": [ - "Jeff Guinn" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-01-24", - "description": "The definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown. For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new, and stunning. Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, shedding new light on a story that we thought we knew.", - "pageCount": 400, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YFGkEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Waco.html?hl=&id=YFGkEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781954118317", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-25", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "A Heart That Works", - "authors": [ - "Rob Delaney" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-11-29", - "description": "People magazine Fall Must Read pick*2022 Buzzfeed Fall Reading pick A visceral and deeply personal memoir by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe, about the loss of his young son. In 2016, Rob Delaney's one-year-old son, Henry, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The family had moved from Los Angeles to London with their two young boys when Rob's wife was pregnant with Henry, their third. The move was an adventure that would bind them even more tightly together as they navigated the novelty of London, the culture clashes, and the funhouse experience of Rob's fame--thanks to his role as co-creator and co-star of the hit series Catastrophe. Henry's illness was a cataclysm that changed everything about their lives. Amid the hospital routine, surgeries, and brutal treatments, they found a newfound community of nurses, aides, caregivers, and fellow parents contending with the unthinkable. Two years later, Henry died, and his family watched their world fall away to reveal the things that matter most. A Heart That Works is Delaney's intimate, unflinching, and fiercely funny exploration of what happened - from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that followed, through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. In the madness of his grief, Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind. Delaney's memoir--profound, painful, full of emotion, and bracingly honest--offers solace to those who have faced devastation and shows us how grace may appear even in the darkest times.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=S6E4zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Heart_That_Works.html?hl=&id=S6E4zwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781984881731", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction", - "science" - ], - "title": "A City on Mars", - "authors": [ - "Kelly Weinersmith", - "Zach Weinersmith" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", - "description": "* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Scientific American’s #1 Book for 2023 * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Times Best Science and Environment Book of 2023 * “Exceptional. . . Forceful, engaging and funny . . . This book will make you happy to live on this planet — a good thing, because you’re not leaving anytime soon.” —New York Times Book Review From the bestselling authors of Soonish, a brilliant and hilarious off-world investigation into space settlement Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered: Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism? With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary. Get in, we’re going to Mars.", - "pageCount": 449, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ImmvEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ImmvEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593793190", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Broken Code", - "authors": [ - "Jeff Horwitz" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", - "description": "By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out \"A page-turning narrative of immense importance.” —James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice. But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they—and the world—had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms. Facebook employees set to work in pursuit of answers. They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break the platform’s supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood. Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook's viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform—often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement—were higher than Facebook's leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook’s damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer. Broken Code tells the story of these employees and their explosive discoveries. Expanding on “The Facebook Files,” his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook’s failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can’t be resolved by strapping on a headset.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JuytEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Broken_Code.html?hl=&id=JuytEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250850096", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "tech" - ], - "title": "The Bill Gates Problem", - "authors": [ - "Tim Schwab" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", - "description": "A powerful investigation of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, showing how he uses philanthropy to exercise enormous political power without accountability Through his vaunted philanthropy, Bill Gates transformed himself from a tech villain into one of the most admired people on the planet. Even as divorce proceedings and allegations of misconduct have recently tarnished his public image, the beneficence of the Gates Foundation, celebrated for spending billions to save lives around the globe, is taken as a given. But as Tim Schwab shows in this fearless investigation, Gates is still exactly who he was at Microsoft: a bully and monopolist, convinced of his own righteousness and intent on imposing his ideas, his solutions, and his leadership on everyone else. At the core, he is not a selfless philanthropist but a power broker, a clever engineer who has innovated a way to turn extreme wealth into immense political influence—and who has made us believe we should applaud his acquisition of power, not challenge it. Piercing the blinding halo that has for too long shielded the world’s most powerful (and most secretive) charitable organization from public scrutiny, The Bill Gates Problem shows how Gates’s billions have purchased a stunning level of control over public policy, private markets, scientific research, and the news media. Whether he is pushing new educational standards in America, health reforms in India, global vaccine policy during the pandemic, or Western industrialized agriculture throughout Africa, Gates’s heady social experimentation has shown itself to be not only undemocratic, but also ineffective. In many places, Bill Gates is hurting the very people he intends to help. No less than dark-money campaign contributions or big-business political lobbying, Bill Gates’s philanthropic empire needs to be seen as a problem of money in politics. It is a dangerous model of unconstrained power that threatens democracy and demands our attention.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=veq_EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bill_Gates_Problem.html?hl=&id=veq_EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780553380958", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-11", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Snow Crash", - "authors": [ - "Neal Stephenson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2000-05-02", - "description": "The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.", - "pageCount": 484, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mqpvVydYo-8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Snow_Crash.html?hl=&id=mqpvVydYo-8C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780735225268", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "A Fever in the Heartland", - "authors": [ - "Timothy Egan" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-04-04", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year • A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year • A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist \"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time.\" —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile “Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them. The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees. A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.", - "pageCount": 441, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FHF5EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Fever_in_the_Heartland.html?hl=&id=FHF5EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374722005", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-17", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "American Gun", - "authors": [ - "Cameron McWhirter", - "Zusha Elinson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-26", - "description": "“A magisterial work of narrative history and original reportage . . . You can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time . . . A virtually unprecedented achievement.” —Mike Spies, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) A Washington Post top 50 nonfiction book of 2023 | Short-listed for the Zócalo Book Prize One of The New York Times’ 33 nonfiction books to read this fall | One of Esquire’s best books of fall | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023 Named a most anticipated book of the fall by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 presents the epic history of America’s most controversial weapon. In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century. In American Gun, the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson track the AR-15 from inception to ubiquity. How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, McWhirter and Elinson follow Stoner—the American Kalashnikov—as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam. Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle’s popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers. And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior. Writing with fairness and compassion, McWhirter and Elinson explore America’s gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll. The result is a moral history of contemporary America’s love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white images.", - "pageCount": 287, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5cCiEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=5cCiEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374279295", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-29", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "King: A Life", - "authors": [ - "Jonathan Eig" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-05-16", - "description": "The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, a perplexing husband and father, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=vXSaEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/King_A_Life.html?hl=&id=vXSaEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781926743271", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "NoMeansNo", - "authors": [ - "Mark Black" - ], - "publishedDate": "2012", - "description": "Invisible Publishing's Bibliophonic Series returns, this time focusing on unsung Canadian punk rock heroes NoMeansNo.NoMeansNo: Going Nowhere, will look at a band whose career has spanned three decades, 14 albums and produced an alter ego that's become as much a part of the Canadian consciousness as SCTV. Through interviews with band members, bit players and fans, the book will explore how one punk band from Victoria, B.C. influenced musicians across the world and continue to be force in punk rock.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=4BtGLgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/NoMeansNo.html?hl=&id=4BtGLgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780691175119", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover", - "authors": [ - "Lerone A. Martin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-02-07", - "description": "This book examines one powerful but largely neglected ally of this rising white conservative coalition: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI he led for almost a half-century. Revered by the evangelical faithful, Hoover was a powerful ally of and partner to the mainstream evangelical movement, working alongside Billy Graham, the mass circulation magazine Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals, and other evangelical institutions and leaders to advance a Christian nationalist vision of America. In some ways it was an odd partnership. Hoover, for one thing, was not himself a \"born-again\" evangelical. And he maintained a domestic partnership with a male senior FBI agent that did not cohere with Christian conservative family values. Yet white Christian conservatives readily looked to Hoover and his FBI for their civic and political salvation. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover explains why white evangelicals from the pulpit to the pew honored Hoover as their anointed Christian champion. Part one of the book illustrates how Hoover made white Christian nationalism the bedrock of the modern national security state by shaping the FBI in his own image as soldiers advancing toward a white, Christian America. The second part explains how Hoover materially supported the white Christian nationalist project of fusing conservative Christianity with American civic life. Along the way, Martin considers broader questions about the relationship between religion and national security in American history, and what Hoover's bureau might reveal about the nature of white evangelicalism…", - "pageCount": 352, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_tCAEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Gospel_of_J_Edgar_Hoover.html?hl=&id=_tCAEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781770415201", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-05", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Anthem", - "authors": [ - "Martin Popoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020", - "description": "Covering Rush's first eight albums, this volume is the first in a three-part series celebrating Canada's iconic rock band. Based on extensive first-hand interviews with family, friends, musicians, and the boys in the band, Anthem offers the most comprehensive biography ever, combining cultural context and canon analysis.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Rock groups" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tRXhyQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Anthem.html?hl=&id=tRXhyQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781101986769", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Teachers", - "authors": [ - "Alexandra Robbins" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-03-14", - "description": "***A National Bestseller*** A riveting, must-read, year-in-the-life account of three teachers, combined with reporting that reveals what’s really going on behind school doors, by New York Times bestselling author and education expert Alexandra Robbins. Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school. Robbins also interviewed hundreds of other teachers nationwide who share their secrets, dramas, and joys. Interspersed among the teachers’ stories—a seeming scandal, a fourth-grade whodunit, and teacher confessions—are hard-hitting essays featuring cutting-edge reporting on the biggest issues facing teachers today, such as school violence; outrageous parent behavior; inadequate support, staffing, and resources coupled with unrealistic mounting demands; the “myth” of teacher burnout; the COVID-19 pandemic; and ways all of us can help the professionals who are central both to the lives of our children and the heart of our communities.", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Education" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-Wx2EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-Wx2EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250753892", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-13", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Crack-Up Capitalism", - "authors": [ - "Quinn Slobodian" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-04-04", - "description": "In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy. Look at a map of the world and you’ll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special economic zones. With the new spaces, ultracapitalists have started to believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether. Crack-Up Capitalism follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. Historian Quinn Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world’s oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy. A masterful work of economic and intellectual history, Crack-Up Capitalism offers both a new way of looking at the world and a new vision of coming threats. Full of rich details and provocative analysis, Crack-Up Capitalism offers an alarming view of a possible future.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eY6IEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Crack_Up_Capitalism.html?hl=&id=eY6IEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780063230477", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-16", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning", - "authors": [ - "Peter Zeihan" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-06-14", - "description": "In this eye-opening, counterintuitive book, economics guru and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan predicts the coming breakdown of globalization and identifies who will benefit and who will lose. For two generations, the Americans have held up the world's collective ceiling. Globe-spanning supply chains made possible under the protection of the U.S. Navy. Internationalized energy and financial markets underpinned by the American dollar. A global constellation of trade linkages, supply chains and operational norms too sprawling and interconnected to be maintained by the regional powers of Europe or Asia. A global food supply system made possible by massive inputs, technology, investment, and safe transport --all American-subsidized. We know this all as the era of free trade. The era of globalization. But the architecture of our world was always artificial. Temporary. In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan does more than simply explain how we got to where we are or describe the end days of the world we know. He maps out the next world: a world deglobalized. Region by region. Country by country. Industry by industry. The future of transportation in a world made insecure. The future of finance in a world without sufficient capital. The future of energy in a world disconnected. The future of industrial materials in a world deindustrializing. The future of manufacturing in a world of shattered supply chains. The future of agriculture in a world bereft of what's necessary to feed eight billion people. A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.", - "pageCount": 336, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hhyYzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_the_Beginni.html?hl=&id=hhyYzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385548281", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Filterworld", - "authors": [ - "Kyle Chayka" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", - "description": "From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself. From coffee shops to rental apartments to social media posts the world round, a sleek and deceptively simple aesthetic has come to predominate. It's in the neon signs and exposed brick of an Internet cafe in Nairobi or the skeletal, modern furniture of an Airbnb in Portland. These designs are easy to identify, but even more crucially, they photograph well. In their simplicity and studied airiness, these images fit seamlessly into the Instagram grid. But this aesthetic is only one small aspect of a broader program of curation that is determined by the algorithm--a network of mathematically determined choices that ramify into the development of city grids and music playlists alike. To have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question. Over the last decade, Kyle Chayka has studied the homogeneity of this curation of reality. Working as a contributor for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic, he has traveled to Berlin, Reykjavik, and Los Angeles tracing the algorithm's lineage. In Filterworld, Chayka lucidly examines how this deeply filtered aesthetic--spanning digital and physical spaces--creates an uncanny blend of work, home, and social life. As the algorithm determines our choices, other important questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity--the very nature of being human? What does the notion of choice mean when the available options have been so carefully arranged for us? Filterworld offers a way out. Kyle Chayka shows us how to disconnect from the tyranny of the algorithms that continue to override our sensibilities, and inform even our most intimate, real-world interactions. Most importantly, he shows us how to reclaim our individual freedom.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Lz3ZzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Filterworld.html?hl=&id=Lz3ZzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780241443903", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-24", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "television", - "economics", - "tech" - ], - "title": "Pandora's Box", - "authors": [ - "Peter Biskind" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", - "description": "Cultural critic Peter Biskind turns his eye toward the new golden age of television, sparked by the fall of play-it-safe network TV and the rise of boundary-busting cable, followed by streaming, which overturned bothbased on exclusive, candid, and colorful interviews with executives, writers, showrunners, directors, and actors.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Television broadcasting" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6_pfzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Pandora_s_Box.html?hl=&id=6_pfzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9798887440149", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-31", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "NoMeansNo", - "authors": [ - "Jason Lamb" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", - "description": "They were unlike any other band in the punk scene they called home. P>NoMeansNo started in the basement of the family home of brothers Rob and John Wright in 1979. For the next three decades, they would add and then replace a guitar player, sign a record deal with Alternative Tentacles and tour the world. All along the way, they kept their integrity, saying \"NO\" to many mainstream opportunities. It was for this reason the band (intentionally) never became a household name, but earned the respect and love of thousands of fans around the world, including some who became big rock stars themselves. They were expertly skilled musicians playing a new kind of punk: intelligent, soulful, hilarious, and complex. They were also really nice Canadian dudes. NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the fully authorized oral and visual history of this highly influential and enigmatic band which has never been told before now. Author Jason Lamb obtained exclusive access to all four former members and interviewed hundreds of people in their orbit, from managers and roadies to fellow musicians, friends, and family members. The result is their complete story, from the band's inception in 1979 to their retirement in 2016, along with hundreds of photos, posters, and memorabilia, much of which has never been seen publicly before. For established fans, this book serves as a \"love letter\" to their favorite group and provides many details previously unknown. For those curious about the story and influence of NoMeansNo, it reveals an eye-opening tale of how a punk band could be world class musicians while truly \"doing it themselves.\" Their impact and importance cannot be overstated, and NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the essential archive.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Music" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MyGUzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/NoMeansNo.html?hl=&id=MyGUzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0593448561", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-31", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "Your Face Belongs to Us", - "authors": [ - "Kashmir Hill" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-19", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The story of a small AI company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it “The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill’s fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.”—John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wired Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true? In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel—who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world. Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level. Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Technology & Engineering" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=juka0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Your_Face_Belongs_to_Us.html?hl=&id=juka0AEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "009953293X", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "fiction" - ], - "title": "Red Dragon", - "authors": [ - "Thomas Harris" - ], - "publishedDate": "2009", - "description": "Special agent Will Graham has been assigned to cases before where he was able to see and feel with the madmen, anticipate their moves, and be vulnerable to their horrific brutality. Now after being forced out of retiring, he meets another evil mind.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Criminal investigation" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WXaLBEMd3-sC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Dragon.html?hl=&id=WXaLBEMd3-sC" - }, - { - "isbn": "1640095411", - "dateStarted": "2024-04-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Starkweather", - "authors": [ - "Harry N. MacLean" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-28", - "description": "The definitive story of Charles Starkweather, often considered to be the first mass killer in the modern age of America On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend (and possible accomplice), Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to the nearby town of Bennet, where a farmer was robbed and killed. When Starkweather’s car broke down, the teenagers who stopped to help were murdered and jammed into a storm cellar. By the time the dust settled, ten innocent people were dead and the city of Lincoln was in a state of terror. Schools closed. Men with rifles perched on the roofs of their houses. The National Guard patrolled the street. If there is a cultural version of PTSD, the town suffered from it. Starkweather and Fugate’s capture and arrest, and the resulting trials about the killing spree, received worldwide coverage. The event would serve as the inspiration for the movie Natural Born Killers and Springsteen’s iconic album Nebraska. Today, the story has dropped far from the national consciousness. With new material, new reporting, and new conclusions about the possible guilt or innocence of Fugate, the tale is ripe for an updated and definitive retelling. In Starkweather, bestselling author Harry N. MacLean tells the story of this shocking event and its lasting impact, a crime spree that struck deep into the heart of the heartland.", - "pageCount": 441, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VvOxEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Starkweather.html?hl=&id=VvOxEAAAQBAJ", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20" - }, - { - "isbn": "0316462845", - "dateStarted": "2024-03-02", - "status": "started", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Machine Vendetta", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", - "description": "From the king of modern space opera comes a new adventure in the Prefect Dreyfus series--Machine Vendetta is a thrilling tale of deadly conspiracies and old enemies that refuse to die. Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Ingvar Tench was one of Panoply's most experienced operatives. So why did she walk alone and unarmed into a habitat with a vicious grudge against her organization? As his colleagues pick up the pieces following her death, Prefect Tom Dreyfus must face his conscience. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the inquiry by proxy. In using her, did Dreyfus also put her in the line of fire? And what does Tench's attack tell him about an enemy he had hoped was dormant? The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies Aurora Rising Elysium Fire Machine Vendetta", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=AGqYzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Machine_Vendetta.html?hl=&id=AGqYzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780369700018", - "dateFinished": "2023-10-30", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "science" - ], - "title": "The Possibility of Life", - "authors": [ - "Jaime Green" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-04-18", - "description": "*An NPR Science Friday Book Club Pick* *A \"Next Big Idea Book Club\" Must Read?* *A Gizmodo New Release Pick for April* *A BookRiot Science Book to Add to Your TBR* *A Wired Book to Read for Spring* *A TODAY Show Summer Book* *A Washington Post Book to Read This Summer* *One of the Chicago Tribune's 52 Books for Summer 2023* \"A dazzling feat of imagination and synthesis.\"—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of An Immense World A spellbinding exploration of alien life and the cosmos, examining how the possibility of life on other planets shapes our understanding of humanity One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. Incorporating expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Star Trek to Arrival, The Possibility of Life explores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?", - "pageCount": 286, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cHNwEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=cHNwEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525655497", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs", - "authors": [ - "Kerry Howley" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-03-21", - "description": "From the acclaimed author of Thrown, a wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America. A lone young woman stuffs a state secret under her skirt, trusts the wrong people to help, and joins a strange community of fellow travelers. A California teenager sets off on a religious journey, only to find himself trapped in a flooded basement under siege. A nation loses faith in its spies, and finds solace in a fraudulent whistleblower. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley builds a map of a parallel universe, drawing in Reality Winner, Lady Gaga, John Walker Lindh, Q, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do whatever it takes to get her daughter out of jail. Flooded with information and yet bereft of knowledge, Howley’s subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures, allowed to forget neither transient moments in their own lives nor the devastating secrets they’re expected to keep. In following these characters, Howley asks essential questions about modern life that most are unwilling to confront. Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections—a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked and followed. A soap opera set in the deep state, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a free fall into a world where everything is recorded and nothing sacred, an enthralling investigation into the nature of memory itself.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qPWNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Bottoms_Up_and_the_Devil_Laughs.html?hl=&id=qPWNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250266767", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-04", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "Recoding America", - "authors": [ - "Jennifer Pahlka" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-06-13", - "description": "Learn more about Jennifer Pahlka's work at recodingamerica.us. “The book I wish every policymaker would read.” —Ezra Klein, The New York Times A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America Just when we most need our government to work—to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats—it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get. But it’s not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Lofty goals morph unrecognizably as they cascade through a complex hierarchy. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today’s world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.", - "pageCount": 221, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aH5-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=aH5-EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781635573572", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-25", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "economics", - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Big Myth", - "authors": [ - "Naomi Oreskes", - "Erik M. Conway" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-02-21", - "description": "The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America’s most tenacious—and destructive—false ideas: the “magic of the marketplace.”", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dHB3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Myth.html?hl=&id=dHB3EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780345404473", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-06", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "title": "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", - "authors": [ - "Philip K. Dick" - ], - "publishedDate": "1996-05-28", - "description": "A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick “The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world.”—John Brunner “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.”—The New York Times “[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling—and terrifying—possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from.”—Rolling Stone", - "pageCount": 258, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3vExWrUnJB0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep.html?hl=&id=3vExWrUnJB0C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781538707593", - "dateFinished": "2023-12-18", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Breaking Twitter", - "authors": [ - "Ben Mezrich" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", - "description": "A rollicking, character-driven narrative by New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich, pulling back the curtain on the biggest business story of our time. BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time--Elon Musk--and the company that represents our culture's dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? What, really, is Elon's end goal? The whole world is watching. BREAKING TWITTER will provide ringside seats.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lq2qzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Breaking_Twitter.html?hl=&id=lq2qzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780345539786", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Red Rising", - "authors": [ - "Pierce Brown" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-01-28", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “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 toils willingly, trusting 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 reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds 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. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jBaNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Rising.html?hl=&id=jBaNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780735211759", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Broad Band", - "authors": [ - "Claire L. Evans" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-03-06", - "description": "If you loved Hidden Figures or The Rise of the Rocket Girls, you'll love Claire Evans' breakthrough book on the women who brought you the internet--written out of history, until now. \"This is a radically important, timely work,\" says Miranda July, filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man. The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers--but from Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program in the Victorian Age, to the cyberpunk Web designers of the 1990s, female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation. In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize, but they have always been part of the story. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth \"Jake\" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. This inspiring call to action shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore. Welcome to the Broad Band. You're next.", - "pageCount": 290, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DddLDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Broad_Band.html?hl=&id=DddLDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780306827341", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "The Algorithm", - "authors": [ - "Hilke Schellmann" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-01-02", - "description": "Based on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents, and real world test results, Emmy‑award winning Wall Street Journal contributor Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating expose on the next civil rights issue of our time: how AI has already taken over the workplace and shapes our future. Hilke Schellmann, is an Emmy‑award winning investigative reporter, Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor and Journalism Professor at NYU. In The Algorithm, she investigates the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work. AI is now being used to decide who has access to an education, who gets hired, who gets fired, and who receives a promotion. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real‑world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high‑stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good. Algorithms are on the brink of dominating our lives and threaten our human future--if we don't fight back. Schellmann takes readers on a journalistic detective story testing algorithms that have secretly analyzed job candidates' facial expressions and tone of voice. She investigates algorithms that scan our online activity including Twitter and LinkedIn to construct personality profiles à la Cambridge Analytica. Her reporting reveals how employers track the location of their employees, the keystrokes they make, access everything on their screens and, during meetings, analyze group discussions to diagnose problems in a team. Even universities are now using predictive analytics for admission offers and financial aid.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KBDwzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Algorithm.html?hl=&id=KBDwzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780099446781", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-05", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "fiction" - ], - "title": "The Silence of the Lambs", - "authors": [ - "Thomas Harris" - ], - "publishedDate": "2002", - "description": "There'S A Killer On The Loose Who Knows That Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, And A Trainee Investigator Who'S Trying To Save Her Own Hide. The Only Man That Can Help Is Locked In An Asylum. But He'S Willing To Put A Brave Face On - If It Will Help Him Escape.", - "pageCount": 436, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Government investigators" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2x5ceEACyeQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Silence_of_the_Lambs.html?hl=&id=2x5ceEACyeQC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780393866513", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-08", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "How to Make a Killing", - "authors": [ - "Tom Mueller" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-08", - "description": "How did a lifesaving medical breakthrough become a for-profit enterprise that threatens many of the people it's meant to save? Six decades ago, visionary doctors achieved the impossible: the humble kidney, acknowledged since ancient times to be as essential to life as the heart, became the first human organ to be successfully replaced with a machine. Yet huge dialysis corporations, ambitious doctor-entrepreneurs and Beltway lobbyists soon turned this medical miracle into an early experiment in for-profit medicine--and one of the nation's worst healthcare catastrophes. With powerful insight and on-the-ground reporting, New York Times best-selling author Tom Mueller introduces an unforgettable cast of characters. Heroic patients, including a Hollywood stuntman and body double, risk their lives to blow the whistle on how they've been mistreated. An unpaid activist living in a south Georgia trailer park fights to save patients from involuntary discharge from their lifesaving care. Industry insiders put their careers on the line to speak out about the endemic wrongs and pervasive inequality they've witnessed--and about dialysis executives who dress as musketeers and Star Wars characters to exhort their employees to more aggressive profit-seeking. Mueller evokes the scientific ingenuity and optimism of the 1950s and 1960s, when the burgeoning field of organ transplant and early dialysis machines offered long-awaited hope for lifesaving care. That is, until a New York salesman had himself dialyzed on the floor of the House, and Congress made renal disease the only \"Medicare for All\" condition--opening the financial floodgates for Big Dialysis. Of the thousands caught in a web of corporate greed, a disproportionate number are Black and Latino, highlighting the stark racial divides already endemic to American medicine. How to Make a Killing reveals dialysis as a microcosm of American medicine and poses a vital challenge: find a way to fix dialysis, and we'll have a fighting chance of fixing our country's dysfunctional healthcare system as a whole, restoring patients, not profits, as its true purpose.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dfxvzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_Make_a_Killing.html?hl=&id=dfxvzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385546492", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Flying Blind", - "authors": [ - "Peter Robison" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-11-30", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS BEST SELLER • A suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX. An \"authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of one of the great American companies\" (New York Times Book Review), from the award-winning reporter for Bloomberg. Boeing is a century-old titan of industry. It played a major role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. The planemaker remains a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, as well as a linchpin in the awesome routine of modern air travel. But in 2018 and 2019, two crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 killed 346 people. The crashes exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company’s history—and one of the costliest corporate scandals ever. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing? Flying Blind is the definitive exposé of the disasters that transfixed the world. Drawing from exclusive interviews with current and former employees of Boeing and the FAA; industry executives and analysts; and family members of the victims, it reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for catastrophe. It shows how in the race to beat the competition and reward top executives, Boeing skimped on testing, pressured employees to meet unrealistic deadlines, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping them or their pilots for flight. It examines how the company, once a treasured American innovator, became obsessed with the bottom line, putting shareholders over customers, employees, and communities. By Bloomberg investigative journalist Peter Robison, who covered Boeing as a beat reporter during the company’s fateful merger with McDonnell Douglas in the late ‘90s, this is the story of a business gone wildly off course. At once riveting and disturbing, it shows how an iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, threatening an industry and endangering countless lives.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wEGNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Flying_Blind.html?hl=&id=wEGNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593655184", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-11", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Our Enemies Will Vanish", - "authors": [ - "Yaroslav Trofimov" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-01-09", - "description": "“Our Enemies Will Vanish achieves the highest level of war reporting: a tough, detailed account that nevertheless reads like a great novel. One is reminded of Michael Herr's Dispatches . . . Frankly, it's what we have all aspired to. I did not really understand Ukraine until I read Trofimov's account.” —Sebastian Junger A revelatory eyewitness account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heroism of the Ukrainian people in their resistance by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Ukrainian chief foreign-affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. But in the face of this existential threat, the Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to seesaw to this day. This is the story of the epic bravery of the Ukrainian people—people Trofimov knows very well. For Trofimov, this war is deeply personal. He grew up in Kyiv and his family has lived there for generations. With deep empathy and local understanding, Trofimov tells the story of how everyday Ukrainian citizens—doctors, computer programmers, businesspeople, and schoolteachers—risked their lives and lost loved ones. He blends their brave and tragic stories with expert military analysis, providing unique insight into the thinking of Ukrainian leadership and mapping out the decisive stages of what has become a perilous war for Ukraine, the Putin regime, and indeed, the world. This brutal, catastrophic struggle is unfolding on another continent, but the United States and its NATO allies have become deeply implicated. As the war drags on, it threatens to engulf the world. We cannot look away. At once heart-breaking and inspiring, Our Enemies Will Vanish is a riveting, vivid, and first-hand account of the Ukrainian refusal to surrender. It is the story of ordinary people fighting not just for their homes and their families but for justice and democracy itself.", - "pageCount": 409, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-RLREAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_Enemies_Will_Vanish.html?hl=&id=-RLREAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385519250", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Siege of Mecca", - "authors": [ - "Yaroslav Trofimov" - ], - "publishedDate": "2007", - "description": "On November 20, 1979, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islams holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Trofimov interviews for the first time scores of direct participants in the siege, including former terrorists, and draws on hundreds of once-classified documents.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Mecca (Saudi Arabia)" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=R84lmAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Siege_of_Mecca.html?hl=&id=R84lmAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781847927279", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-16", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Technofeudalism", - "authors": [ - "Yanis Varoufakis" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-28", - "description": "Capitalism is dead. The #1 bestselling economist shows how the owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords. 'What an amazing piece of work this is. Everyone should read it. 100 out of 100' IRVINE WELSH In his boldest and most far-reaching book yet, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it. 'An important new book' Carole Cadwalladr, Observer 'With superb storytelling, Varoufakis shows how capitalism has eaten itself alive' Brett Scott, author of Cloudmoney 'Provocative and accessible, this is sure to be a key touchstone in debates about the future of the global economy' Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Big data" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tbqazwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Technofeudalism.html?hl=&id=tbqazwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593593950", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-17", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "The Coming Wave", - "authors": [ - "Mustafa Suleyman" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind “A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari “Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman “An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times.”—Bill Gates A Best Book of the Year: Economist, Financial Times, CEO Magazine • Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.", - "pageCount": 353, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Technology & Engineering" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=a-26EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Coming_Wave.html?hl=&id=a-26EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780375706677", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-17", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "fiction" - ], - "title": "No Country for Old Men", - "authors": [ - "Cormac McCarthy" - ], - "publishedDate": "2006", - "description": "Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than two million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.", - "pageCount": 309, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TGQDed2zvh8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/No_Country_for_Old_Men.html?hl=&id=TGQDed2zvh8C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780333717523", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-19", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Into Thin Air", - "authors": [ - "Jon Krakauer" - ], - "publishedDate": "1997", - "description": "Journalist Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that \"suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down.\" He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for this epic account of the May 1996 disaster. Unabridged. 7 CDs.", - "pageCount": 293, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Mountaineering" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gt7EQgH8-b4C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Into_Thin_Air.html?hl=&id=nEVCPgAACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593716601", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Extremely Hardcore", - "authors": [ - "Zoë Schiffer" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-02-13", - "description": "\"Zoë Schiffer has written the definitive book on perhaps the weirdest business story of our time. A fast-paced and riveting account of a hilarious and tragic mess.\" — Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion “Money Stuff” columnist “the bird is freed” - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022 When Elon Musk took over Twitter, commentators were rooting for the visionary behind Tesla and SpaceX to succeed. Here was a tough leader who could grab back power from Twitter’s entitled workforce, motivate them to get “extremely hardcore,” and supercharge Twitter’s profit and potential. And it was all out of the goodness of his own heart, rooted in his fervent belief in the necessity of making Twitter friendlier to free speech. \"I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk said. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.” Once Musk charged into the Twitter headquarters, the command-and-control playbook Musk honed at Tesla and SpaceX went off the rails immediately. Distilling hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world’s online public square into his own personal megaphone. You’ll hear from employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace in real-time, seeing years of progress to fight disinformation and hate speech wiped out within a matter of months. There’s the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk’s inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss’s worst instincts. This is the story of Twitter, but it’s also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs. Riveting, character-driven, and filled with jaw-dropping revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It’s the next best thing to being there, and you won’t have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop.", - "pageCount": 353, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FsTlEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Extremely_Hardcore.html?hl=&id=FsTlEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781524760595", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-25", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Between Two Fires", - "authors": [ - "Joshua Yaffa" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020", - "description": "From a leading journalist in Moscow and correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule \"Unforgettable. . . . This is a book about Putin's Russia that is unlike any other.\" --Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country's most remarkable figures--from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians--who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. Between Two Fires chronicles the lives of a number of strivers who understand that their dreams are best--or only--realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles the director of the country's main television channel, an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions, and many others. The result is an intimate and probing portrait of a nation that is much discussed yet little understood. By showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and frequently repressive state--as often by choice as under threat of force--Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.", - "pageCount": 372, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=H-jEDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Between_Two_Fires.html?hl=&id=H-jEDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781523004775", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-26", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Wealth Supremacy", - "authors": [ - "Marjorie Kelly" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", - "description": "A powerful analysis of how the bias towards wealth that is woven into the very fabric of American capitalism is damaging people, the economy, and the planet, and what the foundations of a new economy could be. This bold manifesto exposes seven myths underlying wealth supremacy, the bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth by and for the wealthy, and is the hidden force behind economic injustice, the climate crisis, and so many other problems of our day: The Myth of Maximizing: No amount of wealth is ever enough. The Myth of Fiduciary Duty: Corporate managers' most sacred duty is to expand capital. The Myth of Corporate Governance: Corporate membership must be reserved for capital alone. The Myth of the Income Statement: Income to capital must always be increased, while income to labor must always be decreased. The Myth of Materiality: Profit--material gain--alone is real, while social and environmental damages are not. The Myth of Takings: The first duty of government must be the protection of private property. The Myth of the Free Market: There should be no limits on the field of action of corporations and capital. Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership: public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. And she sketches the outlines of a non-extractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f8OSzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Wealth_Supremacy.html?hl=&id=f8OSzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593594841", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Secret Gate", - "authors": [ - "Mitchell Zuckoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-04-25", - "description": "The incredible true story of a breathtaking rescue in the frenzied final hours of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan—and how a brave Afghan mother and a compassionate American officer engineered a daring escape—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in a contentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. As evacuation planes departed above, Homeira was caught in the turmoil at the Kabul Airport, trying and failing to secure escape for her and her eight-year-old son, Siawash, along with her parents and the rest of their family. Meanwhile, a young American diplomat named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered to join the skeleton team of remaining officials at Kabul Airport, frantically racing to help rescue the more than 100,000 stranded Americans and their Afghan helpers. When Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the airport two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates, he started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day. On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get them through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract “shooters.” He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. For her part, Homeira broke Sam’s rules and withstood his profanities. Together they braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, to enter the airport, Homeira and Siawash would have to leave behind their family and everything they had ever known. The Secret Gate tells the thrilling, emotional tale of a young man's courage and a mother and son’s skin-of-the-teeth escape from a homeland that is no longer their own.", - "pageCount": 337, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dSSFEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Secret_Gate.html?hl=&id=dSSFEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781736205907", - "dateFinished": "2024-02-29", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "economics" - ], - "title": "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism", - "authors": [ - "Cory Doctorow" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-12-29", - "description": "OneZero, Medium's official technology publication, is thrilled to announce a print-on-demand edition of How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow, with an exclusive new chapter. How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism was first published online in August, where it was an instant hit with readers, scholars, and critics alike. For years now, we've been hearing about the ills of surveillance capitalism - the business of extracting, collecting, and selling vast reams of user data that has exploded with the rise of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But what if everything we've been hearing is wrong? What if surveillance capitalism is not some rogue capitalism or a wrong turn taken by some misguided corporations? What if the system is working exactly as intended - and the only hope of restoring an open web is to take the fight directly to the system itself? In Doctorow's timely and crucial new nonfiction work, the internationally bestselling author of Walkaway, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Little Brother, argues that if we're to have any hope of destroying surveillance capitalism, we're going to have to destroy the monopolies that currently comprise the commercial web as we know it. Only by breaking apart the tech giants that totally control our online experiences can we hope to return to a more open and free web - one where predatory data-harvesting is not a founding principle. Doctorow shows how, despite popular misconception, Facebook and Google do not possess any \"mind-control rays\" capable of brainwashing users into, say, voting for a presidential candidate or joining an extremist group - they have simply used their monopoly power to profit mightily off of people interested in doing those things and made it easy for them to find each other.Doctorow takes us on a whirlwind tour of the last 30 years of digital rights battles and the history of American monopoly - and where the two intersect. Through a deeply compelling and highly readable narrative, he makes the case for breaking up Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple as a means of ending surveillance capitalism.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=W20NzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html?hl=&id=W20NzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780765312181", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Blindsight", - "authors": [ - "Peter Watts" - ], - "publishedDate": "2006-10-03", - "description": "Two months since the stars fell... Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown. Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge. You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...", - "pageCount": 384, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=th7gwAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blindsight.html?hl=&id=th7gwAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593491799", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-01", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Waiting to Be Arrested at Night", - "authors": [ - "Tahir Hamut Izgil" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-08-01", - "description": "Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • THE ECONOMIST • TIME A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China’s internment camps for Muslim minorities. Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government’s radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs’ radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world. Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir’s daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope. Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.", - "pageCount": 273, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UIuZEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Waiting_to_Be_Arrested_at_Night.html?hl=&id=UIuZEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781466876477", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-02", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Colonel", - "authors": [ - "Peter Watts" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-07-29", - "description": "Colonel Keaton is in trouble. His wife has retreated into a virtual heaven and his son remains missing after joining an extrasolar mission to track down an alien race. He is presently tasked by his superiors with the threat assessment of hived human intelligences, one of which successfully attacks a compound under his watch. Now, one of the strongest hive minds in the world approaches Keaton with an offer that could completely change his world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", - "pageCount": 32, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PWvfAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=PWvfAwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593443224", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Means of Control", - "authors": [ - "Byron Tau" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-02-27", - "description": "You are being surveilled right now. This sweeping exposé reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home. “A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age.”—Kirkus Reviews “That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance program—one designed to track everyone.” For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring. Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for sale—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government. In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scope—one that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directive—“get everything you can”—and the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it. Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargain—ubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price?", - "pageCount": 401, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3gzKEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Means_of_Control.html?hl=&id=3gzKEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593299456", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-07", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Under the Eye of Power", - "authors": [ - "Colin Dickey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", - "description": "From beloved cultural historian and acclaimed author of Ghostland comes a history of America's obsession with secret societies and the conspiracies of hidden power The United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch trials to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply this: secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. We’d like to assume these panics exist only at the fringes of society, or are unique features of the internet age. But history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy. Cultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In Under the Eye of Power, Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people—including some of the most powerful people in the country—continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the most: the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it.", - "pageCount": 369, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=H86UEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Under_the_Eye_of_Power.html?hl=&id=H86UEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525561019", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-15", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "3 Shades of Blue", - "authors": [ - "James Kaplan" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-03-05", - "description": "From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name—Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and, above all, Miles. Nineteen fifty-nine saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New Orleans and New York to Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and LA. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. It’s a book about the great forebears of this golden age, particularly Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the disrupters, like Ornette Coleman, who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period. But above all, 3 Shades of Blue is a book about three very different men—their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. Bill Evans had a gruesome downward spiral; John Coltrane took the mystic’s path into a space far away from mainstream concerns. Miles had three or four sea changes in him before the end. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, an American odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.", - "pageCount": 421, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=t5zDEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=t5zDEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525511809", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "history" - ], - "title": "When Crack Was King", - "authors": [ - "Donovan X. Ramsey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", - "description": "LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic “A master class in disrupting a stubborn narrative, a monumental feat for the fraught subject of addiction in Black communities.”—The Washington Post “A poignant and compelling re-examination of a tragic era in America history . . . insightful . . . and deeply moving.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy ONE OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND VULTURE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, She Reads, Electric Lit, The Mary Sue The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality. When Crack Was King follows four individuals to give us a startling portrait of crack’s destruction and devastating legacy: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and the son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a “crack house”; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the Zoo Crew, Newark’s most legendary group of drug traffickers. Weaving together riveting research with the voices of survivors, When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.", - "pageCount": 449, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2O6mEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/When_Crack_Was_King.html?hl=&id=2O6mEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781524732851", - "dateFinished": "2024-03-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "climate" - ], - "title": "Fire Weather", - "authors": [ - "John Vaillant" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-06-06", - "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Slate, and Smithsonian “Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core.\" —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland “Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Nature" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lJeTEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Fire_Weather.html?hl=&id=lJeTEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780063037335", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-03", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "autobiography" - ], - "title": "Finding Me", - "authors": [ - "Viola Davis" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-04-26", - "description": "OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF 2022 • A PARADE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A MARIE CLAIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK “It’s clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all.”—USA Today “[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success….Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels.”—Los Angeles Times In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you. Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.", - "pageCount": 282, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gl05EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=gl05EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781039000780", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Sideways", - "authors": [ - "Josh O'Kane" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-13", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs' pitch for the long-forsaken property—with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO—Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood—and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech’s digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GJKTEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sideways.html?hl=&id=GJKTEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781770415379", - "dateAdded": "2024-01-07", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Driven: Rush in the '90s and in the End", - "authors": [ - "Martin Popoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-04-27", - "description": "The conclusion to the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North. Includes two full-color photo inserts, with unearthed photos of the band. \"A must for Rush fans.\" -- Library Journal on Anthem, book one of the Rush Across the Decades trilogy In this conclusion to his trilogy of authoritative books on Canada's most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of \"life at the top\" for Rush's Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy, with Peart losing his daughter and his wife within the space of ten months and, two decades later, succumbing to cancer himself. In between, however, there is a gorgeous and heartbreaking album of reflection and bereavement, as well as a triumphant trip to Brazil, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and -- some say surprisingly -- the band's first full-blown concept album to close an immense career marked by integrity and idealism.", - "pageCount": 368, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=l6DYzQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Driven_Rush_in_the_90s_and_in_the_End.html?hl=&id=l6DYzQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781770415362", - "dateFinished": "2024-01-06", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Limelight: Rush in The '80s", - "authors": [ - "Martin Popoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", - "description": "Part two of the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North In the follow-up to Anthem: Rush in the '70s, Martin Popoff brings together canon analysis, cultural context, and extensive firsthand interviews to celebrate Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart at the peak of their persuasive power. Rush was one of the most celebrated hard rock acts of the '80s, and the second book of Popoff's staggeringly comprehensive three-part series takes readers from Permanent Waves to Presto, while bringing new insight to Moving Pictures, their crowning glory. Limelight: Rush in the '80s is a celebration of fame, of the pushback against that fame, of fortunes made -- and spent ... In the latter half of the decade, as Rush adopts keyboard technology and gets pert and poppy, there's an uproar amongst diehards, but the band finds a whole new crop of listeners. Limelight charts a dizzying period in the band's career, built of explosive excitement but also exhaustion, a state that would lead, as the '90s dawned, to the band questioning everything they previously believed, and each member eying the oncoming decade with trepidation and suspicion.", - "pageCount": 375, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MpFczQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Limelight_Rush_in_The_80s.html?hl=&id=MpFczQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374602291", - "dateAdded": "2023-11-18", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "We Were Once a Family", - "authors": [ - "Roxanna Asgarian" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-03-14", - "description": "The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children—and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew very little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children—with fateful consequences. In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian became the first reporter to put the children’s birth families at the center of the story. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Family & Relationships" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=N4t-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/We_Were_Once_a_Family.html?hl=&id=N4t-EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781645036951", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-16", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "sports" - ], - "title": "Black Ball", - "authors": [ - "Theresa Runstedtler" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023", - "description": "Against the backdrop of ongoing massive resistance to racial desegregation and increasingly strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into disorder. The press and the public blamed young Black players for the chaos in the NBA, citing drugs, violence, greed, and criminality. The supposed decline of pro basketball became a metaphor for the first decades of integration in America: the rules of the game had changed, allowing more Black people onto a formerly white playing field, and now they were ruining everything. But Black Ball argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the NBA as the star-laden powerhouse we know today, thanks largely to the efforts of Black players in challenging the white basketball establishment of owners, coaches, and spectators. Spotlighting legendary players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bernard King, and Connie Hawkins, scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball's \"Dark Ages,\" weaving together her deep knowledge of the game's key icons and institutions with incisive social and political analysis of the era. Black ballers created an aerial, improvisational, and creative style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods, laying the foundation for the explosive popularity and profitability of the league in subsequent decades. They also transformed labor in the pro-basketball world, filing lawsuits and organizing unions to demand better salaries and greater autonomy. Without their skills, style, and savvy, there would be no Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or LeBron James today…", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=te9EzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Ball.html?hl=&id=te9EzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593085172", - "dateFinished": "2023-11-16", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Providence", - "authors": [ - "Max Barry" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020", - "description": "Seven years after first contact, Providence Five launches. An enormous warship, built to protect humanity, it has a crew of four. Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson will be confined to the ship for years, monitoring the AI-powered ship and reporting the war's progress to a global audience by way of social media. When their communications are cut, their ship becomes decreasingly trustworthy. To survive, they must win a fight that is suddenly and terrifyingly real. -- adapted from jacket", - "pageCount": 322, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=yfLsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Providence.html?hl=&id=yfLsDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0393881067", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Survival of the Richest", - "authors": [ - "Douglas Rushkoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-06", - "description": "Named One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by Kirkus and Literary Hub The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion—QAnon, for example, or meme stocks—reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GGWNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Survival_of_the_Richest.html?hl=&id=GGWNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780008466770", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Trust the Plan", - "authors": [ - "Will Sommer" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-03-08", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zZqEzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Trust_the_Plan.html?hl=&id=zZqEzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780306925481", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Corporate Rock Sucks", - "authors": [ - "Jim Ruland" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-04-12", - "description": "A no-holds-barred narrative history of the iconic label that brought the world Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and more, by the co-author of Do What You Want and My Damage Greg Ginn started SST Records in the sleepy beach town of Hermosa Beach, CA, to supply ham radio enthusiasts with tuners and transmitters. But when Ginn wanted to launch his band, Black Flag, no one was willing to take them on. Determined to bring his music to the masses, Ginn turned SST into a record label. On the back of Black Flag's relentless touring, guerilla marketing, and refusal to back down, SST became the sound of the underground. In Corporate Rock Sucks, music journalist Jim Ruland relays the unvarnished story of SST Records, from its remarkable rise in notoriety to its infamous downfall. With records by Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, and scores of obscure yet influential bands, SST was the most popular indie label by the mid-80s--until a tsunami of legal jeopardy, financial peril, and dysfunctional management brought the empire tumbling down. Throughout this investigative deep-dive, Ruland leads readers through SST's tumultuous history and epic catalog. Featuring never-before-seen interviews with the label's former employees, as well as musicians, managers, producers, photographers, video directors, and label heads, Corporate Rock Sucks presents a definitive narrative history of the '80s punk and alternative rock scenes, and shows how the music industry was changed forever.", - "pageCount": 304, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YjuWzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Corporate_Rock_Sucks.html?hl=&id=YjuWzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781952616037", - "dateAdded": "2024-04-20", - "status": "want to read", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", "development", - "climate" - ], - "title": "Sustainable Web Design", - "authors": [ - "Tom Greenwood" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "Make greener design choices for better experiences and a healthier planet.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Sites Web" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VdduzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sustainable_Web_Design.html?hl=&id=VdduzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593083888", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "health" - ], - "title": "The Myth of Normal", - "authors": [ - "Gabor Maté, MD" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-13", - "description": "The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.", - "pageCount": 577, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Psychology" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eZVUEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Myth_of_Normal.html?hl=&id=eZVUEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781950665655", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", "nonfiction" ], - "title": "Ludicrous", + "title": "The Pragmatic Programmer", "authors": [ - "Edward Niedermeyer" + "Andrew Hunt", + "David Thomas" ], - "publishedDate": "2021-01-12", - "description": "Tesla is the most exciting car company in a generation . . . but can it live up to the hype? Tesla Motors and CEO Elon Musk have become household names, shaking up the staid auto industry by creating a set of innovative electric vehicles that have wowed the marketplace and defied conventional wisdom. The company's market valuation now rivals that of long-established automakers, and, to many industry observers, Tesla is defining the future of the industry. But behind the hype, Tesla has some serious deficiencies that raise questions about its sky-high valuation, and even its ultimate survival. Tesla's commitment to innovation has led it to reject the careful, zero-defects approach of other car manufacturers, even as it struggles to mass-produce cars reliably, and with minimal defects. While most car manufacturers struggle with the razor-thin margins of mid-priced sedans, Tesla's strategy requires that the Model 3 finally bring it to profitability, even as the high-priced Roadster and Model S both lost money. And Tesla's approach of continually focusing on the future, even as commitments and deadlines are repeatedly missed, may ultimately test the patience of all but its most devoted fans. In Ludicrous, journalist and auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer lays bare the disconnect between the popular perception of Tesla and the day-to-day realities of the company—and the cars it produces. Blending original reporting and never-before-published insider accounts with savvy industry analysis, Niedermeyer tells the story of Tesla as it's never been told before—with clear eyes, objectivity and insight.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=vO5KEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Ludicrous.html?hl=&id=vO5KEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781473223363", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Aurora Rising", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-11-02", - "description": "Previously published as THE PREFECT. A rollercoaster ride through the dark and turbulent universe of REVELATION SPACE: an interstellar thriller where nothing - and no one - is what they seem ... Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life. A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny. Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it. 'An adroit and fast-paced blend of space opera and police procedural, original and exciting' George R. R. Martin", - "pageCount": 528, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Space colonies" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZdbetAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Aurora_Rising.html?hl=&id=ZdbetAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374538668", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Blockchain Chicken Farm", - "authors": [ - "Xiaowei Wang" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", - "description": "From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.", - "pageCount": 256, + "publishedDate": "1999-10-20", + "description": "What others in the trenches say about The Pragmatic Programmer... “The cool thing about this book is that it’s great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.” — Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change “I found this book to be a great mix of solid advice and wonderful analogies!” — Martin Fowler, author of Refactoring and UML Distilled “I would buy a copy, read it twice, then tell all my colleagues to run out and grab a copy. This is a book I would never loan because I would worry about it being lost.” — Kevin Ruland, Management Science, MSG-Logistics “The wisdom and practical experience of the authors is obvious. The topics presented are relevant and useful.... By far its greatest strength for me has been the outstanding analogies—tracer bullets, broken windows, and the fabulous helicopter-based explanation of the need for orthogonality, especially in a crisis situation. I have little doubt that this book will eventually become an excellent source of useful information for journeymen programmers and expert mentors alike.” — John Lakos, author of Large-Scale C++ Software Design “This is the sort of book I will buy a dozen copies of when it comes out so I can give it to my clients.” — Eric Vought, Software Engineer “Most modern books on software development fail to cover the basics of what makes a great software developer, instead spending their time on syntax or technology where in reality the greatest leverage possible for any software team is in having talented developers who really know their craft well. An excellent book.” — Pete McBreen, Independent Consultant “Since reading this book, I have implemented many of the practical suggestions and tips it contains. Across the board, they have saved my company time and money while helping me get my job done quicker! This should be a desktop reference for everyone who works with code for a living.” — Jared Richardson, Senior Software Developer, iRenaissance, Inc. “I would like to see this issued to every new employee at my company....” — Chris Cleeland, Senior Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc. “If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.” — Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process--taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you'll learn how to Fight software rot; Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge; Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code; Avoid programming by coincidence; Bullet-proof your code with contracts, assertions, and exceptions; Capture real requirements; Test ruthlessly and effectively; Delight your users; Build teams of pragmatic programmers; and Make your developments more precise with automation. Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with entertaining anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you're a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you'll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You'll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career. You'll become a Pragmatic Programmer.", + "pageCount": 346, "printType": "BOOK", "categories": [ "Computers" ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=myUyzQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5wBQEp6ruIAC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blockchain_Chicken_Farm.html?hl=&id=myUyzQEACAAJ" + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=5wBQEp6ruIAC" }, { - "isbn": "1568589395", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "isbn": "9781610398039", + "dateFinished": "2018-10-06", "status": "finished", "rating": "unrated", "tags": [ "tech", - "labor" + "politics" ], - "title": "Work Won't Love You Back", + "title": "Surveillance Valley", "authors": [ - "Sarah Jaffe" + "Yasha Levine" ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "A preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements examines this \"labor of love\" myth--the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. pay.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "BUSINESS & ECONOMICS" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UGt8zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Work_Won_t_Love_You_Back.html?hl=&id=UGt8zQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1591847087", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Hatching Twitter", - "authors": [ - "Nick Bilton" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-09-30", - "description": "The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communication. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world. But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on. In this rousing history that reads like a novel, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter’s early exponential growth, following the four hackers—Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine. Drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails, Bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley culture.", - "pageCount": 319, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GX8ODAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Hatching_Twitter.html?hl=&id=GX8ODAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0374601178", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "Fancy Bear Goes Phishing", - "authors": [ - "Scott J. Shapiro" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-05-23", - "description": "\"Unsettling, absolutely riveting, and—for better or worse—necessary reading.\" —Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to understand it. It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. With lucidity and wit, he establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society. And because hacking is a human-interest story, he tells the fascinating tales of perpetrators, including Robert Morris Jr., the graduate student who accidentally crashed the internet in the 1980s, and the Bulgarian “Dark Avenger,” who invented the first mutating computer-virus engine. We also meet a sixteen-year-old from South Boston who took control of Paris Hilton’s cell phone, the Russian intelligence officers who sought to take control of a US election, and others. In telling their stories, Shapiro exposes the hackers’ tool kits and gives fresh answers to vital questions: Why is the internet so vulnerable? What can we do in response? Combining the philosophical adventure of Gödel, Escher, Bach with dramatic true-crime narrative, the result is a lively and original account of the future of hacking, espionage, and war, and of how to live in an era of cybercrime. Includes black-and-white images", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=nbWYEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Fancy_Bear_Goes_Phishing.html?hl=&id=nbWYEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0374721246", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Subprime Attention Crisis", - "authors": [ - "Tim Hwang" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", - "description": "From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundation In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet—and its free services—will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.", - "pageCount": 176, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=iyPQDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=iyPQDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1839762039", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech" - ], - "title": "Internet for the People", - "authors": [ - "Ben Tarnoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-06-14", - "description": "In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this-it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone's behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.", - "pageCount": 245, + "publishedDate": "2018-02-06", + "description": "The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built. In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea -- using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad -- drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology. But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news -- and the device on which you read it.", + "pageCount": 384, "printType": "BOOK", "categories": [ "Political Science" ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Lj1xEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=65WYDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Internet_for_the_People.html?hl=&id=Lj1xEAAAQBAJ" + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=65WYDgAAQBAJ" }, { - "isbn": "0520293282", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Black Against Empire", - "authors": [ - "Joshua Bloom", - "Waldo E. Martin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-10-25", - "description": "15 Rupture -- 16 The Limits of Heroism -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Figures", - "pageCount": 562, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D7UwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Against_Empire.html?hl=&id=D7UwDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781556527654", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Assassination of Fred Hampton", - "authors": [ - "Jeffrey Haas" - ], - "publishedDate": "2010", - "description": "Uncovering a cold-blooded execution at the hands of a conspiring police force, this title pursues the murderers of Black Panther Fred Hampton. Documenting the 14-year process of bringing the killers to justice, this chronicle also depicts the 18-month court trial.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Assassination" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hDYtmQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Assassination_of_Fred_Hampton.html?hl=&id=hDYtmQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593652886", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Creative Act", - "authors": [ - "Rick Rubin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-01-17", - "description": "The #1 New York Times bestseller. From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us. \"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott “I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.", - "pageCount": 433, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Self-Help" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=l3dtEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Creative_Act.html?hl=&id=l3dtEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1912248700", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "isbn": "9781250196699", + "dateFinished": "2018-10-07", "status": "finished", "rating": "unrated", "tags": [ "tech", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Abolish Silicon Valley", - "authors": [ - "Wendy Liu" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-03-23", - "description": "Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. \"Lucid, probing and urgent. Wendy Liu manages to be both optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends.\" -- Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal \"An inspiring memoir manifesto...Technologists all over the world are realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a road map for that journey of realization.\" -- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Little Brother Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised \"innovation\" is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Technology & Engineering" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JhiREAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Abolish_Silicon_Valley.html?hl=&id=JhiREAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780674430006", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", - "authors": [ - "Thomas Piketty" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-04-15", - "description": "The main driver of inequality--returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth--is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values. Thomas Piketty's findings in this ambitious, original, rigorous work will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=89E_zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Capital_in_the_Twenty_First_Century.html?hl=&id=89E_zQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1455574139", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ "nonfiction" ], - "title": "The Good Nurse", + "title": "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now", "authors": [ - "Charles Graeber" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-07-29", - "description": "\"CHILLING.\" -- Stephen King An intimate -- and frightening -- glimpse inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, Charles Cullen, whose 16-year long \"nursing\" career left as many as 400 dead. When nurse Charlie Cullen was arrested in 2003, journalists were quick to dub him \"The Angel of Death.\" But Cullen was neither a mercy killer nor a simple monster. He was a son, a husband, a father, a best friend, and a valued caregiver. He was also implicated in the deaths of as many as 400 people, and may be the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen's career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years, across nine hospitals. In this riveting work of investigative journalism, Charles Graeber-the only person Cullen chose to speak with following his arrest-reveals how Cullen got away with murder for so long. Based on hundreds of hours of previously unseen and unheard footage, recordings, and records, as well as extensive interviews with homicide detectives, Cullen's friends, family, coworkers, and confidential informants and whistleblowers, plus exclusive, one-on-one interviews with Cullen, himself, THE GOOD NURSE paints a dramatic portrait of madness and the bounds of friendship, and shines a spotlight on America's medical system. A harrowing and irresistibly paced book, you'll never look at a hospital the same way again.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6sUZnwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Good_Nurse.html?hl=&id=6sUZnwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780356512693", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "fantasy" - ], - "title": "The World We Make", - "authors": [ - "N. K. Jemisin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022", - "description": "From the record-breaking, four-time Hugo Award-winning N. K. Jemisin comes 'a glorious fantasy' (Neil Gaiman) - a story of culture, identity, magic and myths in contemporary New York City. The sequel to the critically acclaimed The City We Became, this is the final book of the Great Cities Duology. Every great city has a soul. A human avatar that embodies their city's heart and wields its magic. New York? She's got six. But all is not well in the city that never sleeps. Though Brooklyn, Manny, Bronca, Venezia, Padmini, and Neek have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading--and destroying the entire universe in the process--the mysterious capital \"E\" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and \"law and order\" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction. 'Hopeful and enthralling, The World We Make is more evidence of [Jemisin's] ferocious talent' Esquire 'Jemisin brings her living-city saga to a satisfying conclusion, maintaining a sense of energy and excitement throughout' Booklist 'Jemisin embodies the spirit of the city in as lush and lively a voice as ever and does a masterful job incorporating even more history and magic' Publishers Weekly 'The conclusion to Jemisin's Great Cities duology is a searing commentary on present-day politics as manipulated by a primordial evil...This riveting and powerful urban fantasy duology is masterfully written' BuzzFeed News The Great Cities Duology The City We Became The World We Make", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8o8IzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_World_We_Make.html?hl=&id=8o8IzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1786070472", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "The Panama Papers", - "authors": [ - "Bastian Obermayer", - "Frederik Obermaier" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016", - "description": "\"With precision and purpose, THE PANAMA PAPERS is what 'Follow the Money' means.\" --Bob Woodward,The Washington Post Late one evening, investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels, he then receives documents revealing how the president of Argentina has sequestered millions of dollars of state money for private use. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellowSüddeutsche journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in the secret world where complex networks of letterbox companies help the super-rich to hide their money. Faced with the contents of the largest data leak in history, they activate an international network of journalists to follow every possible line of inquiry. Operating in the strictest secrecy for over a year, they uncover cases involving European prime ministers and international dictators, emirs and kings, celebrities and aristocrats. The real-life thriller behind the story of the century,The Panama Papers is an intense, unputdownable account that proves, once and for all, that there exists a small elite living by a different set of rules and blows their secret world wide open.", - "pageCount": 366, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jNLhjwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Panama_Papers.html?hl=&id=jNLhjwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593492321", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "climate" - ], - "title": "The Climate Book", - "authors": [ - "Greta Thunberg" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-02-13", - "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope—but only if we listen to the science before it's too late. In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts—geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders—to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Throughout, illuminating and often shocking grayscale charts, graphs, diagrams, photographs, and illustrations underscore their research and their arguments. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.", - "pageCount": 465, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=4R3gEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Climate_Book.html?hl=&id=4R3gEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0316509841", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "fantasy" - ], - "title": "The City We Became", - "authors": [ - "N. K. Jemisin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-03-24", - "description": "Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city from an ancient evil in the first book of a stunning new novel by Hugo Award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all. For more from N. K. Jemisin, check out: The Inheritance TrilogyThe Hundred Thousand KingdomsThe Broken KingdomsThe Kingdom of Gods The Inheritance Trilogy (omnibus edition)Shades in Shadow: An Inheritance Triptych (e-only short fiction)The Awakened Kingdom (e-only novella) Dreamblood DuologyThe Killing MoonThe Shadowed Sun The Dreamblood Duology (omnibus) The Broken EarthThe Fifth SeasonThe Obelisk GateThe Stone Sky How Long 'til Black Future Month? (short story collection)", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qyPZwAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_City_We_Became.html?hl=&id=qyPZwAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316221047", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Operation Paperclip", - "authors": [ - "Annie Jacobsen" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-02-11", - "description": "The explosive story of America's secret post-WWII science programs, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51 In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War? Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century. In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.", - "pageCount": 592, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=iHVTlwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Operation_Paperclip.html?hl=&id=iHVTlwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780062996213", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Key Man", - "authors": [ - "Simon Clark", - "Will Louch" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "In this compelling story of greed, theft, and the dark underbelly of globalization and impact investing, two Wall Street Journal financial reporters investigate the shocking collapse of Abraaj-the largest private-equity failure in history-and the face behind its glimmering rise and catastrophic fall…", - "pageCount": 352, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZZMGzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Key_Man.html?hl=&id=ZZMGzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780143129028", - "dateFinished": "2019-08-18", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "tech" - ], - "title": "American Kingpin", - "authors": [ - "Nick Bilton" + "Jaron Lanier" ], "publishedDate": "2018-05-29", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye. It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.", - "pageCount": 377, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6xlZDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Kingpin.html?hl=&id=6xlZDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780399590436", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Mastermind", - "authors": [ - "Evan Ratliff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-07-21", - "description": "The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting—undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk.”—Los Angeles Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Evening Standard • Kirkus Reviews It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them. The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined. For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed. Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux’s empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age. Praise for The Mastermind “The Mastermind is true crime at its most stark and vivid depiction. Evan Ratliff’s work is well done from beginning to end, paralleling his investigative work with the work of the many federal agents developing the case against LeRoux.”—San Francisco Book Review (five stars) “A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)", - "pageCount": 498, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=T_PsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Mastermind.html?hl=&id=T_PsDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982156152", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Red Roulette", - "authors": [ - "Desmond Shum" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-09-07", - "description": "\"THE BOOK CHINA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ.\"--CNN A riveting insider's story of how the Party and big money work in China today, by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the zenith of power and wealth--and then fell out of favor. She was disappeared four years ago. News of this book led to a phone call from Whitney, proof that she's alive. As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China's Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy, he vaulted into China's billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she has not been able to tell it herself.", - "pageCount": 320, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=v788EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Roulette.html?hl=&id=v788EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385547772", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Stay True", - "authors": [ - "Hua Hsu" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-27", - "description": "From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_EGNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Stay_True.html?hl=&id=_EGNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0593315618", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Tracers in the Dark", - "authors": [ - "Andy Greenberg" - ], - "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", - "description": "From the award-winning author of Sandworm comes the propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, exposing once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence. “I love the book… It reads like a thriller… These stories are amazing.” (Michael Lewis) Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing. Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet. Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world’s most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hL_BEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Tracers_in_the_Dark.html?hl=&id=hL_BEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780063041363", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics" - ], - "title": "Raising Them Right", - "authors": [ - "Kyle Spencer" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-07-12", - "description": "A riveting behind-the-scenes account of the new stars of the far right--and how they've partnered with billionaire donors, idealogues, and political insiders to build the most powerful youth movement the American right has ever seen In the wake of the Obama presidency, a group of young charismatic conservatives catapulted onto the American political and cultural scenes, eager to thwart nationwide pushes for greater equity and inclusion. They dreamed of a cultural revolution--online and off--that would offer a forceful alternative to the progressive politics that were dominating American college campuses. In Raising Them Right, a gripping, character-driven read and investigative tour de force, Kyle Spencer chronicles the people and organizations working to lure millions of unsuspecting young American voters into the far-right fold--revealing their highly successful efforts to harness social media in alarming ways and capitalize on the democratization of celebrity culture. These power-hungry new faces may look and sound like antiestablishment renegades, but they are actually part of a tightly organized and heavily funded ultraconservative initiative to transform American youth culture and popularize fringe ideas. There is Charlie Kirk, the swashbuckling Trump insider and founder of the right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA, who dreams of taking back the country's soul from weak-kneed liberals and becoming a national powerbroker in his own right. There is the acid-tongued Candace Owens, a Black ultraconservative talk-show host and Fox News regular who is seeking to bring Black America to the GOP and her own celebritydom into the national forefront. And there is the young, rough-and-tumble libertarian Cliff Maloney, who built the Koch-affiliated organization Young Americans for Liberty into a political force to be reckoned with, while solidifying his own power and pull inside conservative circles. Chock-full of original reporting and unprecedented access, Raising Them Right is a striking prism through which to view the extraordinary shifts that have taken place in the American political sphere over the last decade. It establishes Kyle Spencer as the premier authority on a new generation of young conservative communicators who are merging politics and pop culture, social media and social lives, to bring cruel economic philosophies, skeletal government, and dangerous antidemocratic ideals into the mainstream. Theirs is a crusade that is just beginning.", - "pageCount": 368, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zVuyzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Raising_Them_Right.html?hl=&id=zVuyzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780425212738", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Zodiac Unmasked", - "authors": [ - "Robert Graysmith" - ], - "publishedDate": "2007-01-02", - "description": "Robert Graysmith reveals the true identity of Zodiac—America's most elusive serial killer. Between December 1968 and October 1969 a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for thirty-seven murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog. After painstaking investigation and more than thirty years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac’s true identity. With overwhelming evidence he reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped. America’s greatest unsolved mystery has finally been solved. INCLUDES PHOTOS AND A COMPLETE REPRODUCTION OF ZODIAC’S LETTERS", - "pageCount": 564, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8Wm6fvRvEqIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zodiac_Unmasked.html?hl=&id=8Wm6fvRvEqIC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316365215", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "labor", - "health" - ], - "title": "Rest Is Resistance", - "authors": [ - "Tricia Hersey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-10-11", - "description": "Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace of work -- feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its virtuous benefit. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. From the founder and creator of The Nap Ministry, Rest Is Resistance is a battle cry, a guidebook, a map for a movement, and a field guide for the weary and hopeful. It is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey's lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action and manifesto for those who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.", - "pageCount": 272, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Body, Mind & Spirit" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UwfuzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Rest_Is_Resistance.html?hl=&id=UwfuzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781922458513", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Indelible City", - "authors": [ - "Louisa Lim" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-05-03", - "description": "An award-winning journalist takes to the protest-riven streets of Hong Kong to write this startling landmark account of the island city’s complex past and precarious future.", - "pageCount": 321, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2mVkEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Indelible_City.html?hl=&id=2mVkEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781984880758", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Seek and Hide", - "authors": [ - "Amy Gajda" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-04-12", - "description": "“Gajda’s chronicle reveals an enduring tension between principles of free speech and respect for individuals’ private lives. …just the sort of road map we could use right now.”—The Atlantic “Wry and fascinating…Gajda is a nimble storyteller [and] an insightful guide to a rich and textured history that gets easily caricatured, especially when a culture war is raging.”—The New York Times An urgent book for today's privacy wars, and essential reading on how the courts have--for centuries--often protected privileged men's rights at the cost of everyone else's. Should everyone have privacy in their personal lives? Can privacy exist in a public place? Is there a right to be left alone even in the United States? You may be startled to realize that the original framers were sensitive to the importance of privacy interests relating to sexuality and intimate life, but mostly just for powerful and privileged (and usually white) men. The battle between an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s right to know has been fought for centuries. The founders demanded privacy for all the wrong press-quashing reasons. Supreme Court jus­tice Louis Brandeis famously promoted First Amend­ment freedoms but argued strongly for privacy too; and presidents from Thomas Jefferson through Don­ald Trump confidently hid behind privacy despite intense public interest in their lives. Today privacy seems simultaneously under siege and surging. And that’s doubly dangerous, as legal expert Amy Gajda argues. Too little privacy leaves ordinary people vulnerable to those who deal in and publish soul-crushing secrets. Too much means the famous and infamous can cloak themselves in secrecy and dodge accountability. Seek and Hide carries us from the very start, when privacy concepts first entered American law and society, to now, when the law al­lows a Silicon Valley titan to destroy a media site like Gawker out of spite. Muckraker Upton Sinclair, like Nellie Bly before him, pushed the envelope of privacy and propriety and then became a privacy advocate when journalists used the same techniques against him. By the early 2000s we were on our way to today’s full-blown crisis in the digital age, worrying that smartphones, webcams, basement publishers, and the forever internet had erased the right to privacy completely.", - "pageCount": 401, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Law" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=bfE3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bfE3EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781429925051", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Jumper: Griffin's Story", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2008-02-05", - "description": "An original novel from Steven Gould, creator of the Jumper series, that tells the back story of Griffin O'Connor, a character created for the film of Jumper. What if you could jump? Go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye? What would you do? Where would you go? What if you were only five years old? Griffin has a secret. It's a secret that he's sworn to his parents to keep, and never tell. Griffin is a Jumper: a person who can teleport to any place he has ever been. The first time was when he was five, and his parents crossed an ocean to protect the secret. The most important time was when he was nine. That was the day that the men came to his house and murdered his parents. Griffin knows that the men were looking for him, and he must never let them find him. Griffin grows up with only two goals: to survive, and to kill the people who want him dead. And a Jumper bent on revenge is not going to let anything stand in his way. Jumper is a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox/New Regency Productions, starring Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, and Jamie Bell. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pUPwoQrLtQUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pUPwoQrLtQUC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780812578546", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Reflex", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2005-08", - "description": "Davy, who teleports for government cases, is taken captive by a mysterious group of people who brainwash him for their own purposes, forcing Davy's teleportation-capable wife, Millie, to rescue him.", - "pageCount": 388, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rmY7cMdHle8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Reflex.html?hl=&id=rmY7cMdHle8C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781429987547", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Impulse", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-01-08", - "description": "Steven Gould returns to the world of his classic novel Jumper in the thrilling sequel Impulse. Cent has a secret. She lives in isolation, with her parents, hiding from the people who took her father captive and tortured him to gain control over his ability to teleport, and from the government agencies who want to use his talent. Cent has seen the world, but only from the safety of her parents' arms. She's teleported more than anyone on Earth, except for her mother and father, but she's never been able to do it herself. Her life has never been in danger. Until the day when she went snowboarding without permission and triggered an avalanche. When the snow and ice thundered down on her, she suddenly found herself in her own bedroom. That was the first time. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", - "pageCount": 368, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0xpvOtMEhvMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=0xpvOtMEhvMC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780765357694", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Jumper", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2008-02-05", - "description": "Story of Davy, a young man, who discovers he has a power that sets him apart from others, teleporting.", - "pageCount": 356, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y_B7OEueYuUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Jumper.html?hl=&id=Y_B7OEueYuUC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781429952408", - "dateFinished": "2020-06-08", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Shade", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2010-07-20", - "description": "Steven Gould's classic SF novel Jumper is the story of a young man with a single mysterious superpower: he can teleport anywhere, in the blink of an eye. Now, in a story set after Jumper's sequel Reflex, we see that a single mysterious superpower can add up to a lot of different kinds of miracle... In 2008 Jumper was brought to the screen as a big-budget SF adventure of the same name, directed by Doug Liman and starring Hayden Christiansen and Samuel L. Jackson. The movie rearranged the story line and gave the protagonist a teleporting sidekick. When the movie's producers expressed a desire to see a novel published about the sidekick's backstory, Gould chose to write the book himself; it was published as Jumper: Griffin's Story (2007), and is not canonical with the other two \"Jumper\" novels. \"Shade\" takes place in the world of the novels, not the alternate continuity of the movie. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", - "pageCount": 32, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=G4_DjO5ZHUYC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=G4_DjO5ZHUYC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385263481", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Hyperion", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "1989-05-26", - "description": "A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion “Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World “An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review “Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post “An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist", - "pageCount": 492, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8nsmEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Hyperion.html?hl=&id=8nsmEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780307781918", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Endymion", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-01-05", - "description": "The multiple-award-winning science fiction master returns to the universe that is his greatest triumph--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion --with a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors. Dan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel (Song of Kali) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort. Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion, took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics. Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.", - "pageCount": 815, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WqkIdLAEgfYC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=WqkIdLAEgfYC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780765336545", - "dateFinished": "2019-10-30", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Exo", - "authors": [ - "Steven Gould" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-09-09", - "description": "A sequel to Impulse returns readers to the world of Jumper and follows the experiences of a teen girl whose teleporting abilities subject her to the illicit agendas of corrupt and violent factions.", - "pageCount": 462, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wnItBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Exo.html?hl=&id=wnItBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780307781895", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Fall of Hyperion", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-02-02", - "description": "“State of the art science fiction . . . a landmark novel.”—Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Now, in the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same. Praise for The Fall of Hyperion “One of the finest SF novels published in the past few years.”—Science Fiction Eye “A magnificently original blend of themes and styles.”—The Denver Post", - "pageCount": 786, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DaN3-r0EXOcC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DaN3-r0EXOcC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780307781925", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Rise of Endymion", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-01-12", - "description": "The magnificent conclusion to one of the greatest science fiction sagas of our time The time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples. But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered--an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.", - "pageCount": 1066, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rsSPgjg5O9IC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rsSPgjg5O9IC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780380978939", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Ilium", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "2003-07-22", - "description": "The first installment of a new saga based on themes from \"The Iliad\" and \"The Tempest\" places classical characters and gods in such settings as the Plains of Ilium, the terraformed oceans of Mars, and Jupiter space.", - "pageCount": 596, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-lz30EVpBkoC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Ilium.html?hl=&id=-lz30EVpBkoC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780380978946", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Olympos", - "authors": [ - "Dan Simmons" - ], - "publishedDate": "2005-06-28", - "description": "Science fiction-roman.", - "pageCount": 708, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VSnCKaLwQuEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Olympos.html?hl=&id=VSnCKaLwQuEC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316134675", - "dateFinished": "2020-01-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Leviathan Wakes", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-06-15", - "description": "From a New York Times bestselling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Now a Prime Original series. Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. \"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.\" —George R. R. Martin The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 621, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=yud-foXqGUEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=yud-foXqGUEC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217637", - "dateFinished": "2020-04-27", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Babylon's Ashes", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-12-06", - "description": "The sixth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Babylon's Ashes has the galaxy in full revolution, and it's up to the crew of the Rocinante to make a desperate mission to the gate network and thin hope of victory. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood. The Free Navy -- a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships -- has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them. James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network. But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. Babylon's Ashes is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the bestselling Nemesis Games. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 484, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3jsYCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3jsYCwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316332828", - "dateFinished": "2020-05-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Persepolis Rising", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-12-05", - "description": "The seventh book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Persepolis Rising finds an old enemy returning home with more power and technology than anyone thought possible, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante tries to rally forces against the new invasion. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES An old enemy returns. In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace. In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it. New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity -- and of the Rocinante -- unexpectedly and forever. . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 586, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cxNVDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=cxNVDgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217590", - "dateFinished": "2020-04-15", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Nemesis Games", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2015-06-02", - "description": "The fifth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Nemesis Games drives the crew of the Rocinante apart, and as they struggle to survive, the inner planets fall victim to an enemy's catastrophic plan. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle. Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price. And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left. Nemesis Games is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the bestselling Cibola Burn. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 479, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=A_-zBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=A_-zBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316332934", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Leviathan Falls", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-11-30", - "description": "The biggest science fiction series of the decade comes to an incredible conclusion in the ninth and final novel in James S.A. Corey’s Hugo-award winning space opera that inspired the Prime Original series. “An all-time genre classic.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) Hugo Award Winner for Best Series The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again. In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before. As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win. But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat. \"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.\" —George R. R. Martin The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 509, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=XA4iEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=XA4iEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316669078", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Sins of Our Fathers", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", - "description": "The final novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story is also available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Through one of the gates, a colony stands alone. Their supplies are low. Their defenses, weak. The leadership is uncertain, and the community fragile. Huge alien beasts threaten the little they have left. But the worst monsters are human, and the greatest dangers are the past they brought. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 65, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f_02EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=f_02EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316235426", - "dateFinished": "2020-03-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Abaddon's Gate", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-06-04", - "description": "The third book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Abaddon's Gate opens the door to the ruins of an alien gate network, and the crew of the Rocinante may hold the key to unlocking its secrets. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES For generations, the solar system -- Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt -- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them. Abaddon's Gate is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the critically acclaimed Caliban's War. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 502, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rIWWl_bA0z4C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rIWWl_bA0z4C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217675", - "dateFinished": "2020-05-15", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Auberon", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-11-12", - "description": "A novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Auberon explores a new and alien world and the age-old dangers that humanity has carried with it to the stars. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. Hugo Award Winner for Best Series Auberon is one of the first and most important colony worlds in humanity's reach, and the new conquering faction has come to claim it. Governor Rittenaur has come to bring civilization and order to the far outpost and guarantee the wealth and power of the Empire. But Auberon already has its own history, a complex culture, and a criminal kingpin named Erich with very different plans. In a world of deceit, violence, and corruption, the greatest danger Rittenaur faces is love. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 75, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xP6yDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xP6yDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217668", - "dateFinished": "2020-03-14", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Churn: An Expanse Novella", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-04-29", - "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Churn takes the bestselling sci-fi series to the dark world of organized crime, drugs, secrets, and murder that shaped the Rocinante's mechanic, Amos. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Before his trip to the stars, before the Rocinante, Timmy was confined to a Baltimore where crime paid you or killed you. Unless the authorities got to you first. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, people do what they must to survive. The Churn follows a crime boss named Burton as his organization is threatened by a new private security force tasked with cleaning up the city. When the police start cracking down, Burton and his footsoldiers-loyal lieutenant Erich, former prostitute Lydia, and young enforcer Timmy-become increasingly desperate to find a way out. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 63, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f2n5AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=f2n5AgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316204071", - "dateFinished": "2020-02-06", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Butcher of Anderson Station", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-10-17", - "description": "A novelette set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Butcher of Anderson Station deepens the story of Colonel Fred Johnson's past as seen on the fifth episode of Season 1 of The Expanse. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A new story set in the world of the Expanse. One day, Colonel Fred Johnson will be hailed as a hero to the system. One day, he will meet a desperate man in possession of a stolen spaceship and a deadly secret and extend a hand of friendship. But long before he became the leader of the Outer Planets Alliance, Fred Johnson had a very different name. The Butcher of Anderson Station. This is his story. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 39, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wLasZiihCzMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=wLasZiihCzMC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316669221", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Drive", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", - "description": "A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 33, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pP02EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pP02EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217569", - "dateFinished": "2020-04-17", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Vital Abyss", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2015-10-15", - "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Vital Abyss is the secret history of the cataclysmic events that occurred on Eros station, and the revelation of what came after. . . Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Somewhere in the vast expanse of space, a group of prisoners lives in permanent captivity. The only company they have is each other and the Belters who guard them. The only stories they know are the triumphs and crimes that brought them there. The only future they see is an empty life in an enormous room. And then the man from Mars came along . . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 67, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=oC6XCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=oC6XCgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217651", - "dateFinished": "2020-02-09", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Gods of Risk", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2012-09-15", - "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Gods of Risk tells the story of Bobbie Draper following the events of Caliban's War. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES As tension between Mars and Earth mounts, and terrorism plagues the Martian city of Londres Nova, sixteen-year-old David Draper is fighting his own lonely war. A gifted chemist vying for a place at the university, David leads a secret life as a manufacturer for a ruthless drug dealer. When his friend Leelee goes missing, leaving signs of the dealer's involvement, David takes it upon himself to save her. But first he must shake his aunt Bobbie Draper, an ex-marine who has been set adrift in her own life after a mysterious series of events nobody is talking about. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 73, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_V1ZXdibLlgC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=_V1ZXdibLlgC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217576", - "dateFinished": "2020-04-28", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Strange Dogs", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-07-18", - "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Strange Dogs follows a family of colonists on Laconia where a new generation of humanity struggles with the profound changes that come with making a home on an alien world. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Like many before them, Cara and her family ventured through the gates as scientists and researchers, driven to carve out a new life and uncover the endless possibilities of the unexplored alien worlds now within reach. But soon the soldiers followed and under this new order Cara makes a discovery that will change everything. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 94, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=no-vDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=no-vDgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316332866", - "dateFinished": "2020-06-06", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Tiamat's Wrath", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-03-26", - "description": "The eighth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Tiamat's Wrath finds the crew of the Rocinante fighting an underground war against a nearly invulnerable authoritarian empire, with James Holden a prisoner of the enemy. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay. At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father's godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cordozar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn't guess. And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte's authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia's eternal rule -- and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose -- seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough. . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 524, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JQdUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JQdUDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316202275", - "dateFinished": "2020-02-05", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Caliban's War", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2012-06-26", - "description": "The second book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Caliban's War shows a solar system on the brink of war, and the only hope of peace rests on James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante's shoulders. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES We are not alone. On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system. In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun . . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 511, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tXGRBgwxAHIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tXGRBgwxAHIC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316217606", - "dateFinished": "2020-04-07", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Cibola Burn", - "authors": [ - "James S. A. Corey" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-06-17", - "description": "The fourth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Cibola Burn sees the crew of the Rocinante on a new frontier, as the rush to colonize the new planets threatens to outrun law and order and give way to war and chaos. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Enter a new frontier. \"An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.\" The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire. Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth. James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail. And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", - "pageCount": 561, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Hn41AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Hn41AgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316462778", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Inhibitor Phase", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-10-12", - "description": "A stellar new science fiction adventure from the author who redefined space opera, set in his bestselling Revelation Space universe. For thirty years a tiny band of humans has been sheltering in the caverns of an airless, crater-pocked world called Michaelmas. Beyond their solar system lie the ruins of human interstellar civilization, stalked by a ruthless, infinitely patient cybernetic entity determined to root out the last few bands of survivors. One man has guided the people of Michaelmas through the hardest of times, and given them hope against the wolves: Miguel de Ruyter. When a lone human ship blunders into their system, and threatens to lead the wolves to Michaelmas, de Ruyter embarks on a desperate, near-suicide mission to prevent catastrophe. But an encounter with a refugee from the ship—the enigmatic woman who calls herself only Glass—leads to de Ruyter's world being turned upside down.", - "pageCount": 564, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=HrL7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=HrL7DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780674273559", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "A Brief History of Equality", - "authors": [ - "Thomas Piketty" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-01-01", - "description": "The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books. It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality. Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.", - "pageCount": 289, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=LCxeEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Brief_History_of_Equality.html?hl=&id=LCxeEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780345540096", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Iceman", - "authors": [ - "Anthony Bruno" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-03-26", - "description": "Soon to be a major motion picture starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, with Ray Liotta and Chris Evans He was smart, merciless, and deadly. And it took someone just as tough to bring him down. A mob contract killer known as “The Iceman” for hiding a body in an ice-cream truck freezer, Richard Kuklinski boasted a personal body count of more than a hundred victims. Using guns, knives, poison, ice picks, tire irons, baseball bats, and bombs, the family man from New Jersey killed for fun, for money, to cover up his own crimes, and to satisfy his inner rage. Law enforcement officials knew all about Kuklinski and had a list of his victims, but couldn’t get near him—until undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. In this harrowing true-crime account, Anthony Bruno delves into the mind of a cold-blooded killer, chronicling the Iceman’s grisly crimes and probing the bizarre dynamics of Agent Polifrone’s dangerous liaison with him. For as Polifrone carefully built up a case against Kuklinksi, he knew he was running out of time—because the Iceman was planning to kill him too. “Bruno puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings.”—Kirkus Reviews “Excellent . . . [re-creates] the tension and stress Polifrone experienced in fulfilling his risky undercover assignment.”—Publishers Weekly", - "pageCount": 320, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SfmxC37lSWUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SfmxC37lSWUC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780804137515", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "labor", - "culture" - ], - "title": "Remote", - "authors": [ - "Jason Fried", - "David Heinemeier Hansson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-10-29", - "description": "The classic guide to working from home and why we should embrace a virtual office, from the bestselling authors of Rework “A paradigm-smashing, compulsively readable case for a radically remote workplace.”—Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet Does working from home—or anywhere else but the office—make sense? In Remote, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of Basecamp, bring new insight to the hotly debated argument. While providing a complete overview of remote work’s challenges, Jason and David persuasively argue that, often, the advantages of working “off-site” far outweigh the drawbacks. In the past decade, the “under one roof” model of conducting work has been steadily declining, owing to technology that is rapidly creating virtual workspaces. Today the new paradigm is “move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace.” Companies see advantages in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves their ability to conduct business across multiple time zones. But what about the workers? Jason and David point out that remote work means working at the best job (not just one that is nearby) and achieving a harmonious work-life balance while increasing productivity. And those are just some of the perks to be gained from leaving the office behind. Remote reveals a multitude of other benefits, along with in-the-trenches tips for easing your way out of the office door where you control how your workday will unfold. Whether you’re a manager fretting over how to manage workers who “want out” or a worker who wants to achieve a lifestyle upgrade while still being a top performer professionally, this book is your indispensable guide.", - "pageCount": 258, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KeJE7Tyl6o8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=KeJE7Tyl6o8C" - }, - { - "isbn": "1984877925", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "autobiography" - ], - "title": "Will", - "authors": [ - "Will Smith" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-11-09", - "description": "The instant #1 New York Times bestseller! “It's the best memoir I've ever read.” —Oprah Winfrey “Will Smith isn't holding back in his bravely inspiring new memoir . . . An ultimately heartwarming read, Will provides a humane glimpse of the man behind the actor, producer and musician, as he bares all his insecurities and trauma.” —USA Today Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had. Will Smith’s transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale—but it’s only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over. This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.", - "pageCount": 433, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=S2ZNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Will.html?hl=&id=S2ZNEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780358244301", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "music" - ], - "title": "Sellout", - "authors": [ - "Dan Ozzi" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "From celebrated music writer Dan Ozzi comes a comprehensive chronicle of the punk music scene's evolution from the early nineties to the mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they dissolved, \"sold out,\" and rose to surprise stardom. From its inception, punk music has been identified by two factors: its proximity to \"authenticity,\" and its reliance on an antiestablishment ethos. Yet, in the mid- to late '90s, major record labels sought to capitalize on punk's rebellious undertones, leading to a schism in the scene: to accept the cash flow of the majors, or stick to indie cred?Sellout chronicles the evolution of the punk scene during this era, focusing on prominent bands as they experienced the last \"gold rush\" of the music industry. Within it, music writer Dan Ozzi follows the rise of successful bands like Green Day and Jimmy Eat World, as well as the implosion of groups like Jawbreaker and At the Drive-In, who buckled under the pressure of their striving labels. Featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of eleven of modern punk's most (in)famous bands, Sellout is the history of the evolution of the music industry, and a punk rock lover's guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era. …", - "pageCount": 429, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WqIPEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sellout.html?hl=&id=WqIPEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781803414317", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Capitalist Realism", - "authors": [ - "Mark Fisher" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-11-25", - "description": "An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.", - "pageCount": 116, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QSiUEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=QSiUEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982140465", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "biography", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Down and Out in Paradise", - "authors": [ - "Charles Leerhsen" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-10-11", - "description": "The bestselling, “unvarnished” (The New York Times), “engrossing” (The Guardian), “gritty, well-researched” (The Economist)—and definitely unauthorized—biography of the celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain, based on extensive interviews with those who knew the real story. Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Bourdain became a celebrity with his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential. He parlayed it into a series of hit television shows, including the Food Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. But his bad boy charisma belied a troubled spirit. Addiction and an obsession with perfection and personal integrity ruined two marriages and turned him into a boss from hell, even as millions of fans became enamored of the quick-witted and genuinely empathetic traveler they saw on TV. At the height of his success Bourdain was already running out of steam, physically and emotionally, when he fell hard for an Italian actress who could be even colder to him than he sometimes was to others, and who effectively drove a wedge between him and his young daughter. Down and Out in Paradise is the first book to tell the full Bourdain story, and to show how Bourdain’s never-before-reported childhood traumas fueled both the creativity and insecurities that would lead him to a place of despair. “Filled with fresh, intimate details” (The New York Times), this is the real story behind an extraordinary life.", - "pageCount": 189, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=sxRJEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=sxRJEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525511847", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "How Fascism Works", - "authors": [ - "Jason Stanley" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-09-04", - "description": "“No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen “One of the defining books of the decade.”—Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • With a new preface • Fascist politics are running rampant in America today—and spreading around the world. A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history. As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals. “With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—William Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope", - "pageCount": 258, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NARIDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NARIDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780306827488", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "We Are Proud Boys", - "authors": [ - "Andy B. Campbell" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-20", - "description": "A gripping investigation into the nation’s most notorious far-right group, revealing how they created a new blueprint for extremism and turned American politics into a blood sport After the 2016 election, Americans witnessed a frightening trend: the sudden rise of a host of new extremist groups across the country. Emboldened by a new president, they flooded political rallies and built fervent online presences, expanding rapidly until they were a regular sight at everyday demonstrations. Amid the chaos, one group emerged as a leader among the others, with matching outfits, bizarre rituals, and a reputation for violence: the Proud Boys. From leading extremism reporter Andy Campbell, We Are Proud Boys is the definitive narrative exploration of this notorious street gang and all the far-right movements they’re connected to. Through groundbreaking new reporting, Campbell delivers the untold story of a gang of blundering, punch-happy goons who grew to become the centerpiece of American extremism and positioned themselves as the unofficial enforcement arm of the GOP. Beginning with their founding by Gavin McInnes, the media personality best known for co-founding VICE, Campbell takes us deep into the Proud Boys, laying bare their origins and their rise to prominence. As he exposes the group's noxious culture and strange rituals, he reveals how the ultimate project of the Proud Boys–to desensitize Americans to political violence–has succeeded entirely, culminating with Republicans calling the January 6 insurrection \"legitimate political discourse.\" The bizarre, frightening story of the Proud Boys reveals the playbook they have created for domestic extremism, giving us the necessary insight to push back against radicalism in America before it swallows our democracy whole.", - "pageCount": 259, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JCRdEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JCRdEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781541674004", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Socialist Manifesto", - "authors": [ - "Bhaskar Sunkara" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-04-30", - "description": "A \"razor-sharp\" introduction to this political and economic ideology makes a galvanizing argument for modern socialism (Naomi Klein) -- and explains how its core tenets could effect positive change in America and worldwide. In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like? The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aPFrDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=aPFrDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525536512", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "culture", - "tech" - ], - "title": "Digital Minimalism", - "authors": [ - "Cal Newport" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-02-05", - "description": "A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller \"Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life.\"--Ezra Klein, Vox Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience \"fear of missing out\" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day \"digital declutter\" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.", - "pageCount": 305, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Self-Help" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1eGCDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Digital_Minimalism.html?hl=&id=1eGCDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781612199160", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Privacy is Power", - "authors": [ - "Carissa Veliz" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-04-06", - "description": "An Economist Book of the Year Every minute of every day, our data is harvested and exploited… It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you, and everyone you know. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. Reclaiming privacy is the only way we can regain control of our lives and our societies. These governments and corporations have too much power, and their power stems from us--from our data. Privacy is as collective as it is personal, and it's time to take back control. Privacy Is Power tells you how to do exactly that. It calls for the end of the data economy and proposes concrete measures to bring that end about, offering practical solutions, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.", - "pageCount": 304, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3TYGEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3TYGEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780300252989", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Seeing Like a State", - "authors": [ - "James C. Scott" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-03-17", - "description": "“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University", - "pageCount": 462, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CA7UDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=CA7UDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781501134630", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Midnight in Chernobyl", - "authors": [ - "Adam Higginbotham" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-02-04", - "description": "A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. “The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying...extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.", - "pageCount": 560, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WwPJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Midnight_in_Chernobyl.html?hl=&id=WwPJDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781788738811", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Silicon Values", - "authors": [ - "Jillian C. York" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", - "description": "The battle for online rights and for the future of democracy Who decides what is permissible on the internet: Politicians? Mark Zuckerberg? Users? Who determines when political debate becomes hate speech? How does this impact our identity or our ability to create communities and to protest? Silicon Values reports on the war for digital rights and how major corporations—Facebook, Twitter, Google and Tiktok—threaten democracy as they harvest our personal data in the pursuit of profit.", - "pageCount": 305, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UOhOEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Silicon_Values.html?hl=&id=UOhOEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593199657", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Zodiac", - "authors": [ - "Robert Graysmith" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-05-05", - "description": "Robert Graysmith’s New York Times bestselling account of the desperate hunt for a serial killer and his own investigation of California’s unsolved Zodiac murders. A sexual sadist, the Zodiac killer took pleasure in torture and murder. His first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead in a lovers’ lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill more. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed thirty-seven dead. The real toll may have reached fifty. Robert Graysmith was on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 when Zodiac first struck, triggering in the resolute reporter an unrelenting obsession with seeing the hooded killer brought to justice. In this gripping account of Zodiac’s eleven-month reign of terror, Graysmith reveals hundreds of facts previously unreleased, including the complete text of the killer’s letters.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0-LbDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zodiac.html?hl=&id=0-LbDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780735211308", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "culture" - ], - "title": "Atomic Habits", - "authors": [ - "James Clear" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-10-16", - "description": "The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 10 million copies sold! Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights. Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field. Learn how to: make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy); overcome a lack of motivation and willpower; design your environment to make success easier; get back on track when you fall off course; ...and much more. Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.", - "pageCount": 322, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lFhbDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lFhbDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781402295638", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Spam Nation", - "authors": [ - "Brian Krebs" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-11-18", - "description": "Now a New York Times bestseller! There is a Threat Lurking Online with the Power to Destroy Your Finances, Steal Your Personal Data, and Endanger Your Life. In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies-and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks-he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere. Blending cutting-edge research, investigative reporting, and firsthand interviews, this terrifying true story reveals how we unwittingly invite these digital thieves into our lives every day. From unassuming computer programmers right next door to digital mobsters like \"Cosma\"-who unleashed a massive malware attack that has stolen thousands of Americans' logins and passwords-Krebs uncovers the shocking lengths to which these people will go to profit from our data and our wallets. Not only are hundreds of thousands of Americans exposing themselves to fraud and dangerously toxic products from rogue online pharmacies, but even those who never open junk messages are at risk. As Krebs notes, spammers can-and do-hack into accounts through these emails, harvest personal information like usernames and passwords, and sell them on the digital black market. The fallout from this global epidemic doesn't just cost consumers and companies billions, it costs lives too. Fast-paced and utterly gripping, Spam Nation ultimately proposes concrete solutions for protecting ourselves online and stemming this tidal wave of cybercrime-before it's too late. \"Krebs's talent for exposing the weaknesses in online security has earned him respect in the IT business and loathing among cybercriminals... His track record of scoops...has helped him become the rare blogger who supports himself on the strength of his reputation for hard-nosed reporting.\" -Bloomberg Businessweek", - "pageCount": 322, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=00LQBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Spam_Nation.html?hl=&id=00LQBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780061739118", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Bind, Torture, Kill", - "authors": [ - "Roy Wenzl", - "Tim Potter", - "L. Kelly", - "Hurst Laviana" - ], - "publishedDate": "2009-10-13", - "description": "For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named \"BTK\"—for \"bind them, torture them, kill them\"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church. Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.", - "pageCount": 573, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=fhiH-9uV5PQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=fhiH-9uV5PQC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316462655", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Absolution Gap", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", - "description": "In the third book of the legendary Revelation Space trilogy, the last remnants of humanity realize that forging an alliance with a greater and even more mysterious alien force may be their only chance for survival. The Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life form reaching a certain level of intelligence -- and they've targeted Humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate. But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety -- or draw down its darkest enemy. And as she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse . . . \"Absolution Gap is a good as it gets, and should solidify Alastair Reynolds' reputation as one of the best hard SF writers in the field.\" -- SF Site", - "pageCount": 807, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rIy9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rIy9DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781472270399", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Unmasked", - "authors": [ - "Paul Holes" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-02-16", - "description": "From the detective who helped catch the Golden State Killer, a memoir about investigating America's toughest cold cases, and the rewards - and toll - of a life spent solving crime. For a decade, from 1973, The Golden State Killer stalked and murdered Californians in the dead of night, leaving entire communities afraid to turn off the lights. Then he vanished, and the case remained unsolved. In 1994, when cold-case investigator Paul Holes came across the old file, he swore he would unmask GSK and finally give these families closure. Twenty-four years later, Holes fulfilled that promise, identifying 73-year-old Joseph J. DeAngelo. Headlines blasted around the world: one of America's most prolific serial killers had been caught. That case launched Paul's career into the stratosphere, turning him into an icon in the true-crime world. But while many know the story of the capture of GSK, until now, no one has truly known the man behind it all. In UNMASKED, Paul takes us through his memories of a storied career and provides an insider account of some of the most notorious cases in contemporary American history, including Laci Peterson's murder and Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping. But this is also a revelatory profile of a complex man and what makes him tick: the drive to find closure for victims and their loved ones; the inability to walk away from a challenge - even at the expense of his own happiness. This is a story about the gritty truth of crime solving when there are no 'case closed' headlines. It is the story of a man and his commitment to his cases, and to the people who might have otherwise been forgotten.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=J4ruzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Unmasked.html?hl=&id=J4ruzgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781400078998", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Under the Banner of Heaven", - "authors": [ - "Jon Krakauer" - ], - "publishedDate": "2004-06-08", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, 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.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0DQaTU7Opq0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=0DQaTU7Opq0C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250087102", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Adnan's Story", - "authors": [ - "Rabia Chaudry" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-08-09", - "description": "With intimate details and newly-uncovered evidence Adnan's Story goes beyond what the hit podcast Serial covered in it's investigation of Adnan Syed's case.", - "pageCount": 417, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5PbUDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Adnan_s_Story.html?hl=&id=5PbUDAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780698191068", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "American Predator", - "authors": [ - "Maureen Callahan" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-07-02", - "description": "INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An Amazon “Best Book of 2019” A Washington Post “10 Books To Read in July” A Los Angeles Times “Seven Highly Anticipated Books for Summer Reading” A USA Today “20 of the Season’s Hottest New Books” A New York Post “25 Best Beach Reads of 2019 You Need to Pre-Order Now” A Bustle “The Best New True Crime Books You Can Read Right Now” “Maureen Callahan’s deft reporting and stylish writing have created one of the all-time-great serial-killer books: sensitive, chilling, and completely impossible to put down.” —Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as \"a force of pure evil,\" Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried \"kill kits\"--cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools--in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter. When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years--uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake--many of which remain unsolved to this day. American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.", - "pageCount": 304, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2uV8DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2uV8DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781501187292", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Chapo Guide to Revolution", - "authors": [ - "Chapo Trap House", - "Felix Biederman", - "Matt Christman", - "Brendan James", - "Will Menaker", - "Virgil Texas" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-10-15", - "description": "Instant New York Times bestseller “Howard Zinn on acid or some bullsh*t like that.” —Tim Heidecker The creators of the cult-hit podcast Chapo Trap House deliver a manifesto for everyone who feels orphaned and alienated—politically, culturally, and economically—by the lanyard-wearing Wall Street centrism of the left and the lizard-brained atavism of the right: there is a better way, the Chapo Way. In a guide that reads like “a weirder, smarter, and deliciously meaner version of The Daily Show’s 2004 America (The Book)” (Paste), Chapo Trap House shows you that you don’t have to side with either sinking ships. These self-described “assholes from the internet” offer a fully ironic ideology for all who feel politically hopeless and prefer broadsides and tirades to reasoned debate. Learn the “secret” history of the world, politics, media, and everything in-between that THEY don’t want you to know and chart a course from our wretched present to a utopian future where one can post in the morning, game in the afternoon, and podcast after dinner without ever becoming a poster, gamer, or podcaster. A book that’s “as intellectually serious and analytically original as it is irreverent and funny” (Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author of No Place to Hide) The Chapo Guide to Revolution features illustrated taxonomies of contemporary liberal and conservative characters, biographies of important thought leaders, “never before seen” drafts of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom manga, and the ten new laws that govern Chapo Year Zero (everyone gets a dog, billionaires are turned into Soylent, and logic is outlawed). If you’re a fan of sacred cows, prisoners being taken, and holds being barred, then this book is NOT for you. However, if you feel disenfranchised from the political and cultural nightmare we’re in, then Chapo, let’s go…", - "pageCount": 320, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Humor" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1SKwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chapo_Guide_to_Revolution.html?hl=&id=1SKwDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780393652253", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber", - "authors": [ - "Mike Isaac" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-09-03", - "description": "Now a SHOWTIME® original series starring Emmy winners Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kyle Chandler and Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman. Now streaming – Only on SHOWTIME. Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Fortune, Bloomberg, Sunday Times A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice “If you want to understand modern-day Silicon Valley, you need to read this book.” —John Carreyrou, New York Times best-selling author of Bad Blood Hailed as the definitive book on Uber and Silicon Valley, Super Pumped is an epic story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history. Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong.", - "pageCount": 594, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TnaODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TnaODwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781541762374", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Cult of the Dead Cow", - "authors": [ - "Joseph Menn" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-06-04", - "description": "The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our privacy, our freedom -- even democracy itself Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone. With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns. Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.", - "pageCount": 272, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=055xDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=055xDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250169129", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Chosen Country", - "authors": [ - "James Pogue" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-05-22", - "description": "Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.", - "pageCount": 304, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Nature" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2ZNUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Chosen_Country.html?hl=&id=2ZNUDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780241554258", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Lazarus Heist", - "authors": [ - "Geoff White" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-09-27", - "description": "BASED ON THE NO 1 HIT PODCAST 'The Lazarus Heist' 'You'll never see North Korea the same way again' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland 'One of the most incredible cyber-espionage stories I've ever heard, told by one of the UK's best tech journalists' Jamie Bartlett, author of The Missing Crypto Queen 'Pacy and eye-popping, this book shows us what happens when the world of Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy meets the world of Misha Glenny's McMafia' - Tom Burgis, author of Kleptopia Meet the Lazarus Group, a shadowy cabal of hackers accused of working on behalf of the North Korean state. It's claimed that they form one of the most dangerous criminal enterprises on the planet, having stolen more than $1bn in an international crime spree. Their targets allegedly include central banks, Hollywood film studios and even the British National Health Service. North Korea denies the allegations, saying the accusations are American attempts to tarnish its image. In this staggering, global investigation, award-winning journalist Geoff White examines how the hackers have harnessed cutting-edge technology to launch a decade-long campaign of brazen and merciless raids on its richer, more powerful adversaries. It's not just money they're after. The Lazarus Group's tactics have been used to threaten democracies, gag North Korea's critics and destabilize global peace. From the bustling streets of Dhaka, to the glamorous studios of Hollywood, to the glittering casinos of Macau and the secretive dynastic court of Pyongyang, this shocking story uncovers the secret world of the Lazarus Group, their victims and the people who have tried - and ultimately, so far failed - to stop them. 'Madly intriguing' Guardian 'Cyber warfare and criminal hacking has never been more pertinent. This a must read to understand the threats currently facing all of us globally' Annie Machon, author of Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jseMEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Lazarus_Heist.html?hl=&id=jseMEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781524731663", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Bad Blood", - "authors": [ - "John Carreyrou" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-05-21", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.", - "pageCount": 354, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CcJFDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=CcJFDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525522287", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Antisocial", - "authors": [ - "Andrew Marantz" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-09-15", - "description": "\"Trenchant and intelligent.\" --The New York Times As seen/heard on NPR, New Yorker Radio Hour, The New York Book Review Podcast, PBS Newshour, CNBC, and more. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 From a rising star at The New Yorker, a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet--and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream. For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of naïvete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls \"the gate crashers\"--the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly--from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room--and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality. Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape--the landscape in which we all now live. Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread--from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?", - "pageCount": 402, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=j5QFEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Antisocial.html?hl=&id=j5QFEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982171070", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction", - "labor" - ], - "title": "Fight Like Hell", - "authors": [ - "Kim Kelly" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-04-26", - "description": "A 2022 New Yorker Best Book of the Year A 2022 Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A 2022 BuzzFeed Book You’ll Love A 2022 LitHub Favorite Book of the Year “Kelly unearths the stories of the people-farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees—behind some of the labor movement’s biggest successes.” —The New York Times A revelatory, inclusive history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly. Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America’s civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor’s relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law. The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this assiduously researched work of journalism, Teen Vogue columnist and independent labor reporter Kim Kelly excavates that history and shows how the rights the American worker has today—the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job—were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears. Fight Like Hell comes at a time of economic reckoning in America. From Amazon’s warehouses to Starbucks cafes, Appalachian coal mines to the sex workers of Portland’s Stripper Strike, interest in organized labor is at a fever pitch not seen since the early 1960s. Inspirational, intersectional, and full of crucial lessons from the past, Fight Like Hell shows what is possible when the working class demands the dignity it has always deserved.", - "pageCount": 448, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eFg1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=eFg1EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982114114", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "My Friend Anna", - "authors": [ - "Rachel DeLoache Williams" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-07-23", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Sex and the City meets Bad Blood and Catch Me if You Can in the astonishing true story of Anna Delvey, a young con artist posing as an heiress in New York City—as told by the former Vanity Fair photo editor who got seduced by her friendship and then scammed out of more than $62,000. Rachel DeLoache Williams’s new friend Anna Delvey, a self-proclaimed German heiress, was worldly and ambitious. She was also generous—picking up the tab for lavish dinners at Le Coucou, infrared sauna sessions at HigherDOSE, drinks at the 11 Howard Library bar, and regular workout sessions with a celebrity personal trainer. When Anna proposed an all-expenses-paid trip to Marrakech at the five-star La Mamounia hotel, Rachel jumped at the chance. But when Anna’s credit cards mysteriously stopped working, the dream vacation quickly took a dark turn. Anna asked Rachel to begin fronting costs—first for flights, then meals and shopping, and, finally, for their $7,500-per-night private villa. Before Rachel knew it, more than $62,000 had been charged to her credit cards. Anna swore she would reimburse Rachel the moment they returned to New York. Back in Manhattan, the repayment never materialized, and a shocking pattern of deception emerged. Rachel learned that Anna had left a trail of deceit—and unpaid bills—wherever she’d been. Mortified, Rachel contacted the district attorney, and in a stunning turn of events, found herself helping to bring down one of the city’s most notorious con artists. With breathless pacing and in-depth reporting from the person who experienced it firsthand, My Friend Anna is an unforgettable true story of “glamour, greed, lust for power” (The New York Times), and female friendship.", - "pageCount": 292, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TWqGDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TWqGDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780671725822", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction", - "biography" - ], - "title": "Miles", - "authors": [ - "Miles Davis", - "Quincy Troupe" - ], - "publishedDate": "1990-09-15", - "description": "Miles discusses his life and music from playing trumpet in high school to the new instruments and sounds from the Caribbean.", - "pageCount": 452, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xgAVXHhuNYgC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Miles.html?hl=&id=xgAVXHhuNYgC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781760635510", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Darkest Web", - "authors": [ - "Eileen Ormsby" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-03-14", - "description": "Dark... A kingpin willing to murder to protect his dark web drug empire. A corrupt government official determined to avoid exposure. The death of a dark web drugs czar in mysterious circumstances in a Bangkok jail cell, just as the author arrives there. Who is Variety Jones and why have darknet markets ballooned tenfold since authorities shut down the original dark web drugs bazaar, Silk Road? Who are the kingpins willing to sell poisons and weapons, identities and bank accounts, malware and life-ruining services online to anyone with a wallet full of Bitcoin? Darker... A death in Minnesota leads detectives into the world of dark web murder-for-hire where hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin is paid to arrange killings, beatings and rapes. Meanwhile, the owner of the most successful hitman website in history is threatening the journalists who investigate his business with a visit from his operatives - and the author is at the top of his list. Darkest... People with the most depraved perversions gather to share their obscene materials in an almost inaccessible corner of the dark web. A video circulates and the pursuit of the monsters responsible for 'Daisy's Destruction' lead detectives into the unimaginable horror of the world of hurtcore. There's the world wide web - the internet we all know that connects us via news, email, forums, shopping and social media. Then there's the dark web - the parallel internet accessed by only a select few. Usually, those it connects wish to remain anonymous and for good reason. Eileen Ormsby has spent the past five years exploring every corner of the Dark Web. She has shopped on darknet markets, contributed to forums, waited in red rooms and been threatened by hitmen on murder-for-hire sites. On occasions, her dark web activities have poured out into the real world and she has attended trials, met with criminals and the law enforcement who tracked them down, interviewed dark web identities and visited them in prison. This book will take you into the murkiest depths of the web's dark underbelly: a place of hitmen for hire, red rooms, hurtcore sites and markets that will sell anything a person is willing to pay for - including another person. The Darkest Web.", - "pageCount": 320, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZlU_DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ZlU_DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780735217959", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "culture" - ], - "title": "The Nineties", - "authors": [ - "Chuck Klosterman" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-02-08", - "description": "An instant New York Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history. It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like \"Cop Killer\" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=sqhPEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nineties.html?hl=&id=sqhPEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781782833338", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Moneyland", - "authors": [ - "Oliver Bullough" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-09-06", - "description": "A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER PRESENTER OF THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES 'HOW TO STEAL A TRILLION' SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2019 SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AN ECONOMIST POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY MAIL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'You cannot understand power, wealth and poverty without knowing about Moneyland.' Simon Kuper, New Statesman 2019: democracy is eating itself, inequality is skyrocketing, the system is breaking apart. Why? Because in 1962, some bankers in London had an idea that changed the world. That idea was called 'offshore'. It meant that, for the first time, thieves could dream big. They could take everything. Join investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into the hidden world of the new global kleptocrats. See the poor countries where public money is stolen and the rich ones where it is laundered and invested. Watch the crooks at work and at play, and meet their respectable, white-collar enablers. Learn how the new system works and begin to see how we can tackle it.", - "pageCount": 298, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0O5PDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Moneyland.html?hl=&id=0O5PDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780544947665", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "culture", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Extended Mind", - "authors": [ - "Annie Murphy Paul" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains--in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships Use your head. That's what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we've got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of \"extra-neural\" resources--the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us-- can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively. The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain. She excavates the untold history of how artists, scientists, and authors--from Jackson Pollock to Jonas Salk to Robert Caro--have used mental extensions to solve problems, make discoveries, and create new works. In the tradition of Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind or Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, The Extended Mind offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how we can all think better.", - "pageCount": 357, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Psychology" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Dk-_DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Extended_Mind.html?hl=&id=Dk-_DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781984823847", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "MBS", - "authors": [ - "Ben Hubbard" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-03-10", - "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A gripping, behind-the-scenes portrait of the rise of Saudi Arabia’s secretive and mercurial new ruler “Revelatory . . . a vivid portrait of how MBS has altered the kingdom during his half-decade of rule.”—The Washington Post Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Kirkus Reviews MBS is the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia’s sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East—and gather as much power as possible into his own hands. Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman has leveraged his influence to restructure the kingdom’s economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and confront its enemies around the region, especially Iran. That vision won him fans at home and on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, and at the White House, where President Trump embraced the prince as a key player in his own vision for the Middle East. But over time, the sheen of the visionary young reformer has become tarnished, leaving many struggling to determine whether MBS is in fact a rising dictator whose inexperience and rash decisions are destabilizing the world’s most volatile region. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, MBS reveals the machinations behind the kingdom’s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen, the bizarre detention of princes and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, and the shifting Saudi relationships with Israel and the United States. And finally, it sheds new light on the greatest scandal of the young autocrat’s rise: the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, a crime that shook Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Washington and left the world wondering whether MBS could get away with murder. MBS is a riveting, eye-opening account of how the young prince has wielded vast powers to reshape his kingdom and the world around him. Praise for MBS “Saudi Arabia is testing the extremes of tradition and innovation, of half-baked visions and intensifying repression. Ben Hubbard’s authoritative reporting on the inner sanctums of its society offers a perfect synthesis of journalism and area expertise: the best description we have at the moment of why things happen as they do in the kingdom.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World", - "pageCount": 394, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RimrDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=RimrDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374712785", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Putin's People", - "authors": [ - "Catherine Belton" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-06-23", - "description": "A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph \"[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism.\" —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic \"This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades.\" —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.", - "pageCount": 405, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pKilDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pKilDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316281935", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "climate", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Intersectional Environmentalist", - "authors": [ - "Leah Thomas" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-03-08", - "description": "From the 2022 TIME100 Next honoree and the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change. The Intersectional Environmentalist examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people -- especially those most often unheard. Written by Leah Thomas, a prominent voice in the field and the activist who coined the term \"Intersectional Environmentalism,\" this book is simultaneously a call to action, a guide to instigating change for all, and a pledge to work towards the empowerment of all people and the betterment of the planet. Thomas shows how not only are Black, Indigenous and people of color unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices, but she argues that the fight for the planet lies in tandem to the fight for civil rights; and in fact, that one cannot exist without the other. An essential read, this book addresses the most pressing issues that the people and our planet face, examines and dismantles privilege, and looks to the future as the voice of a movement that will define a generation.", - "pageCount": 182, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Nature" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=uIY1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=uIY1EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781541763029", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "tech", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Cryptopians", - "authors": [ - "Laura Shin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2023-10-24", - "description": "The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures--vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto's most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=616rzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cryptopians.html?hl=&id=616rzwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780802198853", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Wretched of the Earth", - "authors": [ - "Frantz Fanon" - ], - "publishedDate": "2007-12-01", - "description": "The sixtieth anniversary edition of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, now with a new introduction by Cornel West First published in 1961, and reissued in this sixtieth anniversary edition with a powerful new introduction by Cornel West, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterfuland timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle, and a continuing influence on movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Alongside Cornel West’s introduction, the book features critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha. This sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.", - "pageCount": 328, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-XGKFJq4eccC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-XGKFJq4eccC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781643752198", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Off the Edge", - "authors": [ - "Kelly Weill" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-02-22", - "description": "“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.” —Science Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice. How? Why? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove. In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.", - "pageCount": 289, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=IGEfEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=IGEfEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781541730168", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Compatriots", - "authors": [ - "Andrei Soldatov", - "Irina Borogan" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-10-08", - "description": "The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy. The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB--and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow. But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UHMEwgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Compatriots.html?hl=&id=UHMEwgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780922915941", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Lords of Chaos", - "authors": [ - "Michael Moynihan", - "Didrik Soderlind", - "Didrik Søderlind" - ], - "publishedDate": "2003", - "description": "\"* * * * * *! The most incredible story in the history of music a?| a heavyweight book.\"-Kerrang! \"An unusual combination of true crime journalism, rock and roll reporting and underground obsessiveness, Lords of Chaos turns into one of the more fascinating reads in a long time.\"-Denver Post A narrative feature film based on this award-winning book has just gone into production.", - "pageCount": 428, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Architecture" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5J1fCHvHfosC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Lords_of_Chaos.html?hl=&id=5J1fCHvHfosC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385350273", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Going Clear", - "authors": [ - "Lawrence Wright" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-01-17", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label.", - "pageCount": 359, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Religion" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=z4IDPV2hZL0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=z4IDPV2hZL0C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781501305320", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", - "authors": [ - "Paulo Freire" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-08-18", - "description": "First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.", - "pageCount": 138, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Education" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=oKQMBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed.html?hl=&id=oKQMBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780804170567", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Missoula", - "authors": [ - "Jon Krakauer" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-01-12", - "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A devastating exposé of colleges and local law enforcement.... A substantive deep dive into the morass of campus sex crimes, where the victim is too often treated like the accused.” —Entertainment Weekly Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, home to a highly regarded state university whose beloved football team inspires a passionately loyal fan base. Between January 2008 and May 2012, hundreds of students reported sexual assaults to the local police. Few of the cases were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this, Missoula is also typical. In these pages, acclaimed journalist Jon Krakauer investigates a spate of campus rapes that occurred in Missoula over a four-year period. Taking the town as a case study for a crime that is sadly prevalent throughout the nation, Krakauer documents the experiences of five victims: their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the skepticism directed at them by police, prosecutors, and the public; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. These stories cut through abstract ideological debate about acquaintance rape to demonstrate that it does not happen because women are sending mixed signals or seeking attention. They are victims of a terrible crime, deserving of fairness from our justice system. Rigorously researched, rendered in incisive prose, Missoula stands as an essential call to action.", - "pageCount": 418, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ICzZCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Missoula.html?hl=&id=ICzZCwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593136409", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "climate", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Paradise", - "authors": [ - "Lizzie Johnson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-08-16", - "description": "The definitive firsthand account of California’s Camp Fire, the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century, Paradise is a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds. “A tour de force story of wildfire and a terrifying look at what lies ahead.”—San Francisco Chronicle (Best Books of the Year) On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire was upon them, gobbling an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead. As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lizzie Johnson was there as the town of Paradise burned. She saw the smoldering rubble of a historic covered bridge and the beloved Black Bear Diner and she stayed long afterward, visiting shelters, hotels, and makeshift camps. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and reams of public records, including 911 calls and testimony from a grand jury investigation, Johnson provides a minute-by-minute account of the Camp Fire, following residents and first responders as they fight to save themselves and their town. We see a young mother fleeing with her newborn; a school bus full of children in search of an escape route; and a group of paramedics, patients, and nurses trapped in a cul-de-sac, fending off the fire with rakes and hoses. In Paradise, Johnson documents the unfolding tragedy with empathy and nuance. But she also investigates the root causes, from runaway climate change to a deeply flawed alert system to Pacific Gas and Electric’s decades-long neglect of critical infrastructure. A cautionary tale for a new era of megafires, Paradise is the gripping story of a town wiped off the map and the determination of its people to rise again.", - "pageCount": 449, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D798EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Paradise.html?hl=&id=D798EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781610395847", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Narconomics", - "authors": [ - "Tom Wainwright" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016-02-23", - "description": "What drug lords learned from big business How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work—and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the “war” against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes “Bin Laden,” the Bolivian coca guide; “Old Lin,” the Salvadoran gang leader; “Starboy,” the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qQDdCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qQDdCgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0593136381", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "climate", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Paradise", - "authors": [ - "Lizzie Johnson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "description": "The definitive firsthand account of California's Camp Fire-the nation's deadliest wildfire in a century-and a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds ... A cautionary tale for a new era of megafires, Paradise is the gripping story of a town wiped off the map and the determination of its people to rise again…", - "pageCount": 433, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qSk5EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Paradise.html?hl=&id=qSk5EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780393867749", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History", - "authors": [ - "Lea Ypi" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-01-18", - "description": "Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award The Sunday Times Best Book of the Year in Biography and Memoir A Financial Times Best Book of 2021 (Critics' Picks) The New Yorker, Best Books We Read in 2021 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021 A Guardian Best Book of the Year A reflection on \"freedom\" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D0M3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=D0M3EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781984879790", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Reign of Terror", - "authors": [ - "Spencer Ackerman" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-08-09", - "description": "A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 \"An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued.\" —The New York Times \"One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era.\" —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.", - "pageCount": 449, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BmtuEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Reign_of_Terror.html?hl=&id=BmtuEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780399588594", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Between Two Kingdoms", - "authors": [ - "Suleika Jaouad" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-02-09", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.", - "pageCount": 368, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=J7qdDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=J7qdDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781631498848", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "On Juneteenth", - "authors": [ - "Annette Gordon-Reed" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-05-04", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES • 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2021 New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 New York Times Bestseller Best Books of the Year • Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Independent, Los Angeles Public Library, Washington Independent Review of Books, Spy, Audile, Biblioracle, AbeBooks The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. Reworking the traditional “Alamo” framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself. In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.", - "pageCount": 111, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FwwDEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=FwwDEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781635578584", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Least of Us", - "authors": [ - "Sam Quinones" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021", - "pageCount": 433, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y3M_EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Least_of_Us.html?hl=&id=Y3M_EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1595581030", - "dateAdded": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The New Jim Crow", - "authors": [ - "Michelle Alexander" - ], - "publishedDate": "Jan 5, 2010", - "description": "Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness", - "pageCount": 290, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": ["Social Science"], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RMbDiacb8cIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781585059744", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "The Communist Manifesto", - "authors": [ - "Karl Marx", - "Friedrich Engels" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-06-13", - "description": "The Communist Manifesto is an 1848 pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels commissioned by the Communist League to chart their main ideas and beliefs. In later times, this work was recognized as one of the world's most influential political documents.", - "pageCount": 45, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SAJ2EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SAJ2EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525657750", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Crying in H Mart", - "authors": [ - "Michelle Zauner" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-04-20", - "description": "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.", - "pageCount": 257, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=kRjzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=kRjzDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780141185439", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "autobiography", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", - "authors": [ - "Malcolm X", - "Alex Haley" - ], - "publishedDate": "1965", - "description": "Malcolm X's blazing, legendary autobiography, completed shortly before his assassination in 1965, depicts a remarkable life: a child born into rage and despair, who turned to street-hustling and cocaine in the Harlem ghetto, followed by prison, where he converted to the Black Muslims and honed the energy and brilliance that made him one of the most important political figures of his time - and an icon in ours. It also charts the spiritual journey that took him beyond militancy, and led to his murder, a powerful story of transformation, redemption and betrayal. Vilified by his critics as an anti-white demagogue, Malcolm X gave a voice to unheard African-Americans, bringing them pride, hope and fearlessness, and remains an inspirational and controversial figure today.", - "pageCount": 512, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "African Americans" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aLSePwAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Autobiography_of_Malcolm_X.html?hl=&id=aLSePwAACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781542047197", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "A River in Darkness", - "authors": [ - "Masaji Ishikawa" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-06", - "description": "Previously published in Japan in 2000. Translated from Japanese by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.", - "pageCount": 0, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Caste-based discrimination" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Sl02tAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_River_in_Darkness.html?hl=&id=Sl02tAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781400060344", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Chatter", - "authors": [ - "Patrick Radden Keefe" - ], - "publishedDate": "2005", - "description": "A look inside the secret world of the American intelligence establishment and its link to the global eavesdropping network \"Echelon\" assesses how much privacy Americans have unwittingly sacrificed in favor of national security.", - "pageCount": 322, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DiRaaJBJcicC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Chatter.html?hl=&id=DiRaaJBJcicC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250194725", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "autobiography" - ], - "title": "Sigh, Gone", - "authors": [ - "Phuc Tran" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", - "description": "For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man’s bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the ‘80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes—and ultimately saves—him.", - "pageCount": 256, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=y_uTDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=y_uTDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780593137383", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "religion" - ], - "title": "The Genius of Jesus", - "authors": [ - "Erwin Raphael McManus" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-09-14", - "description": "A groundbreaking manifesto decoding the phenomenon of genius through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, revealing the untapped potential within every human being—from the bestselling author of The Artisan Soul, The Last Arrow, and The Way of the Warrior. “IF ALL GENIUS IS TOUCHED BY MADNESS, THEN IT IS ALSO TOUCHED BY THE DIVINE.” In every realm of our existence—art, science, technology, mathematics—we are captivated by stories of genius. Geniuses violate the status quo, destabilize conventional ways of thinking, and ultimately disrupt history by making us see the world differently. Genius is that rare expression of human capacity that seems to touch the divine. Jesus of Nazareth is undeniably one of the most influential figures ever to have walked the face of the earth. Yet his life as a work of genius has yet to be excavated and explored. In The Genius of Jesus, Erwin Raphael McManus examines the person of Jesus not simply through the lens of his divinity, but as a man who radically changed the possibility of what it means to be human. Drawing on the phenomenon of genius and the phenomenon of Jesus, McManus leads us to see this momentous figure in a new and life-altering way. Genius always leaves clues, and The Genius of Jesus follows those clues so that you can discover your own personal genius. McManus dives into the nuances of Jesus’s words and actions, showing how they can not only inspire us but revolutionize how we think about power, empathy, meaning, beauty, and truth. This work is for anyone who seeks to transform their life from the mundane to the transcendent—for anyone who longs to awaken the genius within. The Genius of Jesus is a thought-provoking exploration of the most controversial and influential figure who ever lived, and a guide for you to discover how his genius can live in you.", - "pageCount": 209, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Religion" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ouY9EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Genius_of_Jesus.html?hl=&id=ouY9EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780063076112", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "autobiography", - "music", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Storyteller", - "authors": [ - "Dave Grohl" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-10-05", - "description": "The #1 New York Times Bestseller * Named one of Variety's Best Music Books of 2021 * Included in Audible's Best of The Year list * A Business Insider Best Memoirs of 2021 * One of NME's Best Music Books of 2021 So, I've written a book. Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (\"It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!\") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.", - "pageCount": 431, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Music" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3FcnEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3FcnEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250224354", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Last Call", - "authors": [ - "Elon Green" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-03-09", - "description": "The gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon. The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim. Nor will he be his last. The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.", - "pageCount": 272, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jTJ_zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Last_Call.html?hl=&id=jTJ_zQEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781466885967", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Automating Inequality", - "authors": [ - "Virginia Eubanks" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-01-23", - "description": "WINNER: The 2018 McGannon Center Book Prize and shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice The New York Times Book Review: \"Riveting.\" Naomi Klein: \"This book is downright scary.\" Ethan Zuckerman, MIT: \"Should be required reading.\" Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: \"A must-read.\" Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: \"The single most important book about technology you will read this year.\" Cory Doctorow: \"Indispensable.\" A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination—and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years—because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems—rather than humans—control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pn4pDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pn4pDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780553418811", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Weapons of Math Destruction", - "authors": [ - "Cathy O'Neil" - ], - "publishedDate": "2016", - "description": "\"A former Wall Street quantitative analyst sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling, a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality,\"--NoveList.", - "pageCount": 274, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CxD-DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction.html?hl=&id=CxD-DAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781610395700", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction", - "politics", - "economics" - ], - "title": "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", - "authors": [ - "Shoshana Zuboff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-01-15", - "description": "The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called \"surveillance capitalism,\" and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new \"behavioral futures markets,\" where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new \"means of behavioral modification.\" The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a \"Big Other\" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled \"hive\" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.", - "pageCount": 658, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lRqrDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lRqrDQAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780316462433", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Revelation Space", - "authors": [ - "Alastair Reynolds" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", - "description": "This highly acclaimed first novel in the Revelation Space universe has redefined the space opera with a staggering journey across vast gulfs of time and space to confront the very nature of reality itself . . . Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason, and if that reason is uncovered, the universe and reality itself could be irrevocably altered . . . \"[A] tour de force... Ravishingly inventive.\" -- Publishers Weekly", - "pageCount": 630, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GIy9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=GIy9DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781784780463", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Radical Technologies", - "authors": [ - "Adam Greenfield" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-06-01", - "description": "A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human. Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.", - "pageCount": 396, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Rm3nDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Radical_Technologies.html?hl=&id=Rm3nDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781982159016", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Afghanistan Papers", - "authors": [ - "Craig Whitlock", - "The Washington Post" - ], - "publishedDate": "2022-08-30", - "description": "A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.", - "pageCount": 384, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eOR-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Afghanistan_Papers.html?hl=&id=eOR-EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "1931498717", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Don't Think of an Elephant!", - "authors": [ - "George Lakoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2004-09", - "pageCount": 124, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": ["Political Science"], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dovUAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books?id=dovUAgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&hl=en" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781101980972", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Democracy in Chains", - "authors": [ - "Nancy MacLean" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-06-05", - "description": "Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's \"Most Valuable Book\" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ESJaDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Democracy_in_Chains.html?hl=&id=ESJaDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525509578", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "culture" - ], - "title": "The Sum of Us", - "authors": [ - "Heather McGhee" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-02-16", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s new podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL", - "pageCount": 450, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6m7cDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6m7cDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385543378", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Say Nothing", - "authors": [ - "Patrick Radden Keefe" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-02-26", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be an FX limited series streaming on HULU • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. \"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga.\" —New York Times Book Review Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.", - "pageCount": 516, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Qw1aDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Qw1aDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385526845", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Beautiful Struggle", - "authors": [ - "Ta-Nehisi Coates" - ], - "publishedDate": "2008-05-06", - "description": "An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us. Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence—and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack—and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present—to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond. Praise for The Beautiful Struggle “I grew up in a Maryland that lay years, miles and worlds away from the one whose summers and sorrows Ta-Nehisi Coates evokes in this memoir with such tenderness and science; and the greatest proof of the power of this work is the way that, reading it, I felt that time, distance and barriers of race and class meant nothing. That in telling his story he was telling my own story, for me.”—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley", - "pageCount": 242, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hxIZP9gHs-EC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=hxIZP9gHs-EC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385530217", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Snakehead", - "authors": [ - "Patrick Radden Keefe" - ], - "publishedDate": "2009-07-21", - "description": "In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people. “Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SKxptmGzIoMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SKxptmGzIoMC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780679645986", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Between the World and Me", - "authors": [ - "Ta-Nehisi Coates" - ], - "publishedDate": "2015-07-14", - "description": "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.", - "pageCount": 163, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TV05BgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TV05BgAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "0307279278", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Snakehead", - "authors": [ - "Patrick Radden Keefe" - ], - "publishedDate": "2010-07-27", - "description": "In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people. “Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "True Crime" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6LByqlMGrAEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Snakehead.html?hl=&id=6LByqlMGrAEC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780547237725", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Big Sort", - "authors": [ - "Bill Bishop", - "Robert G. Cushing" - ], - "publishedDate": "2009", - "description": "In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term \"the big sort.\" Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by state, but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show) compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live a few miles away. How this came to be, and its dire implications for our country, is the subject of this ground-breaking work. In The Big Sort, Bishop has taken his analysis to a new level. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.", - "pageCount": 388, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=nLNVd8ZkW0UC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Sort.html?hl=&id=nLNVd8ZkW0UC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780674050402", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Corruption in America", - "authors": [ - "Zephyr Teachout" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-09-15", - "description": "When Louis XVI gave Ben Franklin a diamond-encrusted snuffbox, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to corrupt him by clouding his judgment. By contrast, in 2010 the Supreme Court gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Zephyr Teachout shows that Citizens United was both bad law and bad history.", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dctwBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Corruption_in_America.html?hl=&id=dctwBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780999745465", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Curse of Bigness", - "authors": [ - "Tim Wu" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018", - "description": "From the man who coined the term \"net neutrality\" and who has made significant contributions to our understanding of antitrust policy and wireless communications, comes a call for tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness.", - "pageCount": 154, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "BUSINESS & ECONOMICS" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=30sLtAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Curse_of_Bigness.html?hl=&id=30sLtAEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780770436186", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Countdown to Zero Day", - "authors": [ - "Kim Zetter" - ], - "publishedDate": "2014-11-11", - "description": "Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery—apparently as much to the technicians replacing the centrifuges as to the inspectors observing them. Then, five months later, a seemingly unrelated event occurred: A computer security firm in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot some computers in Iran that were crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, the firm’s programmers believed the malicious code on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a mysterious virus of unparalleled complexity. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon. For Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital realm to wreak actual, physical destruction on a nuclear facility. In these pages, Wired journalist Kim Zetter draws on her extensive sources and expertise to tell the story behind Stuxnet’s planning, execution, and discovery, covering its genesis in the corridors of Bush’s White House and its unleashing on systems in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day ranges far beyond Stuxnet itself. Here, Zetter shows us how digital warfare developed in the US. She takes us inside today’s flourishing zero-day “grey markets,” in which intelligence agencies and militaries pay huge sums for the malicious code they need to carry out infiltrations and attacks. She reveals just how vulnerable many of our own critical systems are to Stuxnet-like strikes, from nation-state adversaries and anonymous hackers alike—and shows us just what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by such an attack. Propelled by Zetter’s unique knowledge and access, and filled with eye-opening explanations of the technologies involved, Countdown to Zero Day is a comprehensive and prescient portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.", - "pageCount": 521, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1l2YAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=1l2YAwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525564638", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Sandworm", - "authors": [ - "Andy Greenberg" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-20", - "description": "\"With the nuance of a reporter and the pace of a thriller writer, Andy Greenberg gives us a glimpse of the cyberwars of the future while at the same time placing his story in the long arc of Russian and Ukrainian history.\" —Anne Applebaum, bestselling author of Twilight of Democracy The true story of the most devastating act of cyberwarfare in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it: \"[A] chilling account of a Kremlin-led cyberattack, a new front in global conflict\" (Financial Times). In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billion dollars in damage—the largest, most destructive cyberattack the world had ever seen. The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in history: a group known as Sandworm. Working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike. A chilling, globe-spanning detective story, Sandworm considers the danger this force poses to our national security and stability. As the Kremlin's role in foreign government manipulation comes into greater focus, Sandworm exposes the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield. It reveals how the lines between digital and physical conflict, between wartime and peacetime, have begun to blur—with world-shaking implications.", - "pageCount": 370, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NgIHEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sandworm.html?hl=&id=NgIHEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781526629838", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politic", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends", - "authors": [ - "Nicole Perlroth" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-02-18", - "description": "WINNER OF THE FT & McKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 The instant New York Times bestseller A Financial Times and The Times Book of the Year 'A terrifying exposé' The Times 'Part John le Carré . . . Spellbinding' New Yorker We plug in anything we can to the internet. We can control our entire lives, economy and grid via a remote web control. But over the past decade, as this transformation took place, we never paused to think that we were also creating the world's largest attack surface. And that the same nation that maintains the greatest cyber advantage on earth could also be among its most vulnerable. Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers and a few unsung heroes, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing and gripping feat of journalism. Drawing on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.", - "pageCount": 529, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xj7rDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/This_Is_How_They_Tell_Me_the_World_Ends.html?hl=&id=xj7rDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780307594655", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Master Switch", - "authors": [ - "Tim Wu" - ], - "publishedDate": "2010-11-02", - "description": "A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year \"A must-read for all Americans who want to remain the ones deciding what they can read, watch, and listen to.” —Arianna Huffington Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today’s great information powers—Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T—Tim Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of \"the master switch\"? Here, Tim Wu shows how a battle royale for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.", - "pageCount": 384, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6Dp4FoEEo6IC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6Dp4FoEEo6IC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780307463760", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "labor" - ], - "title": "Rework", - "authors": [ - "Jason Fried", - "David Heinemeier Hansson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2010-03-09", - "description": "Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses. What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you. With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of \"downsizing,\" and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.", - "pageCount": 290, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=U77um_h_dgcC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=U77um_h_dgcC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780008323455", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction", - "labor" - ], - "title": "It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work", - "authors": [ - "Jason Fried", - "David Heinemeier Hansson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-10-04", - "description": "Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework, are back with a manifesto to combat all your modern workplace worries and fears.", - "pageCount": 240, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Self-Help" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=LsplDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/It_Doesn_t_Have_to_Be_Crazy_at_Work.html?hl=&id=LsplDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781631497780", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy", - "authors": [ - "Adam Jentleson" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-01-12", - "description": "With a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration THE CASE FOR ENDING THE FILIBUSTER \"A truly excellent book… blistering and persuasive.” —Ezra Klein, New York Times An insider’s account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to hijack our democracy. Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster—which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed—to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority. • “Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times • “Careful and thorough and exacting.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books • “[An] excellent, surprising new book.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker", - "pageCount": 301, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=i5HxDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=i5HxDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781953953308", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "development", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Working in Public", - "authors": [ - "Nadia Eghbal" - ], - "publishedDate": "202-08-04", - "description": "An inside look at modern open source software developers--and their influence on our online social world. \"Nadia is one of today's most nuanced thinkers about the depth and potential of online communities, and this book could not have come at a better time.\" --Devon Zuegel, director of product, communities at GitHub Open source software––in which developers publish code that anyone can use––has long served as a bellwether for other online behavior. In the late 1990s, it provided an optimistic model for public collaboration, but in the last 20 years it’s shifted to solo operators who write and publish code that’s consumed by millions. In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet reorienting itself around individual creators. Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators. She examines the trajectory of open source projects, including: - the platform of GitHub, for hosting and development; - the structures, roles, incentives, and relationships involved; - the often-overlooked maintenance required of its creators; - and the costs of production that endure through an application’s lifetime. Eghbal also scrutinizes the role of platforms––like Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram––which reduce infrastructure and distribution costs for creators, but which massively increase the scope of interactions with their audience. Open source communities are increasingly centered around the work of individual developers rather than teams. Similarly, if creators, rather than discrete communities, are going to become the epicenter of our online social systems, we need to better understand how they work––and we can do so by studying what happened to open source.", - "pageCount": 293, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zxjBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=zxjBEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781101201220", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "labor", - "climate", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Let My People Go Surfing", - "authors": [ - "Yvon Chouinard" - ], - "publishedDate": "2006-09-05", - "description": "Yvon Chouinard-legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.-shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth. From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike. A newly revised edition of Let My People Go Surfing is available now. From the Trade Paperback edition.", - "pageCount": 284, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Om98RYbp-8sC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Let_My_People_Go_Surfing.html?hl=&id=Om98RYbp-8sC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781938340109", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "labor", - "climate", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Responsible Company", - "authors": [ - "Yvon Chouinard", - "Vincent Stanley" - ], - "publishedDate": "2013-10-06", - "description": "The Responsible Company, by Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, and Vincent Stanley, co-editor of its Footprint Chronicles, draw on the their 40 years' experience at Patagonia – and knowledge of current efforts by other companies – to articulate the elements of responsible business for our time. Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery. In plain, compelling prose, the authors describe the current impact of manufacturing and commerce on the planet’s natural systems and human communities, and how that impact now forces business to change its ways. The Responsible Company shows companies how to reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone seeks. It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do, in what order. This is the first book to show companies how to thread their way through economic sea change and slow the drift toward ecological bankruptcy. Its advice is simple but powerful: reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come, and earn the trust you’ll need by treating your workers, customers and communities with respect.", + "description": "AS SEEN IN THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY THE SOCIAL DILEMMA A WIRED \"ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK\" A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK \"THE CONSCIENCE OF SILICON VALLEY\"- GQ “Profound . . . Lanier shows the tactical value of appealing to the conscience of the individual. In the face of his earnest argument, I felt a piercing shame about my own presence on Facebook. I heeded his plea and deleted my account.” - Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review “Mixes prophetic wisdom with a simple practicality . . . Essential reading.” - The New York Times (Summer Reading Preview) You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we’re better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms. Lanier’s reasons for freeing ourselves from social media’s poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more “connected” than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.", "pageCount": 160, "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tgLnBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tgLnBAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781594206016", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Dark Mirror", - "authors": [ - "Barton Gellman" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-05-19", - "description": "“Engrossing. . . . Gellman [is] a thorough, exacting reporter . . . a marvelous narrator for this particular story, as he nimbly guides us through complex technical arcana and some stubborn ethical questions. . . . Dark Mirror would be simply pleasurable to read if the story it told didn’t also happen to be frighteningly real.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times From the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the New York Times bestseller Angler, the definitive master narrative of Edward Snowden and the modern surveillance state, based on unique access to Snowden and groundbreaking reportage around the world. Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning. He jumped off from what Snowden gave him to track the reach and methodology of the U.S. surveillance state and bring it to light with astonishing new clarity. Along the way, he interrogated Snowden’s own history and found important ways in which myth and reality do not line up. Gellman treats Snowden with respect, but this is no hagiographic account, and Dark Mirror sets the record straight in ways that are both fascinating and important. Dark Mirror is the story that Gellman could not tell before, a gripping inside narrative of investigative reporting as it happened and a deep dive into the machinery of the surveillance state. Gellman recounts the puzzles, dilemmas and tumultuous events behind the scenes of his work – in top secret intelligence facilities, in Moscow hotel rooms, in huddles with Post lawyers and editors, in Silicon Valley executive suites, and in encrypted messages from anonymous accounts. Within the book is a compelling portrait of national security journalism under pressure from legal threats, government investigations, and foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing Gellman’s files. Throughout Dark Mirror, Gellman wages an escalating battle against unknown adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense. With the vivid and insightful style that is the author’s trademark, Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale about the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents. Along the way, with the benefit of fresh reporting, it tells the full story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since All the President’s Men.", - "pageCount": 450, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=7_LsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Mirror.html?hl=&id=7_LsDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781953953322", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "culture" - ], - "title": "Get Together", - "authors": [ - "Bailey Richardson ", - "Kevin Huynh ", - "Kai Elmer Sotto" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-08-20", - "description": "A practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community, online or IRL. Although communities feel magical, they don’t come together by magic. Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K–12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them. In Get Together, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto of People & Company share true stories of everyday people who have created thriving communities, both in person and online. They provide clear steps to untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together, helping individuals and organizations navigate the intricacies of leading a community, including: - How to rally the first people - How to get people talking - How to attract new, authentic folks - How to develop leaders and expand globally. The People & Company team reminds us that we each hold the potential to spark a community. Get Together shows readers that if we join forces—as company and customers, artist and fans, organizer and advocates—we’ll do more together than we ever could alone.", - "pageCount": 169, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BRnBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=BRnBEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525561378", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Zucked", - "authors": [ - "Roger McNamee" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-02-04", - "description": "One of the Financial Times' Best Business Books of 2019 The New York Times bestseller about a noted tech venture capitalist, early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook investor, who wakes up to the serious damage Facebook is doing to our society—and sets out to try to stop it. If you had told Roger McNamee even three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying our democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. Zucked is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face. And then comes the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put. To McNamee's shock, even still Facebook's leaders duck and dissemble, viewing the matter as a public relations problem. Now thoroughly alienated, McNamee digs into the issue, and fortuitously meets up with some fellow travelers who share his concern, and help him sharpen its focus. Soon he and a dream team of Silicon Valley technologists are charging into the fray, to raise consciousness about the existential threat of Facebook, and the persuasion architecture of the attention economy more broadly—to our public health and to our political order. Zucked is both an enthralling personal narrative and a masterful explication of the forces that have conspired to place us all on the horns of this dilemma. This is the story of a company and its leadership, but it's also a larger tale of a business sector unmoored from normal constraints, just at a moment of political and cultural crisis, the worst possible time to be given new tools for summoning the darker angels of our nature and whipping them into a frenzy. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, Roger McNamee happened to be in the right place to witness a crime, and it took him some time to make sense of what he was seeing and what we ought to do about it. The result of that effort is a wise, hard-hitting, and urgently necessary account that crystallizes the issue definitively for the rest of us.", - "pageCount": 402, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DzHJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zucked.html?hl=&id=DzHJDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780802147950", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Fentanyl, Inc.", - "authors": [ - "Ben Westhoff" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-09-03", - "description": "A four-year investigation into the world of synthetic drugs—from black market factories to users & dealers to harm reduction activists—and what it revealed. A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. “A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape,” writes Ben Westhoff. “These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs” —and all-too-often tragically lethal. Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice—and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe—were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Westhoff visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China’s vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. Poignantly, he chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the United States and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many. “Timely and agonizing. . . . An impressive work of investigative journalism.” —USA Today “Westhoff explores the many-tentacled world of illicit opioids, from the streets of East St. Louis to Chinese pharmaceutical companies, from music festivals deep in the Michigan woods to sanctioned ‘shooting up rooms’ in Barcelona, in this frank, insightful, and occasionally searing exposé. . . . Westhoff’s well-reported and researched work will likely open eyes, slow knee-jerk responses, and start much needed conversations.” —Publishers Weekly “Our 25 Favorite Books of 2019” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Best Books of 2019” —Buzzfeed “Best Nonfiction of 2019” —Kirkus Reviews “50 Best Books of 2019” —Daily Telegraph “Best Nonfiction Books of 2019” —Tyler Cowen “Best Books of 2019” —Yahoo Finance", - "pageCount": 365, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2xqSDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2xqSDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780241991411", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction", - "autobiography" - ], - "title": "A Promised Land", - "authors": [ - "Barack Obama" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-11-17", - "description": "THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy - and the perfect gift this Christmas! 'Gorgeously written, humorous, compelling, life affirming' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective-the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of \"hope and change,\" and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day. 'What is unexpected in A Promised Land is the former president's candour' David Olusoga, Observer", - "pageCount": 768, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ypb9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Promised_Land.html?hl=&id=ypb9DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780061809613", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Sundering", - "authors": [ - "Walter Jon Williams" - ], - "publishedDate": "2009-10-13", - "description": "“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin Following The Praxis, Walter Jon Williams’ critically-acclaimed mix of space opera and military science fiction, the conflict grows for the fate of humanity…and the universe. The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for ten centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids—a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise—plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination, and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula, whose courageous exploits are becoming legend in the new history of galactic civil war. Yet their cunning, skill, and bravery may be no match for the overwhelming enemy descending upon the loyalist stronghold of Zanshaa, as the horrific battle looms that will determine the structure of the universe—and who shall live to inhabit it—for millennia to come.", - "pageCount": 448, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qYNIN3Vhe84C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qYNIN3Vhe84C" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780358237068", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Compromised", - "authors": [ - "Peter Strzok" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-09", - "description": "The FBI veteran behind the Russia investigation draws on decades of experience hunting foreign agents in the United States to lay bare the threat posed by President Trump.", - "pageCount": 387, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Biography & Autobiography" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jYvzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Compromised.html?hl=&id=jYvzDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780804170048", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "economics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Attention Merchants", - "authors": [ - "Tim Wu" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-09-19", - "description": "From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term \"net neutrality”—a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. \"Dazzling.\" —Financial Times Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu’s narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Since then, every new medium—from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook—has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of “attention merchants” has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous reality we can no longer afford to accept at face value.", - "pageCount": 434, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Business & Economics" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mNkxDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Attention_Merchants.html?hl=&id=mNkxDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780525509691", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Purpose of Power", - "authors": [ - "Alicia Garza" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-20", - "description": "An essential guide to building transformative movements to address the challenges of our time, from one of the country’s leading organizers and a co-creator of Black Lives Matter “Excellent and provocative . . . a gateway [to] urgent debates.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Time • Marie Claire • Kirkus Reviews In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called “a love letter to Black people” on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote: Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard ’round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don’t start movements—people do. Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the “rules for radicals” that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American civil rights movement. She reflects instead on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still awakening can inspire and activate more people to fight for the world we all deserve. This is the story of one woman’s lessons through years of bringing people together to create change. Most of all, it is a new paradigm for change for a new generation of changemakers, from the mind and heart behind one of the most important movements of our time.", - "pageCount": 353, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JgLlDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JgLlDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780306846441", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Culture Warlords", - "authors": [ - "Talia Lavin" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", - "description": "One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now. Talia Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers. Culture Warlords is the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists. In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme fatale. Along the way, she discovers a whites-only dating site geared toward racists looking for love, a disturbing extremist YouTube channel run by a fourteen-year-old girl with over 800,000 followers, the everyday heroes of the antifascist movement, and much more. By combining compelling stories chock-full of catfishing and gate-crashing with her own in-depth, gut-wrenching research, she also turns the lens of anti-Semitism, racism, and white power back on itself in an attempt to dismantle and decimate the online hate movement from within. Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the Web-and shows us how we can fight back.", - "pageCount": 288, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=XFfODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=XFfODwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781785355448", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Kill All Normies", - "authors": [ - "Angela Nagle" - ], - "publishedDate": "2017-06-07", - "description": "Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battle ground is the internet. On one side the \"alt right\" ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, a culture of struggle sessions and virtue signalling lurks behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures right through to its mainstream expression. Kill All Normies explores some of the cultural genealogies and past parallels of these styles and subcultures, drawing from transgressive styles of 60s libertinism and conservative movements, to make the case for a rejection of the perpetual cultural turn.", - "pageCount": 136, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Social Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=y-MlDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=y-MlDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780771008795", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi", - "fantasy" - ], - "title": "The Handmaid's Tale", - "authors": [ - "Margaret Atwood" - ], - "publishedDate": "2011-09-06", - "description": "An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.", - "pageCount": 370, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cRPKOzWlOfUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Handmaid_s_Tale.html?hl=&id=cRPKOzWlOfUC" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780374716325", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Lurking", - "authors": [ - "Joanne McNeil" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-02-25", - "description": "One of Esquire’s Best Books to Elevate Your Reading List in 2020, , and a OneZero Best Tech Book of 2020. Named one of the 100 Notable books of 2020 by the End of the World Review. A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been. In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life—what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet—have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told. Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.", - "pageCount": 163, - "printType": "BOOK", "categories": [ "Computers" ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=kaqEDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NZVJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=kaqEDwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781510764705", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Disloyal: A Memoir", - "authors": [ - "Michael Cohen" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-09-08", - "description": "A #1 New York Times Bestseller! \"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn’t put it down until it was over.\"—Rachel Maddow, MSNBC This book almost didn’t see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication. The Inside Story of the Real President Trump, by His Former Attorney and Personal Advisor—The Man Who Helped Get Him Into the Oval Office Once Donald Trump’s fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried. This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump’s lawyer and “fixer,” Cohen not only witnessed firsthand but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump’s business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration. This is a story that you have not read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television. These are accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for over a decade—not a few months or even a couple of years—could know. Cohen describes Trump’s racist rants against President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Black and Hispanic people in general, as well as the cruelty, humiliation, and abuse he leveled at family and staff. Whether he’s exposing the fact that Trump engaged in tax fraud by inflating his wealth or electronic fraud by rigging an online survey, or outing Trump’s Neanderthal views towards women or his hush-money payments to clandestine lovers, Cohen pulls no punches. He shows Trump’s relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, or manipulate. Trump emerges as a man without a soul—a man who courts evangelicals and then trashes them, panders to the common man, but then rips off small business owners, a con man who will do or say absolutely anything to win, regardless of the cost to his family, his associates, or his country. At the heart of Disloyal, we see how Cohen came under the spell of his charismatic \"Boss\" and, as a result, lost all sense of his moral compass. The real \"real\" Donald Trump who permeates these pages—the racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, cheating President—will be discussed, written about, and analyzed for years to come.", - "pageCount": 415, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RX33DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=RX33DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781524745738", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "American Rule", - "authors": [ - "Jared Yates Sexton" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-09-14", - "description": "From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes an eye-opening journey through American history that unearths and debunks the myths we've always told ourselves. Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward? An honest look at the past—and how it’s been covered up—is the only way to find the answers. Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation’s very beginning, and myths of America’s unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here—and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination. Stirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been—and challenges us to forge a new path.", - "pageCount": 385, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "History" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QOY9EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Rule.html?hl=&id=QOY9EAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9780385543798", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi", - "fantasy" - ], - "title": "The Testaments", - "authors": [ - "Margaret Atwood" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-09-10", - "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A modern masterpiece that \"reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale. “Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.", - "pageCount": 412, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=P6F7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=P6F7DwAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781250200891", - "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "politics", - "nonfiction", - "tech", - "economics" - ], - "title": "Break 'Em Up", - "authors": [ - "Zephyr Teachout" - ], - "publishedDate": "2020-05-19", - "description": "A passionate attack on the monopolies that are throttling American democracy. Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the US justice system. How can we recover our freedom from these giants? Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout has the answer: Break 'Em Up. This book is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today's progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens, and historically-disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices. In order to build a better future, we must eradicate monopolies from the private sector and create new safeguards that prevent new ones from seizing power. Through her expert analysis of monopolies in several sectors and their impact on courts, journalism, inequality, and politics, Teachout offers a concrete path toward thwarting these enemies of working Americans and reclaiming our democracy before it’s too late.", - "pageCount": 320, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MPQ5yAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Break_Em_Up.html?hl=&id=MPQ5yAEACAAJ" + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NZVJDwAAQBAJ" }, { "isbn": "9780316261234", @@ -6072,30 +97,6 @@ "language": "en", "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=LvLlCgAAQBAJ" }, - { - "isbn": "9781250196699", - "dateFinished": "2018-10-07", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now", - "authors": [ - "Jaron Lanier" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-05-29", - "description": "AS SEEN IN THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY THE SOCIAL DILEMMA A WIRED \"ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK\" A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK \"THE CONSCIENCE OF SILICON VALLEY\"- GQ “Profound . . . Lanier shows the tactical value of appealing to the conscience of the individual. In the face of his earnest argument, I felt a piercing shame about my own presence on Facebook. I heeded his plea and deleted my account.” - Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review “Mixes prophetic wisdom with a simple practicality . . . Essential reading.” - The New York Times (Summer Reading Preview) You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we’re better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms. Lanier’s reasons for freeing ourselves from social media’s poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more “connected” than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.", - "pageCount": 160, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NZVJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NZVJDwAAQBAJ" - }, { "isbn": "9781250237248", "dateFinished": "2019-10-18", @@ -6144,6 +145,72 @@ "language": "en", "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=fcukDwAAQBAJ" }, + { + "isbn": "9783753145136", + "dateFinished": "2019-11-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Nineteen Eighty-Four", + "authors": [ + "George Orwell" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-01-09", + "description": "\"Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel\", often published as \"1984\", is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, \"Nineteen Eighty-Four\" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.", + "pageCount": 327, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PEpoEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=PEpoEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9798465995368", + "dateFinished": "2020-07-08", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "parenting" + ], + "title": "Raising Lions", + "authors": [ + "Joe Newman" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-09-28", + "description": "The second edition of Joe Newman's acclaimed book Raising Lions is an essential guide for parents and teachers raising strong-willed, precocious children. It offers clear insights into what motivates the most challenging behaviors, and what kinds of responses turn these behaviors around. \"One of the best books on child-rearing I've ever read. Joe Newman describes a cultural shift that has reinforced anxiety and behavior disorders in children by negating parental authority. Even more important, he provides specific, non-punitive ways for parents to help their kids by taking back their authority. Filled with examples and experiences from the author's own life as a child with A.D.H.D., the book is a treasure-trove of useful information.\" Barry Michels, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of The Tools. \"This book is packed with useful information. It is an insightful and practical guide for managing children. I would recommend it to any parent.\" L. Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus Ph.D. University of Minnesota Current childrearing techniques seek to develop children who are confident, self-assured, and unafraid to speak their minds-lions instead of lambs. Although largely positive, this shift has brought with it some very serious problems in our children's behavior. Without going back to an authoritarian model, Joe Newman has developed new ways of helping children develop the ability to self-regulate without undermining their confidence and individuality. Raising Lions challenges us to re-examine our interactions and relationships with children, re-think the root causes of behavior problems and find new ways to support healthy, happy development. For over 20 years Joe Newman has worked with children, parents, teachers, and administrators to help them understand and improve child behavior.", + "pageCount": 218, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TEOszgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Raising_Lions.html?hl=&id=TEOszgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780062884770", + "dateFinished": "2020-07-11", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Praxis", + "authors": [ + "Walter Jon Williams" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-02-26", + "description": "“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin The first book in the completed Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, followed by The Sundering and Conventions of War. All will must bend to the perfect truth of The Praxis For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos. A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.", + "pageCount": 448, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YHDOtwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Praxis.html?hl=&id=YHDOtwEACAAJ" + }, { "isbn": "9781631495748", "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", @@ -6263,96 +330,6 @@ "language": "en", "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Way_of_the_Warrior.html?hl=&id=i4yFDwAAQBAJ" }, - { - "isbn": "9780062884770", - "dateFinished": "2020-07-11", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "The Praxis", - "authors": [ - "Walter Jon Williams" - ], - "publishedDate": "2019-02-26", - "description": "“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin The first book in the completed Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, followed by The Sundering and Conventions of War. All will must bend to the perfect truth of The Praxis For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos. A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.", - "pageCount": 448, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YHDOtwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Praxis.html?hl=&id=YHDOtwEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9783753145136", - "dateFinished": "2019-11-10", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "scifi" - ], - "title": "Nineteen Eighty-Four", - "authors": [ - "George Orwell" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-01-09", - "description": "\"Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel\", often published as \"1984\", is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, \"Nineteen Eighty-Four\" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.", - "pageCount": 327, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Fiction" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PEpoEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=PEpoEAAAQBAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9798465995368", - "dateFinished": "2020-07-08", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "parenting" - ], - "title": "Raising Lions", - "authors": [ - "Joe Newman" - ], - "publishedDate": "2021-09-28", - "description": "The second edition of Joe Newman's acclaimed book Raising Lions is an essential guide for parents and teachers raising strong-willed, precocious children. It offers clear insights into what motivates the most challenging behaviors, and what kinds of responses turn these behaviors around. \"One of the best books on child-rearing I've ever read. Joe Newman describes a cultural shift that has reinforced anxiety and behavior disorders in children by negating parental authority. Even more important, he provides specific, non-punitive ways for parents to help their kids by taking back their authority. Filled with examples and experiences from the author's own life as a child with A.D.H.D., the book is a treasure-trove of useful information.\" Barry Michels, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of The Tools. \"This book is packed with useful information. It is an insightful and practical guide for managing children. I would recommend it to any parent.\" L. Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus Ph.D. University of Minnesota Current childrearing techniques seek to develop children who are confident, self-assured, and unafraid to speak their minds-lions instead of lambs. Although largely positive, this shift has brought with it some very serious problems in our children's behavior. Without going back to an authoritarian model, Joe Newman has developed new ways of helping children develop the ability to self-regulate without undermining their confidence and individuality. Raising Lions challenges us to re-examine our interactions and relationships with children, re-think the root causes of behavior problems and find new ways to support healthy, happy development. For over 20 years Joe Newman has worked with children, parents, teachers, and administrators to help them understand and improve child behavior.", - "pageCount": 218, - "printType": "BOOK", - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TEOszgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Raising_Lions.html?hl=&id=TEOszgEACAAJ" - }, - { - "isbn": "9781610398039", - "dateFinished": "2018-10-06", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "tech", - "politics" - ], - "title": "Surveillance Valley", - "authors": [ - "Yasha Levine" - ], - "publishedDate": "2018-02-06", - "description": "The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built. In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea -- using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad -- drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology. But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news -- and the device on which you read it.", - "pageCount": 384, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Political Science" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=65WYDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=65WYDgAAQBAJ" - }, { "isbn": "9781529418736", "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", @@ -6400,31 +377,6 @@ "language": "en", "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=1QUXYx3oyGQC" }, - { - "isbn": "9780132119177", - "dateFinished": "2018-02-23", - "status": "finished", - "rating": "unrated", - "tags": [ - "development", - "nonfiction" - ], - "title": "The Pragmatic Programmer", - "authors": [ - "Andrew Hunt", - "David Thomas" - ], - "publishedDate": "1999-10-20", - "description": "What others in the trenches say about The Pragmatic Programmer... “The cool thing about this book is that it’s great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.” — Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change “I found this book to be a great mix of solid advice and wonderful analogies!” — Martin Fowler, author of Refactoring and UML Distilled “I would buy a copy, read it twice, then tell all my colleagues to run out and grab a copy. This is a book I would never loan because I would worry about it being lost.” — Kevin Ruland, Management Science, MSG-Logistics “The wisdom and practical experience of the authors is obvious. The topics presented are relevant and useful.... By far its greatest strength for me has been the outstanding analogies—tracer bullets, broken windows, and the fabulous helicopter-based explanation of the need for orthogonality, especially in a crisis situation. I have little doubt that this book will eventually become an excellent source of useful information for journeymen programmers and expert mentors alike.” — John Lakos, author of Large-Scale C++ Software Design “This is the sort of book I will buy a dozen copies of when it comes out so I can give it to my clients.” — Eric Vought, Software Engineer “Most modern books on software development fail to cover the basics of what makes a great software developer, instead spending their time on syntax or technology where in reality the greatest leverage possible for any software team is in having talented developers who really know their craft well. An excellent book.” — Pete McBreen, Independent Consultant “Since reading this book, I have implemented many of the practical suggestions and tips it contains. Across the board, they have saved my company time and money while helping me get my job done quicker! This should be a desktop reference for everyone who works with code for a living.” — Jared Richardson, Senior Software Developer, iRenaissance, Inc. “I would like to see this issued to every new employee at my company....” — Chris Cleeland, Senior Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc. “If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.” — Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process--taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you'll learn how to Fight software rot; Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge; Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code; Avoid programming by coincidence; Bullet-proof your code with contracts, assertions, and exceptions; Capture real requirements; Test ruthlessly and effectively; Delight your users; Build teams of pragmatic programmers; and Make your developments more precise with automation. Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with entertaining anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you're a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you'll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You'll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career. You'll become a Pragmatic Programmer.", - "pageCount": 346, - "printType": "BOOK", - "categories": [ - "Computers" - ], - "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5wBQEp6ruIAC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", - "language": "en", - "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=5wBQEp6ruIAC" - }, { "isbn": "1937557049", "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", @@ -9884,5 +3836,6080 @@ "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GVVsCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", "language": "en", "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=GVVsCwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780143129028", + "dateFinished": "2019-08-18", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "tech" + ], + "title": "American Kingpin", + "authors": [ + "Nick Bilton" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-05-29", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye. It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.", + "pageCount": 377, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6xlZDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Kingpin.html?hl=&id=6xlZDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780765336545", + "dateFinished": "2019-10-30", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Exo", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-09-09", + "description": "A sequel to Impulse returns readers to the world of Jumper and follows the experiences of a teen girl whose teleporting abilities subject her to the illicit agendas of corrupt and violent factions.", + "pageCount": 462, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wnItBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Exo.html?hl=&id=wnItBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316134675", + "dateFinished": "2020-01-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Leviathan Wakes", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-06-15", + "description": "From a New York Times bestselling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Now a Prime Original series. Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. \"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.\" —George R. R. Martin The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 621, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=yud-foXqGUEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=yud-foXqGUEC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316202275", + "dateFinished": "2020-02-05", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Caliban's War", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2012-06-26", + "description": "The second book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Caliban's War shows a solar system on the brink of war, and the only hope of peace rests on James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante's shoulders. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES We are not alone. On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system. In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun . . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 511, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tXGRBgwxAHIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tXGRBgwxAHIC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316204071", + "dateFinished": "2020-02-06", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Butcher of Anderson Station", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-10-17", + "description": "A novelette set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Butcher of Anderson Station deepens the story of Colonel Fred Johnson's past as seen on the fifth episode of Season 1 of The Expanse. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A new story set in the world of the Expanse. One day, Colonel Fred Johnson will be hailed as a hero to the system. One day, he will meet a desperate man in possession of a stolen spaceship and a deadly secret and extend a hand of friendship. But long before he became the leader of the Outer Planets Alliance, Fred Johnson had a very different name. The Butcher of Anderson Station. This is his story. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 39, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wLasZiihCzMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=wLasZiihCzMC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217651", + "dateFinished": "2020-02-09", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Gods of Risk", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2012-09-15", + "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Gods of Risk tells the story of Bobbie Draper following the events of Caliban's War. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES As tension between Mars and Earth mounts, and terrorism plagues the Martian city of Londres Nova, sixteen-year-old David Draper is fighting his own lonely war. A gifted chemist vying for a place at the university, David leads a secret life as a manufacturer for a ruthless drug dealer. When his friend Leelee goes missing, leaving signs of the dealer's involvement, David takes it upon himself to save her. But first he must shake his aunt Bobbie Draper, an ex-marine who has been set adrift in her own life after a mysterious series of events nobody is talking about. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 73, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_V1ZXdibLlgC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=_V1ZXdibLlgC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316235426", + "dateFinished": "2020-03-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Abaddon's Gate", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-06-04", + "description": "The third book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Abaddon's Gate opens the door to the ruins of an alien gate network, and the crew of the Rocinante may hold the key to unlocking its secrets. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES For generations, the solar system -- Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt -- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them. Abaddon's Gate is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the critically acclaimed Caliban's War. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 502, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rIWWl_bA0z4C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rIWWl_bA0z4C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217668", + "dateFinished": "2020-03-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Churn: An Expanse Novella", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-04-29", + "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Churn takes the bestselling sci-fi series to the dark world of organized crime, drugs, secrets, and murder that shaped the Rocinante's mechanic, Amos. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Before his trip to the stars, before the Rocinante, Timmy was confined to a Baltimore where crime paid you or killed you. Unless the authorities got to you first. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, people do what they must to survive. The Churn follows a crime boss named Burton as his organization is threatened by a new private security force tasked with cleaning up the city. When the police start cracking down, Burton and his footsoldiers-loyal lieutenant Erich, former prostitute Lydia, and young enforcer Timmy-become increasingly desperate to find a way out. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 63, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f2n5AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=f2n5AgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217606", + "dateFinished": "2020-04-07", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Cibola Burn", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-06-17", + "description": "The fourth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Cibola Burn sees the crew of the Rocinante on a new frontier, as the rush to colonize the new planets threatens to outrun law and order and give way to war and chaos. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Enter a new frontier. \"An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.\" The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire. Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth. James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail. And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 561, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Hn41AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Hn41AgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217590", + "dateFinished": "2020-04-15", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Nemesis Games", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2015-06-02", + "description": "The fifth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Nemesis Games drives the crew of the Rocinante apart, and as they struggle to survive, the inner planets fall victim to an enemy's catastrophic plan. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle. Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price. And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left. Nemesis Games is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the bestselling Cibola Burn. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 479, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=A_-zBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=A_-zBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217569", + "dateFinished": "2020-04-17", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Vital Abyss", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2015-10-15", + "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, The Vital Abyss is the secret history of the cataclysmic events that occurred on Eros station, and the revelation of what came after. . . Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Somewhere in the vast expanse of space, a group of prisoners lives in permanent captivity. The only company they have is each other and the Belters who guard them. The only stories they know are the triumphs and crimes that brought them there. The only future they see is an empty life in an enormous room. And then the man from Mars came along . . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 67, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=oC6XCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=oC6XCgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217637", + "dateFinished": "2020-04-27", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Babylon's Ashes", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-12-06", + "description": "The sixth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Babylon's Ashes has the galaxy in full revolution, and it's up to the crew of the Rocinante to make a desperate mission to the gate network and thin hope of victory. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood. The Free Navy -- a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships -- has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them. James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network. But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. Babylon's Ashes is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the bestselling Nemesis Games. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 484, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3jsYCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3jsYCwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217576", + "dateFinished": "2020-04-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Strange Dogs", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-07-18", + "description": "A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Strange Dogs follows a family of colonists on Laconia where a new generation of humanity struggles with the profound changes that come with making a home on an alien world. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Like many before them, Cara and her family ventured through the gates as scientists and researchers, driven to carve out a new life and uncover the endless possibilities of the unexplored alien worlds now within reach. But soon the soldiers followed and under this new order Cara makes a discovery that will change everything. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 94, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=no-vDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=no-vDgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316332828", + "dateFinished": "2020-05-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Persepolis Rising", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-12-05", + "description": "The seventh book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Persepolis Rising finds an old enemy returning home with more power and technology than anyone thought possible, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante tries to rally forces against the new invasion. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES An old enemy returns. In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace. In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it. New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity -- and of the Rocinante -- unexpectedly and forever. . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 586, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cxNVDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=cxNVDgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316217675", + "dateFinished": "2020-05-15", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Auberon", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-11-12", + "description": "A novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series, Auberon explores a new and alien world and the age-old dangers that humanity has carried with it to the stars. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. Hugo Award Winner for Best Series Auberon is one of the first and most important colony worlds in humanity's reach, and the new conquering faction has come to claim it. Governor Rittenaur has come to bring civilization and order to the far outpost and guarantee the wealth and power of the Empire. But Auberon already has its own history, a complex culture, and a criminal kingpin named Erich with very different plans. In a world of deceit, violence, and corruption, the greatest danger Rittenaur faces is love. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 75, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xP6yDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xP6yDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316332866", + "dateFinished": "2020-06-06", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Tiamat's Wrath", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-03-26", + "description": "The eighth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Tiamat's Wrath finds the crew of the Rocinante fighting an underground war against a nearly invulnerable authoritarian empire, with James Holden a prisoner of the enemy. Now a Prime Original series. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay. At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father's godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cordozar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn't guess. And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte's authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia's eternal rule -- and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose -- seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough. . . The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 524, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JQdUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JQdUDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781429952408", + "dateFinished": "2020-06-08", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Shade", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2010-07-20", + "description": "Steven Gould's classic SF novel Jumper is the story of a young man with a single mysterious superpower: he can teleport anywhere, in the blink of an eye. Now, in a story set after Jumper's sequel Reflex, we see that a single mysterious superpower can add up to a lot of different kinds of miracle... In 2008 Jumper was brought to the screen as a big-budget SF adventure of the same name, directed by Doug Liman and starring Hayden Christiansen and Samuel L. Jackson. The movie rearranged the story line and gave the protagonist a teleporting sidekick. When the movie's producers expressed a desire to see a novel published about the sidekick's backstory, Gould chose to write the book himself; it was published as Jumper: Griffin's Story (2007), and is not canonical with the other two \"Jumper\" novels. \"Shade\" takes place in the world of the novels, not the alternate continuity of the movie. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", + "pageCount": 32, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=G4_DjO5ZHUYC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=G4_DjO5ZHUYC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781601429551", + "dateFinished": "2020-07-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "religion" + ], + "title": "The Last Arrow", + "authors": [ + "Erwin Raphael McManus" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-08-13", + "description": "Before You Die, Live the Life You Were Born To Live. When you come to the end of your days, you will not measure your life based on success and failures. All of those will eventually blur together into a single memory called “life.” What will give you solace is a life with nothing left undone. One that’s been lived with relentless ambition, a heart on fire, and with no regrets. On the other hand, what will haunt you until your final breath is who you could have been but never became and what you could have done but never did. The Last Arrow is your roadmap to a life that defies odds and alters destinies. Discover the attributes of those who break the gravitational pull of mediocrity as cultural pioneer and thought leader Erwin McManus examines the characteristics of individuals who risked everything for a life they could only imagine. Imagine living the life you were convinced was only a dream. We all begin this life with a quiver full of arrows. Now the choice is yours. Will you cling to your arrows or risk them all, opting to live until you have nothing left to give? Time is short. Pick up this new paperback edition of The Last Arrow and begin the greatest quest of your life. Now with questions for reflection and discussion.", + "pageCount": 226, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Religion" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=avOiDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Last_Arrow.html?hl=&id=avOiDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063251281", + "dateFinished": "2023-08-11", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Where Are Your Boys Tonight?", + "authors": [ + "Chris Payne" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-11", + "description": "An energetic and explosive oral history examining the mainstream emo explosion from 1999-2008 and how it reversed expectations of what was possible in popular music, featuring exclusive interviews with the bands, managers, journalists, photographers, and awe-struck fans that defined the genre and a \"scene\" that would one day sweep across the entire country. If Meet Me in the Bathroom traced New York City's underground Indie scene, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? draws a wide circle around an emo culture that would grace the stages of the mainstream and become bigger than anyone ever thought possible. There was Pete Wentz, the Fall Out Boy leader who launched a litany of scene-stealing bands and preposterous side hustles, and Gerard Way, the wizard behind My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade. Panic! at the Disco and Paramore exploded soon after--a pair of intrepid outsiders who got massive playing by rules uniquely their own. Told from within the scenes that created this big bang, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? follows first-hand accounts of New Jersey basement shows and Long Island VFW hall gigs, where bands like Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, Lifetime, and Taking Back Sunday laid the foundation for the explosion of rock's most polarizing (and addictive) sub-genre. New Jersey native and former Billboard staff writer Chris Payne experienced much of emo's mainstream moment from sweaty crowds and mosh pits, and in Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, he reexamines these bands as they come of age and sky-rocket to fame within a genre rife with contradictions: avowing punk ethos while walking the VMAs red carpet; creating outlets for mental health struggles while perhaps inadvertently turning them into a crucial part of belonging; building fandoms significantly comprising young women and LGBTQ+ kids in an environment that was often toxic and unsafe. Set at the unique intersection of regional emo scenes and the rise of worldwide social media communities like MySpace and Tumblr, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? is a deeply personal, uncompromisingly emotional, and occasionally absurd account--featuring interviews with musicians like Pete Wentz, Chris Carrabba, and Jim Adkins; journalists like Leslie Simon, Andy Greenwald, and Hanif Abdurraqib; and the managers, idolizing scenesters, and won-over fans that made this all possible.", + "pageCount": 480, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BSvtzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Where_Are_Your_Boys_Tonight.html?hl=&id=BSvtzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0306818795", + "dateFinished": "2023-08-19", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction", + "biography" + ], + "title": "Trouble Boys", + "authors": [ + "Bob Mehr" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-03-01", + "description": "Trouble Boys is the first definitive, no-holds-barred biography of one of the last great bands of the twentieth century: The Replacements. With full participation from reclusive singer and chief songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, guitarist Slim Dunlap, and the family of late band co-founder Bob Stinson, author Bob Mehr is able to tell the real story of this highly influential group, capturing their chaotic, tragic journey from the basements of Minneapolis to rock legend. Drawing on years of research and access to the band's archives at Twin/Tone Records and Warner Bros. Mehr also discovers previously unrevealed details from those in the group's inner circle, including family, managers, musical friends and collaborators.", + "pageCount": 521, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Music" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xQ9SCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Trouble_Boys.html?hl=&id=xQ9SCwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316787536", + "dateFinished": "2023-08-27", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Our Band Could Be Your Life", + "authors": [ + "Michael Azerrad" + ], + "publishedDate": "2002-07-02", + "description": "\"This book will be fresh even for those whose lives these bands were...All thirteen profiles are page-turners.\" --Robert Christgau, Village Voice This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties--when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rock's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. Among the bands profiled: Mission of Burma, Butthole Surfers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, The Replacements, Beat Happening, and Dinosaur Jr.", + "pageCount": 532, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Music" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=suH3q3OJ3qoC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life.html?hl=&id=suH3q3OJ3qoC" + }, + { + "isbn": "1952616603", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "labor" + ], + "title": "You Deserve a Tech Union", + "authors": [ + "Ethan Marcotte" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-08-15", + "description": "There's a resurgent labor movement in the tech industry. Tech workers-designers, engineers, writers, and many others-have learned that when they stand together, they're poised to build a better version of the tech industry. They haven't stopped there: at companies from Kickstarter to Google, workers have formed unions. And you should, too. But what are unions? And why do they matter? Ethan Marcotte answers these questions through extensive research and by interviewing tech workers with real-world union-building experience. Ethan shares these workers' insights and stories, weaving them together to outline the process for forming a union of your very own. Because you-yes, you-deserve a tech union. THIS BOOK EXPLORES: What it means to be a \"tech worker,\" and what it means to do tech work A brief history of worker-led activism, inside and outside the tech industry What unions are, why they matter, and how they function An overview of how to form a union in the United States How to use unions to build a more sustainable future for tech work and tech workers", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CQoX0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/You_Deserve_a_Tech_Union.html?hl=&id=CQoX0AEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781804291245", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-13", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Internet Con", + "authors": [ + "Cory Doctorow" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", + "description": "A detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle Big Tech We have recently seen the enshittification of the internet. The tech platforms have created monopolies whose high walls make it expensive to move freely online. They built self-serving, artificial barriers to maintaining connections across platforms. The cost of leaving X or Facebook grew higher, holding hostage the people you love, the communities that matter to you, and the audiences and customers you rely on. None of this is caused by technological limitations: it was a business decision, intended to commodify every part of your personal life. We can choose otherwise: we can dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation. We must force upon Silicon Valley the thing it fears most: interoperability. That means tearing down the walls between platforms, allowing users to mix, match, plug in, and repair without restrictions. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and total annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to fix tech for good, and take back our Internet.", + "pageCount": 193, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pbetEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Internet_Con.html?hl=&id=pbetEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780393322231", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders", + "authors": [ + "Vincent Bugliosi", + "Curt Gentry" + ], + "publishedDate": "2001-12-04", + "description": "The inside story behind the Manson killings explains how Charles Manson was able to make his \"family\" murder for him, chronicles the investigation, and describes in detail the court trial that brought him and his accomplices to justice. Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Reprint.", + "pageCount": 698, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Fiyw_LeL51MC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Helter_Skelter_The_True_Story_of_the_Man.html?hl=&id=Fiyw_LeL51MC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781952616624", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-15", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "labor" + ], + "title": "Surviving Change at Work", + "authors": [ + "Vanessa Gennarelli" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", + "description": "Good design systems can help you create digital products with efficiency and consistency. But great design systems will support and strengthen your team's creativity at the same time. In Expressive Design Systems, Yesenia Perez-Cruz shows you how to build useful, dependable systems that not only maintain harmony across your products, but also flex to accommodate inspiration and experimentation. Learn to communicate your brand, collaborate across teams-and do so much more than standardize components.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dqMn0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Surviving_Change_at_Work.html?hl=&id=dqMn0AEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781620975411", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-19", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "economics", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Monopolized", + "authors": [ + "David Dayen" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020", + "description": "\"David Dayen explains how a narrow interpretation of the Sherman Act four decades ago spawned an age of unprecedented deregulation and corporate dominance. Dayen offers a riveting account of what it means to live in this period--and how we might resist this corporate hegemony.\"--Dust jacket flap.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KN5OxwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Monopolized.html?hl=&id=KN5OxwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593443811", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-24", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Number Go Up", + "authors": [ + "Zeke Faux" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", + "description": "The “endlessly entertaining” (Matt Levine) and “ludicrously compelling” (Evan Osnos) account of the crypto delusion, and how Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers turned useless virtual coins into trillions of dollars “One of the greatest business stories of all time.”—A.J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring. When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” (Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine), Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.", + "pageCount": 313, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=7pu1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Number_Go_Up.html?hl=&id=7pu1EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780062295897", + "dateFinished": "2023-09-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Girl in a Band", + "authors": [ + "Kim Gordon" + ], + "publishedDate": "2015-02-24", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids. Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gK6SrgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Girl_in_a_Band.html?hl=&id=gK6SrgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316487740", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-04", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Blood in the Machine", + "authors": [ + "Brian Merchant" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", + "description": "The true story of what happened the first time machines came for human jobs, when an underground network of 19th century rebels, the Luddites, took up arms against the industrialists that were automating their work--and how it explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech today. The most pressing story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or even Shenzhen. It begins two hundred years ago in rural England, when working men and women rose up en masse rather than starve at the hands of the factory owners who were using machines to erase and degrade their livelihoods. They organized guerilla raids, smashed those machines, and embarked on full-scale assaults against the wealthy machine owners. They won the support of Lord Byron, inspired Mary Shelley, and enraged the Prince Regent and his bloodthirsty government. Before it was over, much blood would be spilled--of rich and poor, of the invisible and of the powerful. This all-but-forgotten and deeply misunderstood class struggle nearly brought 19th century England to its knees. We live now in the second machine age, when similar fears that big tech is dominating our lives and machines replacing human labor run high. We worry that technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are ousting workers from factories, and artificial intelligence will soon remove drivers from cars. How will this all reshape our economy and the way we live? And what can we do about it? The answers lie in the story of our first machine age, when mechanization first came to British factories at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Intertwined with a lucid examination of our current age, the story of the Luddites, the working-class insurgency that took up arms against automation (at a time when it was punishable by death to break a machine), Blood in the Machine reaches through time and space to tell a story about how technology changed our world--and how it's already changing our future.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QvPDzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blood_in_the_Machine.html?hl=&id=QvPDzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982146863", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-08", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Extremely Online", + "authors": [ + "Taylor Lorenz" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-10-03", + "description": "For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on Internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism. By tracing how the Internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms' power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It's the real social history of the Internet. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the Internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century. Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the Internet, and what it has done to us…", + "pageCount": 384, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aHDVEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Extremely_Online.html?hl=&id=aHDVEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781847926258", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-13", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "When Mckinsey Comes to Town", + "authors": [ + "Walt Bogdanich", + "Michael Forsythe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-10-06", + "description": "McKinsey & Co. earns billions of dollars in fees from major corporations and governments who turn to them to maximize their profits and enhance efficiency. Their vaunted statement of values asserts their role is to make the world a better place, and their reputation for excellence and discretion attracts top talent from universities around the world. McKinsey's network is immense- almost 80% of the Fortune 500 and every government, as well as countless militaries, institutions and charities, including the NHS, have paid for and implemented their top secret and world-shaping advice. So what is that advice? And what effect has it actually had? In WHEN MCKINSEY COMES TO TOWN, two prize-winning investigative journalists reveal the truth behind the public image. Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short term profits, thereby boosting the stock price and the wealth of the executives who hire them, at the expense of workers, and safety measures. They frequently recommend steering contracts from governments to their own clients, and just as frequently advise companies in the same industries. Shielded by NDAs, McKinsey has escaped public scrutiny despite their role in advising tobacco companies, purveyors of opioids, repressive governments and oil companies. McKinsey helped insurance companies boost their profits by essentially making it impossible for accident victims to get payments; worked their U.S. government contacts to let Wall Street firms evade scrutiny; enabled massive theft in developing countries such as South Africa; reshaped the NHS. Their work has helped destabilize the global economy and divided society, and has been at the heart of some of the worst corporate scandals in history- from Enron to the Opioid Crisis. Bognadich and Forsythe have managed to penetrate the veil of secrecy McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting- Follow the money. WHEN MCKINSEY COMES TO TOWN is a landmark work of investigative reporting that amounts to a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous. A gripping narrative of secrecy, greed and corruption, this is the story of where and how business went wrong in the modern era.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Industrial management" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YIQAzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/When_Mckinsey_Comes_to_Town.html?hl=&id=YIQAzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781631497513", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-17", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "television", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Mcu", + "authors": [ + "Joanna Robinson", + "Dave Gonzales", + "Gavin Edwards" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", + "description": "The unauthorized, behind-the-scenes story of the stunning rise--and suddenly uncertain reign--of the most transformative cultural phenomenon of our time: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Comics & Graphic Novels" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xs2czwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Mcu.html?hl=&id=xs2czwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593492673", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "The Big Con", + "authors": [ + "Mariana Mazzucato", + "Rosie Collington" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-03-07", + "description": "A vital and timely investigation into the opaque and powerful consulting industry—and what to do about it There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today that must change. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies’ reliance on companies such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability, and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. The “Big Con” describes the confidence trick the consulting industry performs in contracts with hollowed-out and risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. It grew from the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of reforms by the neoliberal right and Third Way progressives, and it thrives on the ills of modern capitalism, from financialization and privatization to the climate crisis. It is possible because of the unique power that big consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks—as advisors, legitimators, and outsourcers—and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. In the end, the Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments, and warps our economies. In The Big Con, Mazzucato and Collington throw back the curtain on the consulting industry. They dive deep into important case studies of consultants taking the reins with disastrous results, such as the debacle of the roll out of HealthCare.gov and the tragic failures of governments to respond adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is an important and exhilarating intellectual journey into the modern economy’s beating heart. With peerless scholarship, and a wealth of original research, Mazzucato and Collington argue brilliantly for building a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.", + "pageCount": 353, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PAmBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Con.html?hl=&id=PAmBEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780679745587", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-22", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "In Cold Blood", + "authors": [ + "Truman Capote" + ], + "publishedDate": "1994-02-01", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time \"chills the blood and exercises the intelligence\" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. In one of the first non-fiction novels ever written, Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, generating both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.", + "pageCount": 370, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mYC3yRvvXxMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/In_Cold_Blood.html?hl=&id=mYC3yRvvXxMC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781324005896", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "science" + ], + "title": "Crossings", + "authors": [ + "Ben Goldfarb" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", + "description": "An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Nature" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xuKczwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Crossings.html?hl=&id=xuKczwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316555678", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-02", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Elysium Fire", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-01-23", + "description": "Elysium Fire is a smoldering tale of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power, of bottomless corruption and overpowering idealism from the king of modern space opera. Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives. Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these \"melters\" leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths... As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies. For more from Alastair Reynolds, check out: Revenger", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PnLhswEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Elysium_Fire.html?hl=&id=PnLhswEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063099951", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-08", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Deepest Map", + "authors": [ + "Laura Trethewey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", + "description": "The dramatic and action-packed story of the last mysterious place on earth--the world's seafloor--and the deep-sea divers, ocean mappers, marine biologists, entrepreneurs, and adventurers involved in the historic push to chart it, as well as the opportunities, challenges, and perils this exploration holds now and for the future. Five oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern--cover approximately 70 percent of the earth. Yet we know little about what lies beneath them. By the early 2020s, less than twenty-five percent of the ocean's floor has been charted, most close to shorelines, and over three quarters of the ocean lies in in what is called the Deep Sea, depths below a thousand meters. Now, the race is on to completely map the ocean's floor by 2030--an epic project involving scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers who are cooperating and competing to get an accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and environment. In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey documents this race to the bottom, following global efforts around the world, from crowdsourcing to advances in technology, recent scientific discoveries to tales of dangerous dives in untested and costly submersibles. The lure of ocean exploration has attracted many, including the likes of James Cameron, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, and Eric Schmidt. The Deepest Map follows a cast of intriguing characters, from early mappers such as Marie Tharp, a woman working in the male-dominated fields of oceanography and geology whose discoveries have added significantly to our knowledge; Victor Vescovo, a man obsessed with reaching the deepest depths of each of the five oceans, and his young, brilliant, and fearless mapper Cassie Bongiovanni; and the diverse entrepreneurs looking to explore and exploit this uncharted territory and its resources. In The Deepest Map, ocean discovery converges with humanity's origin story; in mapping the ocean floor, scientists are actively tracing our roots back to the most inhospitable places on earth where life began--and flourished. But for every conservationist looking to protect the seafloor, there are others who see its commercial potential. Will a new map exacerbate pollution and the degradation of this natural resource? How will the race remake political power structures in years to come? Trethewey probes these questions as countries and conglomerates wrestle over the riches that may lie at the bottom of the sea. The future of humanity depends on our ability to protect this vast, precious, and often ignored resource. A true tale of science, nature, technology, and an extreme outdoor adventure The Deepest Map illuminates why we love--and fear--the earth's final frontier and is a crucial addition to the increasingly urgent conversation about climate change.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=E3p3zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Deepest_Map.html?hl=&id=E3p3zwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982186104", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Waco", + "authors": [ + "Jeff Guinn" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-01-24", + "description": "The definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown. For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new, and stunning. Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, shedding new light on a story that we thought we knew.", + "pageCount": 400, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YFGkEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Waco.html?hl=&id=YFGkEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781954118317", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-25", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "A Heart That Works", + "authors": [ + "Rob Delaney" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-11-29", + "description": "People magazine Fall Must Read pick*2022 Buzzfeed Fall Reading pick A visceral and deeply personal memoir by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe, about the loss of his young son. In 2016, Rob Delaney's one-year-old son, Henry, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The family had moved from Los Angeles to London with their two young boys when Rob's wife was pregnant with Henry, their third. The move was an adventure that would bind them even more tightly together as they navigated the novelty of London, the culture clashes, and the funhouse experience of Rob's fame--thanks to his role as co-creator and co-star of the hit series Catastrophe. Henry's illness was a cataclysm that changed everything about their lives. Amid the hospital routine, surgeries, and brutal treatments, they found a newfound community of nurses, aides, caregivers, and fellow parents contending with the unthinkable. Two years later, Henry died, and his family watched their world fall away to reveal the things that matter most. A Heart That Works is Delaney's intimate, unflinching, and fiercely funny exploration of what happened - from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that followed, through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. In the madness of his grief, Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind. Delaney's memoir--profound, painful, full of emotion, and bracingly honest--offers solace to those who have faced devastation and shows us how grace may appear even in the darkest times.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=S6E4zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Heart_That_Works.html?hl=&id=S6E4zwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781984881731", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction", + "science" + ], + "title": "A City on Mars", + "authors": [ + "Kelly Weinersmith", + "Zach Weinersmith" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", + "description": "* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Scientific American’s #1 Book for 2023 * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Times Best Science and Environment Book of 2023 * “Exceptional. . . Forceful, engaging and funny . . . This book will make you happy to live on this planet — a good thing, because you’re not leaving anytime soon.” —New York Times Book Review From the bestselling authors of Soonish, a brilliant and hilarious off-world investigation into space settlement Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered: Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism? With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary. Get in, we’re going to Mars.", + "pageCount": 449, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ImmvEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ImmvEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593793190", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Broken Code", + "authors": [ + "Jeff Horwitz" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", + "description": "By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out \"A page-turning narrative of immense importance.” —James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice. But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they—and the world—had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms. Facebook employees set to work in pursuit of answers. They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break the platform’s supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood. Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook's viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform—often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement—were higher than Facebook's leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook’s damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer. Broken Code tells the story of these employees and their explosive discoveries. Expanding on “The Facebook Files,” his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook’s failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can’t be resolved by strapping on a headset.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JuytEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Broken_Code.html?hl=&id=JuytEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250850096", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "tech" + ], + "title": "The Bill Gates Problem", + "authors": [ + "Tim Schwab" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", + "description": "A powerful investigation of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, showing how he uses philanthropy to exercise enormous political power without accountability Through his vaunted philanthropy, Bill Gates transformed himself from a tech villain into one of the most admired people on the planet. Even as divorce proceedings and allegations of misconduct have recently tarnished his public image, the beneficence of the Gates Foundation, celebrated for spending billions to save lives around the globe, is taken as a given. But as Tim Schwab shows in this fearless investigation, Gates is still exactly who he was at Microsoft: a bully and monopolist, convinced of his own righteousness and intent on imposing his ideas, his solutions, and his leadership on everyone else. At the core, he is not a selfless philanthropist but a power broker, a clever engineer who has innovated a way to turn extreme wealth into immense political influence—and who has made us believe we should applaud his acquisition of power, not challenge it. Piercing the blinding halo that has for too long shielded the world’s most powerful (and most secretive) charitable organization from public scrutiny, The Bill Gates Problem shows how Gates’s billions have purchased a stunning level of control over public policy, private markets, scientific research, and the news media. Whether he is pushing new educational standards in America, health reforms in India, global vaccine policy during the pandemic, or Western industrialized agriculture throughout Africa, Gates’s heady social experimentation has shown itself to be not only undemocratic, but also ineffective. In many places, Bill Gates is hurting the very people he intends to help. No less than dark-money campaign contributions or big-business political lobbying, Bill Gates’s philanthropic empire needs to be seen as a problem of money in politics. It is a dangerous model of unconstrained power that threatens democracy and demands our attention.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=veq_EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bill_Gates_Problem.html?hl=&id=veq_EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780553380958", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-11", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Snow Crash", + "authors": [ + "Neal Stephenson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2000-05-02", + "description": "The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.", + "pageCount": 484, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mqpvVydYo-8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Snow_Crash.html?hl=&id=mqpvVydYo-8C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780735225268", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "A Fever in the Heartland", + "authors": [ + "Timothy Egan" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-04-04", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year • A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year • A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist \"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time.\" —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile “Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them. The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees. A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.", + "pageCount": 441, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FHF5EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Fever_in_the_Heartland.html?hl=&id=FHF5EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374722005", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-17", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "American Gun", + "authors": [ + "Cameron McWhirter", + "Zusha Elinson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-26", + "description": "“A magisterial work of narrative history and original reportage . . . You can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time . . . A virtually unprecedented achievement.” —Mike Spies, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) A Washington Post top 50 nonfiction book of 2023 | Short-listed for the Zócalo Book Prize One of The New York Times’ 33 nonfiction books to read this fall | One of Esquire’s best books of fall | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023 Named a most anticipated book of the fall by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 presents the epic history of America’s most controversial weapon. In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century. In American Gun, the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson track the AR-15 from inception to ubiquity. How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, McWhirter and Elinson follow Stoner—the American Kalashnikov—as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam. Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle’s popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers. And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior. Writing with fairness and compassion, McWhirter and Elinson explore America’s gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll. The result is a moral history of contemporary America’s love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white images.", + "pageCount": 287, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5cCiEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=5cCiEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374279295", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-29", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "King: A Life", + "authors": [ + "Jonathan Eig" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-05-16", + "description": "The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, a perplexing husband and father, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=vXSaEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/King_A_Life.html?hl=&id=vXSaEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781926743271", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "NoMeansNo", + "authors": [ + "Mark Black" + ], + "publishedDate": "2012", + "description": "Invisible Publishing's Bibliophonic Series returns, this time focusing on unsung Canadian punk rock heroes NoMeansNo.NoMeansNo: Going Nowhere, will look at a band whose career has spanned three decades, 14 albums and produced an alter ego that's become as much a part of the Canadian consciousness as SCTV. Through interviews with band members, bit players and fans, the book will explore how one punk band from Victoria, B.C. influenced musicians across the world and continue to be force in punk rock.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=4BtGLgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/NoMeansNo.html?hl=&id=4BtGLgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780691175119", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover", + "authors": [ + "Lerone A. Martin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-02-07", + "description": "This book examines one powerful but largely neglected ally of this rising white conservative coalition: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI he led for almost a half-century. Revered by the evangelical faithful, Hoover was a powerful ally of and partner to the mainstream evangelical movement, working alongside Billy Graham, the mass circulation magazine Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals, and other evangelical institutions and leaders to advance a Christian nationalist vision of America. In some ways it was an odd partnership. Hoover, for one thing, was not himself a \"born-again\" evangelical. And he maintained a domestic partnership with a male senior FBI agent that did not cohere with Christian conservative family values. Yet white Christian conservatives readily looked to Hoover and his FBI for their civic and political salvation. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover explains why white evangelicals from the pulpit to the pew honored Hoover as their anointed Christian champion. Part one of the book illustrates how Hoover made white Christian nationalism the bedrock of the modern national security state by shaping the FBI in his own image as soldiers advancing toward a white, Christian America. The second part explains how Hoover materially supported the white Christian nationalist project of fusing conservative Christianity with American civic life. Along the way, Martin considers broader questions about the relationship between religion and national security in American history, and what Hoover's bureau might reveal about the nature of white evangelicalism…", + "pageCount": 352, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_tCAEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Gospel_of_J_Edgar_Hoover.html?hl=&id=_tCAEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781770415201", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-05", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Anthem", + "authors": [ + "Martin Popoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020", + "description": "Covering Rush's first eight albums, this volume is the first in a three-part series celebrating Canada's iconic rock band. Based on extensive first-hand interviews with family, friends, musicians, and the boys in the band, Anthem offers the most comprehensive biography ever, combining cultural context and canon analysis.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Rock groups" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tRXhyQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Anthem.html?hl=&id=tRXhyQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781101986769", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Teachers", + "authors": [ + "Alexandra Robbins" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-03-14", + "description": "***A National Bestseller*** A riveting, must-read, year-in-the-life account of three teachers, combined with reporting that reveals what’s really going on behind school doors, by New York Times bestselling author and education expert Alexandra Robbins. Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school. Robbins also interviewed hundreds of other teachers nationwide who share their secrets, dramas, and joys. Interspersed among the teachers’ stories—a seeming scandal, a fourth-grade whodunit, and teacher confessions—are hard-hitting essays featuring cutting-edge reporting on the biggest issues facing teachers today, such as school violence; outrageous parent behavior; inadequate support, staffing, and resources coupled with unrealistic mounting demands; the “myth” of teacher burnout; the COVID-19 pandemic; and ways all of us can help the professionals who are central both to the lives of our children and the heart of our communities.", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Education" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-Wx2EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-Wx2EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250753892", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-13", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Crack-Up Capitalism", + "authors": [ + "Quinn Slobodian" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-04-04", + "description": "In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy. Look at a map of the world and you’ll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special economic zones. With the new spaces, ultracapitalists have started to believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether. Crack-Up Capitalism follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. Historian Quinn Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world’s oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy. A masterful work of economic and intellectual history, Crack-Up Capitalism offers both a new way of looking at the world and a new vision of coming threats. Full of rich details and provocative analysis, Crack-Up Capitalism offers an alarming view of a possible future.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eY6IEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Crack_Up_Capitalism.html?hl=&id=eY6IEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063230477", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-16", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning", + "authors": [ + "Peter Zeihan" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-06-14", + "description": "In this eye-opening, counterintuitive book, economics guru and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan predicts the coming breakdown of globalization and identifies who will benefit and who will lose. For two generations, the Americans have held up the world's collective ceiling. Globe-spanning supply chains made possible under the protection of the U.S. Navy. Internationalized energy and financial markets underpinned by the American dollar. A global constellation of trade linkages, supply chains and operational norms too sprawling and interconnected to be maintained by the regional powers of Europe or Asia. A global food supply system made possible by massive inputs, technology, investment, and safe transport --all American-subsidized. We know this all as the era of free trade. The era of globalization. But the architecture of our world was always artificial. Temporary. In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan does more than simply explain how we got to where we are or describe the end days of the world we know. He maps out the next world: a world deglobalized. Region by region. Country by country. Industry by industry. The future of transportation in a world made insecure. The future of finance in a world without sufficient capital. The future of energy in a world disconnected. The future of industrial materials in a world deindustrializing. The future of manufacturing in a world of shattered supply chains. The future of agriculture in a world bereft of what's necessary to feed eight billion people. A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.", + "pageCount": 336, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hhyYzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_the_Beginni.html?hl=&id=hhyYzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385548281", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Filterworld", + "authors": [ + "Kyle Chayka" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", + "description": "From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself. From coffee shops to rental apartments to social media posts the world round, a sleek and deceptively simple aesthetic has come to predominate. It's in the neon signs and exposed brick of an Internet cafe in Nairobi or the skeletal, modern furniture of an Airbnb in Portland. These designs are easy to identify, but even more crucially, they photograph well. In their simplicity and studied airiness, these images fit seamlessly into the Instagram grid. But this aesthetic is only one small aspect of a broader program of curation that is determined by the algorithm--a network of mathematically determined choices that ramify into the development of city grids and music playlists alike. To have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question. Over the last decade, Kyle Chayka has studied the homogeneity of this curation of reality. Working as a contributor for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic, he has traveled to Berlin, Reykjavik, and Los Angeles tracing the algorithm's lineage. In Filterworld, Chayka lucidly examines how this deeply filtered aesthetic--spanning digital and physical spaces--creates an uncanny blend of work, home, and social life. As the algorithm determines our choices, other important questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity--the very nature of being human? What does the notion of choice mean when the available options have been so carefully arranged for us? Filterworld offers a way out. Kyle Chayka shows us how to disconnect from the tyranny of the algorithms that continue to override our sensibilities, and inform even our most intimate, real-world interactions. Most importantly, he shows us how to reclaim our individual freedom.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Lz3ZzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Filterworld.html?hl=&id=Lz3ZzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780241443903", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-24", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "television", + "economics", + "tech" + ], + "title": "Pandora's Box", + "authors": [ + "Peter Biskind" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", + "description": "Cultural critic Peter Biskind turns his eye toward the new golden age of television, sparked by the fall of play-it-safe network TV and the rise of boundary-busting cable, followed by streaming, which overturned bothbased on exclusive, candid, and colorful interviews with executives, writers, showrunners, directors, and actors.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Television broadcasting" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6_pfzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Pandora_s_Box.html?hl=&id=6_pfzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9798887440149", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-31", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "NoMeansNo", + "authors": [ + "Jason Lamb" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-14", + "description": "They were unlike any other band in the punk scene they called home. P>NoMeansNo started in the basement of the family home of brothers Rob and John Wright in 1979. For the next three decades, they would add and then replace a guitar player, sign a record deal with Alternative Tentacles and tour the world. All along the way, they kept their integrity, saying \"NO\" to many mainstream opportunities. It was for this reason the band (intentionally) never became a household name, but earned the respect and love of thousands of fans around the world, including some who became big rock stars themselves. They were expertly skilled musicians playing a new kind of punk: intelligent, soulful, hilarious, and complex. They were also really nice Canadian dudes. NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the fully authorized oral and visual history of this highly influential and enigmatic band which has never been told before now. Author Jason Lamb obtained exclusive access to all four former members and interviewed hundreds of people in their orbit, from managers and roadies to fellow musicians, friends, and family members. The result is their complete story, from the band's inception in 1979 to their retirement in 2016, along with hundreds of photos, posters, and memorabilia, much of which has never been seen publicly before. For established fans, this book serves as a \"love letter\" to their favorite group and provides many details previously unknown. For those curious about the story and influence of NoMeansNo, it reveals an eye-opening tale of how a punk band could be world class musicians while truly \"doing it themselves.\" Their impact and importance cannot be overstated, and NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the essential archive.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Music" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MyGUzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/NoMeansNo.html?hl=&id=MyGUzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0593448561", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-31", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "Your Face Belongs to Us", + "authors": [ + "Kashmir Hill" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-19", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The story of a small AI company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it “The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill’s fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.”—John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wired Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true? In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel—who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world. Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level. Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Technology & Engineering" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=juka0AEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Your_Face_Belongs_to_Us.html?hl=&id=juka0AEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "009953293X", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "fiction" + ], + "title": "Red Dragon", + "authors": [ + "Thomas Harris" + ], + "publishedDate": "2009", + "description": "Special agent Will Graham has been assigned to cases before where he was able to see and feel with the madmen, anticipate their moves, and be vulnerable to their horrific brutality. Now after being forced out of retiring, he meets another evil mind.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Criminal investigation" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WXaLBEMd3-sC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Dragon.html?hl=&id=WXaLBEMd3-sC" + }, + { + "isbn": "1640095411", + "dateStarted": "2024-04-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Starkweather", + "authors": [ + "Harry N. MacLean" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-28", + "description": "The definitive story of Charles Starkweather, often considered to be the first mass killer in the modern age of America On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend (and possible accomplice), Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to the nearby town of Bennet, where a farmer was robbed and killed. When Starkweather’s car broke down, the teenagers who stopped to help were murdered and jammed into a storm cellar. By the time the dust settled, ten innocent people were dead and the city of Lincoln was in a state of terror. Schools closed. Men with rifles perched on the roofs of their houses. The National Guard patrolled the street. If there is a cultural version of PTSD, the town suffered from it. Starkweather and Fugate’s capture and arrest, and the resulting trials about the killing spree, received worldwide coverage. The event would serve as the inspiration for the movie Natural Born Killers and Springsteen’s iconic album Nebraska. Today, the story has dropped far from the national consciousness. With new material, new reporting, and new conclusions about the possible guilt or innocence of Fugate, the tale is ripe for an updated and definitive retelling. In Starkweather, bestselling author Harry N. MacLean tells the story of this shocking event and its lasting impact, a crime spree that struck deep into the heart of the heartland.", + "pageCount": 441, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VvOxEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Starkweather.html?hl=&id=VvOxEAAAQBAJ", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20" + }, + { + "isbn": "0316462845", + "dateStarted": "2024-03-02", + "status": "started", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Machine Vendetta", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", + "description": "From the king of modern space opera comes a new adventure in the Prefect Dreyfus series--Machine Vendetta is a thrilling tale of deadly conspiracies and old enemies that refuse to die. Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city-states orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Ingvar Tench was one of Panoply's most experienced operatives. So why did she walk alone and unarmed into a habitat with a vicious grudge against her organization? As his colleagues pick up the pieces following her death, Prefect Tom Dreyfus must face his conscience. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the inquiry by proxy. In using her, did Dreyfus also put her in the line of fire? And what does Tench's attack tell him about an enemy he had hoped was dormant? The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies Aurora Rising Elysium Fire Machine Vendetta", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=AGqYzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Machine_Vendetta.html?hl=&id=AGqYzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780369700018", + "dateFinished": "2023-10-30", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "science" + ], + "title": "The Possibility of Life", + "authors": [ + "Jaime Green" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-04-18", + "description": "*An NPR Science Friday Book Club Pick* *A \"Next Big Idea Book Club\" Must Read?* *A Gizmodo New Release Pick for April* *A BookRiot Science Book to Add to Your TBR* *A Wired Book to Read for Spring* *A TODAY Show Summer Book* *A Washington Post Book to Read This Summer* *One of the Chicago Tribune's 52 Books for Summer 2023* \"A dazzling feat of imagination and synthesis.\"—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of An Immense World A spellbinding exploration of alien life and the cosmos, examining how the possibility of life on other planets shapes our understanding of humanity One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. Incorporating expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Star Trek to Arrival, The Possibility of Life explores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?", + "pageCount": 286, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cHNwEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=cHNwEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525655497", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs", + "authors": [ + "Kerry Howley" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-03-21", + "description": "From the acclaimed author of Thrown, a wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America. A lone young woman stuffs a state secret under her skirt, trusts the wrong people to help, and joins a strange community of fellow travelers. A California teenager sets off on a religious journey, only to find himself trapped in a flooded basement under siege. A nation loses faith in its spies, and finds solace in a fraudulent whistleblower. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley builds a map of a parallel universe, drawing in Reality Winner, Lady Gaga, John Walker Lindh, Q, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do whatever it takes to get her daughter out of jail. Flooded with information and yet bereft of knowledge, Howley’s subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures, allowed to forget neither transient moments in their own lives nor the devastating secrets they’re expected to keep. In following these characters, Howley asks essential questions about modern life that most are unwilling to confront. Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections—a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked and followed. A soap opera set in the deep state, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a free fall into a world where everything is recorded and nothing sacred, an enthralling investigation into the nature of memory itself.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qPWNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Bottoms_Up_and_the_Devil_Laughs.html?hl=&id=qPWNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250266767", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-04", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "Recoding America", + "authors": [ + "Jennifer Pahlka" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-06-13", + "description": "Learn more about Jennifer Pahlka's work at recodingamerica.us. “The book I wish every policymaker would read.” —Ezra Klein, The New York Times A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America Just when we most need our government to work—to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats—it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get. But it’s not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Lofty goals morph unrecognizably as they cascade through a complex hierarchy. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today’s world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.", + "pageCount": 221, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aH5-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=aH5-EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781635573572", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-25", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "economics", + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Big Myth", + "authors": [ + "Naomi Oreskes", + "Erik M. Conway" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-02-21", + "description": "The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America’s most tenacious—and destructive—false ideas: the “magic of the marketplace.”", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dHB3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Myth.html?hl=&id=dHB3EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780345404473", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-06", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "title": "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", + "authors": [ + "Philip K. Dick" + ], + "publishedDate": "1996-05-28", + "description": "A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick “The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world.”—John Brunner “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.”—The New York Times “[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling—and terrifying—possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from.”—Rolling Stone", + "pageCount": 258, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3vExWrUnJB0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep.html?hl=&id=3vExWrUnJB0C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781538707593", + "dateFinished": "2023-12-18", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Breaking Twitter", + "authors": [ + "Ben Mezrich" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-11-07", + "description": "A rollicking, character-driven narrative by New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich, pulling back the curtain on the biggest business story of our time. BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time--Elon Musk--and the company that represents our culture's dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? What, really, is Elon's end goal? The whole world is watching. BREAKING TWITTER will provide ringside seats.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lq2qzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Breaking_Twitter.html?hl=&id=lq2qzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780345539786", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Red Rising", + "authors": [ + "Pierce Brown" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-01-28", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “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 toils willingly, trusting 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 reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds 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. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jBaNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Rising.html?hl=&id=jBaNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780735211759", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Broad Band", + "authors": [ + "Claire L. Evans" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-03-06", + "description": "If you loved Hidden Figures or The Rise of the Rocket Girls, you'll love Claire Evans' breakthrough book on the women who brought you the internet--written out of history, until now. \"This is a radically important, timely work,\" says Miranda July, filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man. The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers--but from Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program in the Victorian Age, to the cyberpunk Web designers of the 1990s, female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation. In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize, but they have always been part of the story. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth \"Jake\" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. This inspiring call to action shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore. Welcome to the Broad Band. You're next.", + "pageCount": 290, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DddLDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Broad_Band.html?hl=&id=DddLDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780306827341", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "The Algorithm", + "authors": [ + "Hilke Schellmann" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-01-02", + "description": "Based on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents, and real world test results, Emmy‑award winning Wall Street Journal contributor Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating expose on the next civil rights issue of our time: how AI has already taken over the workplace and shapes our future. Hilke Schellmann, is an Emmy‑award winning investigative reporter, Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor and Journalism Professor at NYU. In The Algorithm, she investigates the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work. AI is now being used to decide who has access to an education, who gets hired, who gets fired, and who receives a promotion. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real‑world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high‑stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good. Algorithms are on the brink of dominating our lives and threaten our human future--if we don't fight back. Schellmann takes readers on a journalistic detective story testing algorithms that have secretly analyzed job candidates' facial expressions and tone of voice. She investigates algorithms that scan our online activity including Twitter and LinkedIn to construct personality profiles à la Cambridge Analytica. Her reporting reveals how employers track the location of their employees, the keystrokes they make, access everything on their screens and, during meetings, analyze group discussions to diagnose problems in a team. Even universities are now using predictive analytics for admission offers and financial aid.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KBDwzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Algorithm.html?hl=&id=KBDwzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780099446781", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-05", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "fiction" + ], + "title": "The Silence of the Lambs", + "authors": [ + "Thomas Harris" + ], + "publishedDate": "2002", + "description": "There'S A Killer On The Loose Who Knows That Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, And A Trainee Investigator Who'S Trying To Save Her Own Hide. The Only Man That Can Help Is Locked In An Asylum. But He'S Willing To Put A Brave Face On - If It Will Help Him Escape.", + "pageCount": 436, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Government investigators" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2x5ceEACyeQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Silence_of_the_Lambs.html?hl=&id=2x5ceEACyeQC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780393866513", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-08", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "How to Make a Killing", + "authors": [ + "Tom Mueller" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-08", + "description": "How did a lifesaving medical breakthrough become a for-profit enterprise that threatens many of the people it's meant to save? Six decades ago, visionary doctors achieved the impossible: the humble kidney, acknowledged since ancient times to be as essential to life as the heart, became the first human organ to be successfully replaced with a machine. Yet huge dialysis corporations, ambitious doctor-entrepreneurs and Beltway lobbyists soon turned this medical miracle into an early experiment in for-profit medicine--and one of the nation's worst healthcare catastrophes. With powerful insight and on-the-ground reporting, New York Times best-selling author Tom Mueller introduces an unforgettable cast of characters. Heroic patients, including a Hollywood stuntman and body double, risk their lives to blow the whistle on how they've been mistreated. An unpaid activist living in a south Georgia trailer park fights to save patients from involuntary discharge from their lifesaving care. Industry insiders put their careers on the line to speak out about the endemic wrongs and pervasive inequality they've witnessed--and about dialysis executives who dress as musketeers and Star Wars characters to exhort their employees to more aggressive profit-seeking. Mueller evokes the scientific ingenuity and optimism of the 1950s and 1960s, when the burgeoning field of organ transplant and early dialysis machines offered long-awaited hope for lifesaving care. That is, until a New York salesman had himself dialyzed on the floor of the House, and Congress made renal disease the only \"Medicare for All\" condition--opening the financial floodgates for Big Dialysis. Of the thousands caught in a web of corporate greed, a disproportionate number are Black and Latino, highlighting the stark racial divides already endemic to American medicine. How to Make a Killing reveals dialysis as a microcosm of American medicine and poses a vital challenge: find a way to fix dialysis, and we'll have a fighting chance of fixing our country's dysfunctional healthcare system as a whole, restoring patients, not profits, as its true purpose.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dfxvzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_Make_a_Killing.html?hl=&id=dfxvzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385546492", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Flying Blind", + "authors": [ + "Peter Robison" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-11-30", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS BEST SELLER • A suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX. An \"authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of one of the great American companies\" (New York Times Book Review), from the award-winning reporter for Bloomberg. Boeing is a century-old titan of industry. It played a major role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. The planemaker remains a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, as well as a linchpin in the awesome routine of modern air travel. But in 2018 and 2019, two crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 killed 346 people. The crashes exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company’s history—and one of the costliest corporate scandals ever. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing? Flying Blind is the definitive exposé of the disasters that transfixed the world. Drawing from exclusive interviews with current and former employees of Boeing and the FAA; industry executives and analysts; and family members of the victims, it reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for catastrophe. It shows how in the race to beat the competition and reward top executives, Boeing skimped on testing, pressured employees to meet unrealistic deadlines, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping them or their pilots for flight. It examines how the company, once a treasured American innovator, became obsessed with the bottom line, putting shareholders over customers, employees, and communities. By Bloomberg investigative journalist Peter Robison, who covered Boeing as a beat reporter during the company’s fateful merger with McDonnell Douglas in the late ‘90s, this is the story of a business gone wildly off course. At once riveting and disturbing, it shows how an iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, threatening an industry and endangering countless lives.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=wEGNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Flying_Blind.html?hl=&id=wEGNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593655184", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-11", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Our Enemies Will Vanish", + "authors": [ + "Yaroslav Trofimov" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-01-09", + "description": "“Our Enemies Will Vanish achieves the highest level of war reporting: a tough, detailed account that nevertheless reads like a great novel. One is reminded of Michael Herr's Dispatches . . . Frankly, it's what we have all aspired to. I did not really understand Ukraine until I read Trofimov's account.” —Sebastian Junger A revelatory eyewitness account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heroism of the Ukrainian people in their resistance by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Ukrainian chief foreign-affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. But in the face of this existential threat, the Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to seesaw to this day. This is the story of the epic bravery of the Ukrainian people—people Trofimov knows very well. For Trofimov, this war is deeply personal. He grew up in Kyiv and his family has lived there for generations. With deep empathy and local understanding, Trofimov tells the story of how everyday Ukrainian citizens—doctors, computer programmers, businesspeople, and schoolteachers—risked their lives and lost loved ones. He blends their brave and tragic stories with expert military analysis, providing unique insight into the thinking of Ukrainian leadership and mapping out the decisive stages of what has become a perilous war for Ukraine, the Putin regime, and indeed, the world. This brutal, catastrophic struggle is unfolding on another continent, but the United States and its NATO allies have become deeply implicated. As the war drags on, it threatens to engulf the world. We cannot look away. At once heart-breaking and inspiring, Our Enemies Will Vanish is a riveting, vivid, and first-hand account of the Ukrainian refusal to surrender. It is the story of ordinary people fighting not just for their homes and their families but for justice and democracy itself.", + "pageCount": 409, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-RLREAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_Enemies_Will_Vanish.html?hl=&id=-RLREAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385519250", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-14", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Siege of Mecca", + "authors": [ + "Yaroslav Trofimov" + ], + "publishedDate": "2007", + "description": "On November 20, 1979, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islams holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Trofimov interviews for the first time scores of direct participants in the siege, including former terrorists, and draws on hundreds of once-classified documents.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Mecca (Saudi Arabia)" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=R84lmAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Siege_of_Mecca.html?hl=&id=R84lmAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781847927279", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-16", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Technofeudalism", + "authors": [ + "Yanis Varoufakis" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-28", + "description": "Capitalism is dead. The #1 bestselling economist shows how the owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords. 'What an amazing piece of work this is. Everyone should read it. 100 out of 100' IRVINE WELSH In his boldest and most far-reaching book yet, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it. 'An important new book' Carole Cadwalladr, Observer 'With superb storytelling, Varoufakis shows how capitalism has eaten itself alive' Brett Scott, author of Cloudmoney 'Provocative and accessible, this is sure to be a key touchstone in debates about the future of the global economy' Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Big data" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tbqazwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Technofeudalism.html?hl=&id=tbqazwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593593950", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-17", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "The Coming Wave", + "authors": [ + "Mustafa Suleyman" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-05", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind “A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari “Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman “An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times.”—Bill Gates A Best Book of the Year: Economist, Financial Times, CEO Magazine • Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.", + "pageCount": 353, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Technology & Engineering" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=a-26EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Coming_Wave.html?hl=&id=a-26EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780375706677", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-17", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "fiction" + ], + "title": "No Country for Old Men", + "authors": [ + "Cormac McCarthy" + ], + "publishedDate": "2006", + "description": "Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than two million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.", + "pageCount": 309, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TGQDed2zvh8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/No_Country_for_Old_Men.html?hl=&id=TGQDed2zvh8C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780333717523", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-19", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Into Thin Air", + "authors": [ + "Jon Krakauer" + ], + "publishedDate": "1997", + "description": "Journalist Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that \"suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down.\" He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for this epic account of the May 1996 disaster. Unabridged. 7 CDs.", + "pageCount": 293, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Mountaineering" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gt7EQgH8-b4C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Into_Thin_Air.html?hl=&id=nEVCPgAACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593716601", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Extremely Hardcore", + "authors": [ + "Zoë Schiffer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-02-13", + "description": "\"Zoë Schiffer has written the definitive book on perhaps the weirdest business story of our time. A fast-paced and riveting account of a hilarious and tragic mess.\" — Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion “Money Stuff” columnist “the bird is freed” - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022 When Elon Musk took over Twitter, commentators were rooting for the visionary behind Tesla and SpaceX to succeed. Here was a tough leader who could grab back power from Twitter’s entitled workforce, motivate them to get “extremely hardcore,” and supercharge Twitter’s profit and potential. And it was all out of the goodness of his own heart, rooted in his fervent belief in the necessity of making Twitter friendlier to free speech. \"I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk said. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.” Once Musk charged into the Twitter headquarters, the command-and-control playbook Musk honed at Tesla and SpaceX went off the rails immediately. Distilling hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world’s online public square into his own personal megaphone. You’ll hear from employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace in real-time, seeing years of progress to fight disinformation and hate speech wiped out within a matter of months. There’s the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk’s inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss’s worst instincts. This is the story of Twitter, but it’s also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs. Riveting, character-driven, and filled with jaw-dropping revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It’s the next best thing to being there, and you won’t have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop.", + "pageCount": 353, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FsTlEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Extremely_Hardcore.html?hl=&id=FsTlEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781524760595", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-25", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Between Two Fires", + "authors": [ + "Joshua Yaffa" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020", + "description": "From a leading journalist in Moscow and correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule \"Unforgettable. . . . This is a book about Putin's Russia that is unlike any other.\" --Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country's most remarkable figures--from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians--who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. Between Two Fires chronicles the lives of a number of strivers who understand that their dreams are best--or only--realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles the director of the country's main television channel, an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions, and many others. The result is an intimate and probing portrait of a nation that is much discussed yet little understood. By showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and frequently repressive state--as often by choice as under threat of force--Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.", + "pageCount": 372, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=H-jEDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Between_Two_Fires.html?hl=&id=H-jEDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781523004775", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-26", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Wealth Supremacy", + "authors": [ + "Marjorie Kelly" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-09-12", + "description": "A powerful analysis of how the bias towards wealth that is woven into the very fabric of American capitalism is damaging people, the economy, and the planet, and what the foundations of a new economy could be. This bold manifesto exposes seven myths underlying wealth supremacy, the bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth by and for the wealthy, and is the hidden force behind economic injustice, the climate crisis, and so many other problems of our day: The Myth of Maximizing: No amount of wealth is ever enough. The Myth of Fiduciary Duty: Corporate managers' most sacred duty is to expand capital. The Myth of Corporate Governance: Corporate membership must be reserved for capital alone. The Myth of the Income Statement: Income to capital must always be increased, while income to labor must always be decreased. The Myth of Materiality: Profit--material gain--alone is real, while social and environmental damages are not. The Myth of Takings: The first duty of government must be the protection of private property. The Myth of the Free Market: There should be no limits on the field of action of corporations and capital. Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership: public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. And she sketches the outlines of a non-extractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f8OSzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Wealth_Supremacy.html?hl=&id=f8OSzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593594841", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Secret Gate", + "authors": [ + "Mitchell Zuckoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-04-25", + "description": "The incredible true story of a breathtaking rescue in the frenzied final hours of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan—and how a brave Afghan mother and a compassionate American officer engineered a daring escape—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in a contentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. As evacuation planes departed above, Homeira was caught in the turmoil at the Kabul Airport, trying and failing to secure escape for her and her eight-year-old son, Siawash, along with her parents and the rest of their family. Meanwhile, a young American diplomat named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered to join the skeleton team of remaining officials at Kabul Airport, frantically racing to help rescue the more than 100,000 stranded Americans and their Afghan helpers. When Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the airport two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates, he started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day. On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get them through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract “shooters.” He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. For her part, Homeira broke Sam’s rules and withstood his profanities. Together they braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, to enter the airport, Homeira and Siawash would have to leave behind their family and everything they had ever known. The Secret Gate tells the thrilling, emotional tale of a young man's courage and a mother and son’s skin-of-the-teeth escape from a homeland that is no longer their own.", + "pageCount": 337, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dSSFEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Secret_Gate.html?hl=&id=dSSFEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781736205907", + "dateFinished": "2024-02-29", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "economics" + ], + "title": "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism", + "authors": [ + "Cory Doctorow" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-12-29", + "description": "OneZero, Medium's official technology publication, is thrilled to announce a print-on-demand edition of How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow, with an exclusive new chapter. How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism was first published online in August, where it was an instant hit with readers, scholars, and critics alike. For years now, we've been hearing about the ills of surveillance capitalism - the business of extracting, collecting, and selling vast reams of user data that has exploded with the rise of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But what if everything we've been hearing is wrong? What if surveillance capitalism is not some rogue capitalism or a wrong turn taken by some misguided corporations? What if the system is working exactly as intended - and the only hope of restoring an open web is to take the fight directly to the system itself? In Doctorow's timely and crucial new nonfiction work, the internationally bestselling author of Walkaway, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Little Brother, argues that if we're to have any hope of destroying surveillance capitalism, we're going to have to destroy the monopolies that currently comprise the commercial web as we know it. Only by breaking apart the tech giants that totally control our online experiences can we hope to return to a more open and free web - one where predatory data-harvesting is not a founding principle. Doctorow shows how, despite popular misconception, Facebook and Google do not possess any \"mind-control rays\" capable of brainwashing users into, say, voting for a presidential candidate or joining an extremist group - they have simply used their monopoly power to profit mightily off of people interested in doing those things and made it easy for them to find each other.Doctorow takes us on a whirlwind tour of the last 30 years of digital rights battles and the history of American monopoly - and where the two intersect. Through a deeply compelling and highly readable narrative, he makes the case for breaking up Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple as a means of ending surveillance capitalism.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=W20NzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html?hl=&id=W20NzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780765312181", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Blindsight", + "authors": [ + "Peter Watts" + ], + "publishedDate": "2006-10-03", + "description": "Two months since the stars fell... Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown. Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge. You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...", + "pageCount": 384, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=th7gwAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blindsight.html?hl=&id=th7gwAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593491799", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-01", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Waiting to Be Arrested at Night", + "authors": [ + "Tahir Hamut Izgil" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-08-01", + "description": "Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • THE ECONOMIST • TIME A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China’s internment camps for Muslim minorities. Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government’s radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs’ radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world. Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir’s daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope. Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.", + "pageCount": 273, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UIuZEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Waiting_to_Be_Arrested_at_Night.html?hl=&id=UIuZEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781466876477", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-02", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Colonel", + "authors": [ + "Peter Watts" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-07-29", + "description": "Colonel Keaton is in trouble. His wife has retreated into a virtual heaven and his son remains missing after joining an extrasolar mission to track down an alien race. He is presently tasked by his superiors with the threat assessment of hived human intelligences, one of which successfully attacks a compound under his watch. Now, one of the strongest hive minds in the world approaches Keaton with an offer that could completely change his world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", + "pageCount": 32, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=PWvfAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=PWvfAwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593443224", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Means of Control", + "authors": [ + "Byron Tau" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-02-27", + "description": "You are being surveilled right now. This sweeping exposé reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home. “A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age.”—Kirkus Reviews “That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance program—one designed to track everyone.” For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring. Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for sale—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government. In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scope—one that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directive—“get everything you can”—and the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it. Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargain—ubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price?", + "pageCount": 401, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3gzKEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Means_of_Control.html?hl=&id=3gzKEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593299456", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-07", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Under the Eye of Power", + "authors": [ + "Colin Dickey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", + "description": "From beloved cultural historian and acclaimed author of Ghostland comes a history of America's obsession with secret societies and the conspiracies of hidden power The United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch trials to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply this: secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. We’d like to assume these panics exist only at the fringes of society, or are unique features of the internet age. But history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy. Cultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In Under the Eye of Power, Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people—including some of the most powerful people in the country—continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the most: the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it.", + "pageCount": 369, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=H86UEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Under_the_Eye_of_Power.html?hl=&id=H86UEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525561019", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-15", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "3 Shades of Blue", + "authors": [ + "James Kaplan" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-03-05", + "description": "From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name—Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and, above all, Miles. Nineteen fifty-nine saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New Orleans and New York to Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and LA. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. It’s a book about the great forebears of this golden age, particularly Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the disrupters, like Ornette Coleman, who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period. But above all, 3 Shades of Blue is a book about three very different men—their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. Bill Evans had a gruesome downward spiral; John Coltrane took the mystic’s path into a space far away from mainstream concerns. Miles had three or four sea changes in him before the end. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, an American odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.", + "pageCount": 421, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=t5zDEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=t5zDEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525511809", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "history" + ], + "title": "When Crack Was King", + "authors": [ + "Donovan X. Ramsey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-07-11", + "description": "LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic “A master class in disrupting a stubborn narrative, a monumental feat for the fraught subject of addiction in Black communities.”—The Washington Post “A poignant and compelling re-examination of a tragic era in America history . . . insightful . . . and deeply moving.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy ONE OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND VULTURE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, She Reads, Electric Lit, The Mary Sue The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality. When Crack Was King follows four individuals to give us a startling portrait of crack’s destruction and devastating legacy: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and the son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a “crack house”; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the Zoo Crew, Newark’s most legendary group of drug traffickers. Weaving together riveting research with the voices of survivors, When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.", + "pageCount": 449, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2O6mEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/When_Crack_Was_King.html?hl=&id=2O6mEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781524732851", + "dateFinished": "2024-03-28", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "climate" + ], + "title": "Fire Weather", + "authors": [ + "John Vaillant" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-06-06", + "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Slate, and Smithsonian “Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core.\" —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland “Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Nature" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lJeTEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Fire_Weather.html?hl=&id=lJeTEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063037335", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-03", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "autobiography" + ], + "title": "Finding Me", + "authors": [ + "Viola Davis" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-04-26", + "description": "OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF 2022 • A PARADE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A MARIE CLAIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK “It’s clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all.”—USA Today “[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success….Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels.”—Los Angeles Times In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you. Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.", + "pageCount": 282, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=gl05EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=gl05EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781039000780", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-10", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Sideways", + "authors": [ + "Josh O'Kane" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-13", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs' pitch for the long-forsaken property—with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO—Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood—and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech’s digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GJKTEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sideways.html?hl=&id=GJKTEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781770415379", + "dateAdded": "2024-01-07", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Driven: Rush in the '90s and in the End", + "authors": [ + "Martin Popoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-04-27", + "description": "The conclusion to the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North. Includes two full-color photo inserts, with unearthed photos of the band. \"A must for Rush fans.\" -- Library Journal on Anthem, book one of the Rush Across the Decades trilogy In this conclusion to his trilogy of authoritative books on Canada's most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of \"life at the top\" for Rush's Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy, with Peart losing his daughter and his wife within the space of ten months and, two decades later, succumbing to cancer himself. In between, however, there is a gorgeous and heartbreaking album of reflection and bereavement, as well as a triumphant trip to Brazil, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and -- some say surprisingly -- the band's first full-blown concept album to close an immense career marked by integrity and idealism.", + "pageCount": 368, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=l6DYzQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Driven_Rush_in_the_90s_and_in_the_End.html?hl=&id=l6DYzQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781770415362", + "dateFinished": "2024-01-06", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Limelight: Rush in The '80s", + "authors": [ + "Martin Popoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", + "description": "Part two of the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North In the follow-up to Anthem: Rush in the '70s, Martin Popoff brings together canon analysis, cultural context, and extensive firsthand interviews to celebrate Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart at the peak of their persuasive power. Rush was one of the most celebrated hard rock acts of the '80s, and the second book of Popoff's staggeringly comprehensive three-part series takes readers from Permanent Waves to Presto, while bringing new insight to Moving Pictures, their crowning glory. Limelight: Rush in the '80s is a celebration of fame, of the pushback against that fame, of fortunes made -- and spent ... In the latter half of the decade, as Rush adopts keyboard technology and gets pert and poppy, there's an uproar amongst diehards, but the band finds a whole new crop of listeners. Limelight charts a dizzying period in the band's career, built of explosive excitement but also exhaustion, a state that would lead, as the '90s dawned, to the band questioning everything they previously believed, and each member eying the oncoming decade with trepidation and suspicion.", + "pageCount": 375, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MpFczQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Limelight_Rush_in_The_80s.html?hl=&id=MpFczQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374602291", + "dateAdded": "2023-11-18", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "We Were Once a Family", + "authors": [ + "Roxanna Asgarian" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-03-14", + "description": "The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children—and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew very little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children—with fateful consequences. In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian became the first reporter to put the children’s birth families at the center of the story. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Family & Relationships" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=N4t-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/We_Were_Once_a_Family.html?hl=&id=N4t-EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781645036951", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-16", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "sports" + ], + "title": "Black Ball", + "authors": [ + "Theresa Runstedtler" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023", + "description": "Against the backdrop of ongoing massive resistance to racial desegregation and increasingly strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into disorder. The press and the public blamed young Black players for the chaos in the NBA, citing drugs, violence, greed, and criminality. The supposed decline of pro basketball became a metaphor for the first decades of integration in America: the rules of the game had changed, allowing more Black people onto a formerly white playing field, and now they were ruining everything. But Black Ball argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the NBA as the star-laden powerhouse we know today, thanks largely to the efforts of Black players in challenging the white basketball establishment of owners, coaches, and spectators. Spotlighting legendary players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bernard King, and Connie Hawkins, scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball's \"Dark Ages,\" weaving together her deep knowledge of the game's key icons and institutions with incisive social and political analysis of the era. Black ballers created an aerial, improvisational, and creative style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods, laying the foundation for the explosive popularity and profitability of the league in subsequent decades. They also transformed labor in the pro-basketball world, filing lawsuits and organizing unions to demand better salaries and greater autonomy. Without their skills, style, and savvy, there would be no Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or LeBron James today…", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=te9EzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Ball.html?hl=&id=te9EzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593085172", + "dateFinished": "2023-11-16", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Providence", + "authors": [ + "Max Barry" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020", + "description": "Seven years after first contact, Providence Five launches. An enormous warship, built to protect humanity, it has a crew of four. Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson will be confined to the ship for years, monitoring the AI-powered ship and reporting the war's progress to a global audience by way of social media. When their communications are cut, their ship becomes decreasingly trustworthy. To survive, they must win a fight that is suddenly and terrifyingly real. -- adapted from jacket", + "pageCount": 322, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=yfLsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Providence.html?hl=&id=yfLsDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0393881067", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Survival of the Richest", + "authors": [ + "Douglas Rushkoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-06", + "description": "Named One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by Kirkus and Literary Hub The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion—QAnon, for example, or meme stocks—reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created—a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies—and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GGWNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Survival_of_the_Richest.html?hl=&id=GGWNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780008466770", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Trust the Plan", + "authors": [ + "Will Sommer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-03-08", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zZqEzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Trust_the_Plan.html?hl=&id=zZqEzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780306925481", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Corporate Rock Sucks", + "authors": [ + "Jim Ruland" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-04-12", + "description": "A no-holds-barred narrative history of the iconic label that brought the world Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and more, by the co-author of Do What You Want and My Damage Greg Ginn started SST Records in the sleepy beach town of Hermosa Beach, CA, to supply ham radio enthusiasts with tuners and transmitters. But when Ginn wanted to launch his band, Black Flag, no one was willing to take them on. Determined to bring his music to the masses, Ginn turned SST into a record label. On the back of Black Flag's relentless touring, guerilla marketing, and refusal to back down, SST became the sound of the underground. In Corporate Rock Sucks, music journalist Jim Ruland relays the unvarnished story of SST Records, from its remarkable rise in notoriety to its infamous downfall. With records by Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, and scores of obscure yet influential bands, SST was the most popular indie label by the mid-80s--until a tsunami of legal jeopardy, financial peril, and dysfunctional management brought the empire tumbling down. Throughout this investigative deep-dive, Ruland leads readers through SST's tumultuous history and epic catalog. Featuring never-before-seen interviews with the label's former employees, as well as musicians, managers, producers, photographers, video directors, and label heads, Corporate Rock Sucks presents a definitive narrative history of the '80s punk and alternative rock scenes, and shows how the music industry was changed forever.", + "pageCount": 304, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=YjuWzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Corporate_Rock_Sucks.html?hl=&id=YjuWzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781952616037", + "dateAdded": "2024-04-20", + "status": "want to read", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "development", + "climate" + ], + "title": "Sustainable Web Design", + "authors": [ + "Tom Greenwood" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "Make greener design choices for better experiences and a healthier planet.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Sites Web" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VdduzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sustainable_Web_Design.html?hl=&id=VdduzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593083888", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "health" + ], + "title": "The Myth of Normal", + "authors": [ + "Gabor Maté, MD" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-13", + "description": "The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.", + "pageCount": 577, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Psychology" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eZVUEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Myth_of_Normal.html?hl=&id=eZVUEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781950665655", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Ludicrous", + "authors": [ + "Edward Niedermeyer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-01-12", + "description": "Tesla is the most exciting car company in a generation . . . but can it live up to the hype? Tesla Motors and CEO Elon Musk have become household names, shaking up the staid auto industry by creating a set of innovative electric vehicles that have wowed the marketplace and defied conventional wisdom. The company's market valuation now rivals that of long-established automakers, and, to many industry observers, Tesla is defining the future of the industry. But behind the hype, Tesla has some serious deficiencies that raise questions about its sky-high valuation, and even its ultimate survival. Tesla's commitment to innovation has led it to reject the careful, zero-defects approach of other car manufacturers, even as it struggles to mass-produce cars reliably, and with minimal defects. While most car manufacturers struggle with the razor-thin margins of mid-priced sedans, Tesla's strategy requires that the Model 3 finally bring it to profitability, even as the high-priced Roadster and Model S both lost money. And Tesla's approach of continually focusing on the future, even as commitments and deadlines are repeatedly missed, may ultimately test the patience of all but its most devoted fans. In Ludicrous, journalist and auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer lays bare the disconnect between the popular perception of Tesla and the day-to-day realities of the company—and the cars it produces. Blending original reporting and never-before-published insider accounts with savvy industry analysis, Niedermeyer tells the story of Tesla as it's never been told before—with clear eyes, objectivity and insight.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=vO5KEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Ludicrous.html?hl=&id=vO5KEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781473223363", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Aurora Rising", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-11-02", + "description": "Previously published as THE PREFECT. A rollercoaster ride through the dark and turbulent universe of REVELATION SPACE: an interstellar thriller where nothing - and no one - is what they seem ... Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life. A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny. Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it. 'An adroit and fast-paced blend of space opera and police procedural, original and exciting' George R. R. Martin", + "pageCount": 528, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Space colonies" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZdbetAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Aurora_Rising.html?hl=&id=ZdbetAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374538668", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Blockchain Chicken Farm", + "authors": [ + "Xiaowei Wang" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", + "description": "From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.", + "pageCount": 256, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=myUyzQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Blockchain_Chicken_Farm.html?hl=&id=myUyzQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1568589395", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "labor" + ], + "title": "Work Won't Love You Back", + "authors": [ + "Sarah Jaffe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "A preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements examines this \"labor of love\" myth--the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. pay.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "BUSINESS & ECONOMICS" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UGt8zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Work_Won_t_Love_You_Back.html?hl=&id=UGt8zQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1591847087", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Hatching Twitter", + "authors": [ + "Nick Bilton" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-09-30", + "description": "The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communication. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world. But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on. In this rousing history that reads like a novel, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter’s early exponential growth, following the four hackers—Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine. Drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails, Bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley culture.", + "pageCount": 319, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GX8ODAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Hatching_Twitter.html?hl=&id=GX8ODAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0374601178", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "Fancy Bear Goes Phishing", + "authors": [ + "Scott J. Shapiro" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-05-23", + "description": "\"Unsettling, absolutely riveting, and—for better or worse—necessary reading.\" —Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to understand it. It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. With lucidity and wit, he establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society. And because hacking is a human-interest story, he tells the fascinating tales of perpetrators, including Robert Morris Jr., the graduate student who accidentally crashed the internet in the 1980s, and the Bulgarian “Dark Avenger,” who invented the first mutating computer-virus engine. We also meet a sixteen-year-old from South Boston who took control of Paris Hilton’s cell phone, the Russian intelligence officers who sought to take control of a US election, and others. In telling their stories, Shapiro exposes the hackers’ tool kits and gives fresh answers to vital questions: Why is the internet so vulnerable? What can we do in response? Combining the philosophical adventure of Gödel, Escher, Bach with dramatic true-crime narrative, the result is a lively and original account of the future of hacking, espionage, and war, and of how to live in an era of cybercrime. Includes black-and-white images", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=nbWYEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Fancy_Bear_Goes_Phishing.html?hl=&id=nbWYEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0374721246", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Subprime Attention Crisis", + "authors": [ + "Tim Hwang" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", + "description": "From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundation In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet—and its free services—will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.", + "pageCount": 176, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=iyPQDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=iyPQDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1839762039", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech" + ], + "title": "Internet for the People", + "authors": [ + "Ben Tarnoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-06-14", + "description": "In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this-it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone's behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.", + "pageCount": 245, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Lj1xEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Internet_for_the_People.html?hl=&id=Lj1xEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0520293282", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Black Against Empire", + "authors": [ + "Joshua Bloom", + "Waldo E. Martin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-10-25", + "description": "15 Rupture -- 16 The Limits of Heroism -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Figures", + "pageCount": 562, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D7UwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Against_Empire.html?hl=&id=D7UwDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781556527654", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Assassination of Fred Hampton", + "authors": [ + "Jeffrey Haas" + ], + "publishedDate": "2010", + "description": "Uncovering a cold-blooded execution at the hands of a conspiring police force, this title pursues the murderers of Black Panther Fred Hampton. Documenting the 14-year process of bringing the killers to justice, this chronicle also depicts the 18-month court trial.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Assassination" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hDYtmQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Assassination_of_Fred_Hampton.html?hl=&id=hDYtmQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593652886", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Creative Act", + "authors": [ + "Rick Rubin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-01-17", + "description": "The #1 New York Times bestseller. From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us. \"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott “I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.", + "pageCount": 433, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Self-Help" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=l3dtEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Creative_Act.html?hl=&id=l3dtEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1912248700", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Abolish Silicon Valley", + "authors": [ + "Wendy Liu" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-03-23", + "description": "Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. \"Lucid, probing and urgent. Wendy Liu manages to be both optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends.\" -- Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal \"An inspiring memoir manifesto...Technologists all over the world are realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a road map for that journey of realization.\" -- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Little Brother Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised \"innovation\" is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Technology & Engineering" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JhiREAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Abolish_Silicon_Valley.html?hl=&id=JhiREAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780674430006", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", + "authors": [ + "Thomas Piketty" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-04-15", + "description": "The main driver of inequality--returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth--is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values. Thomas Piketty's findings in this ambitious, original, rigorous work will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=89E_zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Capital_in_the_Twenty_First_Century.html?hl=&id=89E_zQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1455574139", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Good Nurse", + "authors": [ + "Charles Graeber" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-07-29", + "description": "\"CHILLING.\" -- Stephen King An intimate -- and frightening -- glimpse inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, Charles Cullen, whose 16-year long \"nursing\" career left as many as 400 dead. When nurse Charlie Cullen was arrested in 2003, journalists were quick to dub him \"The Angel of Death.\" But Cullen was neither a mercy killer nor a simple monster. He was a son, a husband, a father, a best friend, and a valued caregiver. He was also implicated in the deaths of as many as 400 people, and may be the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen's career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years, across nine hospitals. In this riveting work of investigative journalism, Charles Graeber-the only person Cullen chose to speak with following his arrest-reveals how Cullen got away with murder for so long. Based on hundreds of hours of previously unseen and unheard footage, recordings, and records, as well as extensive interviews with homicide detectives, Cullen's friends, family, coworkers, and confidential informants and whistleblowers, plus exclusive, one-on-one interviews with Cullen, himself, THE GOOD NURSE paints a dramatic portrait of madness and the bounds of friendship, and shines a spotlight on America's medical system. A harrowing and irresistibly paced book, you'll never look at a hospital the same way again.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6sUZnwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Good_Nurse.html?hl=&id=6sUZnwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780356512693", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "fantasy" + ], + "title": "The World We Make", + "authors": [ + "N. K. Jemisin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022", + "description": "From the record-breaking, four-time Hugo Award-winning N. K. Jemisin comes 'a glorious fantasy' (Neil Gaiman) - a story of culture, identity, magic and myths in contemporary New York City. The sequel to the critically acclaimed The City We Became, this is the final book of the Great Cities Duology. Every great city has a soul. A human avatar that embodies their city's heart and wields its magic. New York? She's got six. But all is not well in the city that never sleeps. Though Brooklyn, Manny, Bronca, Venezia, Padmini, and Neek have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading--and destroying the entire universe in the process--the mysterious capital \"E\" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and \"law and order\" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction. 'Hopeful and enthralling, The World We Make is more evidence of [Jemisin's] ferocious talent' Esquire 'Jemisin brings her living-city saga to a satisfying conclusion, maintaining a sense of energy and excitement throughout' Booklist 'Jemisin embodies the spirit of the city in as lush and lively a voice as ever and does a masterful job incorporating even more history and magic' Publishers Weekly 'The conclusion to Jemisin's Great Cities duology is a searing commentary on present-day politics as manipulated by a primordial evil...This riveting and powerful urban fantasy duology is masterfully written' BuzzFeed News The Great Cities Duology The City We Became The World We Make", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8o8IzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_World_We_Make.html?hl=&id=8o8IzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1786070472", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "The Panama Papers", + "authors": [ + "Bastian Obermayer", + "Frederik Obermaier" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016", + "description": "\"With precision and purpose, THE PANAMA PAPERS is what 'Follow the Money' means.\" --Bob Woodward,The Washington Post Late one evening, investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels, he then receives documents revealing how the president of Argentina has sequestered millions of dollars of state money for private use. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellowSüddeutsche journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in the secret world where complex networks of letterbox companies help the super-rich to hide their money. Faced with the contents of the largest data leak in history, they activate an international network of journalists to follow every possible line of inquiry. Operating in the strictest secrecy for over a year, they uncover cases involving European prime ministers and international dictators, emirs and kings, celebrities and aristocrats. The real-life thriller behind the story of the century,The Panama Papers is an intense, unputdownable account that proves, once and for all, that there exists a small elite living by a different set of rules and blows their secret world wide open.", + "pageCount": 366, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jNLhjwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Panama_Papers.html?hl=&id=jNLhjwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593492321", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "climate" + ], + "title": "The Climate Book", + "authors": [ + "Greta Thunberg" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-02-13", + "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope—but only if we listen to the science before it's too late. In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts—geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders—to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Throughout, illuminating and often shocking grayscale charts, graphs, diagrams, photographs, and illustrations underscore their research and their arguments. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.", + "pageCount": 465, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=4R3gEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Climate_Book.html?hl=&id=4R3gEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0316509841", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "fantasy" + ], + "title": "The City We Became", + "authors": [ + "N. K. Jemisin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-03-24", + "description": "Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city from an ancient evil in the first book of a stunning new novel by Hugo Award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all. For more from N. K. Jemisin, check out: The Inheritance TrilogyThe Hundred Thousand KingdomsThe Broken KingdomsThe Kingdom of Gods The Inheritance Trilogy (omnibus edition)Shades in Shadow: An Inheritance Triptych (e-only short fiction)The Awakened Kingdom (e-only novella) Dreamblood DuologyThe Killing MoonThe Shadowed Sun The Dreamblood Duology (omnibus) The Broken EarthThe Fifth SeasonThe Obelisk GateThe Stone Sky How Long 'til Black Future Month? (short story collection)", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qyPZwAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_City_We_Became.html?hl=&id=qyPZwAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316221047", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Operation Paperclip", + "authors": [ + "Annie Jacobsen" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-02-11", + "description": "The explosive story of America's secret post-WWII science programs, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51 In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War? Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century. In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.", + "pageCount": 592, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=iHVTlwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Operation_Paperclip.html?hl=&id=iHVTlwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780062996213", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Key Man", + "authors": [ + "Simon Clark", + "Will Louch" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "In this compelling story of greed, theft, and the dark underbelly of globalization and impact investing, two Wall Street Journal financial reporters investigate the shocking collapse of Abraaj-the largest private-equity failure in history-and the face behind its glimmering rise and catastrophic fall…", + "pageCount": 352, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZZMGzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Key_Man.html?hl=&id=ZZMGzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780399590436", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Mastermind", + "authors": [ + "Evan Ratliff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-07-21", + "description": "The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting—undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk.”