Dan's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:53:50 -0700 60 Dan's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade]]> 12152359 672 Andrew Feinstein 0374208387 Dan 0 to-read 3.90 2011 The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
author: Andrew Feinstein
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average rating: 3.90
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story]]> 36377173  ]]> 280 Ramzy Baroud 0745337996 Dan 0 to-read 4.59 The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story
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]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601
Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid and entertaining, Wynn-Williams’ account pulls back the curtain on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the global elite. She exposes the true cost of Silicon Valley’s ambition, from outrageous schemes cooked up on private jets to the alarming consequences of Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of global dominance.

Careless People is an ordinary woman's gripping and darkly funny memoir that will forever change how you view the technology that runs our lives – and the unchecked power of those who control it.]]> 382 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Dan 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
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]]> <![CDATA[An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography]]> 97920 Hotel Rwanda.

As his country was being torn apart by violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina - the 'Oskar Schindler of Africa' - refused to bow to the madness that surrounded him. Confronting killers with a combination of diplomacy, flattery, and deception, he offered shelter to more than twelve thousand members of the Tutsi clan and Hutu moderates, while homicidal mobs raged outside with machetes.

An Ordinary Man explores what the Academy Award-nominated film Hotel Rwanda could not: the inner life of the man who became one of the most prominent public faces of that terrible conflict. Rusesabagina tells for the first time the full story of his life - growing up as the son of a rural farmer, the child of a mixed marriage, his extraordinary career path which led him to become the first Rwandan manager of the Belgian-owned Hotel Milles Collines - all of which contributed to his heroic actions in the face of such horror. He will also bring the reader inside the hotel for those one hundred terrible days depicted in the film, relating the anguish of those who watched as their loved ones were hacked to pieces and the betrayal that he felt as a result of the UN’s refusal to help at this time of crisis.

Including never-before-reported details of the Rwandan genocide, An Ordinary Man is sure to become a classic of tolerance literature, joining such books as Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, and Elie Wiesel’s Night. Paul Rusesabagina’s autobiography is the story of one man who did not let fear get the better of him—a man who found within himself a vast reserve of courage and bravery, and showed the world how one 'ordinary man' can become a hero.]]> 224 Paul Rusesabagina 0143038605 Dan 0 to-read 4.17 2006 An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
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average rating: 4.17
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]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Dan 0 to-read 4.47 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
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average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
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]]> <![CDATA[The Naqaid (Satires) of Jarir & Al Farazdaq]]> 15360931 175 Arthur Wormhoudt 0916358577 Dan 0 to-read 0.0 The Naqaid (Satires) of Jarir & Al Farazdaq
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]]> The Violence Of Love 226862 240 Oscar A. Romero 1570755353 Dan 0 to-read 4.40 1980 The Violence Of Love
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average rating: 4.40
book published: 1980
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]]> <![CDATA[Marxism and the National Question]]> 40544818 Joseph Stalin Dan 0 to-read 4.31 Marxism and the National Question
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]]> <![CDATA[Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers]]> 22939436
To critics who dared call him "namby-pamby," Rogers said, "Only people who take the time to see our work can begin to understand the depth of it." This is the invitation of Peaceful Neighbor, to see and understand Rogers's convictions and their expression through his program. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, it turns out, is far from sappy, sentimental, and shallow; it's a sharp political response to a civil and political society poised to kill.]]> 222 Michael G. Long 0664260470 Dan 0 to-read 3.99 2015 Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals]]> 3280003
The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world-- decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author, Jane Mayer, relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

The Dark Side will chronicle real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained—or not—and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results. For instance, there is the stunning admission of one of the detainees, Sheikh Ibn al-Libi, that the confession he gave under duress—which provided a key piece of evidence buttressing congressional support of going to war against Iraq--was in fact fabricated, to make the torture stop.

