The World Is Flat [Further Updated and Expanded; Release 3.0]

The World Is Flat [Further Updated and Expanded; Release 3.0]
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 682
Release: 2007-08-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780374292782

Explores globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2009-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307373355

From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe

The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe
Author: Rita Chin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691192774

"From the influx of immigrants in the 1950s to contemporary worries about refugees and terrorism, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe examines the historical development of multiculturalism on the Continent. Rita Chin argues that there were few efforts to institute state-sponsored policies of multiculturalism, and those that emerged were pronounced failures virtually from their inception. She shows that today's crisis of support for cultural pluralism isn't new but actually has its roots in the 1980s. Chin looks at the touchstones of European multiculturalism, from the urgent need for laborers after World War II to the public furor over the publication of The Satanic Verses and the question of French girls wearing headscarves to school. While many Muslim immigrants had lived in Europe for decades, in the 1980s they came to be defined by their religion and the public's preoccupation with gender relations. Acceptance of sexual equality became the critical gauge of Muslims' compatibility with Western values. The convergence of left and right around the defense of such personal freedoms against a putatively illiberal Islam has threatened to undermine commitment to pluralism as a core ideal. Chin contends that renouncing the principles of diversity brings social costs, particularly for the left, and she considers how Europe might construct an effective political engagement with its varied population."--Publisher web site

Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy
Author: J. D. Vance
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2016-06-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0062300563

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

America in Retreat

America in Retreat
Author: Bret Stephens
Publisher: Sentinel
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1595231218

"Americans are weary of acting as the world's policeman, especially in the face of our unending economic troubles at home. President Obama stands for cutting defense budgets, leaving Afghanistan, abandoning Iraq, appeasing Russia, and offering premature declarations of victory over al Qaeda. Meanwhile, some Republicans now also argue for a far smaller and less expensive American footprint abroad. Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens rejects this view. As he sees it, retreating from our global responsibilities will ultimately exact a devastating price to our security and prosperity. In the 1930s, it was the weakness and vacillation of the democracies that led to war and genocide. Today the regimes in Tehran, Damascus, Beijing, and Moscow continue to test America's will. Americans have often been tempted to turn our backs on a world that fails to live up to our idealism and doesn't easily bend. But succumbing to that temptation always leads to tragedy. The mantle of global leadership is a responsibility we must shoulder for the sake of our freedom, our prosperity, and our safety"--

New York Times Story of the Yankees

New York Times Story of the Yankees
Author: The New York Times
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0762472197

Experience a century of the pride, power, and pinstripes of the Yankees, Major League Baseball's most successful team, as told through the stories of their hometown newspaper, The New York Times. The New York Yankees are the most storied franchise in baseball history. They consistently draw the largest home and away crowds of any team, command the largest broadcast audiences in baseball, draw the greatest number of on-line followers, and routinely sell more copies of books and magazines than any other professional sports team. The New York Times Story of the Yankees includes more than 350 articles chronicling the team's most famous milestones—as well as the best writing about the ball club. Each article is hand-selected from The Times by the peerless sportswriter Dave Anderson, creating the most complete and compelling history to date about the Yankees. Organized by era, the book covers the biggest stories and events in Yankee history, such as the purchase of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris's 61st home run, and David Cone's perfect game. It chronicles the team's 27 World Series championships and 40 American League pennants; its rivalries with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox; controversial owners, players, and managers; and more. The articles span the years from 1903—when the team was known as the New York Highlanders—to the present, and include stories from well-known and beloved Times reporters such as Arthur Daley, John Kieran, Leonard Koppett, Red Smith, Tyler Kepner, Ira Berkow, Richard Sandomir, Jim Roach, and George Vecsey. Hundreds of black-and-white photographs throughout capture every era. A foreword by die-hard Yankees fan, Alec Baldwin, completes the celebration of baseball's greatest team.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
Author: Nicole Perlroth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526629836

WINNER OF THE FT & McKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 The instant New York Times bestseller A Financial Times and The Times Book of the Year 'A terrifying exposé' The Times 'Part John le Carré . . . Spellbinding' New Yorker We plug in anything we can to the internet. We can control our entire lives, economy and grid via a remote web control. But over the past decade, as this transformation took place, we never paused to think that we were also creating the world's largest attack surface. And that the same nation that maintains the greatest cyber advantage on earth could also be among its most vulnerable. Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers and a few unsung heroes, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing and gripping feat of journalism. Drawing on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.

Power Wars

Power Wars
Author: Charlie Savage
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 1067
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0316286605

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage's penetrating investigation of the Obama presidency and the national security state. Barack Obama campaigned on changing George W. Bush's "global war on terror" but ended up entrenching extraordinary executive powers, from warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention to military commissions and targeted killings. Then Obama found himself bequeathing those authorities to Donald Trump. How did the United States get here? In Power Wars, Charlie Savage reveals high-level national security legal and policy deliberations in a way no one has done before. He tells inside stories of how Obama came to order the drone killing of an American citizen, preside over an unprecendented crackdown on leaks, and keep a then-secret program that logged every American's phone calls. Encompassing the first comprehensive history of NSA surveillance over the past forty years as well as new information about the Osama bin Laden raid, Power Wars equips readers to understand the legacy of Bush's and Obama's post-9/11 presidencies in the Trump era.

Half the Sky

Half the Sky
Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2010-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0307387097

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope, two of our most fiercely moral voices With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty. Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Rise and Kill First

Rise and Kill First
Author: Ronen Bergman
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 784
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0679604685

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the IDF’s targeted killing programs, hailed by The New York Times as “an exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject.” WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist • The New York Times Book Review • BBC History Magazine • Mother Jones • Kirkus Reviews The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the entire world. “A remarkable feat of fearless and responsible reporting . . . important, timely, and informative.”—John le Carré