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Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

The Moviegoer cover

The Moviegoer

Walker Percy

Open Road Media , 2011 • 184 pages

In this National Book Award–winning novel from a “brilliantly breathtaking writer,” a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras (The New York Times Book Review) On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx’s one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life

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Black Markets and Militants

Khalid Mustafa Medani

Cambridge University Press , 2022 • 427 pages

Understanding the political and socio-economic factors which give rise to youth recruitment into militant organizations is central to grasping some of the most important issues that affect the contemporary Middle East and Africa In this book, Khalid Mustafa Medani explains why youth are attracted to militant organizations, examining the specific role economic globalization plays in determining how and why militant activists emerge Based on extensive fieldwork, Medani offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of globalization, neoliberal reforms and informal economic networks on the rise and evolution of moderate and militant Islamist movements

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The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

Jan Potocki

Penguin UK , 2006 • 933 pages

Alphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739 But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which tales of characters transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories, which, like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, provides entertainment on an epic scale.

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The Intelligence Intellectuals

Peter C. Grace

Georgetown University Press , 2026 • 235 pages

The untold story of how America's brightest academic minds revolutionized intelligence analysis at the CIA In the early days of the Cold War, the United States faced a crisis in intelligence analysis A series of intelligence failures in 1949 and 1950, including the failure to warn about the North Korean invasion of South Korea, made it clear that gut instinct and traditional practices were no longer sufficient for intelligence analysis in the nuclear age

Joe's recommendation

Recommended by Joe Recommended by Joe

The Vanishing Children of Paris cover

The Vanishing Children of Paris

Arlette Farge, Jacques Revel

Harvard University Press , 1993 • 158 pages

In the spring of 1750 children began to disappear from the streets of Paris as they made their way to school, as they ran errands for their parents, even from the presence of their parents-- no child was safe Astonishing rumors quickly spread .. In fact, the police had been given sweeping powers of arrest to control the problems of vagrancy; some were clearly abusing that power

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Money Beyond Borders

Barry Eichengreen

Princeton University Press , 2026 • 344 pages

A 2,500-year history of international currencies that reveals new insights about the future of the U.S. dollar—as well as crypto and central bank digital currencies Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances Will the dollar continue to reign supreme In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar’s prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow

The Radical Fund cover

The Radical Fund

John Fabian Witt

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 679 pages

From Pulitzer Prize finalist John Fabian Witt comes the captivating secret history of an epic experiment to remake American democracy Before the dark money of the Koch Brothers, before the billions of the Ford Foundation, there was the Garland Fund In 1922, a young idealist named Charles Garland rejected a million-dollar inheritance

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Economics Rules cover

Economics Rules

Dani Rodrik

National Geographic Books , 2015

A leading economist trains a lens on his own discipline to uncover when it fails and when it works In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economic science seems anything but In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within the science, renders a surprisingly upbeat judgment on economics

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A Canticle for Leibowitz

Walter M. Miller (Jr.)

Spectra , 1997 • 376 pages

The winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Miller's bestselling work is a true landmark of 20th-century literature--a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.

The Everywhere Millionaire

Owen Zidar, Eric Zwick

Henry Holt and Company , 2026

From two leading economists comes a groundbreaking new portrait of the hidden fortunes of Main Street business owners—ordinary Americans who built extraordinary wealth and are quietly rewriting the rules of money and power Most people think the path to great wealth runs through Wall Street or Silicon Valley We’re told you must be a Zuckerberg, a Musk, or a Jamie Dimon to get rich

Firearms cover

Firearms

Kenneth Warren Chase

Cambridge University Press , 2003 • 324 pages

This book is a history of firearms across the world from the 1100s up to the 1700s, from the time of their invention in China to the time when European firearms had become clearly superior It asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who had invented them, but it answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world.

Joe's recommendation

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The Discovery of the Mind cover

The Discovery of the Mind

Bruno Snell

Courier Corporation , 2012 • 354 pages

"An illuminating and convincing account of the enormous change in the whole conception of morals and human personality which took place during the centuries covered by Homer, the early lyric poets, the dramatists, and Socrates." — The Times (London) Literary Supplement European thinking began with the Greeks Science, literature, ethics, philosophy — all had their roots in the extraordinary civilization that graced the shores of the Mediterranean a few millennia ago

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Never Turn Back

Julian Gewirtz

Harvard University Press , 2022 • 433 pages

The 1980s saw spirited debate in China, as officials and the public pressed for economic and political liberalization But after Tiananmen, the Communist Party erased the reform debate from memory Julian Gewirtz shows how the leadership expunged alternative visions of China’s future and set the stage for the policing of history under Xi Jinping.

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Feed the People!

Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg

Hachette UK , 2026

Why Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and other slow-food-loving locavores are wrong about food in America—and why Waffle House can save us all The food industry is a major driver of climate change, pollution, obesity, animal suffering, and workplace exploitation Many food writers blame the industrial food system and tell individual eaters to fix these problems by buying local, artisanal food from small farmers—a solution most Americans can’t afford But, as food policy experts Gabriel Rosenberg and Jan Dutkiewicz remind us, modern technology has made food more affordable, abundant, varied, and tastier than at any other time in history

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Meat

Bruce Friedrich

Simon and Schuster , 2026 • 336 pages

"This packed account makes food science feel like an urgent and essential undertaking." —Publishers Weekly (Top Ten New Release in Science) Good Food Institute founder and president Bruce Friedrich offers a hopeful and rigorously researched exploration of how science, policy, and industry can work together to satisfy the world’s soaring demand for meat, while building a healthier and more sustainable world The human love of meat appears to be hard-wired

George Wallace cover

George Wallace

Stephan Lesher

Addison Wesley Publishing Company , 1994 • 632 pages

The first full-scale biography of one of the most pivotal and complex political figures in American history George Wallace formulated the themes that have helped elect every president from Nixon to Clinton and fueled the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot A revealing look that reveals both good and bad.

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The Invention of the Future

Bruno Carvalho

Princeton University Press , 2026 • 440 pages

A kaleidoscopic and original new history of urbanization—from Lisbon to New York, Paris to Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires to Lagos For the past three centuries, urban dwellers and planners have imagined future cities that would be radically different from those of the past Planners pursued progress, whether focused on flying vehicles above, sewage systems below, or daily life in between Yet, as Bruno Carvalho shows in this original and wide-ranging history, which features some sixty illustrations, modern cities continuously defied predictions

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The English Understand Wool

Helen DeWitt

New Directions Publishing , 2022 • 61 pages

A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friends Maman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training Others may not be so fortunate If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified

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The Mauritius Command

Patrick O'Brian

HarperCollins , 1977 • 286 pages

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are now widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written All eighteen books are being re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command -- until his friend, and occasional intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope, under a Commodore's pennant But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains -- Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity can push his crews to the verge of mutiny.

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Victorian Psycho

Virginia Feito

HarperCollins UK , 2025 • 167 pages

Jane Eyre meets American Psycho Gloriously outrageous, sensationally unhinged' SUNDAY TIMES ‘Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny' CATRIONA WARD 'Weird and wonderful' LUCY MANGAN, GUARDIAN

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Scaffolding

Lauren Elkin

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2024 • 348 pages

A Best Book of the Year: Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Week, The New Statesman A Must-Read: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Frieze, Literary Hub, The Millions, BBC, Our Culture, i news “Sexy, intelligent . . . biting, too.” —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair The debut novel by the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is a story of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time Paris, 2019

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Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 416 pages

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 BOOKER PRIZE* *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD* *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 PEN FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION* *AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ATLANTIC, VULTURE, VOGUE, THE WASHINGTON POST, KIRKUS REVIEWS, NPR, THE ECONOMIST, THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, VOX, and more* From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a “vital” (The Washington Post) and “wickedly entertaining” (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and clean beauty who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian she has met by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental

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The Fort Bragg Cartel

Seth Harp

Penguin , 2025 • 369 pages

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2025 “Probably the most gripping, memorable, eye-opening book I’ve read in months.” —David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times “Propulsive.” —The Washington Post “Engrossing. . . Truly shocking.” —The New Republic “The Fort Bragg Cartel opens like a nonfiction thriller and never lets up A page-turning investigation into the dark side of our forever wars.” —Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s premier special operations base, and what the crimes reveal about drug trafficking and impunity among elite soldiers in today’s military In December 2020, a deer hunter discovered two dead bodies that had been riddled with bullets and dumped in a forested corner of Fort Bragg, North Carolina

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I): Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize cover

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I): Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize

Solvej Balle

New Directions Publishing , 2024 • 106 pages

Utterly riveting, Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) is the grand opening of her speculative fiction septology, winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize (Scandinavia’s most important literary award) for being “a masterpiece of its time.” A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024 A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024 SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons

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Underground Asia

Tim Harper

Belknap Press , 2021 • 873 pages

An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A major historian tells the dramatic and untold story of the shadowy networks of revolutionaries across Asia who laid the foundations in the early twentieth century for the end of European imperialism on their continent This is the epic tale of how modern Asia emerged out of conflict between imperial powers and a global network of revolutionaries in the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century

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Roots of Reform

Elizabeth Sanders

University of Chicago Press , 1999 • 552 pages

Offering a revision of the understanding of the rise of the American regulatory state in the late 19th century, this book argues that politically mobilised farmers were the driving force behind most of the legislation that increased national control.

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The Command of the Ocean

N. A. M. Rodger

Allan Lane , 2004 • 1016 pages

The Command of the Ocean describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government Based on the author's own research in half a dozen languages over nearly a decade, and synthesising a vast quantity of secondary material, it describes not just battles and cruises but how the Navy was manned, how it was supplied with timber, hemp and iron, how its men (and sometimes women) were fed, and above all how it was financed and directed

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Journey by Moonlight

Antal Szerb

New York Review of Books , 2014 • 321 pages

An NYRB Classics Original The trouble begins in Venice, the first stop on Erzsi and Mihály’s honeymoon tour of Italy Here Erzsi discovers that her new husband prefers wandering back alleys on his own to her company The trouble picks up in Ravenna, where a hostile man zooms up on a motorcycle as the couple are sitting at an outdoor café

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The Philosopher in the Valley

Michael Steinberger

Simon & Schuster (UK) , 2025

In the age of big data, no company embodies its promise and its perils more than Palantir This software firm sells some of the most powerful and dangerous technology in the world, ingesting huge quantities of data and spotting patterns, trends, and connections that would likely elude most people Apart from Facebook, you'd be hard-pressed to find another tech company that's making as big of a splash - or fraught with more potential pitfalls

Joe's recommendation

Recommended by Joe Recommended by Joe

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The Fabric of Civilization cover

The Fabric of Civilization

Virginia Postrel

2021 • 320 pages

From Neanderthal string to 3D knitting, an "expansive" global history that highlights "how textiles truly changed the world" (Wall Street Journal) The story of humanity is the story of textiles--as old as civilization itself Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history

America cover

America

Jean Baudrillard

Verso , 1989 • 148 pages

In this, his most accessible and evocative book, France’s leading philosopher of postmodernism takes to the freeways in a collection of traveler’s tales from the land of hyperreality.

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More Heat Than Light

Philip Mirowski

Cambridge University Press , 1991 • 468 pages

The development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect on the emergence of neoclassical economics are traced to reveal how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value.

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The Last Days of Budapest

Adam LeBor

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2025 • 546 pages

The Last Days of Budapest tells the powerful story of one of the least-known but most important episodes of the Second World War: life and death in the Hungarian capital from autumn 1940 to early 1945, a gripping story of spies, fanaticism, genocide and military disaster.

Tracy's recommendation

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A Marriage at Sea

Sophie Elmhirst

Penguin Group , 2025 • 257 pages

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025 ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves You won’t be able to put it down.” – USA Today “Remarkable… I found myself, alternately, holding my breath as I read at top speed, wandering rooms in search of someone to read aloud to, and placing the book facedown, arrested by quiet statements that left me reeling with their depth.” – The New York Times “Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction

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The Thousand-Mile War

Brian Garfield

University of Alaska Press , 2010 • 481 pages

The Thousand-Mile War is a powerful story of the battles of the United States and Japan on the bitter rim of the North Pacific, that has been acclaimed as one of the great accounts of World War II Author Brian Garfield, a novelist and screenwriter whose works have sold some 20 million copies, was searching for a new story when he came upon this "forgotten war" in Alaska He found the history of the brave men who had served in the Aleutians so compelling that he wrote the first full-length history of the Aleutian campaign

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The Rise and Reign of the Mammals

Steve Brusatte

HarperCollins , 2022 • 574 pages

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, a "brilliant" and "beautifully told" new history of mammals, illuminating the lost story of the extraordinary family tree that led to us [New Scientist; The Times UK] National Bestseller • Top 10 Nonfiction of the Year: Kirkus • Best Science Book of the Year: The Times UK We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals

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The Gunfighters

Bryan Burrough

Penguin , 2025 • 366 pages

"One of the most important books written on the American West in many years." - True West Magazine From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface

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The Army of Ptolemaic Egypt 323–204 BC

Paul Johstono

Pen and Sword Military , 2020 • 488 pages

A study reconstructed through a wide range of ancient sources, from histories to documentary papyri and inscriptions to archaeological finds The Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled Egypt and much of the eastern Mediterranean basin for nearly 300 years As a Macedonian dynasty, they derived much of their legitimacy from military activity

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Fifth Sun

Camilla Townsend

2019 • 337 pages

Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.

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I Deliver Parcels in Beijing

Hu Anyan

Astra Publishing House , 2025 • 338 pages

An Economist Best Book of 2025 A Financial Times Best Book of 2025 A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025 "Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, translated by Jack Hargreaves, offers an unvarnished dispatch from the front lines of the gig economy...The Cinderella bit of it is that now he can add a new title: internationally best-selling author." —Leah Greenblatt, The New York Times Book Review A runaway bestseller in China, sold in 20+ countries, this delightfully honest and humorous account gives a face and voice to the future of work—as if Nomadland met Nickel and Dimed In 2023, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing became the literary sensation of the year in China

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Global Heartland

Peter Simons

U of Minnesota Press , 2025 • 211 pages

Highlighting the critical role of midwestern farmers in the creation of the American Century Though often left out of the story of the making of the American Century, the farmers of the Midwest were at its center, fueling the nation’s growing power in the midtwentieth century In Global Heartland, Peter Simons explores how, after decades of slipping to the margins of an urbanizing economy, these farmers assumed renewed strategic and cultural importance as they produced essential sustenance for overseas troops and food rations for a domestic population

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Darfur

Millard Burr, Robert O. Collins

2008 • 376 pages

In Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster, Burr and Collins have updated their original 1999 volume with additional chapters The new title is not a publisher's gimmick: this is indeed the prehistory of Darfur's tragedy, and it is essential, if difficult, reading for any serious student of the crisis.. Not only does it provide an account of a history indispensable for understanding Darfur, but it is a salutary reminder of how intractable conflicts in the Chad basin can be. --African Studies Review Millard Burr and Robert Collins' book documents the twists and turns in this long-running saga...

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The Eagle and the Hart

Helen Castor

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 576 pages

From an acclaimed historian comes an epic tale of power and betrayal: the dual biography of Richard II and Henry IV, two cousins whose tumultuous reigns shaped the course of English history Richard of Bordeaux and Henry of Bolingbroke, cousins born just three months apart, were ten years old when Richard became king of England They were thirty-two when Henry deposed him and became king in his place

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Rivers of Empire

Donald Worster

1992 • 420 pages

The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land

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The Emergence of Globalism

Or Rosenboim

Princeton University Press , 2017 • 349 pages

How competing visions of world order in the 1940s gave rise to the modern concept of globalism During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system Without using the term "globalization," they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a "globalist" ideology to reflect this new postwar reality

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Winters in the World

Eleanor Parker

Reaktion Books , 2023 • 267 pages

Interweaving literature, history, and religion, an exquisite meditation on the turning of the seasons in medieval England—now in paperback Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs, and traditions linked to the different seasons

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The Death of the French Atlantic

Alan Forrest

Oxford University Press , 2020 • 351 pages

The Death of the French Atlantic examines the sudden and irreversible decline of France's Atlantic empire in the Age of Revolution, and shows how three major forces undermined the country's competitive position as an Atlantic commercial power The first was war, especially war at sea against France's most consistent enemy and commercial rival in the eighteenth century, Great Britain A series of colonial wars, from the Seven Years' War and the War of American Independence to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars did much to drive France out of the North Atlantic

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How We Disappear

Thomas S. Mullaney

W. W. Norton & Company , 2026

A brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay Our lives are collections of information—from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and random artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent’s death

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Pirate Imperialism

Manuel Barcia

Yale University Press , 2026 • 177 pages

This first truly global history of the suppression of piracy links maritime raiding to empire building in the nineteenth century In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Southeast Asia and China, imperial powers claimed that progress was being held back by the barbarity and greed of pirates, who repeatedly attacked imperial vessels

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The Torqued Man

Peter Mann

HarperCollins , 2022 • 351 pages

“A damn good read.”—Alan Furst A brilliant debut novel, at once teasing literary thriller and a darkly comic blend of history and invention, The Torqued Man is set in wartime Berlin and propelled by two very different but equally mesmerizing voices: a German spy handler and his Irish secret agent, neither of whom are quite what they seem Berlin—September, 1945 Two manuscripts are found in rubble, each one narrating conflicting versions of the life of an Irish spy during the war

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The Exorcist

William Peter Blatty

Random House , 2007 • 370 pages

Father Damien Karras: 'Where is Regan'Regan MacNeil: 'In here With us'.The terror begins unobtrusively Noises in Regan's room, an odd smell, the displacement of furniture, an icy chill Easy explanations are offered Then frightening changes start in

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The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926

Jonathan Coopersmith

Cornell University Press , 2016 • 392 pages

The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 is the first full account of the widespread adoption of electricity in Russia, from the beginning in the 1880s to its early years as a state technology under Soviet rule Jonathan Coopersmith has mined the archives for both the tsarist and the Soviet periods to examine a crucial element in the modernization of Russia Coopersmith shows how the Communist Party forged an alliance with engineers to harness the socially transformative power of this science-based enterprise

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Sincerity and Authenticity

Lionel Trilling

Harvard University Press , 1973 • 201 pages

Trilling is concerned with the process by which the arduous enterprise of sincerity, of being true to one’s self, came to occupy a place of supreme importance in the moral life—and the further shift which finds that place now usurped by the darker and still more strenuous modern ideal of authenticity.

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Cue the Sun!

Emily Nussbaum

Random House , 2024 • 465 pages

The rollicking saga of reality television, a “sweeping” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture” (NPR) “Passionate, exquisitely told . . With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail . . . [Nussbaum] knits her talents for sharp analysis and telling reportage well.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) In development as a docuseries from the studio behind Spencer and Spotlight ONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre

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A Scandal in Königsberg

Christopher Clark

Penguin Group , 2026

Named a Best Book of the Year by TheTimes (London) As told by one of our greatest historians, the story of the scandal that took down two Lutheran preachers in the heart of nineteenth-century Prussia—a chamber piece of cultish esotericism, pseudoscience, and political resistance that conjures up Europe at the end of the age of reason and presages our current age of misinformation In 1835, Johannes Ebel and Georg Heinrich Diestel were tried for having started a cult Worse: It was a cult that encouraged scandalous sexual behavior in women, including the daughters of prestigious Prussian families—causing the deaths of two young women from sexual exhaustion

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The Elusive Body

Alexandra Sifferlin

Penguin Group , 2026

A compelling, necessary, and timely investigation into the diagnosis crisis in the American healthcare system, from the patients living with undiagnosed illnesses, to the doctors searching for answers, and what their quests reveal about our flawed medical system An estimated tens of millions of Americans live with conditions that elude diagnosis, often navigating a healthcare system that fails to recognize or effectively address their suffering Journalist Alexandra Sifferlin has spent years investigating the diagnosis crisis in America—what it means to live without a diagnosis and how both medical and patient communities are working to improve the diagnostic process

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Idolatry

Moshe Halbertal, Avishai Margalit

Harvard University Press , 1992 • 318 pages

Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G.E Moore, this account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities.

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From Frontiers to Borders

Kerry Goettlich

Cambridge University Press , 2025

How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences This book examines these key questions with a unique global perspective Kerry Goettlich argues that linear boundaries are products of particular colonial encounters, rather than being essentially an intra-European practice artificially imposed on colonized regions

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Into the Bright Sunshine

Samuel G. Freedman

Oxford University Press , 2023 • 517 pages

Hubert Humphrey, a fallen hero and a dying man, rose on rickety legs to approach the podium of the Philadelphia Convention Hall, his pulpit for the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania He clutched a sheaf of paper with his speech for the occasion, typed and double-spaced by an assistant from his extemporaneous dictation, and then marked up in pencil by Humphrey himself A note on the first page, circled to draw particular attention, read simply, "30 years ago--Here." In this place, at that time, twenty-nine years earlier to be precise, he had made history

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The Age of Confiscation

Nicholas Mulder

Random House , 2026

A sweeping, resonant, revelatory history of how the expropriation of property made the modern world, by a brilliant young historian Expropriation – the forced transfer of property rights – is usually associated with dictators, unstable countries, and violent revolution But in fact, it has been integral to the political and economic history of the West, enabling everything from the abolition of serfdom and slavery to decolonization, Allied victory in two world wars and the birth of the modern welfare state

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Bunker Hill

Nathaniel Philbrick

Penguin , 2013 • 418 pages

The bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and In the Hurricane's Eye tells the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution, in this "masterpiece of narrative and perspective." (Boston Globe) In the opening volume of his acclaimed American Revolution series, Nathaniel Philbrick turns his keen eye to pre-Revolutionary Boston and the spark that ignited the American Revolution In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the violence at Lexington and Concord, the conflict escalated and skirmishes gave way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill

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Blue Lard

Vladimir Sorokin

New York Review of Books , 2024 • 367 pages

The Russian master's most infamous novel, a dystopian fever dream about cloning, alternative histories, and world domination Blue Lard is an act of desecration Blue Lard is what's left after the towering masterpieces of Russian literature have been blown to smithereens, the most graphic, shocking, controversial, and celebrated book to be published in Russia since the end of Communism

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Opus

Gareth Gore

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 448 pages

A thrilling exposé recounting how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks For over half a century, Banco Popular was one of the most profitable banks in the world—until one day, in 2017, when the Spanish bank suddenly collapsed overnight When investigative journalist Gareth Gore was dispatched to report on the story, he expected to find yet another case of unbridled capitalist ambition gone wrong

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Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City

Jonathan Soffer

Columbia University Press , 2012 • 526 pages

In 1978, Ed Koch assumed control of a city plagued by filth, crime, bankruptcy, and racial tensions By the end of his mayoral run in 1989 and despite the Wall Street crash of 1987, his administration had begun rebuilding neighborhoods and infrastructure Unlike many American cities, Koch's New York was growing, not shrinking

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The Power of Peasant Consumers

Luis Almenar Fernández

Cambridge University Press , 2025

The long-held view of the peasantry as a passive social group has gradually been replaced by a positive narrative that stresses peasant agency in economic, social, and even political terms Contributing to this shift, Luis Almenar Fernández explores the objects that peasants used to store, cook, and serve their food in late medieval Valencia

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General Purpose Technologies and Economic Growth

Elhanan Helpman

MIT Press , 1998 • 348 pages

Traditionally, economists have considered the accumulation of conventional inputs such as labour and capital to be the primary force behind economic growth In the late-1990s however, many economists place technological progress at the centre of the growth process This shift is due to theoretical developments that allow researchers to link microeconomic outcomes.

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Mirrors of Empire

Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam

State University of New York Press , 2026 • 532 pages

Approaches the history of the Mughal Empire at the level of human experience, through a diverse group of autobiographical narratives Starting from 1526, the Mughals ruled over much of India for three centuries, perhaps the most important Islamic empire in the early modern world This period saw the production of a fascinating variety of memoirs and autobiographies in which residents of the empire reflected on their own lives, on Islam in a Hindu context, and on the relationship of individual subjects to their new rulers

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Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Sunil S. Amrith

Harvard University Press , 2013 • 325 pages

For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and as a battleground for European empires, while being shaped by monsoons and human migration Integrating environmental history and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil S Amrith offers insights to the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.

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Ways and Means

Roger Lowenstein

Penguin , 2022 • 449 pages

“Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal “Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis

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The Rouse

China Miéville

Pan Macmillan , 2026

COMING SEPTEMBER 2026 From the bestselling and award-winning master of speculative fiction comes a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic: forced to investigate a devastating personal tragedy, an ordinary woman stumbles on dark conspiracies, and provokes the attention of uncanny forces.

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Rejection

Tony Tulathimutte

HarperCollins , 2024 • 259 pages

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "A master comedian with a virtuoso prose style has produced an audacious, original and highly disturbing book . . . an incandescent satire." —Giles Harvey, The New York Times Magazine From the Whiting and O Henry–winning author of Private Citizens (“the first great millennial novel,” New York Magazine), an electrifying novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos

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Treason in the Blood

Anthony Cave Brown

1994 • 734 pages

Kim Philby has been called "one of the most remarkable double-agents to have been exposed in our time" Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Kim Philby's father and mentor, was one of the most intriguing intellectuals and adventurers of our time, a manipulator who played a key role in establishing the modern Middle East In this dual biography, Anthony Cave Brown, tells the extraordinary story of two men whose lives were directly opposed to the establishment into which they were born and for which they were bred

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Maintenance of Everything

Stewart Brand

Stripe Press , 2026 • 272 pages

The first in-depth exploration of maintenance—and a powerful argument for its civilizational importance—from the author of How Buildings Learn and creator of the Whole Earth Catalog Maintenance is what keeps everything going It’s what keeps life going Yet it’s also easy to shirk or defer—until the thing breaks, the system falters, and everything stops

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Perfection

Vincenzo Latronico

New York Review of Books , 2025 • 137 pages

A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A 2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist Nominee Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature Winner of AIRMAIL's Inaugural Tom Wolfe Literary Prize for Fiction A scathing, provocative novel about contemporary existence by a rising star in Italian literature Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online

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Tom's Crossing

Mark Z. Danielewski

Random House , 2025 • 1233 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of House of Leaves comes a magisterial novel about two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter. “This is an amazing work of fiction I absolutely loved it At the heart you’ll find a blood-drenched story of pursuit and two brave and resourceful children

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The House of Wisdom

Jim Al-Khalili

Penguin Press HC , 2011 • 302 pages

Challenges popular misconceptions to reveal the unrecognized scientific accomplishments of medieval Islam, profiling innovations that played significant roles in bridging the ancient and modern worlds while promoting the European Renaissance.

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1929

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Random House , 2025 • 753 pages

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.” —The Wall Street Journal Named a Most Anticipated Book by New York Times Books Review, TIME, Washington Post, Associated Press, Town & Country, New York Post, and more From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, “the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,” (The Atlantic) comes a riveting narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history—one with ripple effects that still shape our society today In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation

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Luminous

Silvia Park

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 400 pages

Prescient yet timeless, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, this highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood. “I once had a family At least, the earliest version of me had a family.” In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts

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Homeland

Richard Beck

Crown , 2024 • 593 pages

A groundbreaking history of how the decades-long war on terror changed virtually every aspect of American life, from the erosion of citizenship down to the cars we bought and TV we watched—by an acclaimed n+1 writer “Richard Beck, like many people alive today, has spent his adult life living in the shadow of 9/11, and Homeland is a devastating inquiry into the new world that day created.”—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere With all of the military violence occurring overseas even as the threat of sudden mass death permeated life at home, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time

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Peasant Metropolis

David L. Hoffmann

Cornell University Press , 2018 • 307 pages

During the 1930's, 23 million peasants left their villages and moved to Soviet cities, where they comprised almost half the urban population and more than half the nation's industrial workers Drawing on previously inaccessible archival materials, David L Hoffmann shows how this massive migration to the cities—an influx unprecedented in world history—had major consequences for the nature of the Soviet system and the character of Russian society even today.Hoffmann focuses on events in Moscow between the launching of the industrialization drive in 1929 and the outbreak of war in 1941

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Kingdoms of Faith

Brian A. Catlos

Oxford University Press , 2018 • 498 pages

Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain either as a paradise of enlightened tolerance, or as the site where civilisations clashed Award-winning historian Brian A Catlos taps a wide array of original sources to paint a more complex picture, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilisation that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and amongst themselves Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause--a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.Kingdoms of Faith rewrites Spain's Islamic past from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendour of al-Andalus and the many forces that shaped it.