In all cases, whatever the short term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.]]> 392 Jane Mayer 0385526393 Dan 0 to-read 4.18 2008 The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 Dan 0 to-read 4.30 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
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]]> <![CDATA[Cathedrals of Steam: How London’s Great Stations Were Built – And How They Transformed the City]]> 50815174 384 Christian Wolmar 1786499207 Dan 0 to-read 4.09 Cathedrals of Steam: How London’s Great Stations Were Built – And How They Transformed the City
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]]> Tender Is the Flesh 240139608 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 Dan 0 to-read 3.71 2017 Tender Is the Flesh
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average rating: 3.71
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]]> <![CDATA[Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)]]> 1125344 168 Louis D. Brandeis 031210314X Dan 0 to-read 3.60 1914 Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
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average rating: 3.60
book published: 1914
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]]> The House of Dolls 771394
According to Wikipedia: Ian Curtis, the band Joy Division initially the band "was called Warsaw, but as their name conflicted with that of another group, Warsaw Pakt, the name was changed to Joy Division. The moniker was derived from a 1955 novel The House of Dolls [...]."]]> 245 Ka-tzetnik 135633 Dan 0 to-read 3.73 1955 The House of Dolls
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average rating: 3.73
book published: 1955
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cultural Revolution Cookbook]]> 13108428 157 Sasha Gong 9881998468 Dan 0 to-read 4.50 2011 The Cultural Revolution Cookbook
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]]> Why Marx Was Right 10185738 Why Marx Was Right is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia.]]> 258 Terry Eagleton Dan 0 3.87 2011 Why Marx Was Right
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average rating: 3.87
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]]> <![CDATA[Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis]]> 181037654
Why do landlords always win, and renters pay the price? In his radical new interpretation of the housing crisis, lawyer Nick Bano proposes that it is rent not house prices that is at the core of the problem. Despite economic boom and bust, why has the cost of housing continued to skyrocket since the 1970s?

Bano argues that rents have also continued to rise - supported by housing benefit payments and weakening housing laws on evictions - Britain has become a nation of renters and landlords. 1 in 24 UK residents are now landlords. The state has colluded with the market as social housing provision has been replaced by payments, spirally ever higher.

Against Landlords shows that a permanent crisis is not a happenstance of global economics or political incompetence, but has been engineered on purpose. Such a crisis has resulted in the fire at Grenfell and widespread precarity for renters. Bano also shows that this is not just a London problem but can be seen across the country, and that it is inherently racist in nature. It instils anxiety and inequality in order to maintain ever increasingly profits.

As a consequence, building more housing is not the solution. Bano's radical diagnosis show why the solutions proscribed by diverse experts have gone wrong, and what we should do about. It is firstly a problem of the law, and this demands immediate reform to questions of property and land values. Then, the laws concerning renting and landlordism. Finally, it is question of where to build and who for.]]> 240 Nick Bano 1804293873 Dan 0 to-read 4.24 2024 Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis
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]]> <![CDATA[Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production]]> 9185755 Marx offers a penetrating analysis of capitalism's inner workings, examining commodities, value, money, and other factors related to the system's historic origins and contemporary functions. These considerations form the framework for his the system cannot be reformed and must be overthrown by a revolution, resulting in a socialist society in which production serves the needs of every individual rather than generating profits for the few.]]> 880 Karl Marx 0486477487 Dan 0 currently-reading 4.59 1867 Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
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average rating: 4.59
book published: 1867
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]]> <![CDATA[Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI]]> 222725518 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. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed.]]> 501 Karen Hao 0593657519 Dan 0 to-read 4.01 2025 Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
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]]> The Road to Serfdom 299215 The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in England in the spring of 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate attention from the public, politicians, and scholars alike. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 were sold. In April of 1945, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this condensation to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best-seller, the book has sold over a quarter of a million copies in the United States, not including the British edition or the nearly twenty translations into such languages as German, French, Dutch, Swedish, and Japanese, and not to mention the many underground editions produced in Eastern Europe before the fall of the iron curtain.

After thirty-two printings in the United States, The Road to Serfdom has established itself alongside the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and George Orwell for its timeless meditation on the relation between individual liberty and government authority. This fiftieth anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Milton Friedman, commemorates the enduring influence of The Road to Serfdom on the ever-changing political and social climates of the twentieth century, from the rise of socialism after World War II to the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions" in the 1980s and the transitions in Eastern Europe from communism to capitalism in the 1990s.

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992), recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and the principal proponent of libertarianism in the twentieth century.

