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"American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation--the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth--and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including...
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"Comedian Kat Timpf shares how humor has kept her going during the hardest times of her life, and confronts the cancel culture that threatens modern comedy"--
In a 2019 study, 40% of people reported censoring themselves out of fear that voicing their views would alienate them from the people they care about most. Timpf shows why much of the way we talk about sensitive subjects is wrong. We push ourselves into unnecessary conflicts when we should...
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With her trademark black humor, Rachel Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a suprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserve of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors,...
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We all come to moments when we face pivotal decisions, but many feel that they have no guidance for how to make good choices. In 'The Authoritarian Moment', Ben Shapiro lays out the seven most important decisions we'll ever make, and provides a framework for how to make those decisions with virtue and wisdom.
Shapiro knows there are totalitarians on the political Right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional...
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"The 2016 election left many people who are concerned about the environment fearful that progress on climate change would come screeching to a halt. But not Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope. Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, and Pope, a lifelong environmental leader, approach climate change from different perspectives, yet they arrive at similar conclusions. Without agreeing on every point, they share a belief that cities,...
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Why are some nations rich and others poor? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of the right policies? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Based on fifteen years of original research, Acemoglu and Robinson marshall historical evidence from the...
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Senator Kamala Harris's commitment to speaking truth is informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents--an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India--met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and...
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Beginning with the absolutely critical first moments of the outbreak in China, and ending with an epilogue on the vaccine rollout and the unprecedented events between the election of Joseph Biden and his inauguration, Lawrence Wright's The Plague Year surges forward with essential information--and fascinating historical parallels--examining the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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As the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award winning historian and perennial New York Times bestselling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy's inspiring challenge, and America's race to the moon. On May 25, 1961, JFK made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing, fast-paced epic, Douglas Brinkley returns to the...
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"Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections--a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the indelible. Howley's subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures. A soap opera...
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"Physician and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb asks: Has America's COVID-19 catastrophe taught us anything? ... [H]e shows how the coronavirus and its variants were able to trounce America's pandemic preparations, and he outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic...
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"An acerbic, no holds barred indictment of business as usual in Washington, DC--where our elected leaders provide a fig leaf for those who really hold the levers of power--by a 28-year veteran of the Hill, the bestselling author of The Party Is Over Have you ever noticed that behind all the mud-slinging and invective there isn't much difference between the parties? For all of his big talk and promises of change, Obama is basically Bush lite. And Hillary--or...
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Now with a new epilogue that speaks directly to the current energy crisis, "The Prize" recounts the panoramic history of the world's most important resource: oil. Daniel Yergin's timeless book chronicles the struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded oil for decades and that continues to fuel global rivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny of men and nations. This updated edition categorically proves the unwavering significance...
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"Once one of Silicon Valley's greatest success stories, Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users' data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech ... Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances...
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"A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar...
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"There's a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives. It affects every advertisement we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes. "Stakeholder capitalism" makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world, but in reality this ideology championed by America's business and political leaders robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity. Vivek Ramaswamy is a traitor...
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"Voter suppression has plagued America since its inception, and so has the issue of identity-who is really American and what that means. When tied together, as they are in our modern politics, citizens are harmed in overt, subtle, and even personal ways. Stacey Abrams experienced the effects firsthand, running one of the most unconventional races in modern politics as the Democratic nominee for the governorship in Georgia and the first black woman...
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Unfreedom of the Press is not just another book about the press. Levin shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within: "not government oppression or suppression," he writes, but self-censorship, group-think, bias by omission, and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events, and outright lies as news. With the depth of historical background for which his books are renowned, Levin takes the reader...
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"Native women have filled their communities with strength and leadership, both historically and as modern-day warriors. The twelve Native American and First Nations women featured in this book overcame unimaginable hardships - racial and gender discrimination, abuse, and extreme poverty - only to rise to great heights in the fields of politics, science, education, and community activism. Such determination and courage reflect the essence of the traditional...
20) The kissing bug: a true story of a family, an insect, and a nation's neglect of a deadly disease
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"Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas--or the kissing bug disease--is more prevalent in the United...