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The Matter Factory

Peter J. T. Morris

Reaktion Books , 2015 • 504 pages

White coats, Bunsen burners, beakers, flasks, and pipettes—the furnishings of the chemistry laboratory are familiar to most of us from our school days, but just how did these items come to be the crucial tools of science Examining the history of the laboratory, Peter J T Morris offers a unique way to look at the history of chemistry itself, showing how the development of the laboratory helped shape modern chemistry

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The Sublime Post

Choon Hwee Koh

Yale University Press , 2024 • 272 pages

A history of the postal system that once connected the Ottoman Empire Before the advent of steamships or the telegraph, the premier technology for long-distance communication was the horse-run relay system Every empire had one--including the Ottoman Empire In The Sublime Post, Choon Hwee Koh examines how the vast Ottoman postal system worked across three centuries by tracking the roles of eight small-scale actors--the Courier, the Tatar, Imperial Decrees, the Bookkeeper, the Postmaster, the Villager, Money, and the Horse

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Moving Crops and the Scales of History

Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John Bosco Lourdusamy, Tiago Saraiva

Yale University Press , 2023 • 353 pages

A bold redefinition of historical inquiry based on the "cropscape"--the people, creatures, technologies, ideas, and places that surround a crop Human efforts to move crops from one place to another have been a key driving force in history Crops have been on the move for millennia, from wildlands into fields, from wetlands to dry zones, from one imperial colony to another This book is a bold but approachable attempt to redefine historical inquiry based on the "cropscape": the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop

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Agents of Empire

Noel Malcolm

Penguin UK , 2015 • 855 pages

In the second half of the sixteenth century, most of the Christian states of Western Europe were on the defensive against a Muslim superpower - the Empire of the Ottoman sultans There was violent conflict, from raiding and corsairing to large-scale warfare, but there were also many forms of peaceful interaction across the surprisingly porous frontiers of these opposing power-blocs Agents of Empire describes the paths taken through the eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland by members of a Venetian-Albanian family, almost all of them previously invisible to history

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That Most Precious Merchandise

Hannah Barker

University of Pennsylvania Press , 2019 • 323 pages

The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves stretches from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea

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Shadow Ticket

Thomas Pynchon

Penguin , 2025 • 305 pages

A New York Times Bestseller • A New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, Vulture, TIME, The Guardian, The New Republic, and LitHub The new novel from Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice. “A masterpiece.” —The Telegraph “Bonkers and brilliant fun.” —The Washington Post “Late Pynchon at his finest Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, Shadow Ticket capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance — and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open.” —The Los Angeles Times Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind

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The Unwinding

George Packer

Faber & Faber , 2013 • 490 pages

America is in crisis In the space of a generation, it has become more than ever a country of winners and losers, as industries have failed, institutions have disappeared and the country's focus has shifted to idolise celebrity and wealth George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades, bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges, his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving together engaging narratives

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Boundaries of Belonging

Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer

Cambridge University Press , 2026

Examining sectarian divergence in the early modern Middle East, this study provides a fresh perspective on the Sunni-Shi'i division Drawing on Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and European sources, Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer explores the paradox of an Ottoman state that combined rigid ideological discourses with pragmatic governance Through an analysis of key figures, events, periods, and policies, it reveals how political, economic, and religious forces intersected, challenging simplistic sectarian binaries

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The Disappearance of Childhood

Neil Postman

Vintage , 1994 • 194 pages

From the vogue for nubile models to the explosion in the juvenile crime rate, this modern classic of social history and media traces the precipitous decline of childhood in America today−and the corresponding threat to the notion of adulthood Deftly marshaling a vast array of historical and demographic research, Neil Postman, author of Technopoly, suggests that childhood is a relatively recent invention, which came into being as the new medium of print imposed divisions between children and adults

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Misconceiving Canada

Kenneth McRoberts

Oxford University Press Canada , 1997 • 424 pages

This book examines the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada, from its historical roots, the roles of governments such as Trudeau and Mulroney, issues of official bilingualism, multiculturalism, the 1995 Quebec Referendum and the impact Quebec separatism would have on the future of Canada.

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The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson

Random House , 2010 • 641 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “A brilliant and stirring epic . . Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”—John Stauffer, The Wall Street Journal “What she’s done with these oral histories is stow memory in amber.”—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times WINNER: The Mark Lynton History Prize • The Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize • The Hurston-Wright Award for Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • NAACP Image Award for Best Literary Debut • Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize FINALIST: The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Dayton Literary Peace Prize ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • USA Today • Publishers Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • Salon • Newsday • The Daily Beast ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • The Washington Post • The Economist •Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Christian Science Monitor In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970

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This Divided Island

Samanth Subramanian

Macmillan + ORM , 2015 • 259 pages

Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka

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Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

Peter Pomerantsev

Faber & Faber , 2015 • 224 pages

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable

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Crazy Like Us

Ethan Watters

Simon and Schuster , 2010 • 322 pages

“A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson) In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon

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Private Life under Socialism

Yunxiang Yan

Stanford University Press , 2003 • 319 pages

For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer In 1989, he returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years’ fieldwork that has resulted in this book—a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999 The author’s focus on the personal and the emotional sets this book apart from most studies of the Chinese family

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The Great Departure

Tara Zahra

W. W. Norton & Company , 2016 • 286 pages

Zahra handles this immensely complicated and multidimensional history with remarkable clarity and feeling. —Robert Levgold, Foreign Affairs Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations of human history, emptying out villages and irrevocably changing both their new homes and the ones they left behind With a keen historical perspective on the most consequential social phenomenon of the twentieth century, Tara Zahra shows how the policies that gave shape to this migration provided the precedent for future events such as the Holocaust, the closing of the Iron Curtain, and the tragedies of ethnic cleansing In the epilogue, she places the current refugee crisis within the longer history of migration.

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Guests of the Sheik

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Anchor , 1995 • 370 pages

A delightful account of one woman's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. "A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]—simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." —Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity A wonderful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study that offers a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.

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Ants Among Elephants

Sujatha Gidla

Macmillan + ORM , 2017 • 298 pages

A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017 A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017 " Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer." — The Economist The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable

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Factory Girls

Leslie T. Chang

Random House , 2009 • 450 pages

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history In Factory Girls, Leslie T Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta

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Shooting a Tiger

Vijaya Ramadas Mandala

Oxford University Press , 2018 • 343 pages

The figure of the white hunter sahib proudly standing over the carcass of a tiger with a gun in hand is one of the most powerful and enduring images of the empire This book examines the colonial politics that allowed British imperialists to indulge in such grand posturing as the rulers and protectors of indigenous populations This work studies the history of hunting and conservation in colonial India during the high imperial decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Against Money

J. W. Mason, Arjun Jayadev

University of Chicago Press , 2026

A powerful deconstruction of humanity’s most influential invention, from the acclaimed economists J W Mason and Arjun Jayadev Money is unavoidably fundamental to our daily lives It lurks behind the swipe of a card when buying groceries; in looming student-loan debts; in the prices of things we want; and in our subconscious navigation of the modern world

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You Never Know

Tom Selleck, Ellis Henican

HarperCollins , 2024 • 424 pages

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** There are many miles from the business school and basketball court at the University of Southern California to 50 million viewers for the final episode of a TV show called Magnum P.I Tom Selleck has lived every one of those miles in his own iconoclastic and joyful way Frank, funny and open-hearted, You Never Know is an intimate memoir from one of the most beloved actors of our time, the highly personal story of a remarkable life and thoroughly accidental career

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The Gutenberg Elegies

Sven Birkerts

Macmillan + ORM , 2006 • 327 pages

A renowned literary critic examines the impact of information technology on the experience of reading in this "thoughtful and heartfelt" essay collection ( Washington Post ) In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes

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Hyperobjects

Timothy Morton

U of Minnesota Press , 2013 • 241 pages

Having set global warming in irreversible motion, we are facing the possibility of ecological catastrophe But the environmental emergency is also a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place

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Liquid Modernity

Zygmunt Bauman

John Wiley & Sons , 2013 • 183 pages

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history

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A Fire Upon The Deep

Vernor Vinge

Tor Science Fiction , 2010 • 626 pages

Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function

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The Swamp

Michael Grunwald

Simon and Schuster , 2006 • 466 pages

“Brilliant.” —The Washington Post Book World * “Magnificent.” —The Palm Beach Post * “Rich in history yet urgently relevant to current events.” —The New Republic The Everglades in southern Florida were once reviled as a liquid wasteland, and Americans dreamed of draining it Now it is revered as a national treasure, and Americans have launched the largest environmental project in history to try to save it The Swamp is the stunning story of the destruction and possible resurrection of the Everglades, the saga of man's abuse of nature in southern Florida and his unprecedented efforts to make amends

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Brasyl

Ian McDonald

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Incorporated , 2018 • 485 pages

Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world's greatest and strangest nations Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling Three characters, three time periods, three stories that bind together

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Neuromancer

William Gibson

Penguin , 2000 • 337 pages

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace

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Exordia

Seth Dickinson

Tor Books , 2024 • 609 pages

Michael Crichton meets Marvel’s Venom in award-winning author Seth Dickinson’s science fiction debut, named one of The New York Times' Best SFF Books of 2024. "Agonizing and mesmerizing, a devastating and extraordinary achievement."—The New York Times “Magnificent. . . A science fiction action juggernaut.”—Tamsyn Muir “Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time It’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now

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NATO's Secret Armies

Daniele Ganser

Routledge , 2005 • 336 pages

This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows

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The Donkey and the Boat

Chris Wickham

Oxford University Press , 2023 • 836 pages

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological

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The Inheritance of Rome

Chris Wickham

Penguin UK , 2009 • 548 pages

The idea that with the decline of the Roman Empire Europe entered into some immense ‘dark age’ has long been viewed as inadequate by many historians How could a world still so profoundly shaped by Rome and which encompassed such remarkable societies as the Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian empires, be anything other than central to the development of European history How could a world of so many peoples, whether expanding, moving or stable, of Goths, Franks, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, whose genetic and linguistic inheritors we all are, not lie at the heart of how we understand ourselves

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Silence of the Gods

Francis Kendrick Young

2025

A masterful new history of Europe's last unchristianised peoples in the period between 1387 and 1900, from the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia to the Balts and the Finno-Ugric peoples of European Russia, exploring the reasons for their late adoption of Christianity and their creative religious responses to encounters with missionaries--

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The Radical Spanish Empire

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Adrian Masters

Harvard University Press , 2026 • 467 pages

The Spanish Crown had initially hoped to establish an orderly aristocratic society in the New World Yet from the late 1520s, Spanish and Indigenous people throughout the colonies radically challenged the social order Surprisingly, they did so not through violence but through the power of paperwork: petitions, complaints, and legal testimony.

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On Growth and Form

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

DigiCat , 2022 • 694 pages

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 'On Growth and Form' is a groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between biological forms and the mathematical principles underlying their growth Published in 1917, this work melds scientific observation with eloquent prose, revealing how organisms develop according to natural laws that can be expressed mathematically Thompson's intricate analysis transcends traditional biology by blending the depths of morphology, physics, and the theory of evolution, all while embracing a vivid, illustrative style that captivates readers

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America, América

Greg Grandin

Penguin , 2025 • 769 pages

A New York Times bestseller • A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, 2025 Kirkus Prize, 2025 Cundill History Prize, and 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker,The New Republic, and Mother Jones “An extraordinarily ambitious book . . America, América reads at times as the historical equivalent of the great epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez.” —Irish Times From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe

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Why Sound Matters

Damon Krukowski

Yale University Press , 2025 • 129 pages

A poignant consideration of the material aspect of sound and how it fundamentally shapes our experience of the world, both in its presence and absence From the joyous communal connections fostered through shared auditory experience to the devastating impact of noise pollution in the deep sea, musician and author Damon Krukowski urges readers to reconsider the significance of sound and its role in both our personal and collective well-being He looks despairingly at how the multipronged efforts of urban dwellers to mitigate city noise have led to increased isolation, loss of community, and a sense of physical detachment from one’s surroundings

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A Local History of Global Capital

Tariq Omar Ali

Princeton University Press , 2018 • 267 pages

Before the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the world's grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton While the sack circulated globally, the plant was cultivated almost exclusively by peasant smallholders in a small corner of the world: the Bengal delta

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Red Meat Republic

Joshua Specht

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 364 pages

How beef conquered America and gave rise to the modern industrial food complex By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal Beef production in the United States had gone from small-scale, localized operations to a highly centralized industry spanning the country, with cattle bred on ranches in the rural West, slaughtered in Chicago, and consumed in the nation’s rapidly growing cities

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Pirates and Publishers

Fei-Hsien Wang

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 368 pages

A detailed historical look at how copyright was negotiated and protected by authors, publishers, and the state in late imperial and modern China In Pirates and Publishers, Fei-Hsien Wang reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes Wang draws on a vast range of previously underutilized archival sources to show how copyright was received, appropriated, and practiced in China, within and beyond the legal institutions of the state

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Empires of Vice

Diana S. Kim

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 330 pages

A Shared Turn : Opium and the Rise of Prohibition -- The Different Lives of Southeast Asia's Opium Monopolies -- "Morally Wrecked" in British Burma, 1870s-1890s -- Fiscal Dependency in British Malaya, 1890s-1920s -- Disastrous Abundance in French Indochina, 1920s-1940s -- Colonial Legacies.

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Making It Count

Arunabh Ghosh

Princeton University Press , 2022 • 360 pages

Among the biggest challenges facing leaders of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) was how much they did not know In 1949, at the end of a long sequence of wars, the government of one of the largest states in the world committed to fundamentally re-engineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no hard, reliable statistical data about their own country This book is a history of attempts made to resolve this crisis in counting

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The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein

Cambridge University Press , 2005 • 412 pages

Although the importance of the advent of printing for the Western world has long been recognized, it was Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject This edition gives a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century

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The Revolutionary Temper

Robert Darnton

W. W. Norton & Company , 2023 • 478 pages

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice “This captivating history of the decades leading up to the French Revolution…immerse[s] readers in what agitated Parisians read, wore, ate and sang on the way to toppling the monarchy of Louis XVI.” —New York Times Book Review A groundbreaking account of the coming of the French Revolution from a historian of worldwide acclaim When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered an event of global consequence: the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society

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Born in Flames

Bench Ansfield

W. W. Norton & Company , 2025 • 323 pages

“[R]evelatory…Deeply researched and masterfully told.” —Brian Goldstone, New York Times Book Review The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s—and its legacy today. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color

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That Book Is Dangerous!

Adam Szetela

MIT Press , 2025 • 283 pages

An alarming exposé of the new challenges to literary freedom in the age of social media—when anyone with an identity and an internet connection can be a censor In That Book Is Dangerous!, Adam Szetela investigates how well-intentioned and often successful efforts to diversify American literature have also produced serious problems for literary freedom Although progressives are correct to be focused on right-wing attempts at legislative censorship, Szetela argues for attention to the ways that left-wing censorship controls speech within the publishing industry itself

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Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Richard Miles

Penguin , 2011 • 622 pages

The first full-scale history of Hannibal's Carthage in decades and "a convincing and enthralling narrative." (The Economist ) Drawing on a wealth of new research, archaeologist, historian, and master storyteller Richard Miles resurrects the civilization that ancient Rome struggled so mightily to expunge This monumental work charts the entirety of Carthage's history, from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as a Mediterranean empire whose epic land-and-sea clash with Rome made a legend of Hannibal and shaped the course of Western history Carthage Must Be Destroyed reintroduces readers to the ancient glory of a lost people and their generations-long struggle against an implacable enemy.

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The Wide Wide Sea

Hampton Sides

Vintage , 2024 • 415 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES, TIME, THE ECONOMIST, NPR, THE NEW YORKER, THE SMITHSONIAN, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS “In this masterly history, Sides tracks the 18th-century English naval officer James Cook’s third and final voyage across the globe, painting a vivid and propulsive portrait."—The New York Times Book Review On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution

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Draining New Orleans

Richard Campanella

LSU Press , 2023 • 279 pages

In Draining New Orleans, the first full-length book devoted to “the world’s toughest drainage problem,” renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to “reclaim” the city’s swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion

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If this is a Man

Primo Levi

1979 • 396 pages

With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him He was himself a "magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known."

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Dangerous Miracle

Liam Shaw

Random House , 2025 • 236 pages

'Brilliant' TIM SPECTOR 'Excellent' HENRY MARSH 'Thrilling' VENKI RAMAKRISHNAN Antibiotics: one of humanity’s greatest achievements – but invented by microbes An epic narrative of discovery and innovation – but also of extraction and exploitation This is the spellbinding story of how we have burned through the fossil fuels of medicine

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The Highest Exam

Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, Claire Cousineau

Harvard University Press , 2025 • 253 pages

The Highest Exam provides a detailed, research-driven survey of the gaokao, China's high-stakes college entrance exam Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li--past test-takers themselves--show how the exam system shapes schooling, serves state interests, inspires individualistic attitudes, and has lately become a touchstone in US education debates.

Eli Hurvitz and the Creation of Teva Pharmaceuticals

Yossi Goldstein

2018 • 401 pages

Eli Hurvitz (April 1932-November 2011) has become a legend in Israel and beyond His accomplishments in the business world from the 1980s onward earned him a prominent place in the Israeli public consciousness Considered a pillar of Israeli industry, he was the financial and business genius who transformed Teva into one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and launched Israeli industry into the international arena

Community and Consensus in Islam

Farzana Shaikh

Cambridge University Press , 1989 • 272 pages

Community and Consensus in Islam, first published in 1989, represented a bold attempt to introduce the role of ideas in the interpretation of Indo-Muslim politics between 1860 and the Partition of India in 1947 It questioned the widely held view at the time that Indian Muslim politics of the period could be explained by reference to pragmatic interests alone Instead, Farzana Shaikh argued that the influence of ideas rooted in Islamic tradition must form a crucial dimension of any wellgrounded explanation of the determinants of Indo-Muslim political practice

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Jinnah

Ishtiaq Ahmed

Penguin Random House India Private Limited , 2020 • 849 pages

Mohammad Ali Jinnah has been both celebrated and reviled for his role in the Partition of India, and the controversies surrounding his actions have only increased in the seven decades and more since his death Ishtiaq Ahmed places Jinnah's actions under intense scrutiny to ascertain the Quaid-i-Azam's successes and failures and the meaning and significance of his legacy

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The Great Depression

Pierre Berton

Anchor Canada , 2012 • 562 pages

Over 1.5 million Canadians were on relief, one in five was a public dependant, and 70,000 young men travelled like hoboes Ordinary citizens were rioting in the streets, but their demonstrations met with indifference, and dissidents were jailed Canada emerged from the Great Depression a different nation

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These Divided Isles

Philip Stephens

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 229 pages

Evoking the tumultuous history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, These Divided Isles investigates the complexities of culture and colonization to ask what the future holds for both countries Ireland is Britain's closest neighbor—the sea crossing from Scotland measures only twelve miles Ireland was also its first conquered territory in what became Britain's empire

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Power Without Knowledge

Jeffrey Friedman

2019 • 409 pages

Do leading social-scientific experts, or technocrats, know what they are doing In Power without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman maintains that they do not Friedman shows that people are too heterogeneous to act as predictably as technocracy requires of them Technocratic reason, then, entails a drastically oversimplified understanding of human decision making in modern society.

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The Great Divergence

Kenneth Pomeranz

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 404 pages

A landmark comparative history of Europe and China that examines why the Industrial Revolution emerged in the West The Great Divergence sheds light on one of the great questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe Historian Kenneth Pomeranz shows that as recently as 1750, life expectancy, consumption, and product and factor markets were comparable in Europe and East Asia

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The Manchu Way

Mark C. Elliott

Stanford University Press , 2001 • 612 pages

In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China's northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia's mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, This book supplies a radically new perspective on the formative period of the modern Chinese nation.

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The Story of China

Michael Wood

Macmillan + ORM , 2020 • 375 pages

A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world's oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years

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Y2K

Colette Shade

HarperCollins , 2025 • 282 pages

“Nothing I’ve read has cut to the heart of the ’00s like Y2K.” — Bustle Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a delightfully nostalgic and bitingly told exploration about how the early 2000s forever changed us and the world we live in THE EARLY 2000s conjures images of inflatable furniture, flip phones, and low-rise jeans It was a new millennium and the future looked bright, promising prosperity for all

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The Visible Hand

Alfred DuPont Chandler Jr.

Harvard University Press , 1993 • 628 pages

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (1850s–1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book Alfred Chandler, Jr., sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and central sectors of production and distribution.

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Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote

Ahmadou Kourouma

William Heinemann , 2003 • 470 pages

The story of Koyaga, dictator and president of the Gulf Coast, an imaginary former French African colony, is told by Bingo, his sora, part storyteller, part court fool Bingo tells of Koyaga's father, born in an obscure and backward mountain tribe, which he leaves for success as a wrestler, and heroic exploits on the Somme as a French fusilier only to die of hunger in a French colonial prison; and of Koyaga himself, a French solider in Vietnam and Algeria, and then the leader of a coup that overthrows a shortlived post colonial democracy Koyaga is part an archetypal third world dictator, part hero of a folktale his story is told in a prose of haunting simplicity, in a novel that by turns brings to mind Gabriel Marquez and Giles Foden.

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The Land Trap

Mike Bird

Penguin Group , 2025 • 337 pages

How the world’s oldest asset secretly shapes our modern economy In The Land Trap, Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the modern world From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China's real estate crisis today, Bird shows how fortunes are built—and destroyed—on the bedrock of land Tracing three centuries of history, Bird explores how land quietly became the linchpin of the global banking system, driving everything from soaring housing prices to rising geopolitical tensisons

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A Sea of Wealth

Dr. Nicholas Paul Roberts

Univ of California Press , 2025 • 290 pages

A Sea of Wealth is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the Indian Ocean Here the reign of Oman’s longest-serving ruler, Saʿid bin Sultan, offers a keyhole through which we can peer to see the entangled histories of Arabia and the Gulf, South Asia, and East Africa in the Omani Empire In centering this empire, Nicholas P

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Emergency Chronicles

Gyan Prakash

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 452 pages

The gripping story of an explosive turning point in the history of modern India On the night of June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids across the country In the twenty-one harrowing months that followed, her regime unleashed a brutal campaign of coercion and intimidation, arresting and torturing people by the tens of thousands, razing slums, and imposing compulsory sterilization on the poor

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China's Church Divided

Paul P. Mariani

Harvard University Press , 2025 • 347 pages

Paul P Mariani charts China’s fraught Catholic revival after the Cultural Revolution, as Catholics loyal to Rome clashed with a state-sanctioned church Focusing on Shanghai, where the state-appointed Bishop Louis Jin Luxian found himself at odds with underground church leaders, Mariani details a community perilously divided.

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It Will Be Fun and Terrifying

Fabrizio Fenghi

University of Wisconsin Press , 2021 • 312 pages

The National Bolshevik Party, founded in the mid-1990s by Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, began as an attempt to combine radically different ideologies In the years that followed, Limonov, Dugin, and the movements they led underwent dramatic shifts The two leaders eventually became political adversaries, with Dugin and his organizations strongly supporting Putin’s regime while Limonov and his groups became part of the liberal opposition

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The Indian Ideology

Perry Anderson

Verso Books , 2013 • 209 pages

The historiography of modern India is largely a pageant of presumed virtues: harmonious territorial unity, religious impartiality, the miraculous survival of electoral norms in the world’s most populous democracy Even critics of Indian society still underwrite such claims But how well does the “Idea of India” correspond to the realities of the Union

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Making Sense of China's Economy

Tao Wang

Taylor & Francis , 2023 • 339 pages

For years, China’s transformation from one of the world’s poorest nations was lauded as a triumph that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty There were always questions about data reliability and growth sustainability, but the general views on China have recently taken a decidedly sour turn Concerns abound about state interference in the economy, an ageing population, and high debt level

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The Origins of Efficiency

Brian Potter

Stripe Press , 2025 • 479 pages

An examination of how production processes—from penicillin to steel to semiconductors—get more efficient over time, and a powerful argument for efficiency as an underrated driver of progress Efficiency is the engine that powers human civilization It’s the reason rates of famine have fallen precipitously, literacy has risen, and humans are living longer, healthier lives compared to preindustrial times

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Stilwell and the American Experience in China

Barbara W. Tuchman

Random House , 2017 • 770 pages

Barbara W Tuchman won her second Pulitzer Prize for this nonfiction masterpiece—an authoritative work of history that recounts the birth of modern China through the eyes of one extraordinary American General Joseph W Stilwell was a man who loved China deeply and knew its people as few Americans ever have

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The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel

Douglas Brunt

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 384 pages

"The hidden history of one of the world's greatest inventors, a man who disrupted the status quo and then disappeared into thin air on the eve of World War I--this book answers the hundred-year-old mystery of what really became of Rudolf Diesel September 29, 1913: the steamship Dresden is halfway between Belgium and England On board is one of the most famous men in the world, Rudolf Diesel, whose new internal combustion engine is on the verge of revolutionizing global industry forever

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The New Nobility

Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan

PublicAffairs , 2010 • 322 pages

In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse

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Losing Big

Jonathan D Cohen

2025

Description: In 2018, a U.S Supreme Court ruling permitted states to legalize sports gambling To date, 38 have done so The nation is already facing a sports gambling crisis, one that will worsen in the coming years

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Typography

Paul Luna, Fiona Ross, Aaris Sherin, Sue Walker, Vaibhav Singh

Bloomsbury Visual Arts , 2026

This new handbook takes the broadest possible view of typography, defining it as 'design for reading' It considers all kinds of reading matter and visual communication systems; digital, environmental, printed, and produced by hand By offering a rich collection of texts that are genuinely international in authorship and in scope, it seeks to rebalance the Western bias of so many books on the subject

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Erdogan's Empire

Soner Cagaptay

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2019 • 274 pages

Gradually since 2003, Turkey's autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to make Turkey a great power -- in the tradition of past Turkish leaders from the late Ottoman sultans to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey Here the leading authority Soner Cagaptay, author of The New Sultan -- the first biography of President Erdogan -- provides a masterful overview of the power politics in the Middle East and Turkey's place in it Erdogan has picked an unorthodox model in the context of recent Turkish history, attempting to cast his country as a stand-alone Middle Eastern power

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The World Turned Upside Down

Yang Jisheng

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2021 • 768 pages

Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

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The Party's Interests Come First

Joseph Torigian

Stanford University Press , 2025 • 556 pages

China's leader, Xi Jinping, is one of the most powerful individuals in the world—and one of the least understood Much can be learned, however, about both Xi Jinping and the nature of the party he leads from the memory and legacy of his father, the revolutionary Xi Zhongxun (1913–2002) The elder Xi served the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than seven decades

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Native Nations

Kathleen DuVal

Random House , 2025 • 753 pages

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history” (The New York Review of Books), from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE, THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE, AND THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed

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Recommended by Joe Recommended by Joe

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From Click to Boom

Lizhi Liu

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 328 pages

How the world’s largest e-commerce market highlights a digital path to development How do states build vital institutions for market development Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule of law, contract enforcement, and loan access In From Click to Boom, Lizhi Liu examines a digital solution: governments strategically outsourcing tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms—a process she calls “institutional outsourcing.” China’s e-commerce boom showcases this digital path to development

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Fordlandia

Greg Grandin

Metropolitan Books , 2010 • 432 pages

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets

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The Sounds of Mandarin

Janet Y. Chen

Columbia University Press , 2023 • 262 pages

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world today In China, a country with a vast array of regional and local vernaculars, how was this “common language” forged How did people learn to speak Mandarin And what does a focus on speech instead of script reveal about Chinese language and history

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Chinese Characters Across Asia

Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures Zev J Handel

2025

A fascinating story of writing across cultures and time While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts--Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs--are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese In medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit the region together in a common intellectual enterprise that encompassed religion, philosophy, historiography, political theory, art, and literature

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Global Trade in the Premodern World

Richard Lee Smith, Edmond Smith

Routledge , 2025

Global Trade in the Premodern World offers an authoritative and expansive history of exchange and interaction across Eurasia from the prehistoric origins of trade to the integration of large parts of this world-system by the fifteenth century CE The book tackles questions that are critical to our understanding of premodern globalization How did global trade in the premodern world take shape

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In a Bad State

David Schleicher

Oxford University Press , 2023 • 249 pages

In a Bad State provides the first comprehensive history and theory of how the federal government has addressed subnational debt crises Tracing the long history of public budgeting at the state and local level, David Schleicher argues that federal officials face a "trilemma" when a state or city nears default But whether they demand state austerity, permit state defaults, or provide bailouts-and all have been tried-federal officials can only achieve two out of three goals, at best Authoritative and accessible, this book is a guide to understanding the pressing problems that local, state, and federal officials currently face and the policy options they possess for responding.

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The Power of Systems

Eglė Rindzevičiūtė

Cornell University Press , 2016 • 307 pages

In The Power of Systems, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė introduces readers to one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War: the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international think tank established by the US and USSR to advance scientific collaboration From 1972 until the late 1980s, IIASA was one of the very few permanent platforms where policy scientists from both sides of the Cold War could work together to articulate and solve world problems

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Industrial Islamism

Utku Baris Balaban

Univ of California Press , 2025 • 334 pages

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more Industrial Islamism analyzes the relationship, since the end of the Cold War, between the rise of political Islamism in Muslim-majority countries and the rise of a new global "middle class" of industrial entrepreneurs

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Breakneck

Dan Wang

W. W. Norton , 2025

A riveting, firsthand investigation of China's seismic progress, its human costs, and what it means for America.

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Sinews of Power

Yi-Chong Xu

Oxford University Press , 2017 • 361 pages

Politics of the State Grid Corporation of China -- Electricity -- From the ministry to a corporation -- Overseeing SGCC: the contested regimes of central agencies -- State Grid Corporation of China -- SGCC in action: as a policy entrepreneur -- SGCC in action: as technology innovator -- SGCC in action: internationalisation

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Framing the Early Middle Ages

Chris Wickham

OUP Oxford , 2006 • 1125 pages

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country

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Framing the Early Middle Ages

Chris Wickham

OUP Oxford , 2006 • 1125 pages

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country

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Frostbite

Nicola Twilley

Penguin , 2024 • 401 pages

Winner of the James Beard Award for Literary Writing "Engrossing...hard to put down." — The New York Times Book Review “Frostbite is a perfectly executed cold fusion of science, history, and literary verve . . . as a fellow nonfiction writer, I bow down This is how it's done.” — Mary Roach, author of Fuzz and Stiff An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food—for better and for worse How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat

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Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2020 • 273 pages

Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction A SUNDAY TIMES & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' NEW YORK MAGAZINE __________________________________ Piranesi lives in the House Perhaps he always has In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls

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Home Fires

Sean P. Adams

JHU Press , 2014 • 196 pages

This perspective allows a unique view of the development of an industrial society not just from the ground up but from the hearth up.

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Norwegian Wood

Lars Mytting

Abrams , 2015 • 282 pages

“A surprise best-seller which, apparently, has the power to turn even the most feeble of us into axe-wielding lumberjacks.” —Independent The latest Scandinavian publishing phenomenon is not a Stieg Larsson-like thriller; it’s a book about chopping, stacking, and burning wood that has sold more than 200,000 copies in Norway and Sweden and has been a fixture on the bestseller lists there for more than a year Norwegian Wood provides useful advice on the rustic hows and whys of taking care of your heating needs, but it’s also a thoughtful attempt to understand man’s age-old predilection for stacking wood and passion for open fires

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We Are Eating the Earth

Michael Grunwald

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 384 pages

From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate war: the fight to fix our food system Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds

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Chokepoints

Edward Fishman

Penguin Group , 2025 • 561 pages

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Deftly written, Chokepoints is a compelling and dramatic narrative about the new shape of geopolitics." — Daniel Yergin, The Wall Street Journal “Remarkable...One of the most important books on economic warfare ever written.” — Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers The epic story of how America turned the world economy into a weapon, upending decades of globalization to take on a new authoritarian axis—Russia, China, and Iran It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities

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Zone

Mathias Enard

2014 • 528 pages

One of the truly original books of the decade, and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence, Mathias Enard's Zone is an Iliad for our time, an extraordinary and panoramic view of violent conflict and its consequences in the twentieth century and beyond.