On the first American edition of The Road to Serfdom:
"One of the most important books of our generation. . . . It restates for our time the issue between liberty and authority with the power and rigor of reasoning with which John Stuart Mill stated the issue for his own generation in his great essay On Liberty. . . . It is an arresting call to all well-intentioned planners and socialists, to all those who are sincere democrats and liberals at heart to stop, look and listen."—Henry Hazlitt, New York Times Book Review, September 1944

"In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often—at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough—that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of."—George Orwell, Collected Essays]]> 274 Friedrich A. Hayek 0226320618 Dan 0 to-read 4.13 1944 The Road to Serfdom
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average rating: 4.13
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]]> <![CDATA[Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom]]> 693443 281 Norman Cohn 0226113078 Dan 0 to-read 4.03 1975 Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom
author: Norman Cohn
name: Dan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1975
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]]> <![CDATA[Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The global reverberation of Palestinian historical trauma]]> 238714627
'Radiance in Pain and Resilience pulses with the raw truth of Dr Jabr's frontline work. Her words are a rallying cry for Palestinian liberation.' - Dr Jennifer Mullan, Decolonizing Therapy

'A revolutionary contribution that will transform global mental health and psychiatry. This tour de force is a must read for all global mental health workers, as well as the global social justice community.' - Dr Jess Ghannam, Palestinian-American psychologist and professor

'Dr Samah Jabr, a leading Palestinian mental health professional, is an irreplaceable scholar in times of fascism and genocide. This book is a must read for all.' - Dr Tarek Younis, The Muslim, State and Mind: Psychology in times of Islamophobia

About the author
Dr Samah Jabr, a consultant psychiatrist practicing in Palestine, serving commu- nities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is Head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health. She is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University in Washington DC. Dr Jabr is a trainer and supervisor with a special focus on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mhGAP, and the Istanbul Protocol for the documentation of torture. She frequently consults on program development for international organizations. Her key interests include the rights of prisoners, suicide prevention, and historical trauma. Gabor Maté CM (born January 1944) is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician. He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development, trauma, [2] and potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, including autoimmune disease, cancer, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), [3] and addictions.]]> 306 Samah Jabr 1923042920 Dan 0 to-read 4.72 2025 Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The global reverberation of Palestinian historical trauma
author: Samah Jabr
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average rating: 4.72
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces]]> 220458600 A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s largest military base, and what the crimes reveal about drug-trafficking and impunity among elite special operations soldiers

Two dead bodies were discovered in a forested area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2020. One, William “Billy” Lavigne, was a member of Delta Force, the most secretive “black ops” unit in the military. A long-serving veteran of America’s classified assassination program, Lavigne had done more than a dozen deployments, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs on base, and had committed a series of violent crimes before he was mysteriously killed. The other, Timothy Dumas, was a supply officer attached to the Special Forces who used his proximity to clandestine missions to steal guns and traffic drugs into the United States from abroad, and had written a blackmail letter threatening to expose criminality in the special operations task force in Afghanistan.

As soon as Seth Harp, an Iraq war veteran and investigative reporter, begins looking into the double murder, he learns that there have been many more unexplained deaths at Fort Bragg recently, all with some apparent connection to drug-trafficking, as well as dozens of fatal overdoses. Drawing on trial transcripts, police records, and hundreds of interviews, Harp tells a scathing story of narco-trafficking in the Special Forces, drug conspiracies abetted by corrupt police, blatant military cover-ups, American complicity in the Afghan heroin trade, and the pernicious consequences of continuous war.]]> 357 Seth Harp 0593655087 Dan 0 to-read 4.02 2025 The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
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]]> Iran Between Two Revolutions 238093
In this examination of the social bases of Iranian politics, Professor Abrahamian draws on archives of the British Foreign Office and India Office that have only recently been opened; newspaper, memoirs, and biographies published in Tehran between 1906 and 1980; proceedings of the Iranian Majles and Senate; interviews with retired and active politicians; and pamphlets, books, and periodicals distributed by exiled groups in Europe and North America in the period between 1953 and 1980.

Professor Abrahamian explores the impact of socio-economic change on the political structure, especially under the reigns of Reza Shah and Muhammad Reza Shah, and throws fresh light on the significance of the Tudeh party and the failure of the Shah's regime from 1953 to 1978.]]> 561 Ervand Abrahamian 0691101345 Dan 0 to-read 4.28 1982 Iran Between Two Revolutions
author: Ervand Abrahamian
name: Dan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1982
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]]> <![CDATA[Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream]]> 18617616
But there was a dark side to that scene as well.