—Los Angeles Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Evening Standard • Kirkus Reviews It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them. The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined. For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed. Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux’s empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age. Praise for The Mastermind “The Mastermind is true crime at its most stark and vivid depiction. Evan Ratliff’s work is well done from beginning to end, paralleling his investigative work with the work of the many federal agents developing the case against LeRoux.”—San Francisco Book Review (five stars) “A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)", + "pageCount": 498, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=T_PsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Mastermind.html?hl=&id=T_PsDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982156152", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Red Roulette", + "authors": [ + "Desmond Shum" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-09-07", + "description": "\"THE BOOK CHINA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ.\"--CNN A riveting insider's story of how the Party and big money work in China today, by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the zenith of power and wealth--and then fell out of favor. She was disappeared four years ago. News of this book led to a phone call from Whitney, proof that she's alive. As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China's Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy, he vaulted into China's billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she has not been able to tell it herself.", + "pageCount": 320, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=v788EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Roulette.html?hl=&id=v788EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385547772", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Stay True", + "authors": [ + "Hua Hsu" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-27", + "description": "From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=_EGNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Stay_True.html?hl=&id=_EGNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0593315618", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Tracers in the Dark", + "authors": [ + "Andy Greenberg" + ], + "publishedDate": "2024-01-16", + "description": "From the award-winning author of Sandworm comes the propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, exposing once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence. “I love the book… It reads like a thriller… These stories are amazing.” (Michael Lewis) Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing. Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet. Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world’s most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hL_BEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Tracers_in_the_Dark.html?hl=&id=hL_BEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063041363", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics" + ], + "title": "Raising Them Right", + "authors": [ + "Kyle Spencer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-07-12", + "description": "A riveting behind-the-scenes account of the new stars of the far right--and how they've partnered with billionaire donors, idealogues, and political insiders to build the most powerful youth movement the American right has ever seen In the wake of the Obama presidency, a group of young charismatic conservatives catapulted onto the American political and cultural scenes, eager to thwart nationwide pushes for greater equity and inclusion. They dreamed of a cultural revolution--online and off--that would offer a forceful alternative to the progressive politics that were dominating American college campuses. In Raising Them Right, a gripping, character-driven read and investigative tour de force, Kyle Spencer chronicles the people and organizations working to lure millions of unsuspecting young American voters into the far-right fold--revealing their highly successful efforts to harness social media in alarming ways and capitalize on the democratization of celebrity culture. These power-hungry new faces may look and sound like antiestablishment renegades, but they are actually part of a tightly organized and heavily funded ultraconservative initiative to transform American youth culture and popularize fringe ideas. There is Charlie Kirk, the swashbuckling Trump insider and founder of the right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA, who dreams of taking back the country's soul from weak-kneed liberals and becoming a national powerbroker in his own right. There is the acid-tongued Candace Owens, a Black ultraconservative talk-show host and Fox News regular who is seeking to bring Black America to the GOP and her own celebritydom into the national forefront. And there is the young, rough-and-tumble libertarian Cliff Maloney, who built the Koch-affiliated organization Young Americans for Liberty into a political force to be reckoned with, while solidifying his own power and pull inside conservative circles. Chock-full of original reporting and unprecedented access, Raising Them Right is a striking prism through which to view the extraordinary shifts that have taken place in the American political sphere over the last decade. It establishes Kyle Spencer as the premier authority on a new generation of young conservative communicators who are merging politics and pop culture, social media and social lives, to bring cruel economic philosophies, skeletal government, and dangerous antidemocratic ideals into the mainstream. Theirs is a crusade that is just beginning.", + "pageCount": 368, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zVuyzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Raising_Them_Right.html?hl=&id=zVuyzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780425212738", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Zodiac Unmasked", + "authors": [ + "Robert Graysmith" + ], + "publishedDate": "2007-01-02", + "description": "Robert Graysmith reveals the true identity of Zodiac—America's most elusive serial killer. Between December 1968 and October 1969 a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for thirty-seven murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog. After painstaking investigation and more than thirty years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac’s true identity. With overwhelming evidence he reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped. America’s greatest unsolved mystery has finally been solved. INCLUDES PHOTOS AND A COMPLETE REPRODUCTION OF ZODIAC’S LETTERS", + "pageCount": 564, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8Wm6fvRvEqIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zodiac_Unmasked.html?hl=&id=8Wm6fvRvEqIC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316365215", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "labor", + "health" + ], + "title": "Rest Is Resistance", + "authors": [ + "Tricia Hersey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-10-11", + "description": "Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace of work -- feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its virtuous benefit. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. From the founder and creator of The Nap Ministry, Rest Is Resistance is a battle cry, a guidebook, a map for a movement, and a field guide for the weary and hopeful. It is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey's lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action and manifesto for those who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.", + "pageCount": 272, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Body, Mind & Spirit" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UwfuzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Rest_Is_Resistance.html?hl=&id=UwfuzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781922458513", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Indelible City", + "authors": [ + "Louisa Lim" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-05-03", + "description": "An award-winning journalist takes to the protest-riven streets of Hong Kong to write this startling landmark account of the island city’s complex past and precarious future.", + "pageCount": 321, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2mVkEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Indelible_City.html?hl=&id=2mVkEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781984880758", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Seek and Hide", + "authors": [ + "Amy Gajda" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-04-12", + "description": "“Gajda’s chronicle reveals an enduring tension between principles of free speech and respect for individuals’ private lives. …just the sort of road map we could use right now.”—The Atlantic “Wry and fascinating…Gajda is a nimble storyteller [and] an insightful guide to a rich and textured history that gets easily caricatured, especially when a culture war is raging.”—The New York Times An urgent book for today's privacy wars, and essential reading on how the courts have--for centuries--often protected privileged men's rights at the cost of everyone else's. Should everyone have privacy in their personal lives? Can privacy exist in a public place? Is there a right to be left alone even in the United States? You may be startled to realize that the original framers were sensitive to the importance of privacy interests relating to sexuality and intimate life, but mostly just for powerful and privileged (and usually white) men. The battle between an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s right to know has been fought for centuries. The founders demanded privacy for all the wrong press-quashing reasons. Supreme Court jus­tice Louis Brandeis famously promoted First Amend­ment freedoms but argued strongly for privacy too; and presidents from Thomas Jefferson through Don­ald Trump confidently hid behind privacy despite intense public interest in their lives. Today privacy seems simultaneously under siege and surging. And that’s doubly dangerous, as legal expert Amy Gajda argues. Too little privacy leaves ordinary people vulnerable to those who deal in and publish soul-crushing secrets. Too much means the famous and infamous can cloak themselves in secrecy and dodge accountability. Seek and Hide carries us from the very start, when privacy concepts first entered American law and society, to now, when the law al­lows a Silicon Valley titan to destroy a media site like Gawker out of spite. Muckraker Upton Sinclair, like Nellie Bly before him, pushed the envelope of privacy and propriety and then became a privacy advocate when journalists used the same techniques against him. By the early 2000s we were on our way to today’s full-blown crisis in the digital age, worrying that smartphones, webcams, basement publishers, and the forever internet had erased the right to privacy completely.", + "pageCount": 401, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Law" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=bfE3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bfE3EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781429925051", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Jumper: Griffin's Story", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2008-02-05", + "description": "An original novel from Steven Gould, creator of the Jumper series, that tells the back story of Griffin O'Connor, a character created for the film of Jumper. What if you could jump? Go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye? What would you do? Where would you go? What if you were only five years old? Griffin has a secret. It's a secret that he's sworn to his parents to keep, and never tell. Griffin is a Jumper: a person who can teleport to any place he has ever been. The first time was when he was five, and his parents crossed an ocean to protect the secret. The most important time was when he was nine. That was the day that the men came to his house and murdered his parents. Griffin knows that the men were looking for him, and he must never let them find him. Griffin grows up with only two goals: to survive, and to kill the people who want him dead. And a Jumper bent on revenge is not going to let anything stand in his way. Jumper is a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox/New Regency Productions, starring Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, and Jamie Bell. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pUPwoQrLtQUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pUPwoQrLtQUC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780812578546", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Reflex", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2005-08", + "description": "Davy, who teleports for government cases, is taken captive by a mysterious group of people who brainwash him for their own purposes, forcing Davy's teleportation-capable wife, Millie, to rescue him.", + "pageCount": 388, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rmY7cMdHle8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Reflex.html?hl=&id=rmY7cMdHle8C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781429987547", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Impulse", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-01-08", + "description": "Steven Gould returns to the world of his classic novel Jumper in the thrilling sequel Impulse. Cent has a secret. She lives in isolation, with her parents, hiding from the people who took her father captive and tortured him to gain control over his ability to teleport, and from the government agencies who want to use his talent. Cent has seen the world, but only from the safety of her parents' arms. She's teleported more than anyone on Earth, except for her mother and father, but she's never been able to do it herself. Her life has never been in danger. Until the day when she went snowboarding without permission and triggered an avalanche. When the snow and ice thundered down on her, she suddenly found herself in her own bedroom. That was the first time. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.", + "pageCount": 368, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0xpvOtMEhvMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=0xpvOtMEhvMC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780765357694", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Jumper", + "authors": [ + "Steven Gould" + ], + "publishedDate": "2008-02-05", + "description": "Story of Davy, a young man, who discovers he has a power that sets him apart from others, teleporting.", + "pageCount": 356, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y_B7OEueYuUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Jumper.html?hl=&id=Y_B7OEueYuUC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385263481", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Hyperion", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "1989-05-26", + "description": "A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion “Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World “An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review “Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post “An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist", + "pageCount": 492, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=8nsmEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Hyperion.html?hl=&id=8nsmEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780307781918", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Endymion", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-01-05", + "description": "The multiple-award-winning science fiction master returns to the universe that is his greatest triumph--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion --with a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors. Dan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel (Song of Kali) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort. Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion, took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics. Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.", + "pageCount": 815, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WqkIdLAEgfYC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=WqkIdLAEgfYC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780307781895", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Fall of Hyperion", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-02-02", + "description": "“State of the art science fiction . . . a landmark novel.”—Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Now, in the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same. Praise for The Fall of Hyperion “One of the finest SF novels published in the past few years.”—Science Fiction Eye “A magnificently original blend of themes and styles.”—The Denver Post", + "pageCount": 786, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DaN3-r0EXOcC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DaN3-r0EXOcC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780307781925", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Rise of Endymion", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-01-12", + "description": "The magnificent conclusion to one of the greatest science fiction sagas of our time The time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples. But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered--an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.", + "pageCount": 1066, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rsSPgjg5O9IC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rsSPgjg5O9IC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780380978939", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Ilium", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "2003-07-22", + "description": "The first installment of a new saga based on themes from \"The Iliad\" and \"The Tempest\" places classical characters and gods in such settings as the Plains of Ilium, the terraformed oceans of Mars, and Jupiter space.", + "pageCount": 596, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-lz30EVpBkoC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Ilium.html?hl=&id=-lz30EVpBkoC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780380978946", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Olympos", + "authors": [ + "Dan Simmons" + ], + "publishedDate": "2005-06-28", + "description": "Science fiction-roman.", + "pageCount": 708, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=VSnCKaLwQuEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Olympos.html?hl=&id=VSnCKaLwQuEC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316332934", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Leviathan Falls", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-11-30", + "description": "The biggest science fiction series of the decade comes to an incredible conclusion in the ninth and final novel in James S.A. Corey’s Hugo-award winning space opera that inspired the Prime Original series. “An all-time genre classic.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) Hugo Award Winner for Best Series The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again. In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before. As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win. But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat. \"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.\" —George R. R. Martin The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 509, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=XA4iEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=XA4iEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316669078", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Sins of Our Fathers", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", + "description": "The final novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT-bestselling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story is also available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES Through one of the gates, a colony stands alone. Their supplies are low. Their defenses, weak. The leadership is uncertain, and the community fragile. Huge alien beasts threaten the little they have left. But the worst monsters are human, and the greatest dangers are the past they brought. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 65, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=f_02EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=f_02EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316669221", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Drive", + "authors": [ + "James S. A. Corey" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", + "description": "A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion. HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls Memory's Legion The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of Our Fathers", + "pageCount": 33, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pP02EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pP02EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316462778", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Inhibitor Phase", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-10-12", + "description": "A stellar new science fiction adventure from the author who redefined space opera, set in his bestselling Revelation Space universe. For thirty years a tiny band of humans has been sheltering in the caverns of an airless, crater-pocked world called Michaelmas. Beyond their solar system lie the ruins of human interstellar civilization, stalked by a ruthless, infinitely patient cybernetic entity determined to root out the last few bands of survivors. One man has guided the people of Michaelmas through the hardest of times, and given them hope against the wolves: Miguel de Ruyter. When a lone human ship blunders into their system, and threatens to lead the wolves to Michaelmas, de Ruyter embarks on a desperate, near-suicide mission to prevent catastrophe. But an encounter with a refugee from the ship—the enigmatic woman who calls herself only Glass—leads to de Ruyter's world being turned upside down.", + "pageCount": 564, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=HrL7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=HrL7DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780674273559", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "A Brief History of Equality", + "authors": [ + "Thomas Piketty" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-01-01", + "description": "The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books. It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality. Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.", + "pageCount": 289, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=LCxeEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Brief_History_of_Equality.html?hl=&id=LCxeEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780345540096", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Iceman", + "authors": [ + "Anthony Bruno" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-03-26", + "description": "Soon to be a major motion picture starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, with Ray Liotta and Chris Evans He was smart, merciless, and deadly. And it took someone just as tough to bring him down. A mob contract killer known as “The Iceman” for hiding a body in an ice-cream truck freezer, Richard Kuklinski boasted a personal body count of more than a hundred victims. Using guns, knives, poison, ice picks, tire irons, baseball bats, and bombs, the family man from New Jersey killed for fun, for money, to cover up his own crimes, and to satisfy his inner rage. Law enforcement officials knew all about Kuklinski and had a list of his victims, but couldn’t get near him—until undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. In this harrowing true-crime account, Anthony Bruno delves into the mind of a cold-blooded killer, chronicling the Iceman’s grisly crimes and probing the bizarre dynamics of Agent Polifrone’s dangerous liaison with him. For as Polifrone carefully built up a case against Kuklinksi, he knew he was running out of time—because the Iceman was planning to kill him too. “Bruno puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings.”—Kirkus Reviews “Excellent . . . [re-creates] the tension and stress Polifrone experienced in fulfilling his risky undercover assignment.”—Publishers Weekly", + "pageCount": 320, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SfmxC37lSWUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SfmxC37lSWUC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780804137515", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "labor", + "culture" + ], + "title": "Remote", + "authors": [ + "Jason Fried", + "David Heinemeier Hansson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-10-29", + "description": "The classic guide to working from home and why we should embrace a virtual office, from the bestselling authors of Rework “A paradigm-smashing, compulsively readable case for a radically remote workplace.”—Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet Does working from home—or anywhere else but the office—make sense? In Remote, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of Basecamp, bring new insight to the hotly debated argument. While providing a complete overview of remote work’s challenges, Jason and David persuasively argue that, often, the advantages of working “off-site” far outweigh the drawbacks. In the past decade, the “under one roof” model of conducting work has been steadily declining, owing to technology that is rapidly creating virtual workspaces. Today the new paradigm is “move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace.” Companies see advantages in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves their ability to conduct business across multiple time zones. But what about the workers? Jason and David point out that remote work means working at the best job (not just one that is nearby) and achieving a harmonious work-life balance while increasing productivity. And those are just some of the perks to be gained from leaving the office behind. Remote reveals a multitude of other benefits, along with in-the-trenches tips for easing your way out of the office door where you control how your workday will unfold. Whether you’re a manager fretting over how to manage workers who “want out” or a worker who wants to achieve a lifestyle upgrade while still being a top performer professionally, this book is your indispensable guide.", + "pageCount": 258, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=KeJE7Tyl6o8C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=KeJE7Tyl6o8C" + }, + { + "isbn": "1984877925", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "autobiography" + ], + "title": "Will", + "authors": [ + "Will Smith" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-11-09", + "description": "The instant #1 New York Times bestseller! “It's the best memoir I've ever read.” —Oprah Winfrey “Will Smith isn't holding back in his bravely inspiring new memoir . . . An ultimately heartwarming read, Will provides a humane glimpse of the man behind the actor, producer and musician, as he bares all his insecurities and trauma.” —USA Today Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had. Will Smith’s transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale—but it’s only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over. This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.", + "pageCount": 433, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=S2ZNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Will.html?hl=&id=S2ZNEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780358244301", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "music" + ], + "title": "Sellout", + "authors": [ + "Dan Ozzi" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "From celebrated music writer Dan Ozzi comes a comprehensive chronicle of the punk music scene's evolution from the early nineties to the mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they dissolved, \"sold out,\" and rose to surprise stardom. From its inception, punk music has been identified by two factors: its proximity to \"authenticity,\" and its reliance on an antiestablishment ethos. Yet, in the mid- to late '90s, major record labels sought to capitalize on punk's rebellious undertones, leading to a schism in the scene: to accept the cash flow of the majors, or stick to indie cred?Sellout chronicles the evolution of the punk scene during this era, focusing on prominent bands as they experienced the last \"gold rush\" of the music industry. Within it, music writer Dan Ozzi follows the rise of successful bands like Green Day and Jimmy Eat World, as well as the implosion of groups like Jawbreaker and At the Drive-In, who buckled under the pressure of their striving labels. Featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of eleven of modern punk's most (in)famous bands, Sellout is the history of the evolution of the music industry, and a punk rock lover's guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era. …", + "pageCount": 429, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WqIPEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sellout.html?hl=&id=WqIPEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781803414317", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Capitalist Realism", + "authors": [ + "Mark Fisher" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-11-25", + "description": "An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.", + "pageCount": 116, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QSiUEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=QSiUEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982140465", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "biography", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Down and Out in Paradise", + "authors": [ + "Charles Leerhsen" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-10-11", + "description": "The bestselling, “unvarnished” (The New York Times), “engrossing” (The Guardian), “gritty, well-researched” (The Economist)—and definitely unauthorized—biography of the celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain, based on extensive interviews with those who knew the real story. Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Bourdain became a celebrity with his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential. He parlayed it into a series of hit television shows, including the Food Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. But his bad boy charisma belied a troubled spirit. Addiction and an obsession with perfection and personal integrity ruined two marriages and turned him into a boss from hell, even as millions of fans became enamored of the quick-witted and genuinely empathetic traveler they saw on TV. At the height of his success Bourdain was already running out of steam, physically and emotionally, when he fell hard for an Italian actress who could be even colder to him than he sometimes was to others, and who effectively drove a wedge between him and his young daughter. Down and Out in Paradise is the first book to tell the full Bourdain story, and to show how Bourdain’s never-before-reported childhood traumas fueled both the creativity and insecurities that would lead him to a place of despair. “Filled with fresh, intimate details” (The New York Times), this is the real story behind an extraordinary life.", + "pageCount": 189, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=sxRJEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=sxRJEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525511847", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "How Fascism Works", + "authors": [ + "Jason Stanley" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-09-04", + "description": "“No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen “One of the defining books of the decade.”—Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • With a new preface • Fascist politics are running rampant in America today—and spreading around the world. A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history. As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals. “With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—William Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope", + "pageCount": 258, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NARIDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NARIDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780306827488", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "We Are Proud Boys", + "authors": [ + "Andy B. Campbell" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-20", + "description": "A gripping investigation into the nation’s most notorious far-right group, revealing how they created a new blueprint for extremism and turned American politics into a blood sport After the 2016 election, Americans witnessed a frightening trend: the sudden rise of a host of new extremist groups across the country. Emboldened by a new president, they flooded political rallies and built fervent online presences, expanding rapidly until they were a regular sight at everyday demonstrations. Amid the chaos, one group emerged as a leader among the others, with matching outfits, bizarre rituals, and a reputation for violence: the Proud Boys. From leading extremism reporter Andy Campbell, We Are Proud Boys is the definitive narrative exploration of this notorious street gang and all the far-right movements they’re connected to. Through groundbreaking new reporting, Campbell delivers the untold story of a gang of blundering, punch-happy goons who grew to become the centerpiece of American extremism and positioned themselves as the unofficial enforcement arm of the GOP. Beginning with their founding by Gavin McInnes, the media personality best known for co-founding VICE, Campbell takes us deep into the Proud Boys, laying bare their origins and their rise to prominence. As he exposes the group's noxious culture and strange rituals, he reveals how the ultimate project of the Proud Boys–to desensitize Americans to political violence–has succeeded entirely, culminating with Republicans calling the January 6 insurrection \"legitimate political discourse.\" The bizarre, frightening story of the Proud Boys reveals the playbook they have created for domestic extremism, giving us the necessary insight to push back against radicalism in America before it swallows our democracy whole.", + "pageCount": 259, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JCRdEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JCRdEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781541674004", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Socialist Manifesto", + "authors": [ + "Bhaskar Sunkara" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-04-30", + "description": "A \"razor-sharp\" introduction to this political and economic ideology makes a galvanizing argument for modern socialism (Naomi Klein) -- and explains how its core tenets could effect positive change in America and worldwide. In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like? The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aPFrDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=aPFrDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525536512", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "culture", + "tech" + ], + "title": "Digital Minimalism", + "authors": [ + "Cal Newport" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-02-05", + "description": "A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller \"Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life.\"--Ezra Klein, Vox Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience \"fear of missing out\" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day \"digital declutter\" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.", + "pageCount": 305, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Self-Help" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1eGCDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Digital_Minimalism.html?hl=&id=1eGCDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781612199160", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Privacy is Power", + "authors": [ + "Carissa Veliz" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-04-06", + "description": "An Economist Book of the Year Every minute of every day, our data is harvested and exploited… It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you, and everyone you know. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. Reclaiming privacy is the only way we can regain control of our lives and our societies. These governments and corporations have too much power, and their power stems from us--from our data. Privacy is as collective as it is personal, and it's time to take back control. Privacy Is Power tells you how to do exactly that. It calls for the end of the data economy and proposes concrete measures to bring that end about, offering practical solutions, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.", + "pageCount": 304, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3TYGEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3TYGEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780300252989", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Seeing Like a State", + "authors": [ + "James C. Scott" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-03-17", + "description": "“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University", + "pageCount": 462, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CA7UDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=CA7UDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781501134630", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Midnight in Chernobyl", + "authors": [ + "Adam Higginbotham" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-02-04", + "description": "A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. “The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying...extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.", + "pageCount": 560, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=WwPJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Midnight_in_Chernobyl.html?hl=&id=WwPJDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781788738811", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Silicon Values", + "authors": [ + "Jillian C. York" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-03-15", + "description": "The battle for online rights and for the future of democracy Who decides what is permissible on the internet: Politicians? Mark Zuckerberg? Users? Who determines when political debate becomes hate speech? How does this impact our identity or our ability to create communities and to protest? Silicon Values reports on the war for digital rights and how major corporations—Facebook, Twitter, Google and Tiktok—threaten democracy as they harvest our personal data in the pursuit of profit.", + "pageCount": 305, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UOhOEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Silicon_Values.html?hl=&id=UOhOEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593199657", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Zodiac", + "authors": [ + "Robert Graysmith" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-05-05", + "description": "Robert Graysmith’s New York Times bestselling account of the desperate hunt for a serial killer and his own investigation of California’s unsolved Zodiac murders. A sexual sadist, the Zodiac killer took pleasure in torture and murder. His first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead in a lovers’ lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill more. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed thirty-seven dead. The real toll may have reached fifty. Robert Graysmith was on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 when Zodiac first struck, triggering in the resolute reporter an unrelenting obsession with seeing the hooded killer brought to justice. In this gripping account of Zodiac’s eleven-month reign of terror, Graysmith reveals hundreds of facts previously unreleased, including the complete text of the killer’s letters.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0-LbDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zodiac.html?hl=&id=0-LbDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780735211308", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "culture" + ], + "title": "Atomic Habits", + "authors": [ + "James Clear" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-10-16", + "description": "The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 10 million copies sold! Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights. Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field. Learn how to: make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy); overcome a lack of motivation and willpower; design your environment to make success easier; get back on track when you fall off course; ...and much more. Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.", + "pageCount": 322, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lFhbDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lFhbDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781402295638", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Spam Nation", + "authors": [ + "Brian Krebs" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-11-18", + "description": "Now a New York Times bestseller! There is a Threat Lurking Online with the Power to Destroy Your Finances, Steal Your Personal Data, and Endanger Your Life. In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies-and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks-he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere. Blending cutting-edge research, investigative reporting, and firsthand interviews, this terrifying true story reveals how we unwittingly invite these digital thieves into our lives every day. From unassuming computer programmers right next door to digital mobsters like \"Cosma\"-who unleashed a massive malware attack that has stolen thousands of Americans' logins and passwords-Krebs uncovers the shocking lengths to which these people will go to profit from our data and our wallets. Not only are hundreds of thousands of Americans exposing themselves to fraud and dangerously toxic products from rogue online pharmacies, but even those who never open junk messages are at risk. As Krebs notes, spammers can-and do-hack into accounts through these emails, harvest personal information like usernames and passwords, and sell them on the digital black market. The fallout from this global epidemic doesn't just cost consumers and companies billions, it costs lives too. Fast-paced and utterly gripping, Spam Nation ultimately proposes concrete solutions for protecting ourselves online and stemming this tidal wave of cybercrime-before it's too late. \"Krebs's talent for exposing the weaknesses in online security has earned him respect in the IT business and loathing among cybercriminals... His track record of scoops...has helped him become the rare blogger who supports himself on the strength of his reputation for hard-nosed reporting.\" -Bloomberg Businessweek", + "pageCount": 322, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=00LQBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Spam_Nation.html?hl=&id=00LQBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780061739118", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Bind, Torture, Kill", + "authors": [ + "Roy Wenzl", + "Tim Potter", + "L. Kelly", + "Hurst Laviana" + ], + "publishedDate": "2009-10-13", + "description": "For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named \"BTK\"—for \"bind them, torture them, kill them\"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church. Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.", + "pageCount": 573, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=fhiH-9uV5PQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=fhiH-9uV5PQC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316462655", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Absolution Gap", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", + "description": "In the third book of the legendary Revelation Space trilogy, the last remnants of humanity realize that forging an alliance with a greater and even more mysterious alien force may be their only chance for survival. The Inhibitors were designed to eliminate any life form reaching a certain level of intelligence -- and they've targeted Humanity. War veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees have fled into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate. But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety -- or draw down its darkest enemy. And as she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse . . . \"Absolution Gap is a good as it gets, and should solidify Alastair Reynolds' reputation as one of the best hard SF writers in the field.\" -- SF Site", + "pageCount": 807, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=rIy9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=rIy9DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781472270399", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Unmasked", + "authors": [ + "Paul Holes" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-02-16", + "description": "From the detective who helped catch the Golden State Killer, a memoir about investigating America's toughest cold cases, and the rewards - and toll - of a life spent solving crime. For a decade, from 1973, The Golden State Killer stalked and murdered Californians in the dead of night, leaving entire communities afraid to turn off the lights. Then he vanished, and the case remained unsolved. In 1994, when cold-case investigator Paul Holes came across the old file, he swore he would unmask GSK and finally give these families closure. Twenty-four years later, Holes fulfilled that promise, identifying 73-year-old Joseph J. DeAngelo. Headlines blasted around the world: one of America's most prolific serial killers had been caught. That case launched Paul's career into the stratosphere, turning him into an icon in the true-crime world. But while many know the story of the capture of GSK, until now, no one has truly known the man behind it all. In UNMASKED, Paul takes us through his memories of a storied career and provides an insider account of some of the most notorious cases in contemporary American history, including Laci Peterson's murder and Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping. But this is also a revelatory profile of a complex man and what makes him tick: the drive to find closure for victims and their loved ones; the inability to walk away from a challenge - even at the expense of his own happiness. This is a story about the gritty truth of crime solving when there are no 'case closed' headlines. It is the story of a man and his commitment to his cases, and to the people who might have otherwise been forgotten.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=J4ruzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Unmasked.html?hl=&id=J4ruzgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781400078998", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Under the Banner of Heaven", + "authors": [ + "Jon Krakauer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2004-06-08", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, 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.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0DQaTU7Opq0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=0DQaTU7Opq0C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250087102", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Adnan's Story", + "authors": [ + "Rabia Chaudry" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-08-09", + "description": "With intimate details and newly-uncovered evidence Adnan's Story goes beyond what the hit podcast Serial covered in it's investigation of Adnan Syed's case.", + "pageCount": 417, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5PbUDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Adnan_s_Story.html?hl=&id=5PbUDAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780698191068", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "American Predator", + "authors": [ + "Maureen Callahan" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-07-02", + "description": "INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An Amazon “Best Book of 2019” A Washington Post “10 Books To Read in July” A Los Angeles Times “Seven Highly Anticipated Books for Summer Reading” A USA Today “20 of the Season’s Hottest New Books” A New York Post “25 Best Beach Reads of 2019 You Need to Pre-Order Now” A Bustle “The Best New True Crime Books You Can Read Right Now” “Maureen Callahan’s deft reporting and stylish writing have created one of the all-time-great serial-killer books: sensitive, chilling, and completely impossible to put down.” —Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as \"a force of pure evil,\" Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried \"kill kits\"--cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools--in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter. When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years--uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake--many of which remain unsolved to this day. American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.", + "pageCount": 304, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2uV8DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2uV8DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781501187292", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Chapo Guide to Revolution", + "authors": [ + "Chapo Trap House", + "Felix Biederman", + "Matt Christman", + "Brendan James", + "Will Menaker", + "Virgil Texas" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-10-15", + "description": "Instant New York Times bestseller “Howard Zinn on acid or some bullsh*t like that.” —Tim Heidecker The creators of the cult-hit podcast Chapo Trap House deliver a manifesto for everyone who feels orphaned and alienated—politically, culturally, and economically—by the lanyard-wearing Wall Street centrism of the left and the lizard-brained atavism of the right: there is a better way, the Chapo Way. In a guide that reads like “a weirder, smarter, and deliciously meaner version of The Daily Show’s 2004 America (The Book)” (Paste), Chapo Trap House shows you that you don’t have to side with either sinking ships. These self-described “assholes from the internet” offer a fully ironic ideology for all who feel politically hopeless and prefer broadsides and tirades to reasoned debate. Learn the “secret” history of the world, politics, media, and everything in-between that THEY don’t want you to know and chart a course from our wretched present to a utopian future where one can post in the morning, game in the afternoon, and podcast after dinner without ever becoming a poster, gamer, or podcaster. A book that’s “as intellectually serious and analytically original as it is irreverent and funny” (Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author of No Place to Hide) The Chapo Guide to Revolution features illustrated taxonomies of contemporary liberal and conservative characters, biographies of important thought leaders, “never before seen” drafts of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom manga, and the ten new laws that govern Chapo Year Zero (everyone gets a dog, billionaires are turned into Soylent, and logic is outlawed). If you’re a fan of sacred cows, prisoners being taken, and holds being barred, then this book is NOT for you. However, if you feel disenfranchised from the political and cultural nightmare we’re in, then Chapo, let’s go…", + "pageCount": 320, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Humor" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1SKwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chapo_Guide_to_Revolution.html?hl=&id=1SKwDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780393652253", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber", + "authors": [ + "Mike Isaac" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-09-03", + "description": "Now a SHOWTIME® original series starring Emmy winners Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kyle Chandler and Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman. Now streaming – Only on SHOWTIME. Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Fortune, Bloomberg, Sunday Times A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice “If you want to understand modern-day Silicon Valley, you need to read this book.” —John Carreyrou, New York Times best-selling author of Bad Blood Hailed as the definitive book on Uber and Silicon Valley, Super Pumped is an epic story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history. Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong.", + "pageCount": 594, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TnaODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TnaODwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781541762374", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Cult of the Dead Cow", + "authors": [ + "Joseph Menn" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-06-04", + "description": "The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our privacy, our freedom -- even democracy itself Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone. With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns. Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.", + "pageCount": 272, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=055xDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=055xDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250169129", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Chosen Country", + "authors": [ + "James Pogue" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-05-22", + "description": "Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.", + "pageCount": 304, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Nature" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2ZNUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Chosen_Country.html?hl=&id=2ZNUDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780241554258", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Lazarus Heist", + "authors": [ + "Geoff White" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-09-27", + "description": "BASED ON THE NO 1 HIT PODCAST 'The Lazarus Heist' 'You'll never see North Korea the same way again' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland 'One of the most incredible cyber-espionage stories I've ever heard, told by one of the UK's best tech journalists' Jamie Bartlett, author of The Missing Crypto Queen 'Pacy and eye-popping, this book shows us what happens when the world of Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy meets the world of Misha Glenny's McMafia' - Tom Burgis, author of Kleptopia Meet the Lazarus Group, a shadowy cabal of hackers accused of working on behalf of the North Korean state. It's claimed that they form one of the most dangerous criminal enterprises on the planet, having stolen more than $1bn in an international crime spree. Their targets allegedly include central banks, Hollywood film studios and even the British National Health Service. North Korea denies the allegations, saying the accusations are American attempts to tarnish its image. In this staggering, global investigation, award-winning journalist Geoff White examines how the hackers have harnessed cutting-edge technology to launch a decade-long campaign of brazen and merciless raids on its richer, more powerful adversaries. It's not just money they're after. The Lazarus Group's tactics have been used to threaten democracies, gag North Korea's critics and destabilize global peace. From the bustling streets of Dhaka, to the glamorous studios of Hollywood, to the glittering casinos of Macau and the secretive dynastic court of Pyongyang, this shocking story uncovers the secret world of the Lazarus Group, their victims and the people who have tried - and ultimately, so far failed - to stop them. 'Madly intriguing' Guardian 'Cyber warfare and criminal hacking has never been more pertinent. This a must read to understand the threats currently facing all of us globally' Annie Machon, author of Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jseMEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Lazarus_Heist.html?hl=&id=jseMEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781524731663", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Bad Blood", + "authors": [ + "John Carreyrou" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-05-21", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.", + "pageCount": 354, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CcJFDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=CcJFDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525522287", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Antisocial", + "authors": [ + "Andrew Marantz" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-09-15", + "description": "\"Trenchant and intelligent.\" --The New York Times As seen/heard on NPR, New Yorker Radio Hour, The New York Book Review Podcast, PBS Newshour, CNBC, and more. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 From a rising star at The New Yorker, a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet--and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream. For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of naïvete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls \"the gate crashers\"--the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly--from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room--and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality. Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape--the landscape in which we all now live. Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread--from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?", + "pageCount": 402, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=j5QFEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Antisocial.html?hl=&id=j5QFEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982171070", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction", + "labor" + ], + "title": "Fight Like Hell", + "authors": [ + "Kim Kelly" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-04-26", + "description": "A 2022 New Yorker Best Book of the Year A 2022 Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A 2022 BuzzFeed Book You’ll Love A 2022 LitHub Favorite Book of the Year “Kelly unearths the stories of the people-farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees—behind some of the labor movement’s biggest successes.” —The New York Times A revelatory, inclusive history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly. Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America’s civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor’s relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law. The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this assiduously researched work of journalism, Teen Vogue columnist and independent labor reporter Kim Kelly excavates that history and shows how the rights the American worker has today—the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job—were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears. Fight Like Hell comes at a time of economic reckoning in America. From Amazon’s warehouses to Starbucks cafes, Appalachian coal mines to the sex workers of Portland’s Stripper Strike, interest in organized labor is at a fever pitch not seen since the early 1960s. Inspirational, intersectional, and full of crucial lessons from the past, Fight Like Hell shows what is possible when the working class demands the dignity it has always deserved.", + "pageCount": 448, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eFg1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=eFg1EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982114114", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "My Friend Anna", + "authors": [ + "Rachel DeLoache Williams" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-07-23", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Sex and the City meets Bad Blood and Catch Me if You Can in the astonishing true story of Anna Delvey, a young con artist posing as an heiress in New York City—as told by the former Vanity Fair photo editor who got seduced by her friendship and then scammed out of more than $62,000. Rachel DeLoache Williams’s new friend Anna Delvey, a self-proclaimed German heiress, was worldly and ambitious. She was also generous—picking up the tab for lavish dinners at Le Coucou, infrared sauna sessions at HigherDOSE, drinks at the 11 Howard Library bar, and regular workout sessions with a celebrity personal trainer. When Anna proposed an all-expenses-paid trip to Marrakech at the five-star La Mamounia hotel, Rachel jumped at the chance. But when Anna’s credit cards mysteriously stopped working, the dream vacation quickly took a dark turn. Anna asked Rachel to begin fronting costs—first for flights, then meals and shopping, and, finally, for their $7,500-per-night private villa. Before Rachel knew it, more than $62,000 had been charged to her credit cards. Anna swore she would reimburse Rachel the moment they returned to New York. Back in Manhattan, the repayment never materialized, and a shocking pattern of deception emerged. Rachel learned that Anna had left a trail of deceit—and unpaid bills—wherever she’d been. Mortified, Rachel contacted the district attorney, and in a stunning turn of events, found herself helping to bring down one of the city’s most notorious con artists. With breathless pacing and in-depth reporting from the person who experienced it firsthand, My Friend Anna is an unforgettable true story of “glamour, greed, lust for power” (The New York Times), and female friendship.", + "pageCount": 292, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TWqGDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TWqGDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780671725822", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction", + "biography" + ], + "title": "Miles", + "authors": [ + "Miles Davis", + "Quincy Troupe" + ], + "publishedDate": "1990-09-15", + "description": "Miles discusses his life and music from playing trumpet in high school to the new instruments and sounds from the Caribbean.", + "pageCount": 452, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xgAVXHhuNYgC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Miles.html?hl=&id=xgAVXHhuNYgC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781760635510", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Darkest Web", + "authors": [ + "Eileen Ormsby" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-03-14", + "description": "Dark... A kingpin willing to murder to protect his dark web drug empire. A corrupt government official determined to avoid exposure. The death of a dark web drugs czar in mysterious circumstances in a Bangkok jail cell, just as the author arrives there. Who is Variety Jones and why have darknet markets ballooned tenfold since authorities shut down the original dark web drugs bazaar, Silk Road? Who are the kingpins willing to sell poisons and weapons, identities and bank accounts, malware and life-ruining services online to anyone with a wallet full of Bitcoin? Darker... A death in Minnesota leads detectives into the world of dark web murder-for-hire where hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin is paid to arrange killings, beatings and rapes. Meanwhile, the owner of the most successful hitman website in history is threatening the journalists who investigate his business with a visit from his operatives - and the author is at the top of his list. Darkest... People with the most depraved perversions gather to share their obscene materials in an almost inaccessible corner of the dark web. A video circulates and the pursuit of the monsters responsible for 'Daisy's Destruction' lead detectives into the unimaginable horror of the world of hurtcore. There's the world wide web - the internet we all know that connects us via news, email, forums, shopping and social media. Then there's the dark web - the parallel internet accessed by only a select few. Usually, those it connects wish to remain anonymous and for good reason. Eileen Ormsby has spent the past five years exploring every corner of the Dark Web. She has shopped on darknet markets, contributed to forums, waited in red rooms and been threatened by hitmen on murder-for-hire sites. On occasions, her dark web activities have poured out into the real world and she has attended trials, met with criminals and the law enforcement who tracked them down, interviewed dark web identities and visited them in prison. This book will take you into the murkiest depths of the web's dark underbelly: a place of hitmen for hire, red rooms, hurtcore sites and markets that will sell anything a person is willing to pay for - including another person. The Darkest Web.", + "pageCount": 320, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZlU_DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ZlU_DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780735217959", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "culture" + ], + "title": "The Nineties", + "authors": [ + "Chuck Klosterman" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-02-08", + "description": "An instant New York Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history. It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like \"Cop Killer\" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=sqhPEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nineties.html?hl=&id=sqhPEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781782833338", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Moneyland", + "authors": [ + "Oliver Bullough" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-09-06", + "description": "A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER PRESENTER OF THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES 'HOW TO STEAL A TRILLION' SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2019 SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AN ECONOMIST POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY MAIL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'You cannot understand power, wealth and poverty without knowing about Moneyland.' Simon Kuper, New Statesman 2019: democracy is eating itself, inequality is skyrocketing, the system is breaking apart. Why? Because in 1962, some bankers in London had an idea that changed the world. That idea was called 'offshore'. It meant that, for the first time, thieves could dream big. They could take everything. Join investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into the hidden world of the new global kleptocrats. See the poor countries where public money is stolen and the rich ones where it is laundered and invested. Watch the crooks at work and at play, and meet their respectable, white-collar enablers. Learn how the new system works and begin to see how we can tackle it.", + "pageCount": 298, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=0O5PDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Moneyland.html?hl=&id=0O5PDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780544947665", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "culture", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Extended Mind", + "authors": [ + "Annie Murphy Paul" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains--in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships Use your head. That's what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we've got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of \"extra-neural\" resources--the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us-- can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively. The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain. She excavates the untold history of how artists, scientists, and authors--from Jackson Pollock to Jonas Salk to Robert Caro--have used mental extensions to solve problems, make discoveries, and create new works. In the tradition of Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind or Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, The Extended Mind offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how we can all think better.", + "pageCount": 357, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Psychology" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Dk-_DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Extended_Mind.html?hl=&id=Dk-_DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781984823847", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "MBS", + "authors": [ + "Ben Hubbard" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-03-10", + "description": "A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A gripping, behind-the-scenes portrait of the rise of Saudi Arabia’s secretive and mercurial new ruler “Revelatory . . . a vivid portrait of how MBS has altered the kingdom during his half-decade of rule.”—The Washington Post Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Kirkus Reviews MBS is the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia’s sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East—and gather as much power as possible into his own hands. Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman has leveraged his influence to restructure the kingdom’s economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and confront its enemies around the region, especially Iran. That vision won him fans at home and on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, and at the White House, where President Trump embraced the prince as a key player in his own vision for the Middle East. But over time, the sheen of the visionary young reformer has become tarnished, leaving many struggling to determine whether MBS is in fact a rising dictator whose inexperience and rash decisions are destabilizing the world’s most volatile region. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, MBS reveals the machinations behind the kingdom’s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen, the bizarre detention of princes and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, and the shifting Saudi relationships with Israel and the United States. And finally, it sheds new light on the greatest scandal of the young autocrat’s rise: the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, a crime that shook Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Washington and left the world wondering whether MBS could get away with murder. MBS is a riveting, eye-opening account of how the young prince has wielded vast powers to reshape his kingdom and the world around him. Praise for MBS “Saudi Arabia is testing the extremes of tradition and innovation, of half-baked visions and intensifying repression. Ben Hubbard’s authoritative reporting on the inner sanctums of its society offers a perfect synthesis of journalism and area expertise: the best description we have at the moment of why things happen as they do in the kingdom.