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America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators

Jacob Heilbrunn

Liveright Publishing , 2024 • 252 pages

A leading journalist and public intellectual explains the long, disturbing history behind the American Right’s embrace of foreign dictators, from Kaiser Wilhelm and Mussolini to Putin and Orban Why do Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and much of the far Right so explicitly admire the murderous and incompetent Russian dictator Vladimir Putin Why is Ron DeSantis drawing from Victor Orbán’s illiberal politics for his own policies as governor of Florida—a single American state that has more than twice the population of Orbán’s entire nation, Hungary

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The Basque History Of The World

Mark Kurlansky

Random House , 2011 • 402 pages

The Basques are Europe's oldest people, their origins a mystery, their language related to no other on Earth, and even though few in population and from a remote and rugged corner of Spain and France, they have had a profound impact on the world Whilst inward-looking, preserving their ancient language and customs, the Basques also struck out for new horizons, pioneers of whaling and cod fishing, leading the way in exploration of the Americas and Asia, were among the first capitalists and later led Southern Europe's industrial revolution Mark Kurlansky, the author of the acclaimed Cod, blends human stories with economic, political, literary and culinary history to paint a fascinating picture of an intriguing people.

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The Making of New World Slavery

Robin Blackburn

Verso Books , 2020 • 614 pages

The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery The baroque state sought-successfully-to feed upon this commerce and-with markedly less success-to regulate slavery and racial relations To illustrate this thesis, Blackburn examines the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French

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The Politics of Common Reading

Joan Judge

2025

Examines the transformation of vernacular knowledge during a pivotal period of modern Chinese history, 1894 to 1954 In The Politics of Common Reading, Joan Judge examines an era of modern Chinese history, ranging from 1894 to 1954, which she terms "the long Republic." During this era, she explains, editors and compilers accommodated the needs of common readers by secularizing and standardizing texts relating to health, technology, and agriculture, including handbooks and recipe collections

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The Great Displacement

Jake Bittle

Simon and Schuster , 2023 • 368 pages

The untold story of climate migration-the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future"--

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The Tropical Turn

Sureshkumar Muthukumaran

Univ of California Press , 2023 • 315 pages

This book chronicles the earliest histories of familiar tropical Asian crops in the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean, from rice and cotton to citruses and cucumbers Drawing on archaeological materials and textual sources in over seven ancient languages, The Tropical Turn unravels the breathtaking anthropogenic peregrinations of these familiar crops from their homelands in tropical and subtropical Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean, showing the significant impact South Asia had on the ecologies, dietary habits, and cultural identities of peoples across the ancient world In the process, Sureshkumar Muthukumaran offers a fresh narrative history of human connectivity across Afro-Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the late centuries BCE.

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Prototype Nation

Silvia M. Lindtner

Princeton University Press , 2020 • 302 pages

A vivid look at China’s shifting place in the global political economy of technology production How did China’s mass manufacturing and “copycat” production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China’s governance and global image With historical precision and ethnographic detail, Silvia Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007–8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a “new frontier” of innovation

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Innovate to Dominate

Tai Ming Cheung

Cornell University Press , 2022 • 415 pages

In Innovate to Dominate, Tai Ming Cheung offers insight into why, how, and whether China will overtake the United States to become the world's preeminent technological and security power This examination of the means and ends of China's quest for techno-security supremacy is required reading for anyone looking for clues as to the long-term direction of the global order The techno-security domain, Cheung argues, is where national security, innovation, and economic development converge, and it has become the center of power and prosperity in the twenty-first century

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Localized Bargaining

Xiao Ma

Oxford University Press , 2022 • 249 pages

Looks at the rollout of one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history to show how local governments play a complex role China's high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history Despite global media coverage, we know very little about the political process that led the government to invest in the railway program and the reasons for the striking regional and temporal variation in such investments

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How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

Yuen Yuen Ang

Cornell University Press , 2016 • 345 pages

Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy In just three decades it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis

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How Reform Worked in China

Yingyi Qian

MIT Press , 2017 • 414 pages

A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China's successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China's reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government

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The Red Dream

Carl E. Walter

John Wiley & Sons , 2022 • 292 pages

An eye-opening deep dive into the sources and consequences of how China has financed it’s rise to global economic prominence In The Red Dream: The Chinese Communist Party and the Financial Deterioration of China, veteran finance executive Carl Walter uses his unique experience in Chinese finance to deepen his exploration of how the Chinese Communist Party finances its obsession with GDP growth and social control Overwhelmingly debt-fueled, the party’s financial strategy has driven an unsustainable growth in banking and state enterprise assets

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The Handbook of China's Financial System

Marlene Amstad, Guofeng Sun, Wei Xiong

Princeton University Press , 2020 • 504 pages

A comprehensive, in-depth, and authoritative guide to China's financial system The Chinese economy is one of the most important in the world, and its success is driven in large part by its financial system Though closely scrutinized, this system is poorly understood and vastly different than those in the West The Handbook of China’s Financial System will serve as a standard reference guide and invaluable resource to the workings of this critical institution

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Governance and Politics of China

Tony Saich

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2024 • 425 pages

The success or failure of China's development will impact not only its own citizens but also those of the world China is widely recognized as a global actor on the world stage and no global challenge can be resolved without its participation It is important to understand how the country is ruled and what its policy priorities are

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Empire of the Elite

Michael M. Grynbaum

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 368 pages

From a New York Times media correspondent, a dishy history of the Condé Nast magazine empire, home of Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and more, focusing on its glitzy heyday from the 1980s through the 2000s For decades, Condé Nast and its glittering magazines defined how to live the good life in America The brilliant, complicated, striving characters behind Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Architectural Digest, and many other titles manufactured a vision of luxury and sophistication that shaped consumer habits, cultural trends, intellectual attitudes, and political beliefs the world over

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Capital Moves

Jefferson Cowie

The New Press , 2001 • 290 pages

Globalization is the lead story of the new century, but its roots reach back nearly one hundred years, to major corporations' quest for stable, inexpensive, and pliant sources of labor Before the largest companies moved beyond national boundaries, they crossed state lines, abandoning the industrial centers of the Eastern Seaboard for impoverished rural communities in the Midwest and South In their wake they left the decaying urban landscapes and unemployment rates that became hallmarks of late twentieth-century America

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Empire of AI

Karen Hao

Penguin Group , 2025 • 497 pages

An Instant New York Times Bestseller “Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times “Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —Vulture “Hao’s reporting inside OpenAI is exceptional, and she’s persuasive in her argument that the public should focus less on A.I.’s putative ‘sentience’ and more on its implications for labor and the environment.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces

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Fortress Power

Derek S. Denman

U of Minnesota Press , 2025 • 190 pages

A compelling treatise on the relationship between power and enclosure Fortress Power presents a genealogy of fortification as a material and political technology intent on obstruction, tracing its implementation across battlefields, borders, and urban environments Drawing on the influential work of philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, Derek S Denman places the fortress alongside the archetypes of the prison and the camp, citing them as paradigmatic of how space is transformed into a tool of domination and control

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Classical Chinese for Everyone

Bryan W. Van Norden

Hackett Publishing , 2019 • 163 pages

In just thirteen brief, accessible chapters, this engaging little book takes "absolute beginners" from the most basic questions about the language (e.g., what does a classical Chinese character look like?) to reading and understanding selections from classical Chinese philosophical texts and Tang dynasty poetry. "An outstanding introduction to reading classical Chinese Van Norden does a wonderful job of clearly explaining the basics of classical Chinese, and he carefully takes the reader through beautifully chosen examples from the textual tradition An invaluable work." —Michael Puett, Harvard University

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Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings

Zhuangzi

Hackett Publishing , 2020 • 338 pages

Brook Ziporyn's carefully crafted, richly annotated translation of the complete writings of Zhuangzi—including a lucid Introduction, a Glossary of Essential Terms, and a Bibliography—provides readers with an engaging and provocative deep dive into this magical work.

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The Wager

David Grann

Random House , 2025 • 449 pages

A “TOUR DE FORCE OF NARRATIVE NONFICTION” (WSJ) WITH OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NYT BEST SELLER LIST From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, TIME, Smithsonian, NPR, Vulture “Riveting...Reads like a thriller, tackling a multilayered history—and imperialism—with gusto.” —Time On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil

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7 Seconds to Die

John F. Antal

Casemate , 2022 • 197 pages

A military study of the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan—the first war in history won primarily by unmanned systems Fought over the course of forty-four days, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war resulted in a decisive military victory for Azerbaijan Armenia lost even though they controlled the high ground in a mountainous region that favored traditional defense

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Spin

Robert Charles Wilson

Tor Books , 2010 • 468 pages

From the author of Axis and Vortex, the first Hugo Award-winning novel in the environmental apocalyptic Spin Trilogy.. One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier

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Islamic Shangri-La

David G. Atwill

Univ of California Press , 2018 • 258 pages

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more Islamic Shangri-La transports readers to the heart of the Himalayas as it traces the rise of the Tibetan Muslim community from the 17th century to the present

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Forbidden Memory

Tsering Woeser

U of Nebraska Press , 2020 • 450 pages

When Red Guards arrived in Tibet in 1966, intent on creating a classless society, they unleashed a decade of revolutionary violence, political rallies, and factional warfare marked by the ransacking of temples, the destruction of religious artifacts, the burning of books, and the public humiliation of Tibet's remaining lamas and scholars Within Tibet, discussion of those events has long been banned, and no visual records of this history were known to have survived

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Conflicting Memories

Unknown Author

BRILL , 2020 • 711 pages

Conflicting Memories is a study of how the Tibetan encounter with the Chinese state during the Maoist era has been recalled and reimagined by Chinese and Tibetan authors and artists since the late 1970s Written by a team of historians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion, literature and culture, it examines official histories, biographies, memoirs, and films as well as oral testimonies, fiction, and writings by Buddhist adepts

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To the End of Revolution

Xiaoyuan Liu

Columbia University Press , 2020 • 718 pages

The status of Tibet is one of the most controversial and complex issues in the history of modern China In To the End of Revolution, Xiaoyuan Liu draws on unprecedented access to the archives of the Chinese Communist Party to offer a groundbreaking account of Beijing’s evolving Tibet policy during the critical first decade of the People’s Republic Liu details Beijing’s overarching strategy toward Tibet, the last frontier for the Communist revolution to reach

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Common Ground

Lan Wu

Columbia University Press , 2022 • 155 pages

The Qing empire and the Dalai Lama-led Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism came into contact in the eighteenth century Their interconnections would shape regional politics and the geopolitical history of Inner Asia for centuries to come In Common Ground, Lan Wu analyzes how Tibetan Buddhists and the Qing imperial rulers interacted and negotiated as both sought strategies to expand their influence in eighteenth-century Inner Asia

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The Monastery Rules

Berthe Jansen

Univ of California Press , 2018 • 298 pages

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more The Monastery Rules discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan Buddhist societies and how that position was informed by the far-reaching relationship of monastic Buddhism with Tibetan society, economy, law, and culture

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The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier

Benno Weiner

Cornell University Press , 2020 • 430 pages

In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner provides the first in-depth study of an ethnic minority region during the first decade of the People's Republic of China: the Amdo region in the Sino-Tibetan borderland Employing previously inaccessible local archives as well as other rare primary sources, he demonstrates that the Communist Party's goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state-building but also nation-building Such an objective required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community

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Murderland

Caroline Fraser

Penguin Group , 2025 • 497 pages

A National Bestseller “Scorching, seductive . . A superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges.” —Los Angeles Times “This is about as highbrow as true crime gets.” —Vulture “Fraser has outdone herself, and just about everyone else in the true-crime genre, with Murderland.” —Esquire From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest

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Atonement

Ian McEwan

Vintage Canada , 2009 • 416 pages

From the Booker Prize winning author of Amsterdam, a brilliant new novel On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house Watching her is Robbie Turner, son of the Tallis’s cleaning lady, whose education has been subsidized by Cecilia’s and Briony’s father, and who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge

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Forging the Golden Urn

Max Oidtmann

Columbia University Press , 2018 • 215 pages

In 1995, the People’s Republic of China resurrected a Qing-era law mandating that the reincarnations of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monks be identified by drawing lots from a golden urn The Chinese Communist Party hoped to limit the ability of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile to independently identify reincarnations In so doing, they elevated a long-forgotten ceremony into a controversial symbol of Chinese sovereignty in Tibet

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Freedom's Laboratory

Audra J. Wolfe

Johns Hopkins University Press , 2020 • 313 pages

The Cold War ended long ago, but the language of science and freedom continues to shape public debates over the relationship between science and politics in the United States Scientists like to proclaim that science knows no borders Scientific researchers follow the evidence where it leads, their conclusions free of prejudice or ideology

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Black Holes and Time Warps

Kip S Thorne

W. W. Norton & Company , 1994 • 648 pages

In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work, Dr. Rhorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, leads readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, answering the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists think they know what they know Features an introduction by Stephen Hawking.

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The Invention of China

Bill Hayton

2022 • 320 pages

A provocative account showing that "China"--and its 5,000 years of unified history--is a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day

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Pen of Iron

Robert Alter

Princeton University Press , 2010 • 209 pages

How the King James Bible has influenced the style of the American novel from Melville to Cormac McCarthy The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning—and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists—from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy—have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality

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Little Bosses Everywhere

Bridget Read

Random House , 2025 • 369 pages

A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing: a massive money-making scam and radical political conspiracy that has remade American society Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and—most precious of all—financial freedom

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Shattered Lands

Sam Dalrymple

Harper Collins , 2025 • 437 pages

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia--India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait--were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the 'Indian Empire', or more simply as the Raj It was the British Empire's crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world's population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet

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Stealth Democracy

John R. Hibbing, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

Cambridge University Press , 2002 • 308 pages

Americans often complain about the operation of their government, but scholars have never developed a complete picture of people's preferred type of government In this provocative and timely book, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, employing an original national survey and focus groups, report the governmental procedures Americans desire Contrary to the prevailing view that people want greater involvement in politics, most citizens do not care about most policies and therefore are content to turn over decision-making authority to someone else

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On the Line

Daisy Pitkin

Algonquin Books , 2022 • 318 pages

“Riveting and intimate It is hard to imagine a more humanizing portrait of the American labor movement A remarkable debut.” —Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River On the Line takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona

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Economics of Institutional Change

Elodie Douarin, Tomasz Mickiewicz

Springer , 2017 • 333 pages

This book, a third edition, has been significantly expanded and updated It revisits the process of institutional change: its characteristics, determinants and implications for economic performance New chapters address the significance of Post-Communist transition, the differences and importance of initial conditions in institutional building, and, social norms, values, and happiness

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From Foot Soldier to Finance Minister

Richard J. Smethurst

Harvard University Press , 2007 • 424 pages

From his birth into the lowest stratum of the samurai class to his assassination by right-wing militarists, Takahashi Korekiyo (1854-1936) lived through tumultuous times that shaped the course of modern Japan This biography underscores the profound influence of the charismatic finance minister on the political and economic development of Japan.

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Waste Wars

Alexander Clapp

Little, Brown , 2025 • 354 pages

A globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look

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Apple in China

Patrick McGee

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 308 pages

‘Absolutely riveting’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads ‘Disturbing and enlightening’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War ‘Hugely important’ Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers ‘A once-in-a-generation read’ Robert D Kaplan, author of Waste Land As Trump wages a tariff war with China, seeking to boost domestic electronics manufacturing, this book offers an unparalleled insight into why his strategy is embarrassingly naïve Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the 21st century’s defining product

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How Not to Network a Nation

Benjamin Peters

MIT Press , 2016 • 313 pages

How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart

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Molecular Red

McKenzie Wark

Verso Books , 2015 • 360 pages

In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter

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Euromissiles

Susan Colbourn

2022 • 384 pages

A transatlantic history of the Euromissiles from the arms race's early origins to the final days of the Cold War, in which NATO takes center stage For the Western allies, the successive decisions to field, deploy, and destroy the Euromissiles all involved high-stakes gambles--a stark reminder of just how fragile the Atlantic Alliance was"--

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Broken Republik

Chris Reiter, Will Wilkes

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2025 • 353 pages

A splendid book by authors who long ago detected Germany's fragility – and aimed at readers who take no pleasure in the sight of its precipitous decline' Yanis Varoufakis 'The best polemic yet ... the authors prosecute their case with vigour and a terrific eye for detail' Oliver Moody, The Times Book of the Week The compelling story of Germany's decline – where it all went wrong and how it could bounce back For many years, the post-war recovery of Germany was an inspirational story

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Stupid TV, Be More Funny

Alan Siegel

Twelve , 2025 • 268 pages

This comprehensive account of the meteoric rise of The Simpsons combines incisive pop culture criticism and interviews with the show’s creative team that take readers inside the making of an American phenomenon during its most influential decade, the 1990s The Simpsons is an American institution But its status as an occasionally sharp yet ultimately safe sitcom that's still going after 33 years on the air undercuts its revolutionary origins

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Desert Edens

Philipp Lehmann

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 256 pages

How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate Uncovering this history, Desert Edens looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate in the colonial world shaped this upsurge in ideas about climate engineering

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Distant Shores

Melissa Macauley

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 374 pages

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea

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The Price of Collapse

Timothy Brook

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 256 pages

How climate change ushered in the collapse of one of history’s mighty empires In 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed Many historians attribute its demise to the Manchu invasion of China, but the truth is far more profound The Price of Collapse provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule

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The Lives of Lichens

Robert Lücking, Toby Spribille

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 288 pages

A richly illustrated guide to lichens and their biology Existing at the margins of life, lichens are the result of symbiotic relationships between fungi and photosynthesizing partners in the form of algae or cyanobacteria Comprising more than twenty thousand species, lichens are pioneers in diverse ecosystems, colonizing virtually any surface and growing at almost any altitude Found in rainforests, polar regions, deserts, and your backyard, lichens embody a paradox of toughness and sensitivity, surviving trips to space yet endangered by even the slightest environmental changes from industrial pollution here on Earth

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Intraterrestrials

Karen G. Lloyd

Princeton University Press , 2025 • 240 pages

A biologist’s firsthand account of the hunt for life beneath earth’s surface—and how new discoveries are challenging our most basic assumptions about the nature of life on Earth Life thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth’s crust—from methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrost—and it is unlike anything seen on the surface Intraterrestrials shares what scientists are learning about these strange types of microbial life—and how research expeditions to some of the most extreme locales on the planet are broadening our understanding of what life is and how its earliest forms may have evolved

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The Book of Records

Madeleine Thien

Random House , 2025 • 369 pages

Named 2025's Most Anticipated Release by Toronto Star • Literary Hub • Esquire • The Washington Post • Esquire One of Electric Literature's '48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025' The sublime, long-awaited, major new novel from the beloved author of the GG Award-winning, Booker Prize-shortlisted bestseller Do Not Say We Have Nothing In "The Sea," a sprawling, mysterious building-complex that endlessly receives migrants from everywhere and seems to exist somewhere outside of normal space and time, adolescent Lina cares for her ailing father

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Atavists: Stories

Lydia Millet

W. W. Norton & Company , 2025 • 228 pages

A Harper's Bazaar "Best Book Coming Out This Spring" Pick • One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One of The Millions's Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2025 A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of short fiction from "the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves" (Chicago Tribune) The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being

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Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Manu S Pillai

Penguin Random House India Private Limited , 2024 • 599 pages

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: the worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to crocodiles But soon it became clear that Hindu ‘idolatry’ was far more complex than white men’s stereotypes allowed, and Hindus had little desire to convert

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Mellon vs. Churchill

Jill Eicher

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 263 pages

The never-before-told story of the epic battle of wills between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill, as they debated the repayment of the enormous sums loaned by America to Great Britain during World War I Andrew Mellon, one of the most accomplished businessmen of his era, is almost unknown today To this shy, diffident (but brilliant) man fell the daunting task of collecting the war debts from European governments still devastated by World War I and struggling to recover economically

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The Sound of Utopia

Michel Krielaars

Pushkin Press , 2025 • 349 pages

When Stalin came to power, making music in Russia became dangerous Composers now had to create work that served the socialist state, and all artistic production was scrutinized for potential subversion In The Sound of Utopia, Michel Krielaars vividly depicts Soviet musicians and composers struggling to create art in a climate of risk, suspicion and fear

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An Engine, Not a Camera

Donald MacKenzie

MIT Press , 2008 • 782 pages

In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts

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Hellhound On His Trail

Hampton Sides

Vintage , 2010 • 482 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents—from the author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers

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The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade Around Europe 1300-1600 cover

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Shadow Cold War

Jeremy Friedman

UNC Press Books , 2015 • 304 pages

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman’s Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition

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The Box

Marc Levinson

Princeton University Press , 2016 • 540 pages

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that reshaped manufacturing But the container didn't just happen

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Bad Company

Megan Greenwell

HarperCollins , 2025 • 368 pages

A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons

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Marking Native Borders

Lucas P. Kelley

University of Oklahoma Press , 2025 • 227 pages

Since time immemorial, Native peoples’ understandings of space and territory have defined the landscape of the Tennessee Country—the region drained by the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi rivers and their tributaries Marking Native Borders challenges the narrative of inevitable U.S. expansion by exploring how Cherokees and Chickasaws used these notions of space and territory in new and different ways to counter the encroachment of white settlers and land speculators in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

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And the Wolf Finally Came

John Hoerr

University of Pittsburgh Press , 2014 • 737 pages

• Choice 1988 Outstanding Academic Book • Named one of the Best Business Books of 1988 by USA TodayA veteran reporter of American labor analyzes the spectacular and tragic collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s John Hoerr's account of these events stretches from the industrywide barganing failures of 1982 to the crippling work stoppage at USX (U.S Steel) in 1986-87

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Moby Dick

Herman Melville

1892 • 576 pages

A literary classic that wasn't recognized for its merits until decades after its publication, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick tells the tale of a whaling ship and its crew, who are carried progressively further out to sea by the fiery Captain Ahab Obsessed with killing the massive whale, which had previously bitten off Ahab's leg, the seasoned seafarer steers his ship to confront the creature, while the rest of the shipmates, including the young narrator, Ishmael, and the harpoon expert, Queequeg, must contend with their increasingly dire journey The book invariably lands on any short list of the greatest American novels.

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Nana

Émile Zola

Oxford University Press , 2020 • 491 pages

She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.' Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared

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Germinal

Émile Zola

Penguin UK , 2004 • 825 pages

Considered by André Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Émile Zola's Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty of a mining community in northern France Étienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper Compelled to take a back-breakin job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families

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Apocalypse

Lizzie Wade

HarperCollins , 2025 • 377 pages

"Lizzie Wade is an exceptional journalist and a master storyteller She reminds us that survival always has been, and still is, possible, and that our world always has been, and still is, a choice." –Ed Yong, author of An Immense World “This book upended my understanding of the ancient world Wade renders our deep past in vivid prose, showing us that times of great rupture also bring great possibilities for new ways of living, if we let them

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Connectedness and Contagion

Hal S. Scott

MIT Press , 2022 • 439 pages

An argument that contagion is the most significant risk facing the financial system and that Dodd¬Frank has reduced the government's ability to respond effectively The Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 was intended to reform financial policies in order to prevent another massive crisis such as the financial meltdown of 2008 Dodd–Frank is largely premised on the diagnosis that connectedness was the major problem in that crisis—that is, that financial institutions were overexposed to one another, resulting in a possible chain reaction of failures

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India

John Keay

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic , 2011 • 1072 pages

The British historian and author of Into India delivers “a history that is intelligent, incisive, and eminently readable” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) Fully revised with forty thousand new words that take the reader up to present-day India, John Keay’s India: A History spans five millennia in a sweeping narrative that tells the story of the peoples of the subcontinent, from their ancient beginnings in the valley of the Indus to the events in the region today

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The Horde

Marie Favereau

Harvard University Press , 2021 • 385 pages

The Mongols are universally known as conquerors, but they were more than that: influential thinkers, politicians, engineers, and merchants Challenging the view that nomads are peripheral to history, The Horde reveals the complex empire the Mongols built and traces its enduring imprint on politics and society in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

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The Panic of 1907

Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr

John Wiley & Sons , 2009 • 296 pages

Before reading The Panic of 1907, the year 1907 seemed like a long time ago and a different world The authors, however, bring this story alive in a fast-moving book, and the reader sees how events of that time are very relevant for today's financial world In spite of all of our advances, including a stronger monetary system and modern tools for managing risk, Bruner and Carr help us understand that we are not immune to a future crisis." —Dwight B

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Computing Legacies

Peter Krapp

MIT Press , 2024 • 229 pages

A media history of simulation that contextualizes our digital heritage and the history of computing In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbolic work and foregrounding hypothetical literacy

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Governing the Global Clinic

Carol A. Heimer

University of Chicago Press , 2025 • 405 pages

A deep examination of how new, legalistic norms affected the trajectory of global HIV care and altered the practice of medicine HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things It accelerated both trends

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Inside the Stargazer's Palace

Violet Moller

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 176 pages

Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption A new age was coming into view – one guided by observation, technology and logic

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Inadvertent Expansion

Nicholas D. Anderson

Cornell University Press , 2025 • 240 pages

In Inadvertent Expansion, Nicholas D Anderson investigates a surprisingly common yet overlooked phenomenon in the history of great power politics: territorial expansion that was neither intended nor initially authorized by state leaders Territorial expansion is typically understood as a centrally driven and often strategic activity

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Too Like the Lightning

Ada Palmer

Tor Books , 2016 • 433 pages

From the winner of the 2017 John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality Mycroft Canner is a convict For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets

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The Wagner Group

Jack Margolin

Reaktion Books , 2024 • 371 pages

An eye-opening, terrifying history of this notorious and widely influential mercenary group This book exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and secretive mercenary army, revealing details of their operations never documented before

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The Submerged State

Suzanne Mettler

University of Chicago Press , 2011 • 172 pages

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies

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Preface to Plato

Eric A. HAVELOCK

Harvard University Press , 2009 • 343 pages

Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological

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Palo Alto

Malcolm Harris

Little, Brown , 2023 • 762 pages

Named One of the Year's Best Books by VULTURE • THE NEW REPUBLIC • DAZED • WIRED • BLOOMBERG • ESQUIRE • SALON • THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB The history of Silicon Valley, from railroads to microchips, is an “extraordinary” story of disruption and destruction, told for the first time in this comprehensive, jaw-dropping narrative (Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth) Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing

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Material World

Ed Conway

Knopf , 2023 • 513 pages

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. • Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material

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Maoism

Julia Lovell

Random House , 2019 • 485 pages

WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2019 SHORLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2019 'A landmark work giving a global panorama of Mao's ideology filled with historic events and enlivened by striking characters' Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of China 'Wonderful' Andrew Marr, New Statesman Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao's revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People's Republic

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Water

Tirthankar Roy

Oxford University Press , 2025 • 313 pages

From the early twentieth century, a big part of the world - the arid/semiarid tropics - began extracting, storing, and recycling vast quantities of water to sustain population growth and economic development The idea was not a new one in this geography It was an intrinsic part of ancient culture, statecraft, and technology

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Simone Weil, an Anthology

Simone Weil

Grove Press , 1986 • 290 pages

Philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist, political activist -- Simone Weil was among the foremost thinkers of our time Best known in this country for her theological writing, Weil wrote on a great variety of subjects ranging from classical philosophy and poetry, to modern labor, to the language of political discourse The present anthology offers a generous collection of her work, including essays never before translated into English and many that have long been out of print It amply confirms Elizabeth Hardwick's words that Simone Weil was "one of the most brilliant and original minds of twentieth-century France" and "a woman of transcendent intellectual gifts and the widest learning." A longtime Weil scholar, Sian Miles has selected essays representative of the wide sweep of Weil's work and provides a superb introduction that places Weil's work in context of her life and times.

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Independent Africa

Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong

Indiana University Press , 2023 • 389 pages

Independent Africa explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders, and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking.

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Born in Blackness

Howard W. French

National Geographic Books , 2021

Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum

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China's Second Continent

Howard W. French

Vintage , 2015 • 306 pages

A New York Times Notable Book Chinese immigrants of the recent past and unfolding twenty-first century are in search of the African dream So explains indefatigable traveler Howard W French, prize-winning investigative journalist and former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, in the definitive account of this seismic geopolitical development

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A Savage War of Peace

Alistair Horne

Pan Macmillan , 2012 • 565 pages

Thoroughly sharp and honest treatment of a brutal conflict.The Algerian War (1954-1962) was a savage colonial war, killing an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and expelling the same number of European settlers from their homes It was to cause the fall of six French prime minsters and the collapse of the Fourth Repbulic It came close to bringing down de Gaulle and - twice - to plunging France into civil war.The story told here contains heroism and tragedy, and poses issues of enduring relevance beyond the confines of either geography or time Horne writes with the extreme intelligence and perspicacity that are his trademarks.