Many didn't make it out alive, and many deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians and intelligence personnel—the same sort of people who gave birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all the canyon's colorful characters—rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos—happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is the very strange, but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a hippie utopia.]]> 319 David McGowan 1909394122 Dan 0 to-read 3.59 2014 Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
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average rating: 3.59
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]]> <![CDATA[The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism]]> 220234244 The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism is the latest work from renowned revolutionary Torkil Lauesen, whose decades of activism and scholarship have made him a leading voice in global anti-imperialist movements. Drawing on his deep involvement in revolutionary struggles, Lauesen offers a comprehensive analysis of socialism's long, unfolding transition. By examining pivotal moments-from the 1848 revolutions to China's market reforms-Lauesen reframes these struggles not as isolated failures but as integral steps in the global shift away from the capitalist world-system. For those committed to socialist theory and anti-imperialism, The Long Transition provides essential insights into how the decline of capitalism and the rise of a global counter-hegemonies offer new opportunities for socialist transformation.]]> 418 Torkil Lauesen Dan 0 to-read 4.62 2024 The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism
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name: Dan
average rating: 4.62
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]]> Vineland 59721
An old nemesis, federal prosecutor Brock Vond, storms into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed strike force. Soon Zoyd and his daughter, Prairie, go into hiding while Vond begins a relationship with Zoyd's ex-wife and uses Prairie as a pawn against the mother she never knew she had.

Part daytime drama, part political thriller, Vineland is a strange evocation of a twentieth-century America headed for a less than harmonic future.]]> 480 Thomas Pynchon 3499136287 Dan 0 to-read 3.74 1990 Vineland
author: Thomas Pynchon
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average rating: 3.74
book published: 1990
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]]> The Book of Disquiet 45974 The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.]]> 544 Fernando Pessoa 0141183047 Dan 0 to-read 4.44 1982 The Book of Disquiet
author: Fernando Pessoa
name: Dan
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1982
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]]> <![CDATA[Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language]]> 220458608 From linguist Adam Aleksic, known as @etymologynerd on social media, comes a captivating exploration of how internet algorithms are transforming language and communication in unprecedented ways.

“Packed with fascinating facts, of-the-moment observations, and a sparkling voice, Algospeak is a gift to any word nerd. Deftly covering everything from emoji etymologies and trendbait to Taylor Swift fanilects… Adam Aleksic is the wise, yet accessible internet linguistics oracle we need.” —Amanda Montell, author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Cultish

From “brainrot” memes and incel slang to the trend of adding “-core” to different influencer aesthetics, the internet has ushered in an unprecedented linguistic upheaval. We’re entering an entirely new era of etymology, heralded by the invisible forces driving social media algorithms. Thankfully, Algospeak is here to explain. As a professional linguist, Adam Aleksic understands the gravity of language and the way we use it: he knows the ways it has morphed and changed, how it reflects society, and how, in its everyday usage, we carry centuries of human history on our tongues. As a social media influencer, Aleksic is also intimately familiar with the internet’s reach and how social media impacts the way we engage with one another. New slang emerges and goes viral overnight. Accents are shaped or erased on YouTube. Grammatical rules, loopholes, and patterns surface and transform language as we know it. Our interactions, social norms, and habits—both online and in person—shift into something completely different.