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World", + "pageCount": 394, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RimrDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=RimrDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374712785", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Putin's People", + "authors": [ + "Catherine Belton" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-06-23", + "description": "A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph \"[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism.\" —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic \"This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades.\" —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.", + "pageCount": 405, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pKilDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pKilDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316281935", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "climate", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Intersectional Environmentalist", + "authors": [ + "Leah Thomas" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-03-08", + "description": "From the 2022 TIME100 Next honoree and the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change. The Intersectional Environmentalist examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people -- especially those most often unheard. Written by Leah Thomas, a prominent voice in the field and the activist who coined the term \"Intersectional Environmentalism,\" this book is simultaneously a call to action, a guide to instigating change for all, and a pledge to work towards the empowerment of all people and the betterment of the planet. Thomas shows how not only are Black, Indigenous and people of color unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices, but she argues that the fight for the planet lies in tandem to the fight for civil rights; and in fact, that one cannot exist without the other. An essential read, this book addresses the most pressing issues that the people and our planet face, examines and dismantles privilege, and looks to the future as the voice of a movement that will define a generation.", + "pageCount": 182, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Nature" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=uIY1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=uIY1EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781541763029", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "tech", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Cryptopians", + "authors": [ + "Laura Shin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2023-10-24", + "description": "The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures--vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto's most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=616rzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cryptopians.html?hl=&id=616rzwEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780802198853", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Wretched of the Earth", + "authors": [ + "Frantz Fanon" + ], + "publishedDate": "2007-12-01", + "description": "The sixtieth anniversary edition of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, now with a new introduction by Cornel West First published in 1961, and reissued in this sixtieth anniversary edition with a powerful new introduction by Cornel West, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterfuland timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle, and a continuing influence on movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Alongside Cornel West’s introduction, the book features critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha. This sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.", + "pageCount": 328, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=-XGKFJq4eccC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-XGKFJq4eccC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781643752198", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Off the Edge", + "authors": [ + "Kelly Weill" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-02-22", + "description": "“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.” —Science Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice. How? Why? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove. In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.", + "pageCount": 289, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=IGEfEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=IGEfEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781541730168", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Compatriots", + "authors": [ + "Andrei Soldatov", + "Irina Borogan" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-10-08", + "description": "The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy. The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB--and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow. But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UHMEwgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Compatriots.html?hl=&id=UHMEwgEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780922915941", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Lords of Chaos", + "authors": [ + "Michael Moynihan", + "Didrik Soderlind", + "Didrik Søderlind" + ], + "publishedDate": "2003", + "description": "\"* * * * * *! The most incredible story in the history of music a?| a heavyweight book.\"-Kerrang! \"An unusual combination of true crime journalism, rock and roll reporting and underground obsessiveness, Lords of Chaos turns into one of the more fascinating reads in a long time.\"-Denver Post A narrative feature film based on this award-winning book has just gone into production.", + "pageCount": 428, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Architecture" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=5J1fCHvHfosC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Lords_of_Chaos.html?hl=&id=5J1fCHvHfosC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385350273", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Going Clear", + "authors": [ + "Lawrence Wright" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-01-17", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label.", + "pageCount": 359, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Religion" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=z4IDPV2hZL0C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=z4IDPV2hZL0C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781501305320", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", + "authors": [ + "Paulo Freire" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-08-18", + "description": "First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.", + "pageCount": 138, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Education" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=oKQMBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed.html?hl=&id=oKQMBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780804170567", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Missoula", + "authors": [ + "Jon Krakauer" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-01-12", + "description": "NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A devastating exposé of colleges and local law enforcement.... A substantive deep dive into the morass of campus sex crimes, where the victim is too often treated like the accused.” —Entertainment Weekly Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, home to a highly regarded state university whose beloved football team inspires a passionately loyal fan base. Between January 2008 and May 2012, hundreds of students reported sexual assaults to the local police. Few of the cases were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this, Missoula is also typical. In these pages, acclaimed journalist Jon Krakauer investigates a spate of campus rapes that occurred in Missoula over a four-year period. Taking the town as a case study for a crime that is sadly prevalent throughout the nation, Krakauer documents the experiences of five victims: their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the skepticism directed at them by police, prosecutors, and the public; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. These stories cut through abstract ideological debate about acquaintance rape to demonstrate that it does not happen because women are sending mixed signals or seeking attention. They are victims of a terrible crime, deserving of fairness from our justice system. Rigorously researched, rendered in incisive prose, Missoula stands as an essential call to action.", + "pageCount": 418, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ICzZCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Missoula.html?hl=&id=ICzZCwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593136409", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "climate", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Paradise", + "authors": [ + "Lizzie Johnson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-08-16", + "description": "The definitive firsthand account of California’s Camp Fire, the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century, Paradise is a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds. “A tour de force story of wildfire and a terrifying look at what lies ahead.”—San Francisco Chronicle (Best Books of the Year) On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire was upon them, gobbling an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead. As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lizzie Johnson was there as the town of Paradise burned. She saw the smoldering rubble of a historic covered bridge and the beloved Black Bear Diner and she stayed long afterward, visiting shelters, hotels, and makeshift camps. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and reams of public records, including 911 calls and testimony from a grand jury investigation, Johnson provides a minute-by-minute account of the Camp Fire, following residents and first responders as they fight to save themselves and their town. We see a young mother fleeing with her newborn; a school bus full of children in search of an escape route; and a group of paramedics, patients, and nurses trapped in a cul-de-sac, fending off the fire with rakes and hoses. In Paradise, Johnson documents the unfolding tragedy with empathy and nuance. But she also investigates the root causes, from runaway climate change to a deeply flawed alert system to Pacific Gas and Electric’s decades-long neglect of critical infrastructure. A cautionary tale for a new era of megafires, Paradise is the gripping story of a town wiped off the map and the determination of its people to rise again.", + "pageCount": 449, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D798EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Paradise.html?hl=&id=D798EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781610395847", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Narconomics", + "authors": [ + "Tom Wainwright" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016-02-23", + "description": "What drug lords learned from big business How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work—and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the “war” against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes “Bin Laden,” the Bolivian coca guide; “Old Lin,” the Salvadoran gang leader; “Starboy,” the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qQDdCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qQDdCgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0593136381", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "climate", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Paradise", + "authors": [ + "Lizzie Johnson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "description": "The definitive firsthand account of California's Camp Fire-the nation's deadliest wildfire in a century-and a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds ... A cautionary tale for a new era of megafires, Paradise is the gripping story of a town wiped off the map and the determination of its people to rise again…", + "pageCount": 433, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qSk5EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Paradise.html?hl=&id=qSk5EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780393867749", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History", + "authors": [ + "Lea Ypi" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-01-18", + "description": "Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award The Sunday Times Best Book of the Year in Biography and Memoir A Financial Times Best Book of 2021 (Critics' Picks) The New Yorker, Best Books We Read in 2021 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021 A Guardian Best Book of the Year A reflection on \"freedom\" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=D0M3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=D0M3EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781984879790", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Reign of Terror", + "authors": [ + "Spencer Ackerman" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-08-09", + "description": "A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 \"An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued.\" —The New York Times \"One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era.\" —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.", + "pageCount": 449, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BmtuEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Reign_of_Terror.html?hl=&id=BmtuEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780399588594", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Between Two Kingdoms", + "authors": [ + "Suleika Jaouad" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-02-09", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.", + "pageCount": 368, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=J7qdDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=J7qdDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781631498848", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "On Juneteenth", + "authors": [ + "Annette Gordon-Reed" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-05-04", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES • 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2021 New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 New York Times Bestseller Best Books of the Year • Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Independent, Los Angeles Public Library, Washington Independent Review of Books, Spy, Audile, Biblioracle, AbeBooks The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. Reworking the traditional “Alamo” framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself. In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.", + "pageCount": 111, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=FwwDEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=FwwDEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781635578584", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Least of Us", + "authors": [ + "Sam Quinones" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021", + "pageCount": 433, + "printType": "BOOK", + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y3M_EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Least_of_Us.html?hl=&id=Y3M_EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1595581030", + "dateAdded": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The New Jim Crow", + "authors": [ + "Michelle Alexander" + ], + "publishedDate": "Jan 5, 2010", + "description": "Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness", + "pageCount": 290, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RMbDiacb8cIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781585059744", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "The Communist Manifesto", + "authors": [ + "Karl Marx", + "Friedrich Engels" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-06-13", + "description": "The Communist Manifesto is an 1848 pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels commissioned by the Communist League to chart their main ideas and beliefs. In later times, this work was recognized as one of the world's most influential political documents.", + "pageCount": 45, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SAJ2EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SAJ2EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525657750", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Crying in H Mart", + "authors": [ + "Michelle Zauner" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-04-20", + "description": "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.", + "pageCount": 257, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=kRjzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=kRjzDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780141185439", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "autobiography", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", + "authors": [ + "Malcolm X", + "Alex Haley" + ], + "publishedDate": "1965", + "description": "Malcolm X's blazing, legendary autobiography, completed shortly before his assassination in 1965, depicts a remarkable life: a child born into rage and despair, who turned to street-hustling and cocaine in the Harlem ghetto, followed by prison, where he converted to the Black Muslims and honed the energy and brilliance that made him one of the most important political figures of his time - and an icon in ours. It also charts the spiritual journey that took him beyond militancy, and led to his murder, a powerful story of transformation, redemption and betrayal. Vilified by his critics as an anti-white demagogue, Malcolm X gave a voice to unheard African-Americans, bringing them pride, hope and fearlessness, and remains an inspirational and controversial figure today.", + "pageCount": 512, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "African Americans" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=aLSePwAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Autobiography_of_Malcolm_X.html?hl=&id=aLSePwAACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781542047197", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "A River in Darkness", + "authors": [ + "Masaji Ishikawa" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-06", + "description": "Previously published in Japan in 2000. Translated from Japanese by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.", + "pageCount": 0, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Caste-based discrimination" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Sl02tAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_River_in_Darkness.html?hl=&id=Sl02tAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781400060344", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Chatter", + "authors": [ + "Patrick Radden Keefe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2005", + "description": "A look inside the secret world of the American intelligence establishment and its link to the global eavesdropping network \"Echelon\" assesses how much privacy Americans have unwittingly sacrificed in favor of national security.", + "pageCount": 322, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DiRaaJBJcicC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Chatter.html?hl=&id=DiRaaJBJcicC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250194725", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "autobiography" + ], + "title": "Sigh, Gone", + "authors": [ + "Phuc Tran" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", + "description": "For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man’s bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the ‘80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes—and ultimately saves—him.", + "pageCount": 256, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=y_uTDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=y_uTDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780593137383", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "religion" + ], + "title": "The Genius of Jesus", + "authors": [ + "Erwin Raphael McManus" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-09-14", + "description": "A groundbreaking manifesto decoding the phenomenon of genius through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, revealing the untapped potential within every human being—from the bestselling author of The Artisan Soul, The Last Arrow, and The Way of the Warrior. “IF ALL GENIUS IS TOUCHED BY MADNESS, THEN IT IS ALSO TOUCHED BY THE DIVINE.” In every realm of our existence—art, science, technology, mathematics—we are captivated by stories of genius. Geniuses violate the status quo, destabilize conventional ways of thinking, and ultimately disrupt history by making us see the world differently. Genius is that rare expression of human capacity that seems to touch the divine. Jesus of Nazareth is undeniably one of the most influential figures ever to have walked the face of the earth. Yet his life as a work of genius has yet to be excavated and explored. In The Genius of Jesus, Erwin Raphael McManus examines the person of Jesus not simply through the lens of his divinity, but as a man who radically changed the possibility of what it means to be human. Drawing on the phenomenon of genius and the phenomenon of Jesus, McManus leads us to see this momentous figure in a new and life-altering way. Genius always leaves clues, and The Genius of Jesus follows those clues so that you can discover your own personal genius. McManus dives into the nuances of Jesus’s words and actions, showing how they can not only inspire us but revolutionize how we think about power, empathy, meaning, beauty, and truth. This work is for anyone who seeks to transform their life from the mundane to the transcendent—for anyone who longs to awaken the genius within. The Genius of Jesus is a thought-provoking exploration of the most controversial and influential figure who ever lived, and a guide for you to discover how his genius can live in you.", + "pageCount": 209, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Religion" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ouY9EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Genius_of_Jesus.html?hl=&id=ouY9EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780063076112", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "autobiography", + "music", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Storyteller", + "authors": [ + "Dave Grohl" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-10-05", + "description": "The #1 New York Times Bestseller * Named one of Variety's Best Music Books of 2021 * Included in Audible's Best of The Year list * A Business Insider Best Memoirs of 2021 * One of NME's Best Music Books of 2021 So, I've written a book. Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (\"It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!\") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.", + "pageCount": 431, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Music" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=3FcnEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3FcnEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250224354", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-20", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Last Call", + "authors": [ + "Elon Green" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-03-09", + "description": "The gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon. The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim. Nor will he be his last. The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.", + "pageCount": 272, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jTJ_zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Last_Call.html?hl=&id=jTJ_zQEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781466885967", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Automating Inequality", + "authors": [ + "Virginia Eubanks" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-01-23", + "description": "WINNER: The 2018 McGannon Center Book Prize and shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice The New York Times Book Review: \"Riveting.\" Naomi Klein: \"This book is downright scary.\" Ethan Zuckerman, MIT: \"Should be required reading.\" Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: \"A must-read.\" Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: \"The single most important book about technology you will read this year.\" Cory Doctorow: \"Indispensable.\" A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination—and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years—because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems—rather than humans—control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=pn4pDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pn4pDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780553418811", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Weapons of Math Destruction", + "authors": [ + "Cathy O'Neil" + ], + "publishedDate": "2016", + "description": "\"A former Wall Street quantitative analyst sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling, a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality,\"--NoveList.", + "pageCount": 274, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=CxD-DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction.html?hl=&id=CxD-DAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781610395700", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction", + "politics", + "economics" + ], + "title": "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", + "authors": [ + "Shoshana Zuboff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-01-15", + "description": "The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called \"surveillance capitalism,\" and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new \"behavioral futures markets,\" where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new \"means of behavioral modification.\" The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a \"Big Other\" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled \"hive\" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.", + "pageCount": 658, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=lRqrDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lRqrDQAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780316462433", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "Revelation Space", + "authors": [ + "Alastair Reynolds" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-04-21", + "description": "This highly acclaimed first novel in the Revelation Space universe has redefined the space opera with a staggering journey across vast gulfs of time and space to confront the very nature of reality itself . . . Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason, and if that reason is uncovered, the universe and reality itself could be irrevocably altered . . . \"[A] tour de force... Ravishingly inventive.\" -- Publishers Weekly", + "pageCount": 630, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=GIy9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=GIy9DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781784780463", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Radical Technologies", + "authors": [ + "Adam Greenfield" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-06-01", + "description": "A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human. Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.", + "pageCount": 396, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Rm3nDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Radical_Technologies.html?hl=&id=Rm3nDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781982159016", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Afghanistan Papers", + "authors": [ + "Craig Whitlock", + "The Washington Post" + ], + "publishedDate": "2022-08-30", + "description": "A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.", + "pageCount": 384, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=eOR-EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Afghanistan_Papers.html?hl=&id=eOR-EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "1931498717", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Don't Think of an Elephant!", + "authors": [ + "George Lakoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2004-09", + "pageCount": 124, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dovUAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books?id=dovUAgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&hl=en" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781101980972", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Democracy in Chains", + "authors": [ + "Nancy MacLean" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-06-05", + "description": "Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's \"Most Valuable Book\" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ESJaDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Democracy_in_Chains.html?hl=&id=ESJaDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525509578", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "culture" + ], + "title": "The Sum of Us", + "authors": [ + "Heather McGhee" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-02-16", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s new podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL", + "pageCount": 450, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6m7cDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6m7cDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385543378", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Say Nothing", + "authors": [ + "Patrick Radden Keefe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-02-26", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be an FX limited series streaming on HULU • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. \"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga.\" —New York Times Book Review Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.", + "pageCount": 516, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Qw1aDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Qw1aDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385526845", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Beautiful Struggle", + "authors": [ + "Ta-Nehisi Coates" + ], + "publishedDate": "2008-05-06", + "description": "An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us. Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence—and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack—and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present—to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond. Praise for The Beautiful Struggle “I grew up in a Maryland that lay years, miles and worlds away from the one whose summers and sorrows Ta-Nehisi Coates evokes in this memoir with such tenderness and science; and the greatest proof of the power of this work is the way that, reading it, I felt that time, distance and barriers of race and class meant nothing. That in telling his story he was telling my own story, for me.”—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley", + "pageCount": 242, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=hxIZP9gHs-EC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=hxIZP9gHs-EC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385530217", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Snakehead", + "authors": [ + "Patrick Radden Keefe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2009-07-21", + "description": "In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people. “Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=SKxptmGzIoMC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SKxptmGzIoMC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780679645986", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Between the World and Me", + "authors": [ + "Ta-Nehisi Coates" + ], + "publishedDate": "2015-07-14", + "description": "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.", + "pageCount": 163, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=TV05BgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=TV05BgAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "0307279278", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Snakehead", + "authors": [ + "Patrick Radden Keefe" + ], + "publishedDate": "2010-07-27", + "description": "In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people. “Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "True Crime" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6LByqlMGrAEC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Snakehead.html?hl=&id=6LByqlMGrAEC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780547237725", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Big Sort", + "authors": [ + "Bill Bishop", + "Robert G. Cushing" + ], + "publishedDate": "2009", + "description": "In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term \"the big sort.\" Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by state, but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show) compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live a few miles away. How this came to be, and its dire implications for our country, is the subject of this ground-breaking work. In The Big Sort, Bishop has taken his analysis to a new level. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.", + "pageCount": 388, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=nLNVd8ZkW0UC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Sort.html?hl=&id=nLNVd8ZkW0UC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780674050402", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Corruption in America", + "authors": [ + "Zephyr Teachout" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-09-15", + "description": "When Louis XVI gave Ben Franklin a diamond-encrusted snuffbox, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to corrupt him by clouding his judgment. By contrast, in 2010 the Supreme Court gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Zephyr Teachout shows that Citizens United was both bad law and bad history.", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=dctwBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Corruption_in_America.html?hl=&id=dctwBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780999745465", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Curse of Bigness", + "authors": [ + "Tim Wu" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018", + "description": "From the man who coined the term \"net neutrality\" and who has made significant contributions to our understanding of antitrust policy and wireless communications, comes a call for tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness.", + "pageCount": 154, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "BUSINESS & ECONOMICS" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=30sLtAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Curse_of_Bigness.html?hl=&id=30sLtAEACAAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780770436186", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Countdown to Zero Day", + "authors": [ + "Kim Zetter" + ], + "publishedDate": "2014-11-11", + "description": "Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery—apparently as much to the technicians replacing the centrifuges as to the inspectors observing them. Then, five months later, a seemingly unrelated event occurred: A computer security firm in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot some computers in Iran that were crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, the firm’s programmers believed the malicious code on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a mysterious virus of unparalleled complexity. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon. For Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital realm to wreak actual, physical destruction on a nuclear facility. In these pages, Wired journalist Kim Zetter draws on her extensive sources and expertise to tell the story behind Stuxnet’s planning, execution, and discovery, covering its genesis in the corridors of Bush’s White House and its unleashing on systems in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day ranges far beyond Stuxnet itself. Here, Zetter shows us how digital warfare developed in the US. She takes us inside today’s flourishing zero-day “grey markets,” in which intelligence agencies and militaries pay huge sums for the malicious code they need to carry out infiltrations and attacks. She reveals just how vulnerable many of our own critical systems are to Stuxnet-like strikes, from nation-state adversaries and anonymous hackers alike—and shows us just what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by such an attack. Propelled by Zetter’s unique knowledge and access, and filled with eye-opening explanations of the technologies involved, Countdown to Zero Day is a comprehensive and prescient portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.", + "pageCount": 521, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=1l2YAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=1l2YAwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525564638", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Sandworm", + "authors": [ + "Andy Greenberg" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-20", + "description": "\"With the nuance of a reporter and the pace of a thriller writer, Andy Greenberg gives us a glimpse of the cyberwars of the future while at the same time placing his story in the long arc of Russian and Ukrainian history.\" —Anne Applebaum, bestselling author of Twilight of Democracy The true story of the most devastating act of cyberwarfare in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it: \"[A] chilling account of a Kremlin-led cyberattack, a new front in global conflict\" (Financial Times). In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billion dollars in damage—the largest, most destructive cyberattack the world had ever seen. The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in history: a group known as Sandworm. Working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike. A chilling, globe-spanning detective story, Sandworm considers the danger this force poses to our national security and stability. As the Kremlin's role in foreign government manipulation comes into greater focus, Sandworm exposes the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield. It reveals how the lines between digital and physical conflict, between wartime and peacetime, have begun to blur—with world-shaking implications.", + "pageCount": 370, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=NgIHEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Sandworm.html?hl=&id=NgIHEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781526629838", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politic", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends", + "authors": [ + "Nicole Perlroth" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-02-18", + "description": "WINNER OF THE FT & McKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 The instant New York Times bestseller A Financial Times and The Times Book of the Year 'A terrifying exposé' The Times 'Part John le Carré . . . Spellbinding' New Yorker We plug in anything we can to the internet. We can control our entire lives, economy and grid via a remote web control. But over the past decade, as this transformation took place, we never paused to think that we were also creating the world's largest attack surface. And that the same nation that maintains the greatest cyber advantage on earth could also be among its most vulnerable. Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers and a few unsung heroes, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing and gripping feat of journalism. Drawing on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.", + "pageCount": 529, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=xj7rDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/This_Is_How_They_Tell_Me_the_World_Ends.html?hl=&id=xj7rDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780307594655", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Master Switch", + "authors": [ + "Tim Wu" + ], + "publishedDate": "2010-11-02", + "description": "A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year \"A must-read for all Americans who want to remain the ones deciding what they can read, watch, and listen to.” —Arianna Huffington Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today’s great information powers—Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T—Tim Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of \"the master switch\"? Here, Tim Wu shows how a battle royale for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.", + "pageCount": 384, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=6Dp4FoEEo6IC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6Dp4FoEEo6IC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780307463760", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "labor" + ], + "title": "Rework", + "authors": [ + "Jason Fried", + "David Heinemeier Hansson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2010-03-09", + "description": "Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses. What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you. With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of \"downsizing,\" and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.", + "pageCount": 290, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=U77um_h_dgcC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=U77um_h_dgcC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780008323455", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction", + "labor" + ], + "title": "It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work", + "authors": [ + "Jason Fried", + "David Heinemeier Hansson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2018-10-04", + "description": "Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework, are back with a manifesto to combat all your modern workplace worries and fears.", + "pageCount": 240, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Self-Help" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=LsplDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/It_Doesn_t_Have_to_Be_Crazy_at_Work.html?hl=&id=LsplDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781631497780", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy", + "authors": [ + "Adam Jentleson" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-01-12", + "description": "With a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration THE CASE FOR ENDING THE FILIBUSTER \"A truly excellent book… blistering and persuasive.” —Ezra Klein, New York Times An insider’s account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to hijack our democracy. Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster—which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed—to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority. • “Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times • “Careful and thorough and exacting.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books • “[An] excellent, surprising new book.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker", + "pageCount": 301, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=i5HxDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=i5HxDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781953953308", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "development", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Working in Public", + "authors": [ + "Nadia Eghbal" + ], + "publishedDate": "202-08-04", + "description": "An inside look at modern open source software developers--and their influence on our online social world. \"Nadia is one of today's most nuanced thinkers about the depth and potential of online communities, and this book could not have come at a better time.\" --Devon Zuegel, director of product, communities at GitHub Open source software––in which developers publish code that anyone can use––has long served as a bellwether for other online behavior. In the late 1990s, it provided an optimistic model for public collaboration, but in the last 20 years it’s shifted to solo operators who write and publish code that’s consumed by millions. In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet reorienting itself around individual creators. Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators. She examines the trajectory of open source projects, including: - the platform of GitHub, for hosting and development; - the structures, roles, incentives, and relationships involved; - the often-overlooked maintenance required of its creators; - and the costs of production that endure through an application’s lifetime. Eghbal also scrutinizes the role of platforms––like Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram––which reduce infrastructure and distribution costs for creators, but which massively increase the scope of interactions with their audience. Open source communities are increasingly centered around the work of individual developers rather than teams. Similarly, if creators, rather than discrete communities, are going to become the epicenter of our online social systems, we need to better understand how they work––and we can do so by studying what happened to open source.", + "pageCount": 293, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=zxjBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=zxjBEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781101201220", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "labor", + "climate", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Let My People Go Surfing", + "authors": [ + "Yvon Chouinard" + ], + "publishedDate": "2006-09-05", + "description": "Yvon Chouinard-legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.-shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth. From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike. A newly revised edition of Let My People Go Surfing is available now. From the Trade Paperback edition.", + "pageCount": 284, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Om98RYbp-8sC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Let_My_People_Go_Surfing.html?hl=&id=Om98RYbp-8sC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781938340109", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "labor", + "climate", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Responsible Company", + "authors": [ + "Yvon Chouinard", + "Vincent Stanley" + ], + "publishedDate": "2013-10-06", + "description": "The Responsible Company, by Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, and Vincent Stanley, co-editor of its Footprint Chronicles, draw on the their 40 years' experience at Patagonia – and knowledge of current efforts by other companies – to articulate the elements of responsible business for our time. Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery. In plain, compelling prose, the authors describe the current impact of manufacturing and commerce on the planet’s natural systems and human communities, and how that impact now forces business to change its ways. The Responsible Company shows companies how to reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone seeks. It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do, in what order. This is the first book to show companies how to thread their way through economic sea change and slow the drift toward ecological bankruptcy. Its advice is simple but powerful: reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come, and earn the trust you’ll need by treating your workers, customers and communities with respect.", + "pageCount": 160, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=tgLnBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tgLnBAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781594206016", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Dark Mirror", + "authors": [ + "Barton Gellman" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-05-19", + "description": "“Engrossing. . . . Gellman [is] a thorough, exacting reporter . . . a marvelous narrator for this particular story, as he nimbly guides us through complex technical arcana and some stubborn ethical questions. . . . Dark Mirror would be simply pleasurable to read if the story it told didn’t also happen to be frighteningly real.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times From the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the New York Times bestseller Angler, the definitive master narrative of Edward Snowden and the modern surveillance state, based on unique access to Snowden and groundbreaking reportage around the world. Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning. He jumped off from what Snowden gave him to track the reach and methodology of the U.S. surveillance state and bring it to light with astonishing new clarity. Along the way, he interrogated Snowden’s own history and found important ways in which myth and reality do not line up. Gellman treats Snowden with respect, but this is no hagiographic account, and Dark Mirror sets the record straight in ways that are both fascinating and important. Dark Mirror is the story that Gellman could not tell before, a gripping inside narrative of investigative reporting as it happened and a deep dive into the machinery of the surveillance state. Gellman recounts the puzzles, dilemmas and tumultuous events behind the scenes of his work – in top secret intelligence facilities, in Moscow hotel rooms, in huddles with Post lawyers and editors, in Silicon Valley executive suites, and in encrypted messages from anonymous accounts. Within the book is a compelling portrait of national security journalism under pressure from legal threats, government investigations, and foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing Gellman’s files. Throughout Dark Mirror, Gellman wages an escalating battle against unknown adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense. With the vivid and insightful style that is the author’s trademark, Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale about the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents. Along the way, with the benefit of fresh reporting, it tells the full story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since All the President’s Men.", + "pageCount": 450, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=7_LsDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Mirror.html?hl=&id=7_LsDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781953953322", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "culture" + ], + "title": "Get Together", + "authors": [ + "Bailey Richardson ", + "Kevin Huynh ", + "Kai Elmer Sotto" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-08-20", + "description": "A practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community, online or IRL. Although communities feel magical, they don’t come together by magic. Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K–12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them. In Get Together, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto of People & Company share true stories of everyday people who have created thriving communities, both in person and online. They provide clear steps to untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together, helping individuals and organizations navigate the intricacies of leading a community, including: - How to rally the first people - How to get people talking - How to attract new, authentic folks - How to develop leaders and expand globally. The People & Company team reminds us that we each hold the potential to spark a community. Get Together shows readers that if we join forces—as company and customers, artist and fans, organizer and advocates—we’ll do more together than we ever could alone.", + "pageCount": 169, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=BRnBEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=BRnBEAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525561378", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction", + "politics" + ], + "title": "Zucked", + "authors": [ + "Roger McNamee" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-02-04", + "description": "One of the Financial Times' Best Business Books of 2019 The New York Times bestseller about a noted tech venture capitalist, early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook investor, who wakes up to the serious damage Facebook is doing to our society—and sets out to try to stop it. If you had told Roger McNamee even three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying our democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. Zucked is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face. And then comes the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put. To McNamee's shock, even still Facebook's leaders duck and dissemble, viewing the matter as a public relations problem. Now thoroughly alienated, McNamee digs into the issue, and fortuitously meets up with some fellow travelers who share his concern, and help him sharpen its focus. Soon he and a dream team of Silicon Valley technologists are charging into the fray, to raise consciousness about the existential threat of Facebook, and the persuasion architecture of the attention economy more broadly—to our public health and to our political order. Zucked is both an enthralling personal narrative and a masterful explication of the forces that have conspired to place us all on the horns of this dilemma. This is the story of a company and its leadership, but it's also a larger tale of a business sector unmoored from normal constraints, just at a moment of political and cultural crisis, the worst possible time to be given new tools for summoning the darker angels of our nature and whipping them into a frenzy. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, Roger McNamee happened to be in the right place to witness a crime, and it took him some time to make sense of what he was seeing and what we ought to do about it. The result of that effort is a wise, hard-hitting, and urgently necessary account that crystallizes the issue definitively for the rest of us.", + "pageCount": 402, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=DzHJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Zucked.html?hl=&id=DzHJDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780802147950", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Fentanyl, Inc.", + "authors": [ + "Ben Westhoff" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-09-03", + "description": "A four-year investigation into the world of synthetic drugs—from black market factories to users & dealers to harm reduction activists—and what it revealed. A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. “A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape,” writes Ben Westhoff. “These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs” —and all-too-often tragically lethal. Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice—and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe—were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Westhoff visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China’s vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. Poignantly, he chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the United States and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many. “Timely and agonizing. . . . An impressive work of investigative journalism.” —USA Today “Westhoff explores the many-tentacled world of illicit opioids, from the streets of East St. Louis to Chinese pharmaceutical companies, from music festivals deep in the Michigan woods to sanctioned ‘shooting up rooms’ in Barcelona, in this frank, insightful, and occasionally searing exposé. . . . Westhoff’s well-reported and researched work will likely open eyes, slow knee-jerk responses, and start much needed conversations.” —Publishers Weekly “Our 25 Favorite Books of 2019” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Best Books of 2019” —Buzzfeed “Best Nonfiction of 2019” —Kirkus Reviews “50 Best Books of 2019” —Daily Telegraph “Best Nonfiction Books of 2019” —Tyler Cowen “Best Books of 2019” —Yahoo Finance", + "pageCount": 365, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=2xqSDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2xqSDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780241991411", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction", + "autobiography" + ], + "title": "A Promised Land", + "authors": [ + "Barack Obama" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-11-17", + "description": "THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy - and the perfect gift this Christmas! 'Gorgeously written, humorous, compelling, life affirming' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective-the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of \"hope and change,\" and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day. 'What is unexpected in A Promised Land is the former president's candour' David Olusoga, Observer", + "pageCount": 768, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ypb9DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Promised_Land.html?hl=&id=ypb9DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780061809613", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi" + ], + "title": "The Sundering", + "authors": [ + "Walter Jon Williams" + ], + "publishedDate": "2009-10-13", + "description": "“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin Following The Praxis, Walter Jon Williams’ critically-acclaimed mix of space opera and military science fiction, the conflict grows for the fate of humanity…and the universe. The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for ten centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids—a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise—plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination, and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula, whose courageous exploits are becoming legend in the new history of galactic civil war. Yet their cunning, skill, and bravery may be no match for the overwhelming enemy descending upon the loyalist stronghold of Zanshaa, as the horrific battle looms that will determine the structure of the universe—and who shall live to inhabit it—for millennia to come.", + "pageCount": 448, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=qYNIN3Vhe84C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qYNIN3Vhe84C" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780358237068", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Compromised", + "authors": [ + "Peter Strzok" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-09", + "description": "The FBI veteran behind the Russia investigation draws on decades of experience hunting foreign agents in the United States to lay bare the threat posed by President Trump.", + "pageCount": 387, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Biography & Autobiography" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=jYvzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Compromised.html?hl=&id=jYvzDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780804170048", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "economics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Attention Merchants", + "authors": [ + "Tim Wu" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-09-19", + "description": "From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term \"net neutrality”—a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. \"Dazzling.\" —Financial Times Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu’s narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Since then, every new medium—from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook—has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of “attention merchants” has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous reality we can no longer afford to accept at face value.", + "pageCount": 434, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Business & Economics" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=mNkxDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Attention_Merchants.html?hl=&id=mNkxDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780525509691", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "The Purpose of Power", + "authors": [ + "Alicia Garza" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-20", + "description": "An essential guide to building transformative movements to address the challenges of our time, from one of the country’s leading organizers and a co-creator of Black Lives Matter “Excellent and provocative . . . a gateway [to] urgent debates.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Time • Marie Claire • Kirkus Reviews In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called “a love letter to Black people” on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote: Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard ’round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don’t start movements—people do. Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the “rules for radicals” that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American civil rights movement. She reflects instead on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still awakening can inspire and activate more people to fight for the world we all deserve. This is the story of one woman’s lessons through years of bringing people together to create change. Most of all, it is a new paradigm for change for a new generation of changemakers, from the mind and heart behind one of the most important movements of our time.", + "pageCount": 353, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=JgLlDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=JgLlDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780306846441", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Culture Warlords", + "authors": [ + "Talia Lavin" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-10-13", + "description": "One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now. Talia Lavin is every skinhead's worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers. Culture Warlords is the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists. In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme fatale. Along the way, she discovers a whites-only dating site geared toward racists looking for love, a disturbing extremist YouTube channel run by a fourteen-year-old girl with over 800,000 followers, the everyday heroes of the antifascist movement, and much more. By combining compelling stories chock-full of catfishing and gate-crashing with her own in-depth, gut-wrenching research, she also turns the lens of anti-Semitism, racism, and white power back on itself in an attempt to dismantle and decimate the online hate movement from within. Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the Web-and shows us how we can fight back.", + "pageCount": 288, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=XFfODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=XFfODwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781785355448", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Kill All Normies", + "authors": [ + "Angela Nagle" + ], + "publishedDate": "2017-06-07", + "description": "Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battle ground is the internet. On one side the \"alt right\" ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, a culture of struggle sessions and virtue signalling lurks behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures right through to its mainstream expression. Kill All Normies explores some of the cultural genealogies and past parallels of these styles and subcultures, drawing from transgressive styles of 60s libertinism and conservative movements, to make the case for a rejection of the perpetual cultural turn.", + "pageCount": 136, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Social Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=y-MlDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=y-MlDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780771008795", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi", + "fantasy" + ], + "title": "The Handmaid's Tale", + "authors": [ + "Margaret Atwood" + ], + "publishedDate": "2011-09-06", + "description": "An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.", + "pageCount": 370, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=cRPKOzWlOfUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Handmaid_s_Tale.html?hl=&id=cRPKOzWlOfUC" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780374716325", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "tech", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Lurking", + "authors": [ + "Joanne McNeil" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-02-25", + "description": "One of Esquire’s Best Books to Elevate Your Reading List in 2020, , and a OneZero Best Tech Book of 2020. Named one of the 100 Notable books of 2020 by the End of the World Review. A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been. In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life—what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet—have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told. Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.", + "pageCount": 163, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Computers" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=kaqEDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=kaqEDwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781510764705", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "Disloyal: A Memoir", + "authors": [ + "Michael Cohen" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-09-08", + "description": "A #1 New York Times Bestseller! \"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn’t put it down until it was over.\"—Rachel Maddow, MSNBC This book almost didn’t see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication. The Inside Story of the Real President Trump, by His Former Attorney and Personal Advisor—The Man Who Helped Get Him Into the Oval Office Once Donald Trump’s fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried. This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump’s lawyer and “fixer,” Cohen not only witnessed firsthand but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump’s business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration. This is a story that you have not read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television. These are accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for over a decade—not a few months or even a couple of years—could know. Cohen describes Trump’s racist rants against President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Black and Hispanic people in general, as well as the cruelty, humiliation, and abuse he leveled at family and staff. Whether he’s exposing the fact that Trump engaged in tax fraud by inflating his wealth or electronic fraud by rigging an online survey, or outing Trump’s Neanderthal views towards women or his hush-money payments to clandestine lovers, Cohen pulls no punches. He shows Trump’s relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, or manipulate. Trump emerges as a man without a soul—a man who courts evangelicals and then trashes them, panders to the common man, but then rips off small business owners, a con man who will do or say absolutely anything to win, regardless of the cost to his family, his associates, or his country. At the heart of Disloyal, we see how Cohen came under the spell of his charismatic \"Boss\" and, as a result, lost all sense of his moral compass. The real \"real\" Donald Trump who permeates these pages—the racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, cheating President—will be discussed, written about, and analyzed for years to come.", + "pageCount": 415, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=RX33DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=RX33DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781524745738", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction" + ], + "title": "American Rule", + "authors": [ + "Jared Yates Sexton" + ], + "publishedDate": "2021-09-14", + "description": "From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes an eye-opening journey through American history that unearths and debunks the myths we've always told ourselves. Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward? An honest look at the past—and how it’s been covered up—is the only way to find the answers. Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation’s very beginning, and myths of America’s unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here—and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination. Stirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been—and challenges us to forge a new path.", + "pageCount": 385, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "History" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=QOY9EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Rule.html?hl=&id=QOY9EAAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9780385543798", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "scifi", + "fantasy" + ], + "title": "The Testaments", + "authors": [ + "Margaret Atwood" + ], + "publishedDate": "2019-09-10", + "description": "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A modern masterpiece that \"reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale. “Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.", + "pageCount": 412, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Fiction" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=P6F7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=P6F7DwAAQBAJ" + }, + { + "isbn": "9781250200891", + "dateFinished": "2024-04-21", + "status": "finished", + "rating": "unrated", + "tags": [ + "politics", + "nonfiction", + "tech", + "economics" + ], + "title": "Break 'Em Up", + "authors": [ + "Zephyr Teachout" + ], + "publishedDate": "2020-05-19", + "description": "A passionate attack on the monopolies that are throttling American democracy. Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the US justice system. How can we recover our freedom from these giants? Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout has the answer: Break 'Em Up. This book is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today's progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens, and historically-disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices. In order to build a better future, we must eradicate monopolies from the private sector and create new safeguards that prevent new ones from seizing power. Through her expert analysis of monopolies in several sectors and their impact on courts, journalism, inequality, and politics, Teachout offers a concrete path toward thwarting these enemies of working Americans and reclaiming our democracy before it’s too late.", + "pageCount": 320, + "printType": "BOOK", + "categories": [ + "Political Science" + ], + "thumbnail": "https://books.google.com/books/content?id=MPQ5yAEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api&w=512", + "language": "en", + "link": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Break_Em_Up.html?hl=&id=MPQ5yAEACAAJ" } ] \ No newline at end of file