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Mission to Tashkent

Frederick Marshman Bailey

Oxford University Press, USA , 1992 • 330 pages

This book relates the extraordinary adventures of Colonel F.M Bailey, the famous British undercover agent Long accused by Moscow as a master-spy orchestrating the destruction of Bolshevism in Central Asia, Bailey tells a tale that is at once spellbinding, thrilling, and even darkly humorous In Mission to Tashkent Bailey relates in compelling detail the perilous game of cat-and-mouse that he played with Cheka--the dreaded Bolshevik secret police--for sixteen remarkable months

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The Lumumba Plot

Stuart A. Reid

Random House , 2024 • 657 pages

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times “This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers

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Chief of Station, Congo

Lawrence Devlin

PublicAffairs , 2008 • 312 pages

Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way -- out of the Congo Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette, Congo style, with him

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The War That Doesn't Say Its Name

Jason K. Stearns

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 328 pages

Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a “forever war”—a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003—accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid—has failed to stop the violence

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1491 (Second Edition)

Charles C. Mann

Vintage , 2006 • 578 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review) Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them

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Why Nothing Works

Marc J. Dunkelman

PublicAffairs , 2025 • 407 pages

A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle

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Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

1976 • 460 pages

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy remains one of the greatest works of social theory written this century When it first appeared the New English Weekly predicted that for the next five to ten years it will cetainly remain a work with which no one who professes any degree of information on sociology or economics can afford to be unacquainted.' Fifty years on, this prediction seems a little understated Why has the work endured so well

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Kaput

Wolfgang Münchau

Swift Press , 2024 • 210 pages

Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success Angela Merkel was widely seen as the true 'leader of the free world', and Germany's export-driven economic model seemed to deliver prosperity But recent events – from Germany's dependence on Russian gas to its car industry's delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view

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Kaput

Wolfgang Münchau

Swift Press , 2024 • 210 pages

Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success Angela Merkel was widely seen as the true 'leader of the free world', and Germany's export-driven economic model seemed to deliver prosperity But recent events – from Germany's dependence on Russian gas to its car industry's delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view

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How Markets Fail

Cassidy John, John Cassidy

Penguin UK , 2013 • 485 pages

How did we get to where we are John Cassidy shows that the roots of our most recent financial failure lie not with individuals, but with an idea - the idea that markets are inherently rational He gives us the big picture behind the financial headlines, tracing the rise and fall of free market ideology from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan

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The Rise And Fall Of Apartheid

David Welsh

Jonathan Ball Publishers , 2010 • 528 pages

On his way into Parliament on 2 February 1990 FW de Klerk turned to his wife Marike and said, referring to his forthcoming speech: 'South Africa will never be the same again after this.' Did white South Africa crack, or did its leadership yield sufficiently and just in time to avert a revolution The transformation has been called a miracle, belying gloomy predictions of race war in which the white minority went into a laager and fought to the last drop of blood

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Revelation Space

Alastair Reynolds

Gollancz , 2009 • 468 pages

The legendary space opera that kicked off the ground-breaking, universe-spanning series Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin For the human colonists now settling their homeworld, their predecessors are of little interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city

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Blindsight

Peter Watts

Macmillan , 2006 • 388 pages

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell.. Two months of silence, while a world held 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

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India in the Persianate Age

Richard M. Eaton

Univ of California Press , 2019 • 528 pages

Protected by vast mountains and seas, the Indian subcontinent might seem a nearly complete and self-contained world with its own religions, philosophies, and social systems And yet this ancient land and its varied societies experienced prolonged and intense interaction with the peoples and cultures of East and Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and especially Central Asia and the Iranian plateau Richard M

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Barbarism and Religion: Volume 4, Barbarians, Savages and Empires

J. G. A. Pocock

Cambridge University Press , 2005 • 386 pages

Barbarism and Religion' - Edward Gibbon's own phrase - is the title of a sequence of works by John Pocock designed to situate Gibbon, and his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in a series of contexts in the history of eighteenth-century Europe In the fourth volume in the sequence, first published in 2005, Pocock argues that barbarism was central to the history of western historiography, to the history of the Enlightenment, and to Edward Gibbon himself As a concept it was deeply problematic to Enlightened historians seeking to understand their own civilised societies in the light of exposure to newly discovered civilisations which were, until then, beyond the reach of history itself.

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The Machiavellian Moment

John Greville Agard Pocock

Princeton University Press , 2016 • 665 pages

Originally published in 1975, The Machiavellian Moment remains a landmark of historical and political thought Celebrated historian J.G.A Pocock looks at the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness arising from the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy

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Imprudent King

Geoffrey Parker

Yale University Press , 2014 • 489 pages

Drawing on four decades of research and a recent archival discovery, revises the biography of the sixteenth-century monarch as it relates to his work, religion, and personal life, and sheds light on the causes of his leadership failures.

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Emperor

Geoffrey Parker

Yale University Press , 2019 • 665 pages

This “elegant and engaging” biography dramatically reinterprets the life and reign of the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor: “a masterpiece” (Susannah Lipscomb, Financial Times) The life of Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), ruler of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long intrigued biographers But capturing the nature of this elusive man has proven notoriously difficult—especially given his relentless travel, tight control of his own image, and the complexity of governing the world’s first transatlantic empire

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Global Crisis

Geoffrey Parker

Yale University Press , 2013 • 944 pages

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas

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The Pacific Circuit

Alexis Madrigal

MCD , 2025 • 234 pages

Alexis Madrigal reveals how understanding Oakland explains the modern world In The Pacific Circuit, the award-winning journalist Alexis Madrigal sculpts an intricate tableau of the city of Oakland that is at once a groundbreaking big-idea book, a deeply researched work of social and political history, and an intimate portrait of an essential American city that has been at the crossroads of the defining themes of the twenty-first century Oakland’s stories encompass everything from Silicon Valley’s prominence and the ramifications of a compulsively digital future to the underestimated costs of technological innovation on local communities—all personified in this changing landscape for the city’s lifelong inhabitants

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Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks

Hachette UK , 2008 • 450 pages

Consider Phlebas is a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination, from a modern master of science fiction The war raged across the galaxy Billions had died, billions more were doomed Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random

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Command Performance

Jean Echenoz

New York Review of Books , 2025 • 177 pages

A thrilling, inventive, playful, and unorthodox detective and caper novel, the latest work by a French master. “Fans of Jean-Patrick Manchette's deadpan irony will appreciate Command Performance, Echenoz's vibrant, playful homage to the hard-boiled genre, which plays like The Big Lebowski on the Seine.” —Publishers Weekly Gerard Fulmard is a loser A disgraced former flight attendant, he attempts the métier of private detective, with spectacularly disastrous results, then begins working for an obscure political groupuscule beset by an outsized share of infighting and backroom maneuvering

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Poor Economics

Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo

PublicAffairs , 2012 • 321 pages

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live Why do the poor borrow to save Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs In Poor Economics, Abhijit V

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Titanium Noir

Nick Harkaway, Nicholas Cornwell

Knopf , 2023 • 257 pages

A virtuosic mashup of Philip K Dick and Raymond Chandler by way of Marvel—the story of a detective investigating the murder of a Titan, one of society’s most powerful, medically-enhanced elites. • “Cross-genre brilliance from the superbly talented Nick Harkaway.” —William Gibson, New York Times best-selling author of Agency "An exemplar of its genre, Titanium Noir twists and turns between excellent fun and deep melancholy." —The New York Times Book Review Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases

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Thick

Tressie McMillan Cottom

The New Press , 2019 • 113 pages

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Named a notable book of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Time, and The Guardian As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly, Well-Read Black Girl, and Chris Hayes, "incisive, witty, and provocative essays" (Publishers Weekly) by one of the "most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time" (Rebecca Traister) “Thick is sure to become a classic.” —The New York Times Book Review In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically "thick": deemed "thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less," McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work Thick "transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with "writing that is as deft as it is amusing" (Darnell L

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Death Is Our Business

John Lechner

Bloomsbury Publishing USA , 2025 • 297 pages

Extraordinary."-CHRIS MILLER, author of Chip War "Incredible."-ANNIE JACOBSEN, author of Nuclear War, via X From John Lechner, "an amazingly bold reporter" (Adam Hochschild), the shocking inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia's anti-Western foreign strategy In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia's first attempt to claim the country as its own

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The Hidden Wealth of Nations

Gabriel Zucman

University of Chicago Press , 2015 • 142 pages

We are well aware of the rise of the 1% as the rapid growth of economic inequality has put the majority of the world’s wealth in the pockets of fewer and fewer One much-discussed solution to this imbalance is to significantly increase the rate at which we tax the wealthy But with an enormous amount of the world’s wealth hidden in tax havens—in countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands—this wealth cannot be fully accounted for and taxed fairly

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The Rise and Fall of American Growth

Robert J. Gordon

Princeton University Press , 2017 • 784 pages

How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end

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The Great Transformation

Karl Polanyi

Beacon Press , 2025

In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.

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Flying Blind

Peter Robison

Anchor , 2021 • 337 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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

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The Smartest Guys in the Room

Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind

2003 • 486 pages

The inside story of one of history's greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America's seventh largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything.

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Hayek's Bastards

Quinn Slobodian

Princeton University Press , 2025 • 280 pages

The story of the American Right is often told as the fusion of the free market and religion Yet recent decades have seen the rise of a new fusionism which turns to nature and science to defend naturalized inequality and the Social Darwinist virtues of competition"--

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Traitor to His Class

H. W. Brands

National Geographic Books , 2009

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A brilliant evocation of one of the greatest presidents in American history by the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War "It may well be the best general biography of Franklin Roosevelt we will see for many years to come.” —The Christian Science Monitor Drawing on archival material, public speeches, correspondence and accounts by those closest to Roosevelt early in his career and during his presidency, H W

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Deep Space Warfare

John C. Wright

McFarland , 2019 • 209 pages

Since the Cold War, outer space has become of strategic importance for nations looking to seize the ultimate high ground World powers establishing a presence there must consider, among other things, how they will conduct warfare in orbit Leaders must dispense with "Buck Rogers" notions about operations in space and realize that policies there will have serious ramifications for geopolitics

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Box Office Poison

Tim Robey

Harlequin , 2024 • 373 pages

***A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK OF NOVEMBER 2024*** "A wild success." — Publishers Weekly "A surefire hit." —Library Journal STARRED review "A brilliant star turn." —Andrew O’Hagan A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood’s most spectacular flops and how they ended careers, bankrupted studios and changed film history. "Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag…” From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made

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At Night All Blood Is Black

David Diop

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2020 • 94 pages

*WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War

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The Golden Road

William Dalrymple

Bloomsbury Publishing USA , 2025 • 461 pages

The internationally bestselling author of The Anarchy returns with a sparkling, soaring history of ideas, tracing South Asia's under-recognized role in producing the world as we know it For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific

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The Neomercantilists

Eric Helleiner

2021 • 414 pages

This book analyzes the emergence of neomercantilist thought between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, highlighting the global origins of this ideology, its diverse varieties, and the lasting legacies of the ideas of its pioneers on the politics of the world economy"--

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Newborn Socialist Things

Laurence Coderre

Duke University Press , 2021 • 156 pages

Contemporary China is seen as a place of widespread commodification and consumerism, while the preceeding Maoist Cultural Revolution is typically understood as a time when goods were scarce and the state criticized what little consumption was possible Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, both the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed

The Dream Hotel

Laila Lalami

2025

From Laila Lalami-the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a maestra of literary fiction; (NPR)-comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime

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Wireless Wars

Jonathan Pelson

BenBella Books , 2021 • 269 pages

A 2024 US AIR FORCE LEADERSHIP LIBRARY BOOK NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS WINNER — TECHNOLOGY As the world rolls out transformational 5G services, it has become increasingly clear that China may be able to disrupt—or even access—the wireless networks that carry our medical, financial, and even military communications This insider story from a telecommunications veteran uncovers how we got into this mess—and how to change the outcome In Wireless Wars: China's Dangerous Domination of 5G and How We're Fighting Back, author Jon Pelson explains how America invented cellular technology, taught China how to make the gear, and then handed them the market

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Adventures in Innovation

John F. Tyson

2014 • 228 pages

Tyson's journey from student to senior executive when an entirely new world of human communications came into being He traces the development of corporate identity, vision, and activities of Bell-Northern Research (BNR), which would become one of the most innovative and widely respected research-and-development organizations in the world.

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Private Empire

Steve Coll

Penguin , 2012 • 654 pages

“ExxonMobil has met its match in Coll, an elegant writer and dogged reporter . . . extraordinary . . . monumental.” —The Washington Post “Fascinating . . Private Empire is a book meticulously prepared as if for trial . . . a compelling and elucidatory work.” —Bloomberg From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, an extraordinary exposé of Big Oil Includes a profile of current Secretary of State and former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil—the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States—Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power

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A History of the Muslim World

Michael A. Cook

Princeton University Press , 2025

A panoramic history of the Muslim world from the age of the Prophet Muḥammad to the birth of the modern era This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity

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House of Huawei

Eva Dou

Hachette UK , 2025 • 253 pages

The untold story of the mysterious company that shook the world 'Groundbreaking' Dan Wang 'Essential reading' Chris Miller, author of Chip War On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world's most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies' female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the U.S.-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the international spotlight

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Antimemetics

Nadia Asparouhova

2025

It's easier than ever to share ideas, yet some of the most interesting ideas are burrowing deeper underground, circulating quietly among group chats, texts, and whisper networks While memes - self-replicating bits of culture - thrive in an attention-driven economy, other ideas are becoming strangely harder to find Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading explores this paradox, uncovering the hidden forces that determine what we remember, what we forget, and why some ideas - no matter how compelling - resist going viral

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Laws of the Land

Tristan G. Brown

Princeton University Press , 2025

A groundbreaking history of fengshui's roles in public life and law during China's last imperial dynasty Today the term fengshui, which literally means "wind and water," is recognized around the world Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history In Laws of the Land, Tristan Brown tells the story of the important roles--especially legal ones--played by fengshui in Chinese society during China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644-1912)

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Alone Together

Sherry Turkle

Basic Books , 2017 • 463 pages

A groundbreaking book by one of the most important thinkers of our time shows how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones Technology has become the architect of our intimacies Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude

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The Productivity Race

Steve N. Broadberry

Cambridge University Press , 2005 • 480 pages

This book is a reassessment of British performance in manufacturing since 1850 in the light of new evidence on international comparisons of productivity It analyzes productivity levels in Britain, the United States and Germany and provides detailed case studies of all the major manufacturing industries over the past century and a half Stephen Broadberry uncovers new ways of looking at Britain's relative economic decline while debunking a number of misapprehensions regarding the nature and causes of the decline.

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The Rise and Fall of the British Nation

David Edgerton

Penguin Group , 2019

Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation This nation was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways

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No Exit

Yoav Di-Capua

University of Chicago Press , 2018 • 372 pages

It is a curious and relatively little-known fact that for two decades—from the end of World War II until the late 1960s—existentialism’s most fertile ground outside of Europe was in the Middle East, and Jean-Paul Sartre was the Arab intelligentsia’s uncontested champion In the Arab world, neither before nor since has another Western intellectual been so widely translated, debated, and celebrated By closely following the remarkable career of Arab existentialism, Yoav Di-Capua reconstructs the cosmopolitan milieu of the generation that tried to articulate a political and philosophical vision for an egalitarian postcolonial world

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The Mathematical Theory of Communication

Claude E Shannon, Warren Weaver

University of Illinois Press , 1998 • 141 pages

Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory more than fifty years ago Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.

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Gambling Man

Lionel Barber

Random House , 2024 • 306 pages

Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world’s least known but most consequential investors Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen

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Careless People

Sarah Wynn-Williams

Flatiron Books , 2025 • 384 pages

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book — amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this — it’s time to pull out all the stops.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold

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The Attention Merchants

Tim Wu

Vintage , 2017 • 434 pages

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

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More Work For Mother

Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Basic Books , 1985 • 288 pages

In this classic work of women's history (winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology), Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows how and why modern women devote as much time to housework as did their colonial sisters In lively and provocative prose, Cowan explains how the modern conveniences—washing machines, white flour, vacuums, commercial cotton—seemed at first to offer working-class women middle-class standards of comfort Over time, however, it became clear that these gadgets and gizmos mainly replaced work previously conducted by men, children, and servants Instead of living lives of leisure, middle-class women found themselves struggling to keep up with ever higher standards of cleanliness.

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The Last Samurai

Helen DeWitt

Random House , 2011 • 421 pages

‘Fiercely intelligent, very funny and unlike anything else I’ve ever read’ MARK HADDON 'Original...witty...playful...a wonderfully funny book' JAMES WOOD 'A triumph – a genuinely new story, a genuinely new form' A S BYATT Eleven-year-old Ludo is in search of a father Raised singlehandedly by his mother Sibylla, Ludo’s been reading Greek, Arabic, Japanese and a little Hebrew since the age of four; but reading Homer in the original whilst riding the Circle Line on the London Underground isn’t enough to satisfy the boy’s boundless curiosity

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North Woods

Daniel Mason

Random House Large Print , 2023 • 513 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. “With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples

Tracy's recommendation

Recommended by Tracy Recommended by Tracy

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North Woods

Daniel Mason

Random House Large Print , 2023 • 513 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. “With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples

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Before the Deluge

Michael Sonenscher

Princeton University Press , 2009 • 429 pages

Ever since the French Revolution, Madame de Pompadour's comment, "Après moi, le déluge" (after me, the deluge), has looked like a callous if accurate prophecy of the political cataclysms that began in 1789 But decades before the Bastille fell, French writers had used the phrase to describe a different kind of selfish recklessness--not toward the flood of revolution but, rather, toward the flood of public debt In Before the Deluge, Michael Sonenscher examines these fears and the responses to them, and the result is nothing less than a new way of thinking about the intellectual origins of the French Revolution

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The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works

Helen Czerski

W. W. Norton & Company , 2023 • 465 pages

A Financial Times Best Science Book of 2023 “[A] profound, sparkling global ocean voyage.” —Andrew Robinson, Nature A scientist’s exploration of the "ocean engine"—the physics behind the ocean’s systems—and why it matters All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials In The Blue Machine, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski illustrates the mechanisms behind this defining feature of our planet, voyaging from the depths of the ocean floor to tropical coral reefs, estuaries that feed into shallow coastal seas, and Arctic ice floes

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Threat Multiplier

Sherri Goodman

Island Press , 2024 • 266 pages

Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change More than thirty years ago, when Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon’s first Chief Environmental Officer, no one would have imagined this role for our armed forces Indeed, for much of the twentieth century, the Department of Defense (DOD) was better known for containing the Soviet nuclear threat than protecting the environment

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Clashing Over Commerce

Douglas A. Irwin

University of Chicago Press , 2017 • 873 pages

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests

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Mood Machine

Liz Pelly

Simon and Schuster , 2025 • 288 pages

An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed

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High Bias

Marc Masters

UNC Press Books , 2023 • 220 pages

The cassette tape was revolutionary Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history Make your own tapes Trade them with friends Tape over the ones you don’t like The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities

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Power Struggles

Jaume Franquesa, Jaume Franquesa Bartolome

Indiana University Press , 2018 • 286 pages

Wind energy is often portrayed as a panacea for the environmental and political ills brought on by an overreliance on fossil fuels, but this characterization may ignore the impact wind farms have on the regions that host them Power Struggles investigates the uneven allocation of risks and benefits in the relationship between the regions that produce this energy and those that consume it Jaume Franquesa considers Spain, a country where wind now constitutes the main source of energy production

Joe's recommendation

Recommended by Joe Recommended by Joe

Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror

Andrey Mir

2024

Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror Jaspers' Axial Age and Logan's Alphabet Effect (2023), argues that all contemporary disturbances are the outcomes of the reversal of literacy and retrieval of orality - in the form of digital orality To explore these reversal and retrieval, the book looks back in history at how literacy replaced orality in the past The idea is that digital media are now replaying this process backward."--Author's wesite, https://human-as-media.com/about/, viewed 2/26/24.

Joe's recommendation

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Orality and Literacy

Walter J. Ong

Routledge , 2013 • 263 pages

Walter J Ong’s classic work provides a fascinating insight into the social effects of oral, written, printed and electronic technologies, and their impact on philosophical, theological, scientific and literary thought This thirtieth anniversary edition – coinciding with Ong’s centenary year – reproduces his best-known and most influential book in full and brings it up to date with two new exploratory essays by cultural writer and critic John Hartley

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Owned

Eoin Higgins

Bold Type Books , 2025 • 223 pages

A cabal of tech-billionaires is colluding with once-idealistic journalists to create an entirely new media landscape Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence

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Positional Option Trading

Euan Sinclair

John Wiley & Sons , 2020 • 246 pages

A detailed, one-stop guide for experienced options traders Positional Option Trading: An Advanced Guide is a rigorous, professional-level guide on sophisticated techniques from professional trader and quantitative analyst Euan Sinclair The author has over two decades of high-level option trading experience He has written this book specifically for professional options traders who have outgrown more basic trading techniques and are searching for in-depth information suitable for advanced trading

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The Women

Kristin Hannah

Macmillan , 2024

An instant Sunday Times bestseller and soon to be a major motion picture! 'Astonishing Compelling Powerful' - Delia Owens, bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing 'Stuns with sacrifice Uplifts with heroism' - Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry 'Powerful' - Matt Haig, bestselling author of The Midnight Library From the worldwide bestselling author of The Four Winds, The Nightingale and Firefly Lane (a Number One series on Netflix), The Women is a story of devastating loss and epic love

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River of Dark Dreams

Walter Johnson

Harvard University Press , 2013 • 688 pages

Winner of the SHEAR Book Prize Honorable Mention, Avery O Craven Award “Few books have captured the lived experience of slavery as powerfully.” —Ari Kelman, Times Literary Supplement “[One] of the most impressive works of American history in many years.” —The Nation “An important, arguably seminal, book...Always trenchant and learned.” —Wall Street Journal A landmark history, by the author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist The Broken Heart of America, that shows how slavery fueled Southern capitalism

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Embassytown

China Miéville

Pan Macmillan , 2011 • 374 pages

Winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, China Miéville's astonishing Embassytown is an intelligent and immersive exploration of language in an alien world Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet

Joe's recommendation

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Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

Vintage , 2011 • 289 pages

The groundbreaking novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral that originally propelled its author to literary stardom: told in a continuous monologue from patient to psychoanalyst, this masterpiece draws us into the turbulent mind of one lust-ridden young Jewish bachelor named Alexander Portnoy One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years “Deliciously funny . . . absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious . . . a brilliantly vivid reading experience”—The New York Times Book Review “Touching as well as hilariously lewd . .

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American Sheep

Brett Bannor

University of Georgia Press , 2024 • 330 pages

Why did Thomas Jefferson write that he would be happy if all dogs went extinct What economic opportunity did attorney John Lord Hayes envision for the newly emancipated during Reconstruction What American workers were mocked by Theodore Roosevelt as “morose, melancholy men” What problems with revenue collection did Congressman James Beauchamp Clark mention when proposing an income tax

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The Great Transformation

Odd Arne Westad, Jian Chen

Yale University Press , 2024 • 573 pages

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world

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The Control of Nature

John McPhee

Macmillan , 1989 • 290 pages

While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions

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Other Rivers

Peter Hessler

Penguin , 2024 • 465 pages

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan Province to instruct students from the next generation At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners

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Hummingbird Salamander

Jeff VanderMeer

MCD , 2021 • 266 pages

Named one of NPR's Best Books of 2021 From the author of Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things Security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist

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Fire Weather

John Vaillant

Vintage , 2024 • 441 pages

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • 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

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Roadside Picnic

Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky

Hachette UK , 2014 • 148 pages

The Strugatsky brothers' poignant and introspective novel of first contact that inspired the classic film Stalker Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around His life is dominated by the Zone and the thriving black market in the alien products Even the nature of his daughter has been determined by the Zone

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Emergent Tokyo

Jorge Almazan, Studiolab

2022 • 250 pages

This book examines the urban fabric of contemporary Tokyo as a valuable demonstration of permeable, inclusive, and adaptive urban patterns that required neither extensive master planning nor corporate urbanism to develop These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem Together, they create a degree of urban intensity and liveliness that is the envy of the world's cities

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BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War

Andrew Long

Pen and Sword History , 2024 • 275 pages

A detailed account of British intelligence operations in Cold War East Germany, revealing Soviet and East German military secrets from 1946 to 1990 The German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was the frontline in the Cold War, packed with hundreds of thousands of Soviet and East German troops armed with the latest Warsaw Pact equipment, lined up along the 1,400 km Inner German Border

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The Greenlanders

Jane Smiley

Pan Macmillan , 2017 • 721 pages

Set in the fourteenth century in Europe's most far-flung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark, mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family - proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose wilful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son, Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling centre of this unforgettable book Jane Smiley takes us into this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real, but dear to us.

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The Poverty of the World

Sheyda F. A. Jahanbani

Oxford University Press , 2023 • 401 pages

Bringing together foreign and domestic policy, The Poverty of the World aims to offer a new answer to the question of why Americans became obsessed with poverty in the 1960s A history of how American liberals made sense of US power during a period of unprecedented affluence at home, it uses intellectual and political biographies of major figures in postwar US social thought and politics to tell the story of how Americans invented the problem of "global poverty" and executed a war against it.

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Trillion Dollar Triage

Nick Timiraos

Hachette UK , 2022 • 331 pages

The inside story, told with “insight, perspective, and stellar reporting,” of how an unassuming civil servant created trillions of dollars from thin air, combatted a public health crisis, and saved the American economy from a second Great Depression (Alan S Blinder, former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve) By February 2020, the U.S. economic expansion had become the longest on record

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You Dreamed of Empires

Álvaro Enrigue

Penguin Group , 2024 • 241 pages

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF 2024 A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY TOP TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR "Enrigue’s genius lies in his ability to bring readers close to its tangled knot of priests, mercenaries, warriors and princesses while adding a pinch of biting humor." --Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Los Angeles Times “Riotously entertaining.. A triumph of solemnity-busting erudition and mischievous invention that will delight and titillate.” --Financial Times From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory colonial revenge story

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Turkey Under Erdoğan

Dimitar Bechev

Yale University Press , 2022 • 279 pages

An incisive account of Erdoğan’s Turkey – showing how its troubling transformation may be short-lived Since coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, intervening in regional flashpoints from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya And its democracy, sustained by the aspiration to join the European Union, has given way to one-man rule

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The Project-State and Its Rivals

Charles S. Maier

Harvard University Press , 2023 • 529 pages

A new and original history of the forces that shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era’s darker impulses—ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism—revived

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The Southern Tour

Jonathan Chatwin

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2024 • 255 pages

On a freezing January afternoon in 1992, Deng Xiaoping, China's former paramount leader and now a revered elder statesman, set off on a month long trip around China's south in defence of the reforms he had set in motion to open up China's economy and transform the country into the political and economic powerhouse we know today In this book Jonathan Chatwin pursues the story of Deng's legendary "Southern Tour" and examines its legacies in the country today

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Vassal State

Angus Hanton

Swift Press , 2024 • 293 pages

'Provocative and detailed .. Excellent' The Telegraph 'Shocking and meticulous' Danny Dorling 'An eye-opening revelation ... a must-read' Joel Bakan THE TELEGRAPH BEST BOOKS OF 2024 British politicians love to vaunt the benefits of the UK's supposed 'special relationship' with the US But are we really America's economic partner – or its colony

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Making Mao's Steelworks

Koji Hirata

Cambridge University Press , 2024

Located in Manchuria (Northeast China), the geopolitical borderland between China, Russia, and Japan, among others, Anshan Iron and Steel Works (Angang) was Mao-era China's most important industrial enterprise The history of Angang from 1915 to 2000 reveals the hybrid nature of China's accelerated industrialization, shaped by transnational interactions, domestic factors, and local dynamics Utilizing archives in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and English, Koji Hirata provides the first comprehensive history of this enterprise before, during, and after the Mao era (1949-1976)

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Uneven Centuries

Şevket Pamuk

Princeton University Press , 2018 • 373 pages

The first comprehensive history of the Turkish economy The population and economy of the area within the present-day borders of Turkey has consistently been among the largest in the developing world, yet there has been no authoritative economic history of Turkey until now In Uneven Centuries, Şevket Pamuk examines the economic growth and human development of Turkey over the past two hundred years Taking a comparative global perspective, Pamuk investigates Turkey’s economic history through four periods: the open economy during the nineteenth-century Ottoman era, the transition from empire to nation-state that spanned the two world wars and the Great Depression, the continued protectionism and import-substituting industrialization after World War II, and the neoliberal policies and the opening of the economy after 1980

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In the Herbarium

Maura C. Flannery

Yale University Press , 2023 • 336 pages

How herbaria illuminate the past and future of plant science Collections of preserved plant specimens, known as herbaria, have existed for nearly five centuries These pressed and labeled plants have been essential resources for scientists, allowing them to describe and differentiate species and to document and research plant changes and biodiversity over time—including changes related to climate Maura C

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Stalin

Stephen Kotkin

Penguin , 2017 • 1249 pages

“Monumental.” —The New York Times Book Review Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways

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The Chinese Typewriter

Thomas S. Mullaney

MIT Press , 2018 • 501 pages

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind

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Make Your Own Job

Erik Baker

Harvard University Press , 2025 • 350 pages

A sweeping new history of the changing meaning of work in the United States, from Horatio Alger to Instagram influencers How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned Successful workers were increasingly expected to show initiative and enthusiasm for change—not just to do their jobs reliably but to create new opportunities for themselves and for others

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The Archive of Empire

Asheesh Kapur Siddique

Yale University Press , 2024 • 372 pages

How modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British Empire Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London

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Counterrevolution

Melinda Cooper

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 436 pages

A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance

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China and the End of Global Silver, 1873-1937

Austin Dean

2020

"For a very long time, silver was money, but in the late nineteenth century, much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard China, however, remained the most populous country still using silver, although the country had no unified national currency; there was not one standard, but many: silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." This book focuses on how officials, policymakers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system

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Domesticating Empire

Caitlín Eilís Barrett

Oxford University Press , 2019 • 451 pages

Domesticating Empire is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households Caitlín Barrett draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between representations of Egypt and a particular type of Roman household space: the domestic garden Through paintings and mosaics portraying the Nile, canals that turned the garden itself into a miniature "Nilescape," and statuary depicting Egyptian themes, many gardens in Pompeii offered ancient visitors evocations of a Roman vision of Egypt

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A Brief History of the Present

Hilal Ahmed

Penguin Random House India Private Limited , 2024 • 147 pages

Present-day political discourse swings between two contrary positions on the issue of Muslims Hindutva politics categorizes Muslims as a monolithic religious group to substantiate Hindu homogeneity The liberals, on the other hand, claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian democracy (if not secularism!)