As Aleksic uses original surveys, data, and internet archival research to usher us through this new linguistic landscape, he also illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unexpected ways. From our use of emojis to sentence structure to the ways younger generations talk about sex and death (see unalive in English and desvivirse in Spanish), we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology. Algospeak is an energetic, astonishing journey into language, the internet, and what this intersection means for all of us.]]> 256 Adam Aleksic 0593804074 Dan 0 to-read 3.68 2025 Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language
author: Adam Aleksic
name: Dan
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph]]> 57936 784 T.E. Lawrence 0385418957 Dan 0 to-read 3.89 1926 Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
author: T.E. Lawrence
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of an Economic Hitman]]> 514964
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens.]]> 303 John Perkins Dan 0 to-read 3.90 2005 Confessions of an Economic Hitman
author: John Perkins
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution]]> 2260967
Using a wealth of primary sources, Woods uncovers the fascinating growth and development of Bolshevism in pre-revolutionary Russia up to the seizure of power in October 1917. This is the first U.S. publication of this monumental work. It comes at an important time, as the world economic crisis calls for a thorough study of working class history in order to educate a new generation of revolutionaries.]]> 636 Alan Woods 1900007053 Dan 0 to-read 4.63 1999 Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution
author: Alan Woods
name: Dan
average rating: 4.63
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home]]> 989232 295 Pamela Stone 0520244354 Dan 0 to-read 3.64 2007 Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
author: Pamela Stone
name: Dan
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World]]> 62790909 Bestselling journalist Antony Loewenstein uncovers the widespread commercialisation and brutal deployment globally of Israel’s occupation-enforcing technologies.

For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an ‘enemy’ population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world.

The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts — from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas, to the drones being used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown.

In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.]]> 320 Antony Loewenstein 1922310409 Dan 0 to-read 4.42 2023 The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World
author: Antony Loewenstein
name: Dan
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/18
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]]> The Lathe of Heaven 59924
The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity’s self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. It is a classic of the science fiction genre.]]> 176 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060512741 Dan 0 to-read 4.12 1971 The Lathe of Heaven
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse]]> 1335495 284 Philip Greven 0679733388 Dan 0 to-read 4.26 1991 Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse
author: Philip Greven
name: Dan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/07
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]]> La Commune de Shanghai 38111569 338 Hongsheng Jiang 2358720631 Dan 0 to-read 3.50 2010 La Commune de Shanghai
author: Hongsheng Jiang
name: Dan
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition]]> 26196550 784 Manisha Sinha 030018137X Dan 0 to-read 4.21 2016 The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
author: Manisha Sinha
name: Dan
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia]]> 769218
How has this situation come about?

Basing their narrative on firsthand research in Asia and Europe, the authors trace the whole story since the end of World War II. They demonstrate that during the First Indochina War (1946-1954) the security of Saigon and its environs and the locality of the hill tribes depended on profits from and some protection for the opium traffic. Similarly, it became necessary for the United States, when it took over the French commitment in 1954, to look the other way in the matter of the involvement in the drug traffic of succeeding Vietnamese regimes. After Diem’s downfall in 1963 it became apparent that money from the rackets – especially narcotics – was vital to any regime’s survival.

The authors found that in Laos, opium crops found their way from the hill villages into a secret base at Long Tieng; in Burma, the CIA financed remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army, which later became self-supporting by taking over 90 percent of the opium shipments from the rebel Shan States of Burma; that in Thailand, shaky regimes relied on American support and opium money to help bolster their stability. They also found that the Mafia, working through Corsican criminal syndicates from Marseille, had established outposts in Southeast Asia for its international narcotics smuggling operations during the French occupation.

In spite of recent well-publicized seizures of massive shipments of heroin from Southeast Asia, heroin continues to flood the country, spreading into every level of this society and shredding the fabric of everyday life. U.S. government estimates of the number of addicts has leaped from 315,000 in 1969 to over 560,000 in 1972. This book puts all the pieces of this ghastly puzzle together, and then maps the possible avenues out of the horror, suggesting that America may have to choose between our commitments in Southeast Asia and getting heroin out of our high schools.]]> 472 Alfred W. McCoy 0060903287 Dan 0 to-read 4.67 1972 The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
author: Alfred W. McCoy
name: Dan
average rating: 4.67
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (New Studies in European History)]]> 1727874 327 Michael Kellogg 0521845122 Dan 0 to-read 3.73 2005 The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (New Studies in European History)
author: Michael Kellogg
name: Dan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective]]> 187808 196 Ha-Joon Chang 1843310279 Dan 0 to-read 4.20 2002 Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective
author: Ha-Joon Chang
name: Dan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> Mourning and Melancholia 60575822 20 Sigmund Freud Dan 0 to-read 4.17 Mourning and Melancholia
author: Sigmund Freud
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
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]]> <![CDATA[Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?]]> 6763725 81 Mark Fisher 1846943175 Dan 0 to-read 4.20 2009 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
author: Mark Fisher
name: Dan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> <![CDATA[El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico (Wildcat)]]> 59362024
It's 1990, and US labor is being outsourced to Mexico. Rumors of a violent confrontation at the Mexican Ford Assembly plant on January 8 reach the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in the nine employees had been shot by a group of drunken thugs and gangsters, in an act of political repression which changed the course of Mexican and US workers' rights forever.