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Analog Superpowers

Katherine C. Epstein

University of Chicago Press , 2024 • 387 pages

A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire

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The Chinese Computer

Thomas S. Mullaney

MIT Press , 2024 • 372 pages

The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device In The Chinese Computer, Thomas S

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The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy

Mervyn King

W. W. Norton & Company , 2016 • 214 pages

“Mervyn King may well have written the most important book to come out of the financial crisis Agree or disagree, King’s visionary ideas deserve the attention of everyone from economics students to heads of state.” —Lawrence H Summers Something is wrong with our banking system We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his ten years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society

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SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Mary Beard

W. W. Norton & Company , 2015 • 743 pages

New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gift Guide Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic) In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal)

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The Science of Interstellar

Kip Thorne

W. W. Norton & Company , 2014 • 560 pages

A journey through the otherworldly science behind Christopher Nolan’s award-winning film, Interstellar, from executive producer and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne Interstellar, from acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan, takes us on a fantastic voyage far beyond our solar system Yet in The Science of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who assisted Nolan on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, shows us that the movie’s jaw-dropping events and stunning, never-before-attempted visuals are grounded in real science

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Ghost Particle

Alan Chodos, James Riordon

MIT Press , 2024 • 319 pages

The fascinating story of science in pursuit of the ghostly, ubiquitous subatomic particle—the neutrino Isaac Asimov is said to have observed of the neutrino: “The only reason scientists suggested its existence was their need to make calculations come out even And yet the nothing-particle was not a nothing at all.” In fact, as one of the most enigmatic and most populous particles in the universe—about 100 trillion are flying through you every second—the neutrino may hold the clues to some of our deepest cosmic mysteries

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The Biggest Ideas in the Universe

Sean Carroll

Simon and Schuster , 2022 • 268 pages

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Sean Carroll has achieved something I thought impossible: a bridge between popular science and the mathematical universe of working physicists Magnificent!’ Brian Clegg, author of Ten Days in Physics that Shook the World Immense, strange and infinite, the world of modern physics often feels impenetrable to the undiscerning eye – a jumble of muons, gluons and quarks, impossible to explain without several degrees and a research position at CERN

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Quantum Steampunk

Nicole Yunger Halpern

JHU Press , 2022 • 305 pages

The Industrial Revolution meets the quantum-technology revolution A steampunk adventure guide to how mind-blowing quantum physics is transforming our understanding of information and energy Victorian era steam engines and particle physics may seem worlds (as well as centuries) apart, yet a new branch of science, quantum thermodynamics, reenvisions the scientific underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution through the lens of today's roaring quantum information revolution

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Shopping All the Way to the Woods

Rachel S. Gross

Yale University Press , 2024 • 305 pages

A fascinating history of the profitable paradox of the American outdoor experience: visiting nature first requires shopping No escape to nature is complete without a trip to an outdoor recreational store or a browse through online offerings This is the irony of the American outdoor experience: visiting wild spaces supposedly untouched by capitalism first requires shopping With consumers spending billions of dollars on clothing and equipment each year as they seek out nature, the American outdoor sector grew over the past 150 years from a small collection of outfitters to an industry contributing more than 2 percent of the nation's economic output

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All Systems Red

Martha Wells

Tordotcom , 2017 • 96 pages

A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Alex Award Winner: 2018 Locus Award One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017 A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety

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In This Economy?

Kyla Scanlon

Crown Currency , 2024 • 305 pages

“Few people can communicate how the economy actually works better than Kyla Scanlon.”—Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money An illustrated guide to the mad math and terrible terminology of economics, from one of the internet’s favorite financial educators Is our national debt really a threat What is a “mild” recession, exactly If you’re worried about your bank account balance, job security, or mortgage rate, what data should you be keeping tabs on

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Plato at the Googleplex

Rebecca Goldstein

Vintage , 2015 • 482 pages

Is philosophy obsolete Are the ancient questions still relevant in the age of cosmology and neuroscience, not to mention crowd-sourcing and cable news The acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today’s debates on religion, morality, politics, and science

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Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts

Jeremy L. Wallace

Oxford University Press , 2022 • 289 pages

A few numbers came to define Chinese politics, until they did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up Seeking Truth argues that the Chinese government adopted a system of limited, quantified vision in order to survive the disasters unleashed by Mao Zedong's ideological leadership, explains how that system worked, and analyzes how problems accumulated in its blind spots leading Xi Jinping to take the regime into a neopolitical turn

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Left Adrift

Timothy Shenk

2024

A behind-the-scenes look at how democrats lost their way In the generation after World War II, voters around the world routinely split along economic lines, delivering reliable working-class majorities to parties on the left Today, coalitions are increasingly determined by education rather than by income, driving educated professionals to the left and pushing blue-collar voters to the right In Left Adrift historian Timothy Shenk provides a new perspective on this extraordinary shift by taking readers inside a debate that unfolded in a tiny circle of elite political strategists over how leftwing parties could win again

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Why Not Default?

Jerome E. Roos

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 413 pages

How creditors came to wield unprecedented power over heavily indebted countries—and the dangers this poses to democracy The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates—why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts

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More Swindles from the Late Ming

Yingyu Zhang

Columbia University Press , 2024 • 159 pages

A woman seduces her landlord to extort the family farm Gamblers recruit a wily prostitute to get a rich young man back in the game Silver counterfeiters wreak havoc for traveling merchants A wealthy widow is drugged and robbed by a lodger posing as a well-to-do student

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The Book of Swindles

Yingyu Zhang

Columbia University Press , 2017 • 267 pages

This is an age of deception Con men ply the roadways Bogus alchemists pretend to turn one piece of silver into three Devious nuns entice young women into adultery Sorcerers use charmed talismans for mind control and murder

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The Evolution of a New Industry

Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, Zur Shapira

Stanford University Press , 2013 • 206 pages

The Evolution of a New Industry traces the emergence and growth of the Israeli hi-tech sector to provide a new understanding of industry evolution In the case of Israel, the authors reveal how the hi-tech sector built an entrepreneurial culture with a capacity to disseminate intergenerational knowledge of how to found new ventures, as well as an intricate network of support for new firms Following the evolution of this industry from embryonic to mature, Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, and Zur Shapira develop a genealogical approach that relies on looking at the sector in the way that one might consider a family tree

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Fear City

Kim Phillips-Fein

Macmillan + ORM , 2017 • 302 pages

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST An epic, riveting history of New York City on the edge of disaster—and an anatomy of the austerity politics that continue to shape the world today When the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible How could the country’s largest metropolis fail How could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt

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Centrifugal Empire

Jae Ho Chung

Columbia University Press , 2016 • 229 pages

Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People's Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy By analyzing Beijing's strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China's approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests

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The Ripple Effect

Enze Han

Oxford University Press , 2024 • 241 pages

In The Ripple Effect, Enze Han argues that a focus on the Chinese state alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of China's influence in Southeast Asia Instead, we must look beyond the Chinese state, to non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants These actors affect people's perception of China in a variety of ways, and they often have wide-ranging as well as long-lasting effects on bilateral relations Han proposes that to understand this increasingly globalized China, we need more conceptual flexibility regarding which Chinese actors are important to China's relations, and how they wield this influence, whether intentional or not.

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The Latecomer's Rise

Muyang Chen

Cornell University Press , 2024 • 156 pages

In The Latecomer's Rise, Muyang Chen reveals the nature and impact of a rapidly growing form of international lending: Chinese development finance Over the past few decades, China has become the world's largest provider of bilateral development finance Through its two national policy banks, the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim), it has funded infrastructure and industrial projects in numerous emerging markets and developing countries

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On Xi Jinping

Kevin Rudd

Oxford University Press , 2024 • 625 pages

An authoritative account of Xi Jinping's worldview and how it drives Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage In his new book, On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage--that of President Xi Jinping, who now hold near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life

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Drunk in China

Derek Sandhaus

U of Nebraska Press , 2019 • 359 pages

2020 Gourmand Award in Spirits Gold Medal winner in the Independent Book Publishers Awards China is one of the world's leading producers and consumers of liquor, with alcohol infusing all aspects of its culture, from religion and literature to business and warfare Yet to the outside world, China's most famous spirit, baijiu, remains a mystery This is about to change, as baijiu is now being served in cocktail bars beyond its borders

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Achieving Our Country

Richard Rorty

1999 • 159 pages

One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers

Tordotcom , 2021 • 102 pages

Winner of the Hugo Award In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend

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The Nobel Factor

Avner Offer, Gabriel Söderberg

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 344 pages

Economic theory may be speculative, but its impact is powerful and real Since the 1970s, it has been closely associated with a sweeping change around the world--the "market turn." This is what Avner Offer and Gabriel Soderberg call the rise of market liberalism, a movement that, seeking to replace social democracy, holds up buying and selling as the norm for human relations and society Our confidence in markets comes from economics, and our confidence in economics is underpinned by the Nobel Prize in Economics, which was first awarded in 1969

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Life and Death of the American Worker

Alice Driver

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 272 pages

“A startling glimpse into the meatpacking industry’s abuse of undocumented and incarcerated workers.” —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the J Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, an explosive exposé of the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America and the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is headquartered

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Stalin

Stephen Kotkin

Penguin , 2014 • 978 pages

A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: a poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a top leader in a band of revolutionary zealots When the band seizes control of the country in the aftermath of total world war, the former seminarian ruthlessly dominates the new regime until he stands as absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia

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The Spoils of War

Andrew Cockburn

PublicAffairs , 2016 • 322 pages

Two eminent political scientists show that America's great conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, were fought not for ideals, or even geopolitical strategy, but for the individual gain of the presidents who waged them It's striking how many of the presidents Americans venerate-Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D Roosevelt, and John F

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To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause

Benjamin Nathans

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 816 pages

"In the 1960s, the Soviet Union found itself unexpectedly challenged from within by a cohort of dissidents who eventually achieved global fame Their struggle for the rule of law and human rights made them instant heroes in the West, where they appeared as democracy's surrogate soldiers behind the iron curtain But, as historian Benjamin Nathans argues, theirs was a homegrown phenomenon; activists built the anti-totalitarian movement on fundamental concepts from within the communist pantheon

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The Billionaire Who Wasn't

Conor O'Clery

PublicAffairs , 2013 • 354 pages

The astonishing life of the modest New Jersey businessman who anonymously gave away 10 billion dollars and inspired the "giving while living" movement In this bestselling book, Conor O'Clery reveals the inspiring life story of Chuck Feeney, known as the "James Bond of philanthropy." Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression

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An Empire of Their Own

Neal Gabler

Anchor , 2010 • 537 pages

A provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry The names Harry Cohn, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, and Adolph Zucker are giants in the history of contemporary Hollywood, outsiders who dared to invent their own vision of the American Dream

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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

David Van Reybrouck

W. W. Norton & Company , 2024 • 705 pages

Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize • Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize From the internationally best-selling writer, a masterful account of the epic revolution that sparked the decolonization of the modern world On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and, on behalf of 68 million compatriots, announced the birth of a new nation With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after World War II

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A Voyage For Madmen

Peter Nichols

Harper Collins , 2009 • 320 pages

“An extraordinary story of bravery and insanity on the high seas. . . One of the most gripping sea stories I have ever read.” — Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm In the tradition of Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, comes a breathtaking oceanic adventure about an obsessive desire to test the limits of human endurance In 1968 nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held and never before completed: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop

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The Water Kingdom

Philip Ball

University of Chicago Press , 2017 • 350 pages

From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries Water has been so integral to China’s culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization

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Unruly Waters

Sunil Amrith

Basic Books , 2018 • 401 pages

From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its waters Asia's history has been shaped by her waters In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas -- and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations

Tracy's recommendation

Recommended by Tracy Recommended by Tracy

Very Important People cover

Very Important People

Ashley Mears

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 328 pages

A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne In today's New Gilded Age, the world's moneyed classes have taken conspicuous consumption to new extremes In Very Important People, sociologist, author, and former fashion model Ashley Mears takes readers inside the exclusive global nightclub and party circuit—from New York City and the Hamptons to Miami and Saint-Tropez—to reveal the intricate economy of beauty, status, and money that lies behind these spectacular displays of wealth and leisure

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Play Nice

Jason Schreier

Grand Central Publishing , 2024 • 342 pages

From a New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist comes The Social Network for the video game industry, a riveting examination of Blizzard Entertainment's rise and shocking downfall For video game fans, the name Blizzard Entertainment was once synonymous with perfection The renowned company behind classics like Diablo and World of Warcraft was known to celebrate the joy of gaming over all else

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Trading at the Speed of Light

Donald MacKenzie

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 304 pages

A remarkable look at how the growth, technology, and politics of high-frequency trading have altered global financial markets In today’s financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of this epic transformation Donald MacKenzie shows how in the 1990s, in what were then the disreputable margins of the US financial system, a new approach to trading—automated high-frequency trading or HFT—began and then spread throughout the world

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Microstructure of the First Organized Futures Market

Yasuo Takatsuki, Takashi Kamihigashi

Springer , 2020 • 250 pages

This book is the first comprehensive account of the rules and practices─the microstructure─of the Dojima Security Exchange (DSE), the world’s first futures market Despite worldwide interest in the DSE and its relevance to modern financial markets, it is only briefly touched upon as the earliest example of a futures market in most of the existing literature in English Until the publication of this book, there has been no comprehensive account in English of the rules and practices of the DSE

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Red Star Over China

Edgar Snow

Atlantic Books , 2017 • 927 pages

The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leaders in 1936, Edgar Snow came away with the first authorised account of Mao's life, as well as a history of the famous Long March and the men and women who were responsible for the Chinese revolution Out of that experience came Red Star Over China, a classic work that remains one of the most important books ever written about the birth of the Communist movement in China This edition includes extensive notes on the military and political developments in China, further interviews with Mao Tse-tung, a chronology covering 125 years of Chinese revolution and nearly a hundred detailed biographies of the men and women who were instrumental in making China what it is today.

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Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food

Michelle T. King

W. W. Norton & Company , 2024 • 259 pages

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A spirited new history of Chinese food told through an account of the remarkable life of Fu Pei-mei, the woman who brought Chinese cooking to the world In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor that would last four decades

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Indoctrinating the Youth

Jennifer Liu

University of Hawaii Press , 2024 • 241 pages

Indoctrinating the Youth examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists managed middle-school refugee students by merging schools, publishing and distributing updated textbooks, and assisting students as they migrated to the interior with their principals and teachers

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Formosa Betrayed

George H. Kerr

2018 • 520 pages

Formosa Betrayed is the authoritative account of the Kuomintang takeover of Taiwan and the 1947 "228 Incident" in which tens of thousands of Taiwanese people - an entire generation of intellectuals and leaders - were massacred by the new government Kerr was there, knew Taiwan well, and paints a compelling picture of Taiwan's tragic past.

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Outcasts of Empire

Paul D. Barclay

Univ of California Press , 2018 • 328 pages

Introduction : empires and indigenous peoples, global transformation and the limits of international society -- From wet diplomacy to scorched earth : the Taiwan expedition, the Guardline and the Wushe rebellion -- The long durée and the short circuit : gender, language and territory in the making of indigenous Taiwan -- Tangled up in red : textiles, trading posts and ethnic bifurcation in Taiwan -- The geobodies within a geobody : the visual economy of race-making and indigeneity

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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Edward Wilson-Lee

Scribner , 2020 • 416 pages

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck

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American Lucifers

Jeremy Zallen

UNC Press Books , 2019 • 369 pages

The myth of light and progress has blinded us In our electric world, we are everywhere surrounded by effortlessly glowing lights that simply exist, as they should, seemingly clear and comforting proof that human genius means the present will always be better than the past, and the future better still At best, this is half the story

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Gotham’s War Within a War

Emily Brooks

UNC Press Books , 2023 • 259 pages

A surprising history unfolded in New Deal– and World War II–era New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform

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Crowded Orbits

James Clay Moltz

Columbia University Press , 2024 • 352 pages

Space has become increasingly crowded since the turn of the century, as a growing number of countries, companies, and even private citizens have begun operating satellites and become spacefarers Crowded Orbits offers readers a valuable primer on space policy from an international perspective, examining technology, diplomacy, commerce, science, and military applications This second edition is thoroughly updated to cover events of the decade following the book’s original publication in 2014, when the pace of the competition to exploit space has accelerated dramatically

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Billionaire Wilderness

Justin Farrell

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 392 pages

Billionaire Wilderness offers an unprecedented look inside the world of the ultra-wealthy and their relationship to the natural world, showing how the ultra-rich use nature to resolve key predicaments in their lives Justin Farrell immerses himself in Teton County, Wyoming--both the richest county in the United States and the county with the nation's highest level of income inequality--to investigate interconnected questions about money, nature, and community in the twenty-first century

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Alien Oceans

Kevin Hand

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 296 pages

Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar system Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away Beneath the frozen crusts of several of the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn lurk vast oceans that may have existed for as long as Earth, and together may contain more than fifty times its total volume of liquid water

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Assembling the Dinosaur

Lukas Rieppel

Harvard University Press , 2019 • 227 pages

A lively account of the dinosaur’s role in Gilded Age America, examining the connection between business, paleontology, and museums Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America into a world center for vertebrate paleontology At the same time, the United States emerged as the world’s largest industrial economy, and creatures like Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Triceratops became emblems of American capitalism

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The Land Beneath the Ice

David J. Drewry

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 448 pages

A wondrous story of scientific endeavor—probing the great ice sheets of Antarctica From the moment explorers set foot on the ice of Antarctica in the early nineteenth century, they desired to learn what lay beneath David J Drewry provides an insider’s account of the ambitious and often hazardous radar mapping expeditions that he and fellow glaciologists undertook during the height of the Cold War, when concerns about global climate change were first emerging and scientists were finally able to peer into the Antarctic ice and take its measure

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American Bonds

Sarah L. Quinn

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 310 pages

How the American government has long used financial credit programs to create economic opportunities Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, but issues of government credit have been part of American life since the nation’s founding From the 1780s, when a watershed national land credit policy was established, to the postwar foundations of our current housing finance system, American Bonds examines the evolution of securitization and federal credit programs

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Electrifying Indonesia

Anto Mohsin

University of Wisconsin Pres , 2023 • 270 pages

Electrifying Indonesia tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia's rapid post-World War II development As a central part of its nation-building project, the Indonesian state sought to supply electricity to the entire country, bringing transformative socioeconomic benefits across its heterogeneous territories and populations While this project was driven by nationalistic impulses, it was also motivated by a genuine interest in social justice

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The Dong World and Imperial China’s Southwest Silk Road

James A. Anderson

University of Washington Press , 2024 • 300 pages

Brings a borderlands perspective to the history of China From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an important aspect of their political authority

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Command and Control

Eric Schlosser

Penguin , 2013 • 702 pages

The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine “Perilous and gripping . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal

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A Brief History of Earth

Andrew H. Knoll

HarperCollins , 2021 • 272 pages

Harvard’s acclaimed geologist “charts Earth’s history in accessible style” (AP) “A sublime chronicle of our planet." –Booklist, STARRED review How well do you know the ground beneath your feet Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters

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Tata

Mircea Raianu

Harvard University Press , 2021 • 305 pages

An eye-opening portrait of global capitalism spanning 150 years, told through the history of the Tata corporation Nearly a century old, the grand façade of Bombay House is hard to miss in the historic business district of Mumbai This is the iconic global headquarters of the Tata Group, a multinational corporation that produces everything from salt to software

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Danger Sound Klaxon!

Matthew F. Jordan

University of Virginia Press , 2023 • 325 pages

Danger Sound Klaxon! reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the twentieth century Although its metallic shriek at first shocked pedestrians, savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the United States and western Europe to adopt the shrill Klaxon horn as the safest signaling technology available in the 1910s The widespread use of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I, however, transformed how veterans heard this car horn, and its traumatic association with gas attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology

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A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age

Vicki Howard

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2022 • 249 pages

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022 In the modern consumer age that emerged after the First World War, shopping became a ubiquitous cultural practice Despite its apparent universality, the historicity and contingency of shopping should not be ignored: its meaning was always inextricably linked to the political, material and economic contexts within which it took place

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The Fishmeal Revolution

Kristin A. Wintersteen

Univ of California Press , 2021 • 245 pages

Introduction -- A deep history of the Humboldt Current ecosystem -- The new industrial ecology of animal farming in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, 1840-1930 -- Protein from the sea : the "nutrition problem" and the industrialization of fishing in Chile and Peru -- The golden anchoveta : the making of the world's largest single-species fishery in Chimbote, Peru -- States of uncertainty : science, policy, and the bio-economics of Peru's 1972 fishmeal collapse -- The translocal history of industrial fisheries in Iquique and Talcahuano, Chile -- Conclusion -- Appendix A : glossary of marine species -- Appendix B :diagram of Humboldt Current trophic web -- Appendix C : major current systems of Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean -- Appendix D : world fisheries management zones -- Appendix E : world fisheries landings and ENSO events, 1950-2014.

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A Brief History of the Pacific

Jeremy Black

Robinson , 2023 • 245 pages

This brilliantly concise history of the Pacific Ocean nevertheless succeeds in examining both the indigenous presence on ocean's islands and Western control or influence over the its islands and shores There is a particular focus on the period from the 1530s to 1890 with its greater Western coastal and oceanic presence in the Pacific, beginning with the Spanish takeover of the coasts of modern Central America, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and continuing with the Spaniards in the Philippines

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Machineries of Oil

Katayoun Shafiee

MIT Press , 2023 • 359 pages

The emergence of the international oil corporation as a political actor in the twentieth century, seen in BP's infrastructure and information arrangements in Iran In the early twentieth century, international oil corporations emerged as a new kind of political actor The development of the world oil industry, argues Katayoun Shafiee, was one of the era's largest political projects of techno-economic development

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The Global Japanese Restaurant

James Farrer, David Wank

University of Hawaii Press , 2023 • 261 pages

"With more than 120,000 Japanese restaurants around the world, Japanese cuisine has become truly global Through the transnational culinary mobilities of migrant entrepreneurs, workers, ideas and capital, Japanese cuisine spread and adapted to international tastes But this expansion is also entangled in culinary politics, ranging from authenticity claims and status competition among restaurateurs and consumers to societal racism, immigration policies, and soft power politics that have shaped the transmission and transformation of Japanese cuisine

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Combat-Ready Kitchen

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo

Penguin , 2015 • 306 pages

Americans eat more processed foods than anyone else in the world We also spend more on military research These two seemingly unrelated facts are inextricably linked If you ever wondered how ready-to-eat foods infiltrated your kitchen, you’ll love this entertaining romp through the secret military history of practically everything you buy at the supermarket

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Fragrant Frontier

Sarah Turner, Annuska Derks, Jean-François Rousseau

2022

Fragrant Frontiers is an ethnographically rich study that demystifies the contemporary spice trade originating from the Sino-Vietnamese uplands. .. The volume investigates the livelihoods of the ethnic minority farmers cultivating these spices across this mountainours frontier"--Back cover.

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From Free Port to Modern Economy

Chet Singh, Rajah Rasiah, Yee Tuan Wong

Iseas - Yusof Ishak Institute , 2019

The 1950s saw Lim Chong Eu taking an increasingly central role in Malayan politics, moving from the exhilarating preparation for independence to him losing political influence by the end of the decade The following decade saw him trying to revive his political fortunes, and finally succeeding at the ballot box in 1969 Becoming the Chief Minister of Penang State--retreating from national politics, as it were--provided him with the platform from which he would excel as nation builder and political leader

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Nuclear War

Annie Jacobsen

Penguin , 2024 • 401 pages

The INSTANT New York Times bestseller Instant Los Angeles Times bestseller “In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail…Terrifying.”—Wall Street Journal There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States

Joe's recommendation

Recommended by Joe Recommended by Joe

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How China Works

Xiaohuan Lan

Palgrave Macmillan , 2024

This book, a bestseller in China with over a million copies sold, depicts the role played by the Chinese government in China‘s economic development It explains how the Chinese government has gradually established and improved market mechanisms while promoting economic growth

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Balkan Cyberia

Victor Petrov

MIT Press , 2023 • 425 pages

How Bulgaria transformed the computer industry behind the Iron Curtain—and the consequences of that transformation for a society that dreamt of a brighter future Bulgaria in 1963 was a communist country led by a centralized party trying to navigate a multinational Cold War The state needed money, and it sought prestige

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Liberalism Disavowed

Beng Huat Chua

Cornell University Press , 2017 • 228 pages

In Liberalism Disavowed, Beng Huat Chua examines the rejection of Western-style liberalism in Singapore since the nation’s expulsion from Malaysia and formal independence as a republic in 1965 The People’s Action Party, which has ruled Singapore since 1959, has forged an independent non-Western ideology that is evident in various government policies that Chua analyzes, among them multiracialism, public housing, and widespread social distributions to the citizenry

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The Limits of Social Democracy

Jonas Pontusson

1992 • 282 pages

Pontusson's book does an excellent job in taking a critical look at Swedish investment politics. . . On the whole, this book is the best overall explanation of Swedish investment politics It gives the reader a clear basis for understanding the rise of Swedish social democracy and provides a detailed examination of the developments of industrial policy, codetermination, and wage-earner funds.'--Contemporary Sociology

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Reforming to Survive

Magnus B. Rasmussen, Carl Henrik Knutsen

Cambridge University Press , 2023 • 145 pages

This Element details how elites provide policy concessions when they face credible threats of revolution Specifically, the authors discuss how the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent formation of Comintern enhanced elites' perceptions of revolutionary threat by affecting the capacity and motivation of labor movements as well as the elites' interpretation of information signals These developments incentivized elites to provide policy concessions to urban workers, notably reduced working hours and expanded social transfer programs

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You Are All Sanpaku

Sakurazawa Nyoiti, Georges Ohsawa

Lyle Stuart , 1980 • 224 pages

The Japanese term, "sanpaku", describes a condition in the eye that connotes a grave state of physical and spiritual imbalance. "Macrobiotics", is the simple, natural means of correcting the dangerous "sanpaku" condition and creating a state of health, harmony and well-being, within and without This book describes the condition, symptoms, and means of repair for the human body and soul via macrobiotics. **Lightning Print On Demand Title

Money cover

Money

David McWilliams

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 269 pages

In this groundbreaking book, renowned global economist David McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and the awesome power of money: what it is, how it works, and why it matters The story of money is the story of our desires, our genius, and our downfalls Money is power—and power beguiles Nothing we’ve invented as a species has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet’s history so dramatically

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China and the New Maoists

Kerry Brown, Simone van Nieuwenhuizen

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2016 • 200 pages

Forty years after his death, Mao remains a totemic, if divisive, figure in contemporary China Though he retains an immense symbolic importance within China's national mythology, the rise of a capitalist economy has seen the ruling class become increasingly ambivalent towards him And while he continues to be a highly visible and contentious presence in Chinese public life, Mao's enduring influence has been little understood in the West

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The Hamlet Fire

Bryant Simon

UNC Press Books , 2020 • 320 pages

For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the railroad But by the 1970s, it had become a postindustrial backwater, a magnet for businesses in search of cheap labor and almost no oversight Imperial Food Products was one of those businesses The company set up shop in Hamlet in the 1980s

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Creating the Twentieth Century

Vaclav Smil

Oxford University Press , 2005 • 361 pages

The period between 1867 and 1914 remains the greatest watershed in human history since the emergence of settled agricultural societies: the time when an expansive civilization based on synergy of fuels, science, and technical innovation was born At its beginnings in the 1870s were dynamite, the telephone, photographic film, and the first light bulbs Its peak decade - the astonishing 1880s - brought electricity - generating plants, electric motors, steam turbines, the gramophone, cars, aluminum production, air-filled rubber tires, and prestressed concrete

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Down with the System

Serj Tankian

Hachette Books , 2024 • 304 pages

THE *INSTANT* NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER An exhilarating, thoughtful, and beautifully written memoir by musician, songwriter, and lead singer-lyricist of Grammy award-winning metal band, System Of A Down, Serj Tankian Serj Tankian will be the first to admit that his band, System Of A Down, was “unlikely a chart-topper as had ever existed in modern music history: a band of Armenian-Americans playing a practically unclassifiable clash of wildly aggressive metal riffs, unconventional tempo-twisting rhythms, and Armenian folk melodies, with me alternately growling, screaming, and crooning lyrics that could pivot from avant-garde silliness to raging socio-political rants in the space of a single line.” After all, as Serj concedes, “it’s not easy listening.” Even so, there’s no doubt that System’s music had struck a chord with millions of listeners across the globe ever since they burst on the scene in the mid-1990s

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Making Sense of Chaos

J Doyne Farmer

Yale University Press , 2024 • 385 pages

From a pioneer in the field of complexity science and chaos theory, a plan for solving the world's most pressing problems "Farmer convincingly argues that by using big data and today's more powerful computers, we can build more realistic models and simulations of the global economy. . . Farmer's vision will undoubtedly be significant in how economics evolves."--Tej Parikh, Financial Times, "Best New Books on Economics" "Both a manifesto for a revolution in economics and a memoir of an unusual career."--Ed Ballard, Wall Street Journal We live in an age of increasing complexity--an era of accelerating technology and global interconnection that holds more promise, and more peril, than any other time in human history

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The Freeze-Frame Revolution

Peter Watts

Tachyon Publications , 2018 • 140 pages

“This—THIS—is the cutting edge of science fiction.” —Richard K Morgan, author of Altered Carbon How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you

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Under the Nuclear Shadow

FIONA S. CUNNINGHAM

Princeton University Press , 2024

How and why China has pursued information-age weapons to gain leverage against its adversaries How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war Among the states facing this dilemma of fighting limited wars, only China has given information-age weapons such a prominent role While other countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on offensive cyber operations, counterspace capabilities, and precision conventional missiles to coerce its adversaries

From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000 cover

Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, Second Edition cover

Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, Second Edition

Bruce I. Jacobs, Kenneth N. Levy

McGraw Hill Professional , 2016 • 897 pages

The classic guide to quantitative investing—expanded and updated for today’s increasingly complex markets From Bruce Jacobs and Ken Levy—two pioneers of quantitative equity management—the go-to guide to stock selection has been substantially updated to help you build portfolios in today’s transformed investing landscape A powerful combination of in-depth research and expert insights gained from decades of experience, Equity Management, Second Edition includes 24 new peer-reviewed articles that help leveraged long-short investors and leverage-averse investors navigate today’s complex and unpredictable markets

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Advances in Active Portfolio Management: New Developments in Quantitative Investing

Richard C. Grinold, Ronald N. Kahn

McGraw Hill Professional , 2019 • 666 pages

From the leading authorities in their field—the newest, most effective tools for avoiding common pitfalls while maximizing profits through active portfolio management Whether you’re a portfolio manager, financial adviser, or investing novice, this important follow-up to the classic guide to active portfolio management delivers everything you need to beat the market at every turn Advances in Active Portfolio Management gets you fully up to date on the issues, trends, and challenges in the world of active management—and shows how to apply advances in the Grinold and Kahn’s legendary approach to meet current challenges

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A History of Interest Rates

Sidney Homer

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press , 1977 • 640 pages

A History of Interest Rates, Fourth Edition presents a readable account of interest rate trends and lending practices spanning over four millennia of economic history Filled with in-depth insights and illustrative charts and tables, this unique resource provides a broad perspective on interest rate movements - from which financial professionals can evaluate contemporary interest rate and monetary developments - and applies analytical tools, such as yield-curve averaging and decennial averaging, to the data available." "A History of Interest Rates, Fourth Edition offers a highly detailed analysis of money markets and borrowing practices in major economies It places the rates and corresponding credit forms in context by summarizing the political and economic events and financial customs of particular times and places." "To help you stay as current as possible, this revised and updated Fourth Edition contains a new chapter of contemporary material as well as added discussions of interest rate developments over the past ten years."--BOOK JACKET.

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Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe

Robert Drews

Taylor & Francis , 2017 • 295 pages

This book contends that Indo-European languages came to Greece, central Europe, southern Scandinavia and northern Italy no earlier than ca. 1600 BC, brought by the first military men whom Europeans had seen That the Greek, Keltic, Italic and Germanic sub-groups of Indo-European originated in the middle of the second millennium BC is a controversial idea Most Indo-Europeanists date the origin a thousand years earlier, and some archaeologists would place it before 5000 BC, as agriculture spread through Europe Here Robert Drews argues that the Indo-European languages came into Europe via military conquests, and that militarism – a man’s pride in his weapons and in his status as a warrior - began with the employment of horse-drawn chariots in battle.

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Derivative Media

Andrew deWaard

Univ of California Press , 2024 • 300 pages

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old

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Huey Long

Thomas Harry Williams

1969 • 958 pages

He was one of the most extraordinary figures in America's political history, a great natural politician who had become, at the time of his assassination, a serious rival to Franklin D Roosevelt for the presidency.

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Darfur

Millard Burr, Robert O. Collins

2008 • 380 pages

In Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster, Burr and Collins have updated their original 1999 volume with additional chapters The new title is not a publisher's gimmick: this is indeed the prehistory of Darfur's tragedy, and it is essential, if difficult, reading for any serious student of the crisis.. Not only does it provide an account of a history indispensable for understanding Darfur, but it is a salutary reminder of how intractable conflicts in the Chad basin can be. --African Studies Review Millard Burr and Robert Collins' book documents the twists and turns in this long-running saga...

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Who Gets What--and why

Alvin E. Roth

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , 2015 • 275 pages

A Nobel laureate reveals the often surprising rules that govern a vast array of activities -- both mundane and life-changing -- in which money may play little or no role If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers

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Shattered

Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes

Crown , 2018 • 498 pages

1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It was never supposed to be this close And of course she was supposed to win How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the riveting story of a sure thing gone off the rails For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself

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The World Turned Upside Down

Christopher Hill

Penguin Press , 2019 • 448 pages

Within the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century which resulted in the triumph of the protestant ethic - the ideology of the propertied class - there threatened another, quite different, revolution Its success might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church and rejected the protestant ethic In The World Turned Upside Down Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by wandering 'masterless' men, the outbursts of sexual freedom, the great imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs.

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Plastic Capitalism

Sean H. Vanatta

Yale University Press , 2024 • 412 pages

How bankers created the modern consumer credit economy and destroyed financial stability in the process American households are awash in expensive credit card debt But where did all this debt come from In this history of the rise of postwar American finance, Sean H Vanatta shows how bankers created our credit card economy and, with it, the indebted nation we know today

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The Belt and Road City

Simon Curtis, Ian Klaus

Yale University Press , 2024 • 275 pages

An exploration of how China's Belt and Road Initiative seeks to reshape international order and how it has catalyzed a new era of infrastructural geopolitics Over the past decade China has put infrastructural and urban development at the heart of a strategy aimed at nothing less than the transformation of international order The Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to revitalize and reconnect the ancient Silk Roads that linked much of the world before the rise of the West, is an attempt to place China at the center of this new international order, one shaped by Chinese power, norms, and values

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Chinese Workers of the World

Selda Altan

Stanford University Press , 2024 • 312 pages

Chinese workers helped build the modern world They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the construction of the Panama Canal, among many other projects While most investigations of Chinese workers focus on migrant labor, Chinese Workers of the World explores Chinese labor under colonial regimes within China thorough examination of the Yunnan-Indochina Railway, constructed between 1898–1910

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Atomic Steppe

Togzhan Kassenova

Stanford University Press , 2022 • 490 pages

Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory Would it give up these fire-ready weapons—or try to become a Central Asian North Korea

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China's Camel Country

Thomas White

University of Washington Press , 2024 • 266 pages

How animal conservation became a defense against cultural erasure China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification State environmentalism—in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement—has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China’s western borderlands

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A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

Victoria Smolkin

Princeton University Press , 2019 • 360 pages

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society

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George Soros

Kaoru Kurotani

John Wiley & Sons , 2006 • 202 pages

Hungarian-born George Soros is unquestionably one of the world's most powerful and profitable investors Dubbed "The Man Who Moves Markets," Soros is an investment wizard, speculator extraordinaire and magnanimous philanthropist This book chronicles Soros' life - how his family evaded capture by the Nazis, and how Soros used his business acumen to become a billionaire

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Lenin

Victor Sebestyen

Vintage , 2017 • 675 pages

Victor Sebestyen's riveting biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin—the first major biography in English in nearly two decades—is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century but also a fascinating portrait of Lenin the man Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess, and the English classics, Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887 Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first Communist revolution in history

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Lenin

Lars T. Lih

Reaktion Books , 2012 • 238 pages

After Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) is the man most associated with communism and its influence and reach around the world Lenin was the leader of the communist Bolshevik party during the October 1917 revolution in Russia, and he subsequently headed the Soviet state until 1924, bringing stability to the region and establishing a socialist economic and political system In Lenin, Lars T

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To the Finland Station

Edmund Wilson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2019 • 608 pages

One of the great works of modern historical writing, the classic account of the ideas, people, and politics that led to the Bolshevik Revolution Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station is intellectual history on a grand scale, full of romance, idealism, intrigue, and conspiracy, that traces the revolutionary ideas that shaped the modern world from the French Revolution up through Lenin's arrival at Finland Station in St. Petersburg in 1917 Fueled by Wilson's own passionate engagement with the ideas and politics at play, it is a lively and vivid, sweeping account of a singular idea—that it is possible to construct a society based on justice, equality, and freedom—gaining the power to change history

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Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Stanislaw Lem

HMH , 2012 • 199 pages

The absurdly brilliant far-future satire from “the Borges of scientific culture” (Time) The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight—papyralysis—has obliterated much of the planet’s written history Fortunately, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community . .

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At Amberleaf Fair

Phyllis Ann Karr

Wildside Press LLC , 2013 • 222 pages

They come to Amberleaf Fair -- toymakers, storytellers, conjurers, and adventurers They bring song and dance, gifts of love, and tales of far places But in the midst of celebration, the high wizard Talmar is stricken with what appears to be the Choking Glory, his brother Torin the toymaker has been rejected by his lady love, and a fabulous necklace from across the sea has been stolen -- and Torin is the chief suspect

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Orbital

Samantha Harvey

Grove Press , 2023 • 123 pages

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours "Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space

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Spies and Commissars

Robert Service

Pan Macmillan , 2011 • 400 pages

In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, the Western powers were anxious to prevent the spread of Bolshevism across Europe Lenin and Trotsky were equally anxious that the Communist vision they were busy introducing in Russia should do just that But neither side knew anything about the other The revolution and Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War had ensured a diplomatic exodus from Moscow and the usual routes to vital information had been closed off

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Albion's Fatal Tree

Douglas Hay

Pantheon , 1975 • 376 pages

Explores the contrasts between the genteel, aristocratic side of 18th century British society and criminal elements characterized by raucous public hangings marked by insubordination and riot.

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Blood in the Machine

Brian Merchant

Little, Brown , 2023 • 545 pages

"The most important book to read about the AI boom" (Wired): The "gripping" (New Yorker) true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Wired, and the Financial Times • A Next Big Idea Book Club "Must-Read" The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction

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2666

Roberto Bolaño

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2013 • 1053 pages

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.

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The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 352 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK “This summer’s hottest debut.” —Cosmopolitan • “Witty, sexy escapist fiction [that] packs a substantial punch...Fresh and thrilling.” —Los Angeles Times • “Electric...I loved every second.” —Emily Henry “Utterly winning...Imagine if The Time Traveler’s Wife had an affair with A Gentleman in Moscow...Readers, I envy you: There’s a smart, witty novel in your future.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on

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The Prophet Unarmed

Isaac Deutscher

Verso , 2003 • 470 pages

This second volume of the trilogy is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin.

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A Fistful of Shells

Toby Green

Penguin UK , 2019 • 514 pages

Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019 Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award 'Astonishing, staggering' Ben Okri, Daily Telegraph A groundbreaking new history that will transform our view of West Africa By the time of the 'Scramble for Africa' in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for many centuries Its gold had fuelled the economies of Europe and Islamic world since around 1000, and its sophisticated kingdoms had traded with Europeans along the coasts from Senegal down to Angola since the fifteenth century

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Triumph of the Yuppies

Tom McGrath

Grand Central Publishing , 2024 • 327 pages

The “entertaining and insightful” first history of the Yuppie phenomenon, chronicling the roots, rise, triumph and (seeming) fall of the young urban professionals who radically altered American life between 1980 and 1987 (New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich) By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later

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Choosing Terror

Marisa Linton

OUP Oxford , 2013 • 334 pages

Examines the leaders of the French Revolution - Robespierre and his fellow Jacobins - and particularly the gradual process whereby many of them came to 'choose terror', evolving from humanitarian idealists into ruthless politicians, ready to adopt the use of terror to defend the Revolution.

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The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution

Timothy Tackett

Harvard University Press , 2015 • 476 pages

Between 1793 and 1794, thousands of French citizens were imprisoned and hundreds sent to the guillotine by a powerful dictatorship that claimed to be acting in the public interest Only a few years earlier, revolutionaries had proclaimed a new era of tolerance, equal justice, and human rights How and why did the French Revolution’s lofty ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity descend into violence and terror? “By attending to the role of emotions in propelling the Terror, Tackett steers a more nuanced course than many previous historians have managed...Imagined terrors, as...Tackett very usefully reminds us, can have even more political potency than real ones.” —David A

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The Art of Power

Nancy Pelosi

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 352 pages

The most powerful woman in American political history tells the story of her transformation from housewife to House Speaker—how she became a master legislator, a key partner to presidents, and the most visible leader of the Trump resistance When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: “Mother, get a life!” And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been In The Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history—not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in our nation, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care

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Fallen Founder

Nancy Isenberg

Penguin , 2007 • 562 pages

From the author of White Trash and The Problem of Democracy, a controversial challenge to the views of the Founding Fathers offered by Ron Chernow and David McCullough Lin-Manuel Miranda's play "Hamilton" has reignited interest in the founding fathers; and it features Aaron Burr among its vibrant cast of characters With Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg plumbs rare and obscure sources to shed new light on everyone's favorite founding villain The Aaron Burr whom we meet through Isenberg's eye-opening biography is a feminist, an Enlightenment figure on par with Jefferson, a patriot, and—most importantly—a man with powerful enemies in an age of vitriolic political fighting Revealing the gritty reality of eighteenth-century America, Fallen Founder is the authoritative restoration of a figure who ran afoul of history and a much-needed antidote to the hagiography of the revolutionary era.

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Benjamin Franklin Butler

Elizabeth D. Leonard

UNC Press Books , 2022 • 393 pages

Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras Remembered most often for his uncompromising administration of the Federal occupation of New Orleans during the war, Butler reemerges in this lively narrative as a man whose journey took him from childhood destitution to wealth and profound influence in state and national halls of power Prize-winning biographer Elizabeth D

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The Landmark Herodotus

Herodotus

Vintage , 2009 • 1026 pages

“The most densely annotated, richly illustrated, and user friendly edition” of the greatest classical work of history ever written (Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker)—from the editor of the widely praised The Landmark Thucydides Cicero called Herodotus "the father of history," and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature With lucid prose, Herodotus's account of the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city sates set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day

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The Affirmative Action Empire

Terry Dean Martin

Cornell University Press , 2001 • 532 pages

This text provides a survey of the Soviet management of the nationalities question It traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of several official national languages and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programmes.

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Ecological States

Jesse Rodenbiker

Cornell University Press , 2023 • 233 pages

Ecological States critically examines ecological policies in the People's Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society While many point to China's ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, Jesse Rodenbiker argues that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, Rodenbiker shows that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy

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A World History of Rail

Jeremy Black

Amberley Publishing Limited , 2023 • 321 pages

Is it possible to overestimate the impact of the railway in history Jeremy Black analyses that impact from the beginning to today And of course it's not all a triumph The network of the Congo today operates on three gauges run by separate companies; and a lot of it doesn't work.

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The Unaccountability Machine

Dan Davies

Profile Books , 2024 • 160 pages

Entertaining, insightful ... compelling' Financial Times 'A corporation, or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad.' When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it

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American Prometheus

Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin

Atlantic Books , 2021 • 667 pages

THE INSPIRATION FOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN'S NEW FILM OPPENHEIMER*** WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 'Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying' Sunday Times Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J Robert Oppenheimer - director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - was the most famous scientist of his generation In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.

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Age Of Revolution: 1789-1848

Eric Hobsbawm

Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2010 • 419 pages

The first in Eric Hobsbawm's dazzling trilogy on the history of the nineteenth century Between 1789 and 1848 the world was transformed both by the French Revolution and also by the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain This 'Dual Revolution' created the modern world as we know it Eric Hobsbawm traces with brilliant analytical clarity the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by the Dual Revolution - in the conduct of war and diplomacy; in new industrial areas and on the land; among peasantry, bourgeoisie and aristocracy; in methods of government and of revolution; in science, philosophy and religion; in literature and the arts

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Age Of Empire: 1875-1914

Eric Hobsbawm

Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2010 • 400 pages

THE AGE OF EMPIRE is a book about the strange death of the nineteenth century, the world made by and for liberal middle classes in the name of universal progress and civilisation It is about hopes realised which turned into fears: an era of unparalleled peace engendering an era of unparalleled war; revolt and revolution emerging on the outskirts of society; a time of profound identity crisis for bourgeois classes, among new and sudden mass labour movements which rejected capitalism and new middle classes which rejected liberalism

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Age Of Capital: 1848-1875

Eric Hobsbawm

Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2010 • 400 pages

A magisterial account of the rise of capitalism Eric Hobsbawm's magnificent treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875 is a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism and the consolidation of bourgeois culture In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: 'capitalism' The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848

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A Man in Full

Tom Wolfe

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2010 • 756 pages

The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive With A Man in Full, the time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians Big men

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A Failed Empire

Vladislav M. Zubok

Univ of North Carolina Press , 2009 • 504 pages

In this widely praised book, Vladislav Zubok argues that Western interpretations of the Cold War have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the twentieth century

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A City on Mars

Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith

Penguin , 2023 • 449 pages

* 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

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Treasury's War

Juan Zarate

PublicAffairs , 2013 • 265 pages

For more than a decade, America has been waging a new kind of war against the financial networks of rogue regimes, proliferators, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates Juan Zarate, a chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world In this gripping story, he explains in unprecedented detail how a small, dedicated group of officials redefined the Treasury's role and used its unique powers, relationships, and reputation to apply financial pressure against America's enemies

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Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA

Phillip Charles Saunders, Arthur S. Ding, Andrew Scobell, Andrew N. D. Yang, Joel Wuthnow

2019 • 784 pages

Integral to Xi Jinping's vision of restoring China to greatness--what he defines as the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" [zhonghua minzu weida fuxing, 中华民族伟大复兴]--is building a more modern, capable, and disciplined military China's economic development, territorial integrity, and even the survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself cannot be guaranteed without an army that can fight and prevail in modern warfare Articulating the need for a stronger military, Xi and his colleagues have reflected on periods of Chinese weakness, such as the era of imperial decline in the late 19th century and the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s

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On China

Henry Kissinger

Penguin Canada , 2011 • 793 pages

In his new book on China, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book-length to the country he has known intimately for decades, and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the 21st-century world

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Twilight of the Idols

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hackett Publishing , 1997 • 130 pages

Twilight of the Idols presents a vivid, compressed overview of many of Nietzsche’s mature ideas, including his attack on Plato’s Socrates and on the Platonic legacy in Western philosophy and culture Polt provides a trustworthy rendering of Nietzsche’s text in contemporary American English, complete with notes prepared by the translator and Tracy Strong An authoritative Introduction by Strong makes this an outstanding edition Select Bibliography and Index.

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Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

William Cronon

W. W. Norton & Company , 2009 • 590 pages

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the Bancroft Prize. "No one has written a better book about a city…Nature's Metropolis is elegant testimony to the proposition that economic, urban, environmental, and business history can be as graceful, powerful, and fascinating as a novel." —Kenneth T Jackson, Boston Globe

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Plunder

Brendan Ballou

PublicAffairs , 2023 • 341 pages

The authoritative exposé of private equity: what it is, how it kills businesses and jobs, how the government helps, and how we stop it Private equity surrounds us Firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, and KKR are among the largest employers in America and hold assets that rival those of small countries Yet few understand what these firms are or how they work

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The Journals of Captain Cook

James Cook

Graphic Arts Books , 2020 • 428 pages

Depicted by the man himself, The Journals of James Cook is an intimate first-hand account, providing an uncensored and reliable narrative of adventures spanning across the globe The Journals of James Cook depict three of Captain James Cook’s most glorious expeditions, starting in 1768 and leading to Cook’s tragic death in 1779 Having ventured all over the Pacific, Cook encountered lands not yet charted by the British

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The Socialist System

János Kornai

Princeton University Press , 2021 • 675 pages

To understand the dramatic collapse of the socialist order and the current turmoil in the formerly communist world, this comprehensive work examines the most important common properties of all socialist societies JNBnos Kornai brings a life-long study of the problems of the socialist system to his explanation of why inherent attributes of socialism inevitably produced in-efficiency In his past work he has focused on the economic sphere, maintaining consistently that the weak economic performance of socialist countries resulted from the system itself, not from the personalities of top leaders or mistakes made by leading organizations and planners

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Private Equity at Work

Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt

Russell Sage Foundation , 2014 • 396 pages

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model

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Hero of Two Worlds

Mike Duncan

Hachette UK , 2021 • 535 pages

From the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast comes the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A

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The Makers of Rome

Plutarch

Penguin UK , 2004 • 714 pages

These nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalities and military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whose lives span the earliest days of the Republic to the establishment of the Empire Selected from Plutarch's Roman Lives, they include prominent figures who achieved fame for their pivotal roles in Roman history, such as soldierly Marcellus, eloquent Cato and cautious Fabius Here too are vivid portraits of ambitious, hot-tempered Coriolanus; objective, principled Brutus and open-hearted Mark Anthony, who would later be brought to life by Shakespeare In recounting the lives of these great leaders, Plutarch also explores the problems of statecraft and power and illustrates the Roman people's genius for political compromise, which led to their mastery of the ancient world.

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The Future of Money

Eswar S. Prasad

Harvard University Press , 2021 • 497 pages

A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse We think weÕve seen financial innovation We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies

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The Triumph of Broken Promises

Fritz Bartel

Harvard University Press , 2022 • 441 pages

Communist and capitalist states alike were scarred by the economic shocks of the 1970s Why did only communist governments fall in their wake Fritz Bartel argues that Western democracies were insulated by neoliberalism While austerity was fatal to the legitimacy of communism, democratic politicians could win votes by pushing market discipline.

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Inventing Temperature

Hasok Chang

Oxford University Press , 2004 • 305 pages

The author presents simple yet challenging epistemic and technical questions about temperature-measuring instruments, and the complex web of abstract philosophical issues surrounding them He also shows that many items of knowledge we take for granted are in fact spectacular achievements obtained after a great deal of innovative thinking.

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Inventing Accuracy

Donald MacKenzie

MIT Press , 1993 • 484 pages

Mackenzie has achieved a masterful synthesis of engrossing narrative, imaginative concepts, historical perspective, and social concern." Donald MacKenzie follows one line of technology—strategic ballistic missile guidance through a succession of weapons systems to reveal the workings of a world that is neither awesome nor unstoppable He uncovers the parameters, the pressures, and the politics that make up the complex social construction of an equally complex technology.

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Death, Dominance, and State-Building

Roger D. Petersen

Oxford University Press , 2024 • 593 pages

The definitive work on the course, conduct, and aftermath of the Iraq war In Death, Dominance, and State-Building, the eminent scholar of conflict Roger D Petersen provides the first comprehensive analytic history of post-invasion Iraq Although the war is almost universally derided as one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the post-Cold War era, Petersen argues that the course and conduct of the conflict is poorly understood

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Addiction by Design

Natasha Dow Schüll

Princeton University Press , 2014 • 456 pages

Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals Slot machines, revamped by ever more compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry's revenue mainstay Addiction by Design takes readers into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward

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The Money Miners

Trevor Sykes

Allen & Unwin , 1995 • 410 pages

This text recaptures the days of the 1969-70 Australian mining share spree The scandals of Endurance, Tasminex and Queensland mines, and the collapse of the general securities are all traced here It also tells how and why mining shares rose and fell, explaining the techniques of exploration.

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The Rise And Fall of Athens

Plutarch

Random House , 2024 • 496 pages

Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal work What makes a leader For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander

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The Greeks

H.D.F. Kitto

Routledge , 2017 • 396 pages

Most ancient cultures disappeared with scarcely a trace, their effect upon our modern way of life of little consequence The Greeks, however, continue to influence contemporary man through their drama, philosophy and art, their political cognizance and knowledge of science There are many books introducing the Greek world to the modern reader, but this volume was recognized as a classic in the field upon its publication by Penguin Books

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Drunk

Edward Slingerland

Little, Brown Spark , 2021 • 341 pages

An "entertaining and enlightening" deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization—and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E Lieberman, author of Exercised) While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place

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Silent Spring Revolution

Douglas Brinkley

HarperCollins , 2022 • 702 pages

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time

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The Achilles Trap

Steve Coll

Penguin , 2024 • 479 pages

From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed

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Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Spectra , 2011 • 532 pages

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

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Collapse

Vladislav M. Zubok

Yale University Press , 2021 • 468 pages

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world

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Routledge Revivals: Man and Technics (1932)

Oswald Spengler

Routledge , 2016 • 59 pages

First published in 1932, this book, based on an address delivered in 1931, presents a concise and lucid summary of the philosophy of the author of The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler It was his conviction that the technical age — the culture of the machine age — which man had created in virtue of his unique capacity for individual as well as racial technique, had already reached its peak, and that the future held only catastrophe He argued it lacked progressive cultural life and instead was dominated by a lust for power and possession The triumph of the machine led to mass regimentation rather than fewer workers and less work — spelling the doom of Western civilization.

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The New Roman Empire

Anthony Kaldellis

Oxford University Press , 2024 • 1169 pages

This is the first comprehensive, single-author history of the eastern Roman empire (or Byzantium) to appear in over a generation It begins with the foundation of Constantinople in 324 AD and ends with the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, covering political and military history as well as all major changes in religion, society, demography, and economy In recent decades, the study of Byzantium has been revolutionized by new approaches and sophisticated models for how its society and state operated

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China's Age of Abundance

Feng Wang

Cambridge University Press , 2024 • 273 pages

Between the 1980s and the present day, China has experienced one of the most consequential economic transformations in world history One-fifth of the Earth's population has left behind a life of scarcity and subsistence for one of abundance and material comfort, while their nation has emerged as a preeminent economic and political power In a systematic historical and sociological analysis of this unique juncture, Wang Feng charts the origins, forces, and consequences of this meteoric rise in living standards

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Princes of the Yen

Richard Werner

Routledge , 2015 • 516 pages

This eye-opening book offers a disturbing new look at Japan's post-war economy and the key factors that shaped it It gives special emphasis to the 1980s and 1990s when Japan's economy experienced vast swings in activity According to the author, the most recent upheaval in the Japanese economy is the result of the policies of a central bank less concerned with stimulating the economy than with its own turf battles and its ideological agenda to change Japan's economic structure

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Radical Hamilton

Christian Parenti

Verso Books , 2020 • 305 pages

A bold, revisionist history and political biography of the polarizing Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, that reframes the founding of the United States and the history of capitalism In retelling the story of the radical Alexander Hamilton, Parenti rewrites the history early America and global economic history writ large For much of the twentieth century, Hamilton—sometimes seen as the bad boy of the founding fathers or portrayed as the patron saint of bankers—was out of fashion

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The Early Chinese Empires

Mark Edward Lewis

Harvard University Press , 2010 • 334 pages

In 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia

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The Park Chung Hee Era

Byung-Kook Kim, Ezra F. Vogel

Harvard University Press , 2013 • 753 pages

In 1961 South Korea was mired in poverty By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979

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Where the Money Was

Willie Sutton, Edward Linn

Crown , 2004 • 396 pages

The Broadway Books Library of Larceny Luc Sante, General Editor For more than fifty years, Willie Sutton devoted his boundless energy and undoubted genius exclusively to two activities at which he became better than any man in history: breaking in and breaking out The targets in the first instance were banks and in the second, prisons Unarguably America’s most famous bank robber, Willie never injured a soul, but took on almost a hundred banks and departed three of America’s most escape-proof penitentiaries This is the stuff of myth—rascally and cautionary by turns—yet true in every searing, diverting, and brilliantly recalled detail.

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Why Minsky Matters

L. Randall Wray

Princeton University Press , 2017 • 285 pages

Perhaps no economist was more vindicated by the global financial crisis than Hyman P Minsky (1919–96) Although a handful of economists raised alarms as early as 2000, Minsky's warnings began a half-century earlier, with writings that set out a compelling theory of financial instability Yet even today he remains largely outside mainstream economics; few people have a good grasp of his writings, and fewer still understand their full importance

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Party of One

Chun Han Wong

Simon and Schuster , 2024 • 416 pages

Drawing on his years of first-hand reporting across China, including insights from scholars and diplomats and analyses of official speeches and documents, a Wall Street Journal correspondent provides a broad, lucid account of China's leader and how he inspires fear and fervor in his Party, his nation and beyond.

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No Sense of Place

Joshua Meyrowitz

Oxford University Press , 1986 • 432 pages

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us

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Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Ezra F. Vogel

Harvard University Press , 2013 • 553 pages

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist

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Arid Empire

Natalie Koch

Verso Books , 2023 • 209 pages

A revelatory new history of the colonization of the American West The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts from the Middle East For example: In 1856, a caravan of thirty-three camels arrived in Indianola, Texas, led by a Syrian cameleer the Americans called "Hi Jolly." This "camel corps," the US government hoped, could help the army secure the new southwest swath of the country just wrested from Mexico

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The Chile Project

Sebastian Edwards

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 376 pages

"After a modest increase in Metro fares in Santiago, Chile, last October, twenty Metro stations were simultaneously set on fire The fare increase was the tipping point of years of social malaise Days later there were more than a million protesters on the streets The people of Chile were rejecting low pensions, highway tolls, school segregation, low-quality education, and poor public-health services-the result of decades of neoliberalism

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Team of Teams

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell

Penguin , 2015 • 304 pages

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population

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America's Frozen Neighborhoods

Robert C. Ellickson

Yale University Press , 2022 • 318 pages

This book examines local zoning policies and suggests reforms that states and the federal government might adopt to counter the negative effects of exclusionary zoning In this book, Robert Ellickson asserts that local zoning policies are the most consequential regulatory program in the United States Many localities have created barriers to the development of less costly forms of housing Numerous economists have found that current zoning practices inflict major damage on the national economy

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The Spy and the Traitor

Ben Macintyre

Signal , 2018 • 443 pages

The celebrated author of A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Cold War-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine

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With the Old Breed

E.B. Sledge

Presidio Press , 2007 • 402 pages

“Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom Hanks NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War

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The Plot to Save South Africa

Justice Malala

Simon and Schuster , 2023 • 352 pages

A “gripping and important” (The Guardian) account of nine tumultuous days, as the assassination of Nelson Mandela’s protégé by a white supremacist threatens to derail South Africa’s democratic transition and plunge the nation into civil war Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993 Nelson Mandela had been released after twenty-seven years in prison and was in power sharing talks with President F.W. de Klerk

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The Inheritors

Eve Fairbanks

Jonathan Ball Publishers , 2023 • 386 pages

'Lyrical, deep, chilling, and prescient, this is a book we will be talking about for years to come.' - Justice Malala, author and commentator South Africans face a reckoning: mourn a miracle nation that never came into being, fight on to give it birth, or make something else out of 1994's ashes In The Inheritors, award-winning writer Eve Fairbanks tells the stories of ordinary people facing this stupendous question

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Gifts, Favors, and Banquets

Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang

Cornell University Press , 2016 • 382 pages

An elaborate and pervasive set of practices, called guanxi, underlies everyday social relationships in contemporary China Obtaining and changing job assignments, buying certain foods and consumer items, getting into good hospitals, buying train tickets, obtaining housing, even doing business—all such tasks call for the skillful and strategic giving of gifts and cultivating of obligation, indebtedness, and reciprocity Mayfair Mei-hui Yang's close scrutiny of this phenomenon serves as a window to view facets of a much broader and more complex cultural, historical, and political formation Using rich and varied ethnographic examples of guanxi stemming from her fieldwork in China in the 1980s and 1990s, the author shows how this "gift economy" operates in the larger context of the socialist state redistributive economy.

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Translation State

Ann Leckie

Orbit , 2023 • 327 pages

The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful novel from a Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C Clarke award-winning author. "There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can There are few who ever could." —John Scalzi Qven was created to be a Presger translator

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Some Desperate Glory

Emily Tesh

Tordotcom , 2023 • 378 pages

Instant National Bestseller and International Bestseller A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner Emily Tesh’s explosive debut novel. "Some Desperate Glory surprised me at every turn At once a space thriller, a tale of deprogramming, and a missive on identity and meaning, the result is a vitally refreshing addition to the SFF genre

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The Saint of Bright Doors

Vajra Chandrasekera

Tordotcom , 2023 • 273 pages

A 2023 New York Times Notable Book “The best book I've read all year Protean, singular, original.” —Amal El-Mohtar for the New York Times The Saint of Bright Doors sets the high drama of divine revolutionaries and transcendent cults against the mundane struggles of modern life, resulting in a novel that is revelatory and resonant Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father

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The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Shannon Chakraborty

HarperCollins , 2023 • 307 pages

"A thrilling, transportative adventure that is everything promised–Chakraborty's storytelling is fantasy at its best." -- R.F Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and The Poppy War "An exhilarating, propulsive adventure, stitched from the threads of real history, Amina’s adventures are the reason to read fantasy." -- Ava Reid, internationally bestselling author of Juniper & Thorn Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend

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Made in China

Elizabeth O'Brien Ingleson

Harvard University Press , 2024 • 353 pages

Elizabeth Ingleson explores the roots of bilateral trade between the United States and China Telling the story of the 1970s US activists and entrepreneurs who pressed for access to China's vast labor market, Ingleson shows how not just Chinese reform but also US deindustrialization fueled a dramatic, unanticipated shift in global capitalism.

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The Guns of August

Barbara W. Tuchman

Random House , 2009 • 658 pages

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world

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The Sleepwalkers

Christopher Clark

Harper Collins , 2013 • 736 pages

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict

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Reconstruction Updated Edition

Eric Foner

Harper Collins , 2014 • 752 pages

From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery

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US National Security and Foreign Direct Investment

Edward Montgomery Graham, David Matthew Marchick

Peterson Institute , 2006 • 236 pages

Examines foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States, the national security concerns associated with this investment, and treatment of these concerns under US policy This book asks whether the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) process can be improved and answers in the affirmative.Does foreign ownership of American businesses pose a threat to the United States (like the abortive attempt by CNOOC, a Chinese company, to purchase Unocal during the summer of 2005)

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The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Benjamin M. Friedman

Vintage , 2010 • 594 pages

From the author of Day of Reckoning, the acclaimed critique of Ronald Reagan’s economic policy (“Every citizen should read it,” said The New York Times): a persuasive, wide-ranging argument that economic growth provides far more than material benefits In clear-cut prose, Benjamin M Friedman examines the political and social histories of the large Western democracies–particularly of the United States since the Civil War–to demonstrate the fact that incomes on the rise lead to more open and democratic societies

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Zhou Enlai

Jian Chen

Harvard University Press - T , 2024 • 841 pages

The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People’s Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss—Chairman Mao Zhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People’s Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister He was the architect of the country’s administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster

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The Power to Destroy

Michael J. Graetz

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 368 pages

How the antitax fringe went mainstream—and now threatens America’s future The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards—and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a “second American Revolution,” setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy

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Beneath the United States

Lars Schoultz

Harvard University Press , 1998 • 497 pages

In this sweeping history of United States policy toward Latin America, Lars Schoultz shows that the United States has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor, unable to manage its affairs and stubbornly underdeveloped This perception of inferiority was apparent from the beginning John Quincy Adams, who first established diplomatic relations with Latin America, believed that Hispanics were "lazy, dirty, nasty...a parcel of hogs." In the early nineteenth century, ex-President John Adams declared that any effort to implant democracy in Latin America was "as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes." Drawing on extraordinarily rich archival sources, Schoultz, one of the country's foremost Latin America scholars, shows how these core beliefs have not changed for two centuries

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Nixonland

Rick Perlstein

Simon and Schuster , 2008 • 896 pages

“Perlstein...aims here at nothing less than weaving a tapestry of social upheaval His success is dazzling.” —Los Angeles Times “Both brilliant and fun, a consuming journey back into the making of modern politics.” —Jon Meacham “Nixonland is a grand historical epic Rick Perlstein has turned a story we think we know—American politics between the opposing presidential landslides of 1964 and 1972—into an often-surprising and always-fascinating new narrative.” —Jeffrey Toobin Rick Perlstein’s bestselling account of how the Nixon era laid the groundwork for the political divide that marks our country today

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The Jakarta Method

Vincent Bevins

PublicAffairs , 2020 • 362 pages

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile

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Lenin's Tomb

David Remnick

Vintage , 2014 • 626 pages

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

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The Rise of Merchant Banking

Stanley Chapman

Routledge , 2013 • 240 pages

This is the first serious history of merchant banking, based on the archives of the leading houses and the records of their activities throughout the world It combines scholarly insight with readability, and offers a totally new assessment of the origins of one of the most dynamic sectors of the City of London money market, of the British economy as a whole and of a major aspect of the growth of international business Dr Chapman has researched new material from the archives of Rothschilds, Barings, Kleinwort Benson and other leading houses together with a wide range of archives and published work in Europe, America and South Africa to trace the roots of British enterprise in financing international trade, exporting capital, floating companies, arbitrage, and other activities of the merchant banks

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Inside Money

Zachary Karabell

Penguin , 2021 • 457 pages

A sweeping history of the legendary private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman, exploring its central role in the story of American wealth and its rise to global power Conspiracy theories have always swirled around Brown Brothers Harriman, and not without reason Throughout the nineteenth century, when America was convulsed by a devastating financial panic essentially every twenty years, Brown Brothers quietly went from strength to strength, propping up the U.S. financial system at crucial moments and catalyzing successive booms, from the cotton trade and the steamship to the railroad, while largely managing to avoid the unwelcome attention that plagued some of its competitors

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Volt Rush

Henry Sanderson

Simon and Schuster , 2022 • 290 pages

A remarkably hopeful and useful book...The climate crisis leaves us no choice but to build a new world and as Sanderson makes clear, we are capable of making it a better one than the dirty and dangerous planet we’ve come to take for granted.' Bill McKibben, Observer book of the week We depend on a handful of metals and rare earths to power our phones and computers Increasingly, we rely on them to power our cars and our homes Whoever controls these finite commodities will become rich beyond imagining Sanderson journeys to meet the characters, companies, and nations scrambling for the new resources, linking remote mines in the Congo and Chile’s Atacama Desert to giant Chinese battery factories, shadowy commodity traders, secretive billionaires, a new generation of scientists attempting to solve the dilemma of a ‘greener’ world.

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Journey to the Jones ACT

Charlie Papavizas

Fortis , 2024

Charlie Papavizas captures a rich history from the early 17th century English Navigation Acts to the building of a great merchant fleet of vessels to make permanent America's place in the maritime world with that fleet.

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Development in Multiple Dimensions

Alexander Lee

University of Michigan Press , 2019 • 305 pages

Why do some states provide infrastructure and social services to their citizens, and others do not In Development in Multiple Dimensions, Alexander Lee examines the origins of success and failure in the public services of developing countries Comparing states within India, this study examines how elites either control, or are shut out of, policy decisions and how the interests of these elites influence public policy

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Locked in Place

Vivek Chibber

Princeton University Press , 2011 • 360 pages

Why were some countries able to build "developmental states" in the decades after World War II while others were not Through a richly detailed examination of India's experience, Locked in Place argues that the critical factor was the reaction of domestic capitalists to the state-building project

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My Life as a Quant

Emanuel Derman

John Wiley & Sons , 2016 • 311 pages

In My Life as a Quant, Emanuel Derman relives his exciting journey as one of the first high-energy particle physicists to migrate to Wall Street Page by page, Derman details his adventures in this field—analyzing the incompatible personas of traders and quants, and discussing the dissimilar nature of knowledge in physics and finance Throughout this tale, he also reflects on the appropriate way to apply the refined methods of physics to the hurly-burly world of markets.

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The Long Game

Rush Doshi

Oxford University Press , 2021 • 433 pages

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it

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The Making of the Modern Middle East

Jeremy Bowen

Picador , 2023

A Spectator and New Statesman Book of the Year 'An illuminating and riveting read.' - Jonathan Dimbleby Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present Here, Bowen offers readers a gripping and invaluable guide to the modern Middle East, how it came to be and what its future might hold In The Making of the Modern Middle East - in part based on his acclaimed podcast, 'Our Man in the Middle East' - Bowen takes us on a journey across the Middle East and through its history

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A Companion to Chinese History

Michael Szonyi

John Wiley & Sons , 2017 • 475 pages

A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment

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Restless Empire

Odd Arne Westad

Basic Books , 2012 • 544 pages

As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability—a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations

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Wild Ride

Anne Stevenson-Yang

Bui Jones Limited , 2024

How did China grow from an impoverished country to become the second largest economy in the world in just over four decades And how did this economic miracle come to an end, as seems the case today To understand the story of China's rapid rise and equally rapid fall, author Anne Stevenson-Yang takes us back to the beginning, when Deng Xiaoping took over and opened its moribund economy to Western money and know-how

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American Plastic

Jeffrey L. Meikle

Rutgers University Press , 1995 • 440 pages

(Meikle) traces the course of plastics from 19th-century celluloid and the first wholly synthetic bakelite, in 1907, through the proliferation of compounds (vinyls, acrylics, nylon, etc.) and recent ecological concerns".--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Winner of the 1996 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology and a 1996 CHOICE Oustanding Academic Book. 70 illustrations.

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Autonomous Technology

Langdon Winner

MIT Press , 1978 • 400 pages

The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer

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Private Equity

Carrie Sun

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2024 • 353 pages

Named a most-anticipated book of 2024 by the Sunday Times, Financial Times, Stylist, Vogue, NPR.org, Oprah Daily, Town & Country and more.'A moving story of how easily a life can be submerged by work, and what it takes to regain one's soul' Oliver Burkeman, bestselling author of Four Thousand WeeksWhat are you willing to sacrifice to get to the top?What it might take to break free and leave it all behind?Carrie Sun can't shake the feeling that she's wasting her life At twenty-nine, she's left her job, dropped out of an MBA program and is trapped in an unhappy engagement

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Shadow Empires

Thomas J. Barfield

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 384 pages

An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony

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The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics

Richard C. Koo

John Wiley & Sons , 2011 • 373 pages

The revised edition of this highly acclaimed work presents crucial lessons from Japan's recession that could aid the US and other economies as they struggle to recover from the current financial crisis This book is about Japan's 15-year long recession and how it affected current theoretical thinking about its causes and cures It has a detailed explanation on what happened to Japan, but the discoveries made are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate another half to the macroeconomic spectrum of possibilities that conventional theorists have overlooked

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Bomb Power

Garry Wills

Penguin , 2011 • 269 pages

From Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, a groundbreaking examination of how the atomic bomb profoundly altered the nature of American democracy and has left us in a state of war alert ever since Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017 In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots-by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state-in ways still felt today

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The Sciences of the Artificial, reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird cover

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Breaking Through

Katalin Karikó

Crown , 2023 • 345 pages

A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines “Katalin Karikó’s story is an inspiration.”—Bill Gates “Riveting . . . a true story of a brilliant biochemist who never gave up or gave in.”—Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Katalin Karikó has had an unlikely journey The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karikó grew up in an adobe home that lacked running water, and her family grew their own vegetables

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Empires of the Steppes

Kenneth W. Harl

Harlequin , 2023 • 695 pages

A narrative history of how Attila, Genghis Khan and the so-called barbarians of the steppes shaped world civilization The barbarian nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others

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Foucault's Pendulum

Umberto Eco

Random House , 2014 • 656 pages

Three book editors, jaded by reading far too many crackpot manuscripts on the mystic and the occult, are inspired by an extraordinary conspiracy story told to them by a strange colonel to have some fun They start feeding random bits of information into a powerful computer capable of inventing connections between the entries, thinking they are creating nothing more than an amusing game, but then their game starts to take over, the deaths start mounting, and they are forced into a frantic search for the truth

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Administrative Behavior, 4th Edition

Herbert A. Simon

Simon and Schuster , 2013 • 384 pages

In this fourth edition of his ground-breaking work, Herbert A Simon applies his pioneering theory of human choice and administrative decision-making to concrete organizational problems To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's original publication, Professor Simon enhances his timeless observations on the human decision-making process with commentaries examining new facets of organizational behavior

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The Age of Anxiety

Andrea Tone

Basic Books , 2008 • 320 pages

Anxious Americans have increasingly pursued peace of mind through pills and prescriptions In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that 40 million adult Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder in any given year: more than double the number thought to have such a disorder in 2001 Anti-anxiety drugs are a billion-dollar business

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The Bankers’ New Clothes

Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 624 pages

A Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek Book of the Year Why our banking system is broken—and what we must do to fix it New bank failures have been a rude awakening for everyone who believed that the banking industry was reformed after the Global Financial Crisis—and that we’d never again have to choose between massive bailouts and financial havoc The Bankers’ New Clothes uncovers just how little things have changed—and why banks are still so dangerous

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Energy and Civilization

Vaclav Smil

MIT Press , 2018 • 564 pages

A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done

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Homicide

David Simon

Holt Paperbacks , 2007 • 672 pages

From the creator of HBO's The Wire, the classic book about homicide investigation that became the basis for the hit television show The scene is Baltimore Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death At the center of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world

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Labor and Monopoly Capital

Harry Braverman

New York : Monthly Review Press , 1974 • 488 pages

This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman, "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century" (1975) and "Two Comments" (1976), that add much to our understanding of the book.

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The Economic Government of the World

Martin Daunton

Penguin UK , 2023 • 889 pages

An epic history of money, trade and development since 1933 In 1933, Keynes reflected on the crisis of the Great Depression that arose from individualistic capitalism: 'It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and it doesn't deliver the goods .. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.' We are now in a similar state of perplexity, wondering how to respond to the economic problems of the world

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Black Earth

Timothy Snyder

Tim Duggan Books , 2015 • 480 pages

A brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the defining tragedy of our time In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying

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A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021

Alan S. Blinder

Princeton University Press , 2024 • 440 pages

From the New York Times bestselling author, the fascinating story of U.S. economic policy from Kennedy to Biden—filled with lessons for today In this book, Alan Blinder, one of the world’s most influential economists and one of the field’s best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States Spanning twelve presidents, from John F Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from William McChesney Martin to Jerome Powell, this is an insider’s story of macroeconomic policy that hasn’t been told before—one that is a pleasure to read, and as interesting as it is important

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Red Plenty

Francis Spufford

Faber & Faber , 2010 • 450 pages

Bizarre and quite brilliant.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times'Thrilling.' Michael Burleigh, Sunday Telegraph'Francis Spufford has one of the most original minds in contemporary literature.' Nick HornbyThe Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche and sputniks would lead the way to the stars And it's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

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Mimesis

Erich Auerbach, Edward W. Said

Princeton University Press , 2013 • 616 pages

More than half a century after its translation into English, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis remains a masterpiece of literary criticism A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which Auerbach responds to his critics

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The Dialogic Imagination

M. M. Bakhtin

University of Texas Press , 2010 • 749 pages

These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)—known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky—as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975 The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology

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When We Cease to Understand the World

Benjamin Labatut

New York Review of Books , 2021 • 193 pages

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2021 Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction

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The New Kings of New York

Adam Piore

2022 • 380 pages

There's a story behind every apartment sale, every building development, and each real estatetransaction in New York City And many of those stories involve the uber-wealthy behaving badly-the blood sport that is New York real estate is defined by billion-dollar feuds THE NEW KINGSOF NEW YORK: Renegades, Moguls, Gamblers and the Remaking of the World's MostFamous Skyline, by journalist Adam Piore (The Real Deal; April 12, 2022; hardcover $29.95),charts the extraordinary transformation of America's greatest city from a near-bankrupt urbancombat zone into the land of Billionaires' Row and Hudson Yards-a luxury playground for theglobal 1 percent-and provides an inside look at the bombastic developers behind the biggest realestate deals of this century.The first two decades of the twenty-first century were a giddy, hyperbolic era of dizzying highs anddeep, dark lows

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Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

Simon and Schuster , 2016 • 368 pages

In this instant and tenacious New York Times bestseller, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight “offers a rare and revealing look at the notoriously media-shy man behind the swoosh” (Booklist, starred review), illuminating his company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands Bill Gates named Shoe Dog one of his five favorite books of 2016 and called it “an amazing tale, a refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like

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Cadillac Desert

Marc Reisner

Penguin , 1993 • 612 pages

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought Reisner anticipated this moment He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water

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When We Walk By

Kevin F. Adler, Donald W. Burnes

North Atlantic Books , 2023 • 326 pages

How to end homelessness in America: a must-read guide to understanding housing instability, supporting our unhoused neighbors, and reclaiming our humanity A deeply humanizing analysis that will change the way you think about poverty and homelessness—for the socially engaged reader of Isabel Wilkerson's Caste and Matthew Desmond's Evicted Think about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person

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Sinews of War and Trade

Laleh Khalili

Verso Books , 2020 • 369 pages

How shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism In our networked world, the realities governing the international movement of freight are easily forgotten But maritime transport remains the bedrock of trade Convoys perpetually crisscross the oceans, carrying gas, oil, ore – indeed, every type of consumable and commodity

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Default

Gregory Makoff

Georgetown University Press , 2024 • 250 pages

The dramatic inside story of the most important case in the history of sovereign debt law Unlike individuals or corporations that become insolvent, nations do not have access to bankruptcy protection from their creditors When a country defaults on its debt, the international financial system is ill equipped to manage the crisis Decisions by key individuals—from national leaders to those at the International Monetary Fund, from holdout creditors to judges—determine the fate of an entire national economy

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The Elements of Power

David S. Abraham

Yale University Press , 2015 • 334 pages

Our future hinges on a set of elements that few of us have even heard of In this surprising and revealing book, David S Abraham unveils what rare metals are and why our electronic gadgets, the most powerful armies, and indeed the fate of our planet depend on them These metals have become the building blocks of modern society; their properties are now essential for nearly all our electronic, military, and “green” technologies

Back to the Futures: Crashing Dirt Bikes, Chasing Cows, and Unraveling the Mystery of Commodity Futures Markets cover

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Postwar

Tony Judt

Penguin , 2006 • 1000 pages

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year “Impressive . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement

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Eighteen Days in October

Uri Kaufman

St. Martin's Press , 2023 • 323 pages

"Pacy and enthralling." —Financial Times "Tells the story brilliantly." —Senator Joseph I Lieberman "Stimulating and insightful...will no doubt find a permanent place on the Arab-Israeli bookshelf." —Michael Oren, New York Times bestselling author of Six Days of War October 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order

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Dead in the Water

Matthew Campbell, Kit Chellel

National Geographic Books , 2022

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award “A triumph of investigative journalism.” —Tom Wright, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Billion Dollar Whale "Truly one of the most nail-biting, page-turning, terrifying true-crime books I've ever read." —Nick Bilton, New York Times bestselling author of American Kingpin From award-winning journalists Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, the gripping, true-crime story of a notorious maritime hijacking at the heart of a massive conspiracy—and the unsolved murder that threatened to unravel it all In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion

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The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Richard Rothstein

Liveright Publishing , 2017 • 246 pages

New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review) Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson)

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A Peace to End All Peace

David Fromkin

Holt Paperbacks , 2010 • 693 pages

Published with a new afterword from the author—the classic, bestselling account of how the modern Middle East was created The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions All of these conflicts—including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis, and the violent challenges posed by Iraq's competing sects—are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War

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Limitless

Jeanna Smialek

Knopf , 2023 • 385 pages

This fascinating deep dive into one of the most powerful and least understood American institutions—the Federal Reserve—is “a riveting narrative...[and] an invaluable guide to the monetary policy debates of the last few years" (Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance). “The best book on the Fed in our time and a model of financial writing.” –Kirkus The marble halls of the Federal Reserve have always held secrets; for decades the Fed did the utmost to preserve its room to maneuver, operating behind the scenes as much as possible Yet over the past two decades, this elite world of bankers and economists speaking a language that only monetary experts could understand has been forced to change its ways

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Modi's India

Christophe Jaffrelot

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 656 pages

A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance Over the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large Modi managed to seduce a substantial number of citizens by promising them development and polarizing the electorate along ethno-religious lines

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Black Wave

Kim Ghattas

Henry Holt and Company , 2020 • 278 pages

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 “[A] sweeping and authoritative history" (The New York Times Book Review), Black Wave is an unprecedented and ambitious examination of how the modern Middle East unraveled and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979 Kim Ghattas seamlessly weaves together history, geopolitics, and culture to deliver a gripping read of the largely unexplored story of the rivalry between between Saudi Arabia and Iran, born from the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution and fueled by American policy

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When the Clock Broke

John Ganz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2024 • 245 pages

John Ganz is the most important young political writer of his generation—just the one our dark moment needs." —Rick Perlstein "Lively and kaleidoscopic." —Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker "John Ganz belongs to a species of public intellectual that is almost extinct . . When the Clock Broke is the first of what I hope will be a shelf of books that help us uncover the true history of our times." —Jeet Heer A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era—and their dark legacy today

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Taming the Street

Diana B. Henriques

Random House , 2023 • 465 pages

The “extraordinary” (New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) story of FDR’s fight for the soul of American capitalism—from award-winning journalist Diana B Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust “I thought I was well versed in the New Deal, but it turns out I knew next to nothing Diana Henriques’s chronicle is meticulous, illuminating, and riveting.”—Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland Taming the Street describes how President Franklin D

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Second-hand Time

Svetlana Alexievich

Juggernaut Books , 2016 • 582 pages

Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich invents a new genre of narrative non-fiction as she writes the life stories of housewives, artists, party workers, students, soldiers, traders, living through a time of political upheaval -- the fall of the Soviet Union and the two decades that followed it.

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Underground Empire

Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman

Henry Holt and Company , 2023 • 166 pages

A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems America’s security state first started to weaponize these channels after 9/11, when they seemed like necessities to combat terrorism—but now they’re a matter of course Multinational companies like AT&T and Citicorp build hubs, which they use to make money, but which the government can also deploy as choke points

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Invisible China

Scott Rozelle, Natalie Hell

University of Chicago Press , 2020 • 242 pages

A study of how China’s changing economy may leave its rural communities in the dust and launch a political and economic disaster As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern

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Free Trade Under Fire

Douglas A. Irwin

Princeton University Press , 2020 • 366 pages

An updated look at global trade and why it remains as controversial as ever Free trade is always under attack, more than ever in recent years The imposition of numerous U.S. tariffs in 2018, and the retaliation those tariffs have drawn, has thrust trade issues to the top of the policy agenda Critics contend that free trade brings economic pain, including plant closings and worker layoffs, and that trade agreements serve corporate interests, undercut domestic environmental regulations, and erode national sovereignty

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How China Escaped Shock Therapy

Isabella M. Weber

Routledge , 2021 • 256 pages

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided

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Study Gods

Yi-Lin Chiang

Princeton University Press , 2022 • 288 pages

How privileged adolescents in China acquire status and why this helps them succeed Study Gods offers a rare look at the ways privileged youth in China prepare themselves to join the ranks of the global elite Yi-Lin Chiang shows how these competitive Chinese high schoolers first become “study gods” (xueshen), a term describing academically high-performing students Constant studying, however, is not what explains their success, for these young people appear god-like in their effortless abilities to excel

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Empire of Silver

Jin Xu

Yale University Press , 2021 • 385 pages

A thousand-year history of how China’s obsession with silver influenced the country’s financial well-being, global standing, and political stability This revelatory account of the ways silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with “white metal” held China back from financial modernization First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China’s economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century

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The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Gosta Esping-Andersen

John Wiley & Sons , 2013 • 260 pages

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in western societies Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the most distinguished contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced western societies Esping-Andersen distinguishes several major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different western countries

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Imperial Twilight

Stephen R. Platt

Vintage , 2018 • 592 pages

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage

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The Rise and Fall of Imperial China

Yuhua Wang

Princeton University Press , 2022 • 352 pages

How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again What factors led to imperial China’s decline The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth

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A Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America, 1960–2017

Timothy J. Kehoe, Juan Pablo Nicolini

U of Minnesota Press , 2022 • 643 pages

A major, new, and comprehensive look at six decades of macroeconomic policies across the region What went wrong with the economic development of Latin America over the past half-century Along with periods of poor economic performance, the region’s countries have been plagued by a wide variety of economic crises This major new work brings together dozens of leading economists to explore the economic performance of the ten largest countries in South America and of Mexico

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Where Does Money Come From?

Josh Ryan-Collins, Tony Greenham, Richard Werner

2014 • 186 pages

Based on detailed research and consultation with experts, including the Bank of England, this book reviews theoretical and historical debates on the nature of money and banking and explains the role of the central bank, the Government and the European Union Following a sell out first edition and reprint, this second edition includes new sections on Libor and quantitative easing in the UK and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

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To Rule the Waves

Bruce Jones

Simon and Schuster , 2021 • 416 pages

From a brilliant Brookings Institution expert, an “important” (The Wall Street Journal) and “penetrating historical and political study” (Nature) of the critical role that oceans play in the daily struggle for global power, in the bestselling tradition of Robert Kaplan’s The Revenge of Geography For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit

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A Nation of Counterfeiters

Stephen Mihm

Harvard University Press , 2009 • 470 pages

Prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation Their success, Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by freewheeling capitalism and little government control Mihm shows how eventually the older monetary system was dismantled, along with the counterfeit economy it sustained.

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Capital

Karl Marx

OUP Oxford , 1999 • 842 pages

A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society It has also proved to be the most influential work in social science in the twentieth century; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology Millions of readers this century have treated Capital as a sacred text, subjecting it to as many different interpretations as the bible itself

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The Company-State

Philip J. Stern

Oxford University Press , 2012 • 315 pages

The Company-State offers a political and intellectual history of the English East India Company in the century before its acquisition of territorial power It argues the Company was no mere merchant, but a form of early modern, colonial state and sovereign that laid the foundations for the British Empire in India.

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The Man from the Future

Ananyo Bhattacharya

National Geographic Books , 2023

An electrifying biography of one of the most extraordinary scientists of the twentieth century and the world he made The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes

2012 • 838 pages

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

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Trading and Exchanges

Larry Harris

OUP USA , 2003 • 664 pages

Focusing on market microstructure, Harris (chief economist, U.S Securities and Exchange Commission) introduces the practices and regulations governing stock trading markets Writing to be understandable to the lay reader, he examines the structure of trading, puts forward an economic theory of trading, discusses speculative trading strategies, explores liquidity and volatility, and considers the evaluation of trader performance Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

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The Predators' Ball

Connie Bruck

Simon & Schuster , 2020 • 400 pages

“Connie Bruck traces the rise of this empire with vivid metaphors and with a smooth command of high finance’s terminology.” —The New York Times “The Predators’ Ball is dirty dancing downtown.” —New York Newsday From bestselling author Connie Bruck, The Predators’ Ball dramatically captures American business history in the making, uncovering the philosophy of greed that dominated Wall Street in the 1980s During the 1980s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert was the Billionaire Junk Bond King

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The Prize

Daniel Yergin

Simon and Schuster , 2012 • 928 pages

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself

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India Is Broken

Ashoka Mody

Stanford University Press , 2023 • 589 pages

A provocative new account of how India moved relentlessly from its hope-filled founding in 1947 to the dramatic economic and democratic breakdowns of today When Indian leaders first took control of their government in 1947, they proclaimed the ideals of national unity and secular democracy Through the first half century of nation-building, leaders could point to uneven but measurable progress on key goals, and after the mid-1980s, dire poverty declined for a few decades, inspiring declarations of victory

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MBS

Ben Hubbard

Crown , 2020 • 394 pages

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

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Sovereign Funds

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Harvard University Press , 2023 • 289 pages

Zongyuan Zoe Liu provides the first in-depth examination of sovereign funds in China Under President Xi, the state has become an aggressive financier, using sovereign funds at home and abroad to secure allies and influence, boost strategic industries like semiconductors and fintech, and pick winners among domestic businesses and multinationals.

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The Wages of Destruction

Adam Tooze

Penguin UK , 2007 • 832 pages

Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy provides a groundbreaking new account of how Hitler established himself in power, mobilized for war - and led his country to annihilation Was the tragedy of the Second World War determined by Nazi Germany's terrifying power, or by its fatal weakness This gripping and universally-acclaimed new history tells the real story of the cost of Hitler's plans for world domination - and will overturn everything you thought you knew about the Third Reich. 'A tour de force' Niall Ferguson 'Masterful ... smashes a gallery of preconceptions' The Times 'This book will change the way we look at Nazi history ... nothing less than a masterpiece Rejoice, rejoice, for a great historian is born' Sunday Telegraph 'A remarkable and gripping revision of the history of Nazi Germany' New Statesman Books of the Year 'A powerful and provocative reassessment of the whole story' Richard Overy

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Slouching Towards Utopia

J. Bradford DeLong

Basic Books , 2022 • 532 pages

An instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world’s leading economists, offering a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied “A magisterial history.”—​Paul Krugman Named a Best Book of 2022 by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again

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Money

Jacob Goldstein

Hachette Books , 2020 • 220 pages

The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs Money only works because we all agree to believe in it In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century

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The Billionaire Raj

James Crabtree

Crown , 2019 • 418 pages

A colorful and revealing portrait of the rise of India’s new billionaire class in a radically unequal society India is the world’s largest democracy, with more than one billion people and an economy expanding faster than China’s But the rewards of this growth have been far from evenly shared, and the country’s top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of America's Gilded Age, funneling profits from huge conglomerates into lifestyles of conspicuous consumption

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How Big Things Get Done

Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner

Crown Currency , 2023 • 231 pages

“Why do big projects go wrong so often, and are there any lessons you can use when renovating your kitchen Bent Flyvbjerg is the ‘megaproject’ expert and Dan Gardner brings the storytelling skills to How Big Things Get Done, with examples ranging from a Jimi Hendrix studio to the Sydney Opera House.”—Financial Times “Entertaining . . There are lessons here for managers of all stripes.”—The Economist A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist, Financial Times, CEO Magazine, Morningstar Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award, the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, and the Inc

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The Black Swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Random House Digital, Inc. , 2009 • 388 pages

In the author's point of view, a black swan is an improbable event with three principal characteristics - It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities

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The History of the GPU - Steps to Invention

Jon Peddie

Springer Nature , 2023 • 424 pages

This is the first book in a three-part series that traces the development of the GPU Initially developed for games the GPU can now be found in cars, supercomputers, watches, game consoles and more GPU concepts go back to the 1970s when computer graphics was developed for computer-aided design of automobiles and airplanes

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The Price of Time

Edward Chancellor

Grove Press , 2022 • 375 pages

A comprehensive and profoundly relevant history of interest from one of the world’s leading financial writers, The Price of Time explains our current global financial position and how we got here In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest The practice wasn’t always popular—in the ancient world, usury was generally viewed as exploitative, a potential path to debt bondage and slavery

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The World for Sale

Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

Oxford University Press , 2021 • 352 pages

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones We rarely stop to consider where they have come from But we should In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the world economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources

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Normal Accidents

Charles Perrow

Princeton University Press , 2011 • 464 pages

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them

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The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

Random House Trade Paperbacks , 2021 • 666 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “outstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and wit” (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas “A timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.”—The Wall Street Journal WINNER: The Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism FINALIST: The National Book Critics Circle Award • The Sabew Best in Business Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • The Economist • Bloomberg • Mother Jones At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history Swept away from his placid home at Cambridge University by the currents of the conflict, Keynes found himself thrust into the halls of European treasuries to arrange emergency loans and packed off to America to negotiate the terms of economic combat

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Saudi, Inc.

Ellen R Wald

2024

The Saudi Royal family and Aramco leadership are, and almost always have been, motivated by ambitions of longterm strength and profit They use Islamic laws, Wahhabi ideology, gender discrimination, and public beheadings to maintain stability and their own power Underneath the thobes and abayas and behind the religious fanaticism and illiberalism lies a most sophisticated and ruthless enterprise

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Chip War

Chris Miller

Simon and Schuster , 2022 • 464 pages

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world’s most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips

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Money and Empire

Perry Mehrling

Cambridge University Press , 2022 • 311 pages

Charles Kindleberger ranks as one of the twentieth century's best known and most influential international economists This book traces the evolution of his thinking in the context of a 'key-currency' approach to the rise of the dollar system, here revealed as the indispensable framework for global economic development since World War II Unlike most of his colleagues, Kindleberger was deeply interested in history, and his economics brimmed with real people and institutional details

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The Great American Transit Disaster

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

University of Chicago Press , 2023 • 364 pages

A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way

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The Most Fun I Never Want to Have Again

R. D. Koncerak

CreateSpace , 2013 • 358 pages

In the early 2000's, America was in the midst of an economic boom Nowhere was the prosperity more evident than across metro Atlanta and Georgia's thriving community banking industry Georgia saw more new bank start-ups than almost any other US state between 1997 and 2007…and then suffered more bank failures than most states combined between 2008 and 2012

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The City & The City

China Miéville

Pan Macmillan , 2018 • 400 pages

With an introduction by novelist Kamila Shamsie When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger

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Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Pan Macmillan , 2015 • 609 pages

Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Novel Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet Who will inherit this new Earth

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Frans de Waal

W. W. Norton & Company , 2016 • 320 pages

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

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An Immense World

Ed Yong

Knopf Canada , 2022 • 484 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Globe and Mail, The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses to encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats

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Central Asia

Adeeb Khalid

Princeton University Press , 2022 • 576 pages

A major history of Central Asia and how it has been shaped by modern world events Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-eighteenth century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule

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Building a Ruin

Yakov Feygin

Harvard University Press , 2024 • 289 pages

A masterful account of the global Cold War’s decisive influence on Soviet economic reform, and the national decay that followed What brought down the Soviet Union From some perspectives the answers seem obvious, even teleological—communism was simply destined to fail When Yakov Feygin studied the question, he came to another conclusion: at least one crucial factor was a deep contradiction within the Soviet political economy brought about by the country’s attempt to transition from Stalinist mass mobilization to a consumer society

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The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

Constellation , 2013 • 370 pages

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization

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There Are No Accidents

Jessie Singer

Simon and Schuster , 2023 • 352 pages

A journalist recounts the surprising history of accidents and reveals how they’ve come to define all that’s wrong with America We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents

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Billion Dollar Whale

Bradley Hope, Tom Wright

Hachette Books , 2018 • 395 pages

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios) Now a

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Lords of Finance

Liaquat Ahamed

Random House , 2010 • 578 pages

THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE The current financial crisis has only one parallel: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, which crippled the future of an entire generation and set the stage for the horrors of the Second World War Yet the economic meltdown could have been avoided, had it not been for the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers

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The Confidence Game

Steven Solomon

1995 • 616 pages

This first behind-closed-doors look at the elite cadre that controls the international money supply draws on hundreds of exclusive interviews and provides never-before-reported details of cloistered negotiations to reveal how perilously close the global economy has often come to collapsing.

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Trade Wars are Class Wars

Matthew C. Klein, Michael Pettis

Yale University Press , 2020 • 292 pages

This is a very important book."--Martin Wolf, Financial TimesA provocative look at how today's trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "Worth reading for [the authors'] insights into the history of trade and finance."--George Melloan, Wall Street Journal Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees

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Our Lives in Their Portfolios

Brett Chistophers

Verso Books , 2023 • 321 pages

All hail the new masters of Capitalism: How asset managers acquired the world Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock And they don’t just own financial assets The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live—all now swell asset managers’ bulging investment portfolios

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Seeing Like a State

James C. Scott

Yale University Press , 2020 • 462 pages

“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

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How Music Works

David Byrne

Crown , 2017 • 384 pages

Updated with a new chapter on digital curation* How Music Works is David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social or technological Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers ever-new and thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

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Boom Town

Sam Anderson

Crown , 2018 • 513 pages

A brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City—a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny, from award-winning journalist Sam Anderson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Chicago Tribune • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • Deadspin Oklahoma City was born from chaos It was founded in a bizarre but momentous “Land Run” in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims

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New York 2140

Kim Stanley Robinson

Orbit , 2017 • 624 pages

New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson returns with a bold and brilliant vision of New York City in the next century As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal Every skyscraper an island For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city

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The Lofts of SoHo

Aaron Shkuda

University of Chicago Press , 2024 • 304 pages

A groundbreaking look at the transformation of SoHo. American cities entered a new phase when, beginning in the 1950s, artists and developers looked upon a decaying industrial zone in Lower Manhattan and saw, not blight, but opportunity: cheap rents, lax regulation, and wide open spaces Thus, SoHo was born From 1960 to 1980, residents transformed the industrial neighborhood into an artist district, creating the conditions under which it evolved into an upper-income, gentrified area

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The Caesars Palace Coup

Sujeet Indap, Max Frumes

Diversion Books , 2022 • 352 pages

It was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards In the tradition of Barbarians at the Gate and The Big Short comes the riveting, multi-dimensional poker game between private equity firms and distressed debt hedge funds that played out from the Vegas Strip to Manhattan boardrooms to Chicago courthouses and even, for a moment, the halls of the United States Congress

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The Genesis Machine

Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel

Public Affairs , 2023

A breakthrough investigation of synthetic biology: the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence and has the potential to program biological systems like we program computers Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal

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Superman: Red Son (New Edition)

Mark Millar

DC Comics , 2014 • 172 pages

Imagine a reality where the world’s most powerful super-being does not grow up in Smallville, Kansas - or even America, for that matter… : RED SON is a vivid tale of Cold War paranoia, that reveals how the ship carrying the infant who would later be known as Superman lands in the midst of the 1950s Soviet Union Raised on a collective, the infant grows up and becomes a symbol to the Soviet people, and the world changes drastically from what we know - bringing Superman into conflict with Batman, Lex Luthor and many others

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Modern: Genius, Madness, and One Tumultuous Decade That Changed Art Forever

Philip Hook

The Experiment, LLC , 2022 • 434 pages

A revelatory, fast-paced account of the most exciting, frenzied, and revolutionary decade in art history—1905 to the dawn of World War I in 1914—and the avant-garde artists who indelibly changed our visual landscape Modern begins on a specific day—March 22, 1905—at a specific place: the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where works of art we recognize as modern were first exhibited Drawing on his forty five-year fine art career, author Philip Hook illuminates how this new art came to be—and how truly shocking it was

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The Power Broker

Robert A. Caro

Knopf , 1974 • 1338 pages

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York

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The Man Who Broke Capitalism

David Gelles

Simon and Schuster , 2022 • 272 pages

New York Times Bestseller New York Times reporter and “Corner Office” columnist David Gelles reveals legendary GE CEO Jack Welch to be the root of all that’s wrong with capitalism today and offers advice on how we might right those wrongs In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world

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The Dismal Science

Peter Mountford

Tin House Books , 2014 • 281 pages

The Dismal Science tells of a middle-aged vice president at the World Bank, Vincenzo D’Orsi, who publicly quits his job over a seemingly minor argument with a colleague A scandal inevitably ensues, and he systematically burns every bridge to his former life

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Weapons of Math Destruction

Cathy O'Neil

Crown , 2016 • 288 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric—with a new afterword “A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen . . . relevant and urgent.”—Financial Times NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Globe • Wired • Fortune • Kirkus Reviews • The Guardian • Nature • On Point We live in the age of the algorithm Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by machines

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Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman

Doubleday Canada , 2011 • 614 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public

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The Master & Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

Rosetta Books , 2016 • 448 pages

Satan, Judas, a Soviet writer, and a talking black cat named Behemoth populate this satire, “a classic of twentieth-century fiction” (The New York Times) In 1930s Moscow, Satan decides to pay the good people of the Soviet Union a visit In old Jerusalem, the fateful meeting of Pilate and Yeshua and the murder of Judas in the garden of Gethsemane unfold

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The Fall of the House of Labor

David Montgomery

Cambridge University Press , 1987 • 600 pages

This book studies the changing ways in which American industrial workers mobilised concerted action in their own interests between the abolition of slavery and the end of open immigration from Europe and Asia Sustained class conflict between 1916 and 1922 reshaped governmental and business policies, but left labour largely unorganised and in retreat The House of Labor, so arduously erected by working-class activists during the preceeding generation, did not collapse, but ossified, so that when labour activism was reinvigorated after 1933, the movement split in two These developments are analysed here in ways which stress the links between migration, neighbourhood life, racial subjugation, business reform, the state, and the daily experience of work itself.

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A Business of State

Rupali Mishra Mishra

Harvard University Press , 2018 • 370 pages

At the height of its power around 1800, the English East India Company controlled half of the world’s trade and deployed a vast network of political influencers at home and abroad Yet the story of the Company’s beginnings in the early seventeenth century has remained largely untold Rupali Mishra’s account of the East India Company’s formative years sheds new light on one of the most powerful corporations in the history of the world

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Unwanted Visionaries

Sergey Radchenko

Oxford University Press , 2014 • 416 pages

Mikhail Gorbachev's relations with the West have captured the imagination of contemporaries and historians alike, but his vision of Soviet leadership in Asia has received far less attention The failure of Gorbachev's Asian initiatives has had dramatic consequences, by the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was in full retreat from Asia, and since the Soviet collapse, Russia has been left on the sidelines of the "Pacific century." In this exceptionally wide-ranging and deeply researched book, Sergey Radchenko offers an illuminating account of the end of the Cold War in the East, tracing the death of Soviet ambitions in Asia

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Mahogany

Jennifer L. Anderson

Harvard University Press , 2012 • 421 pages

Colonial Americans were enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany As this exotic wood became fashionable, demand for it set in motion a dark, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation Anderson traces the path from source to sale, revealing how prosperity and desire shaped not just people’s lives but the natural world.

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Industry of Anonymity

Jonathan Lusthaus

Harvard University Press , 2018 • 280 pages

Jonathan Lusthaus lifts the veil on cybercriminals in the most extensive account yet of the lives they lead and the vast international industry they have created Having traveled to hotspots around the world to meet with hundreds of law enforcement agents, security gurus, hackers, and criminals, he charts how this industry based on anonymity works.

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The Gods of the Sea

Fynn Holm

Cambridge University Press , 2023 • 235 pages

Japan is often imagined as a nation with a long history of whaling In this innovative new study, Fynn Holm argues that for centuries some regions in early modern Japan did not engage in whaling In fact, they were actively opposed to it, even resorting to violence when whales were killed Resistance against whaling was widespread especially in the Northeast among the Japanese fishermen who worshiped whales as the incarnation of Ebisu, the god of the sea

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1950s Canada

Nelson Wiseman

2023 • 256 pages

1950s Canada chronicles the social, economic, and cultural developments of Canadian politics and public affairs in the 1950s.

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Imperial Engineers

Richard Hornsey

University of Toronto Press , 2022 • 378 pages

Established in 1871 on the outskirts of London, the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill was arguably the first engineering school in Britain For thirty-five years the college helped staff the government institutions of British India responsible for the railways, irrigation systems, telegraph network, and forests Founded to meet the high demand for engineers in that country, it was closed thirty-five years later because its educational innovations had been surpassed by Britain’s universities – on both occasions against the wishes of the Government of India

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A Century of Maritime Science

Jennifer M. Hubbard, David Wildish, Robert L. Stephenson

University of Toronto Press , 2016 • 488 pages

Located on the Bay of Fundy, the St. Andrews Biological Station is Canada’s oldest permanent marine research institution A Century of Maritime Science reviews the fisheries, environmental, oceanographic, and aquaculture research conducted over the last hundred years at St. Andrews from the perspective of the participating scientists Introductory essays by two leading historians of science situate the work at St. Andrews within their historical context With topics including the contributions of women to the early study of marine biology in Canada; the study of scallops, Atlantic salmon, and paralytic shellfish poisoning; and the development of underwater camera technology, A Century of Maritime Science offers a captivating mixture of first-hand reminiscences, scientific expertise, and historical analysis.

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24/7 Politics

Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 424 pages

How cable television upended American political life in the pursuit of profits and influence As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment—frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship

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Murder in a Mill Town

Bruce Dorsey

Oxford University Press , 2023 • 385 pages

A master storyteller presents a riveting drama of America's first "crime of the century"--from murder investigation to a church sex scandal to celebrity trial--and its aftermath In December 1832 a farmer found the body of a young, pregnant woman hanging near a haystack outside a New England mill town When news spread that Methodist preacher Ephraim Avery was accused of murdering Sarah Maria Cornell, a factory worker, the case gave the public everything they found irresistible: sexually charged violence, adultery, the hypocrisy of a church leader, secrecy and mystery, and suspicions of insanity

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Silk

Aarathi Prasad

HarperCollins , 2024 • 463 pages

A Next Big Idea Book Club Must-Read for April "Aarathi Prasad spins a masterpiece of a story, as luminous, supple, and surprising as the wondrous threads themselves." —Sy Montgomery, bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus and Of Time and Turtles Throughout history, across cultures and countries, silk has reigned as the undeniable queen of fabrics, yet its origins and evolution remain a mystery In a gorgeous and sweeping narrative, Silk weaves together its intricate story and the indelible mark it has left on humanity

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The Globemakers

Peter Bellerby

Bloomsbury Publishing USA , 2023 • 324 pages

“Peter Bellerby's tale of learning how to fashion worlds-a journey through history, science, craft, and passion-spun me on my axis.”-Dava Sobel, New York Times bestselling author of Longitude The beautifully illustrated story of our globe and the globes it has inspired, told from inside the workshop of one of the world's last globemakers, with four-color photos throughout Many of us encounter a globe as children We find a grown-up and ask, “Where are we?” They spin the globe and point to a minuscule dot amidst a massive expanse of sea and land

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Frontier Science

Matthew S. Wiseman

University of Toronto Press , 2024 • 276 pages

Between 1945 and 1970, Canada’s Department of National Defence sponsored scientific research into the myriad challenges of military operations in cold regions To understand and overcome the impediments of the country’s cold climate, scientists studied cold-weather acclimatization, hypothermia, frostbite, and psychological morale for soldiers assigned to active duty in northern Canada Frontier Science investigates the history of military science in northern Canada during this period of the Cold War, highlighting the consequences of government-funded research for humans and nature alike

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Empire of the Scalpel

Ira Rutkow

Simon and Schuster , 2022 • 416 pages

From a renowned surgeon and historian with five decades of experience comes a remarkable history of surgery's development--spanning the Stone Age to the present day--blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling There are not many events in life that can be as simultaneously life-frightening and life-saving as a surgical operation Yet, in America, tens-of-millions of major surgical procedures are performed annually but few of us pause to consider the magnitude of these figures because we have such inherent confidence in surgeons

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Children of Ash and Elm

Neil Price

Basic Books , 2020 • 629 pages

The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more

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Betting on the Civil Service Examinations

En Li

Harvard East Asian Monographs , 2023

In Betting on the Civil Service Examinations, En Li places the history of Chinese weixing, or "surname guessing," for civil service examinations in a larger context Li traces institutional revenue innovations surrounding lottery regulation and depicts an expansive community stretching among Guangdong, Southeast Asia, and North America.

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Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance

Jane Gleeson-White

W. W. Norton & Company , 2012 • 304 pages

“Lively history. . . Show[s] double entry’s role in the creation of the accounting profession, and even of capitalism itself.”—The New Yorker Filled with colorful characters and history, Double Entry takes us from the ancient origins of accounting in Mesopotamia to the frontiers of modern finance At the heart of the story is double-entry bookkeeping: the first system that allowed merchants to actually measure the worth of their businesses

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A Technological History of Cold-War India, 1947–⁠1969

William A.T. Logan

Springer Nature , 2021 • 297 pages

This book provides a technological history of modern India, in particular the Nehruvian development in the context of the Cold War Through a series of case studies about military modernization, transportation infrastructure, and electric power, it examines how the ideals of autarky and technological indigenization conflicted with the economic and political realities of the Cold War world Where other studies tend to focus on the political leaders and economists who oversaw development, this book demonstrates how the perspective of the engineers, government bureaucrats, and aid workers informed and ultimately implemented development.

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Behind the Urals

John Scott, Stephen Kotkin

1989 • 360 pages

John Scott's classic account of his five years as a worker in the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, first published in 1942, is enhanced in this edition by Stephen Kotkin's introduction, which places the book in context for today's readers; by the texts of three debriefings of Scott conducted at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1938 and published here for the first time; and by a selection of photographs showing life in Magnitogorsk in the 1930s No other book provides such a graphic description of the life of workers under the First Five-Year Plan.

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An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750-1895

Gwyn Campbell

Cambridge University Press , 2005 • 444 pages

The first comprehensive economic history of pre-colonial Madagascar, this study examines the island's role from 1750 to 1895 in the context of a burgeoning international economy and the rise of modern European imperialism This study reveals that the Merina of the Central Highlands attempted to found an island empire and through the exploitation of its human and natural resources build the economic and military might to challenge British and French pretensions in the region Ultimately, the Merina failed due to imperial forced labour policies and natural disasters, the nefarious consequences of which (disease; depopulation; ethnic enmity) have in traditional histories been imputed external capitalist and French colonial policies.

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A Century of Development in Taiwan

Chow, Peter C.Y.

Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022 • 400 pages

Most colonies became independent countries after the end of World War II, while few of them became modernized even after decades of their independence Taiwan is one of the few to become a modern state with remarkable achievements in its economic, socio-cultural, and political development This book addresses the path and trajectory of the emergence of Taiwan from a colony to a modern state in the past century.

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The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean

Sharika D. Crawford

UNC Press Books , 2020 • 217 pages

Illuminating the entangled histories of the people and commodities that circulated across the Atlantic, Sharika D Crawford assesses the Caribbean as a waterscape where imperial and national governments vied to control the profitability of the sea Crawford places the green and hawksbill sea turtles and the Caymanian turtlemen who hunted them at the center of this waterscape

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Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. III

Fernand Braudel

Univ of California Press , 1992 • 704 pages

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject Originally published in the early 1980s, Civilization traces the social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, although his primary focus is Europe Braudel skims over politics, wars, etc., in favor of examining life at the grass roots: food, drink, clothing, housing, town markets, money, credit, technology, the growth of towns and cities, and more Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

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Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. II

Fernand Braudel

Univ of California Press , 1992 • 678 pages

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject Originally published in the early 1980s, Civilization traces the social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, although his primary focus is Europe Braudel skims over politics, wars, etc., in favor of examining life at the grass roots: food, drink, clothing, housing, town markets, money, credit, technology, the growth of towns and cities, and more Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

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Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution

Rebecca L. Spang

Harvard University Press , 2015 • 361 pages

Rebecca L Spang, who revolutionized our understanding of the restaurant, has written a new history of money It is also a new history of the French Revolution, with economics at its heart In her telling, radicalization was driven by an ever-widening gap between political ideals—including “freedom of money”—and the harsh realities of daily life.

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A Velvet Empire

David Todd

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 368 pages

How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth century After Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military conquest A Velvet Empire is a global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms of imperial collaboration that extended France's power from the Middle East to Latin America and ushered in the modern age of globalization

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Nathaniel's Nutmeg (25th Anniversary Edition)

Giles Milton

Picador USA , 2024

The 25th anniversary edition of the much-beloved true adventure tale of Nathaniel Courthope; “A magnificent piece of popular history” (The Independent on Sunday) The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and largely ignored

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Holy Food

Christina Ward

Process , 2021 • 240 pages

Holy Food explores the influence of newer and unorthodox beliefs on modern American food Beginning with the infamous strawberry shortcake that sated visitors to the Oneida Community in the late 1800s to the celebratory cakes of the Unarius practitioners in present-day California, Ward shows us a range of feasting and fasting Religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (they contain souls), Kosher and Halal rules forbade the shrimp cocktail (shellfish are scavengers, or maybe G-d just said "no"), and a long-ago Pope forbade Catholics to eat meat on Fridays (one should fast to atone for committed sins)

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A Book of Waves

Stefan Helmreich

Duke University Press , 2023 • 270 pages

In A Book of Waves Stefan Helmreich examines ocean waves as forms of media that carry ecological, geopolitical, and climatological news about our planet Drawing on ethnographic work with oceanographers and coastal engineers in the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Bangladesh, Helmreich details how scientists at sea and in the lab apprehend waves’ materiality through abstractions, seeking to capture in technical language these avatars of nature at once periodic and irreversible, wild and pacific, ephemeral and eternal

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The Dean of Shandong

Daniel A. Bell

Princeton University Press , 2023 • 208 pages

An inside view of Chinese academia and what it reveals about China’s political system On January 1, 2017, Daniel Bell was appointed dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University—the first foreign dean of a political science faculty in mainland China’s history In The Dean of Shandong, Bell chronicles his experiences as what he calls “a minor bureaucrat,” offering an inside account of the workings of Chinese academia and what they reveal about China’s political system

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Cybernetic Revolutionaries

Eden Medina

MIT Press , 2014 • 343 pages

A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy

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Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups

Ryan Manucha

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP , 2022 • 282 pages

Gerard Comeau, a retiree living in rural New Brunswick, never thought his booze run would turn him into a Canadian hero In 2012, after Comeau had driven to Quebec to purchase cheaper beer and crossed back into his home province, police officers participating in a low-stakes sting operation tailed and detained him, confiscated his haul, and levied a fine of less than $300 Countries routinely engage in trade wars and erect barriers to protect domestic industries from foreign competition

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The Biomedical Empire

Barbara Katz Rothman

Stanford University Press , 2021 • 115 pages

We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power In this book, Barbara Katz Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the "medical industrial complex" have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power Factors as fundamental as one's citizenship and sex identity—drivers of our access to basic goods and services—rely on approval and legitimation by biomedicine

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The Cactus Hunters

Jared D. Margulies

U of Minnesota Press , 2023 • 317 pages

An exploration of the explosive illegal trade in succulents and the passion that drives it Cacti and succulents are phenomenally popular worldwide among plant enthusiasts, despite being among the world’s most threatened species The fervor driving the illegal trade in succulents might also be driving some species to extinction Delving into the strange world of succulent collecting, The Cactus Hunters takes us to the heart of this conundrum: the mystery of how and why ardent lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade

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Imperial Wine

Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Univ of California Press , 2024 • 341 pages

A fascinating and approachable deep dive into the colonial roots of the global wine industry Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britain's surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand Here, historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative

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American Gun

Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2023 • 287 pages

“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

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A Ritual Geology

Robyn d'Avignon

Duke University Press , 2022 • 225 pages

Set against the ongoing corporate enclosure of West Africa’s goldfields, A Ritual Geology tells the untold history of one of the world’s oldest indigenous gold mining industries: Francophone West Africa’s orpaillage Establishing African miners as producers of subterranean knowledge, Robyn d’Avignon uncovers a dynamic “ritual geology” of techniques and cosmological engagements with the earth developed by agrarian residents of gold-bearing rocks in savanna West Africa

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F-35

Tom Burbage, Betsy Clark, Adrian Pitman, David Poyer

Simon and Schuster , 2023 • 366 pages

The inside story of the most expensive and controversial military program in history, as told by those who lived it The F-35 has changed allied combat warfare But by the time it’s completed, it will cost more than the Manhattan Project and the B-2 Stealth Bomber It has been subject to the most aggressive cyberattacks in history from China, Russia, North Korea, and others

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American Technological Sublime

David E. Nye

MIT Press , 1996 • 388 pages

American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime" (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely Technology has long played a central role in the formation of Americans' sense of selfhood

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A Workshop for Peace

George A. Dudley

MIT Press (MA) , 1994 • 440 pages

In this book he unfolds the first eyewitness account of the creation of a landmark building that was functionally and symbolically important in its time, marking the emergence of modern architecture as the dominant language of postwar institutions and cities.

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Darfur Peacekeepers

Janos Besenyo

Harmattan Hongrie , 2021 • 230 pages

« Dr Besenyo has written a troubling, first-hand account of the remarkably complex and difficult operation the AU/UN peacekeeping effort was in Darfur It should be read by policymakers who contemplate these operations in the future. » Andrex Natsios, Director at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and Executive Professor

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1493

Charles C. Mann

Vintage , 2012 • 722 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply engaging history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world—from the highly acclaimed author of 1491. • "Fascinating...Lively...A convincing explanation of why our world is the way it is." —The New York Times Book Review Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

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BART

Michael C. Healy

Heyday.ORIM , 2013 • 426 pages

An insider’s “indispensible” behind-the-scenes history of the transit system of San Francisco and surrounding counties (Houston Chronicle) In the first-ever history book about BART, longtime agency spokesman Michael C Healy gives an insider’s account of the rapid transit system’s inception, hard-won approval, construction, and operations, warts and all

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A Theory of Militant Democracy

Alexander S. Kirshner

Yale University Press , 2014 • 221 pages

How should pro-democratic forces safeguard representative government from anti-democratic forces By granting rights of participation to groups that do not share democratic values, democracies may endanger the very rights they have granted; but denying these rights may also undermine democratic values Alexander Kirshner offers a set of principles for determining when one may reasonably refuse rights of participation, and he defends this theory through real-world examples, ranging from the far-right British Nationalist Party to Turkey’s Islamist Welfare Party to America’s Democratic Party during Reconstruction.

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Everyday Lives in China's Cold War Military-Industrial Complex

Youwei Xu, Y. Yvon Wang

Springer Nature , 2022 • 393 pages

This book translates and contextualizes the recollections of men and women who built, lived, and worked in some of the factory compounds relocated from China’s most cosmopolitan city—Shanghai Small Third Line factories became oases of relatively prosperous urban life among more impoverished agricultural communities These accounts, plus the guiding questions, contextual notes, and further readings accompanying them, show how everyday lives fit into the sweeping geopolitical changes in China and the world during the Cold War era

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Governing the Market

Robert Wade

Princeton University Press , 2018 • 495 pages

Published originally in 1990 to critical acclaim, Robert Wade's Governing the Market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy In it, Wade challenged claims both of those who saw the East Asian story as a vindication of free market principles and of those who attributed the success of Taiwan and other countries to government intervention Instead, Wade turned attention to the way allocation decisions were divided between markets and public administration and the synergy between them

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The Crescent and the Compass

Angel Millar

2017 • 218 pages

A timely survey of radical spirituality and political activism in Islam and the West over the last century and a half, The Crescent And The Compass uncovers numerous previously unknown and unexplored connections between European, American, and Middle Eastern movements, organizations, secret societies, and thinkers Subjects covered include Sufism and Islamic Gnosticism; Muslim revolutionaries and Freemasons; Rene Guenon, fringe Masonry, Traditionalism, and Islam; the early history of the Shriners; the Ancient Order of Zuzimites; Charles, Prince of Wales and Islamic spirituality; and militant anti-Freemasonry.

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Engineering in Plain Sight

Grady Hillhouse

No Starch Press , 2022 • 265 pages

Engineering in Plain Sight is a beautifully illustrated field guide with accessible explanations to nearly every part of the constructed world around us Author Grady Hillhouse is the creator behind the popular YouTube channel Practical Engineering (over 3 million subscribers!) and this book is essentially 50 new episodes crammed between two covers Engineering in Plain Sight extends the field guide genre from natural phenomena to human-made structures, making them approachable and understandable to non-engineers

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Democracy and Capitalism in Turkey

Devrim Adam Yavuz

Bloomsbury Publishing , 2023 • 281 pages

While a positive correlation between capitalism and democracy has existed in Western Europe and North America, the example of late-industrializing nations such as Turkey has demonstrated that the two need not always go hand in hand, and sometimes the interests of business coincide more firmly with anti-democratic forces This book explores the factors that compelled capitalists in Turkey to adopt a more pro-democratic ideology by examining a leading Turkish business lobby (TÜSIAD) which has been pushing for democratic reform since the 1990s, despite representing some of the largest corporation owners in Turkey and having supported the state's authoritarian tendencies in the past such as the military coup of 1980

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Empire of Cotton

Sven Beckert

Vintage , 2015 • 642 pages

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist. “Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism.

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A History of Control Engineering, 1800-1930

Stuart Bennett

IET , 1986 • 232 pages

Dr. Bennett traces the growing awareness of the importance and significance of the concept of feedback in engineering and details the technical developments that contributed to this awareness There follows an account of the development of steam and hydraulic servomechanisms and their application to the control of ships and aircraft.