Rob McKenzie was working at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly plant in Minnesota when he heard of the attack. He didn't believe the official story, and began a years-long investigation to uncover the truth. His findings took him further than he expected - all the way to the doors of the CIA.

Virtually unknown outside of Mexico, the full story of 'El Golpe', or 'The Coup', is a dark tale of political intrigue that still resonates today.]]> 272 Rob McKenzie 0745345638 Dan 0 to-read 4.26 El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico (Wildcat)
author: Rob McKenzie
name: Dan
average rating: 4.26
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]]> <![CDATA[We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement]]> 46026103 433 Ryan Grim 1947492381 Dan 0 to-read 4.26 2019 We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement
author: Ryan Grim
name: Dan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America's Most Secret Military Operatives]]> 127306417
Inside our military is a team of operators whose work is so secretive that the name of the unit itself is classified. Highly-trained in warfare, self-defense, infiltration, and deep surveillance, "the Unit," as the Department of Defense has asked us to refer to it, has been responsible for preventing dozens of terrorist attacks in the Western world. Never before has a member of this unit shared their story ― until now.

From Adam Gamal, one of the only Muslim Arab Americans to serve inside “the Unit," comes an incisive firsthand account of our nation’s most secretive military group. When Adam arrived in the United States at the age of twenty, he spoke no English, and at 5’1” and 112 pounds, he was far from what you might expect of a soldier. But compelled into service by a debt he felt he owed to his new country, he rose through the ranks of the military to become one of its most elite and skilled operators.

With humor and humility, Adam shares stories of life-threatening injuries, of the camaraderie and capabilities of his team, and of the incredible missions―but also of the growth he experienced as he learned to understand his own moderate faith.

Enthralling and eye-opening, The Unit is at once a gripping account of the fight against terror, an urgent examination of the need for diversity, and an inside look at how America fights its battles abroad in the modern age of terrorism.

This edition includes a 16 page color photo insert.]]> 304 Adam Gamal Dan 0 to-read 3.93 The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America's Most Secret Military Operatives
author: Adam Gamal
name: Dan
average rating: 3.93
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]]> <![CDATA[Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century]]> 1522185 The Wealth of Nations in a radically different way than is usually done. He examines how the recent US attempt to bring into existence the first truly global empire in world history was conceived in order to counter China’s spectacular economic success of the 1990s, and how the US’s disastrous failure in Iraq has made the People’s Republic of China the true winner of the US War on Terror. In the 21st century, China may well become again the kind of noncapitalist market economy that Smith described, under totally different domestic and world-historical conditions.]]> 418 Giovanni Arrighi 1844671046 Dan 0 to-read 4.13 2007 Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century
author: Giovanni Arrighi
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America]]> 18640850 Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary WarThe successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies--a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war.The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.]]> 363 Gerald Horne 1479893404 Dan 0 to-read 4.17 2014 The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
author: Gerald Horne
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2014
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date added: 2025/02/04
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]]> A Workers' Inquiry 169859025 A Workers' Inquiry 1955 0 Karl Marx Dan 0 to-read 3.00 A Workers' Inquiry
author: Karl Marx
name: Dan
average rating: 3.00
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> Gray's Anatomy 475900 1257 Henry Gray 0517223651 Dan 0 to-read 4.33 1858 Gray's Anatomy
author: Henry Gray
name: Dan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1858
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (Apogee Books Space)]]> 405001 The High Frontier. Fourteen years later, the Space Studies Institute, founded by O'Neill, re-released the original text, unchanged except for the doctor's addition of the Appendix "A View from 1988," and a new preface by astronaut Kathy Sullivan. This is one of the milestone and timeless classics of space habitation, alternative power, and human potential, all made possible with technology we already have. This expanded third edition features a new preface, introduction, and collection of essays by space researchers.]]> 184 Gerard K. O'Neill 189652267X Dan 0 to-read 4.23 1977 The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (Apogee Books Space)
author: Gerard K. O'Neill
name: Dan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[How Europe Underdeveloped Africa]]> 40630 The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.
Before a bomb ended his life in the summer of 1980, Walter Rodney had created a powerful legacy. This pivotal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had already brought a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. his Marxist analysis went far beyond the heretofore accepted approach in the study of Third World underdevelopment. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an excellent introductory study for the student who wishes to better understand the dynamics of Africa’s contemporary relations with the West.]]> 312 Walter Rodney 0882580965 Dan 0 to-read 4.41 1971 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
author: Walter Rodney
name: Dan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> Storm of Steel 240485
Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict, but more importantly as a unique personal struggle.

Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure.

Published shortly after the war's end, 'Storm of Steel' was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann's brilliant new translation.]]> 289 Ernst Jünger 0141186917 Dan 0 to-read 4.15 1920 Storm of Steel
author: Ernst Jünger
name: Dan
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[All Quiet on the Western Front]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 Dan 0 to-read 4.07 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Holy Qur'an (English, Arabic and Urdu Edition)]]> 834368 Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall 8171512275 Dan 0 to-read 4.00 The Holy Qur'an (English, Arabic and Urdu Edition)
author: Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> Nuclear War: A Scenario 182733784
Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.]]> 373 Annie Jacobsen 0593476093 Dan 0 currently-reading 4.32 2024 Nuclear War: A Scenario
author: Annie Jacobsen
name: Dan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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They got some of the most propagandized and evil americans to do war games and safe to say everyone ended up with the conclusion that the world should end and billions die if USA gets attacked like they have never provoked anything in the world.
]]> <![CDATA[Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1)]]> 1554
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has never been surpassed for the raw and terrible power with which its hero struggles to answer the eternal question, "Who am I?" The play, a story of a king who acting entirely in ignorance kills his father and marries his mother, unfolds with shattering power; we are helplessly carried along with Oedipus towards the final, horrific truth.

To make Oedipus more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. We hope that the reader may, through this edition, more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama.]]> 75 Sophocles 1580495931 Dan 0 to-read 3.74 -429 Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1)
author: Sophocles
name: Dan
average rating: 3.74
book published: -429
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World]]> 390264
These are some of the questions Samir Amin confronts in Delinking . He argues that Third World countries cannot hope to raise living standards if they continue to adjust their development strategies in line with the trends set by a fundamentally unequal global capitalist system over which they have no control.

The only alternative, he maintains, is for Third World societies to 'delink' from the logic of the global system - each country submitting its external economic relations to the logic of domestic development priorities, which in turn requires a broad coalition of popular forces in control of the state. Delinking, he shows, is not about absolute autarchy, but a neutralizing of the effects of external economic interactions on internal choices.]]> 208 Samir Amin 0862328039 Dan 0 to-read 4.22 1986 Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World
author: Samir Amin
name: Dan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> Prime of Life (1929-1944) 141433 480 Simone de Beauvoir 1569249563 Dan 0 to-read 4.18 1960 Prime of Life (1929-1944)
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Dan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life (Population and Development Series)]]> 232731
In Reading History Sideways , leading family scholar Arland Thornton demonstrates how this approach, though long since discredited, has permeated Western ideas and values about the family. Further, its domination of social science for centuries caused the misinterpretation of Western trends in family structure, marriage, fertility, and parent-child relations. Revisiting the "developmental fallacy," Thornton here traces its central role in changes in the Western world, from marriage to gender roles to adolescent sexuality. Through public policies, aid programs, and colonialism, it continues to reshape families in non-Western societies as well.]]> 344 Arland Thornton 0226798607 Dan 0 to-read 4.20 2005 Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life (Population and Development Series)
author: Arland Thornton
name: Dan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> How the Irish Became White 305686 248 Noel Ignatiev 0415918251 Dan 0 to-read 3.73 1995 How the Irish Became White
author: Noel Ignatiev
name: Dan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]> 118317 400 Gilles Deleuze 0816612250 Dan 0 to-read 4.17 1972 Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
author: Gilles Deleuze
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class]]> 7856 Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world's most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States.]]> 332 Mike Davis 1859842488 Dan 0 to-read 4.41 1986 Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class
author: Mike Davis
name: Dan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds]]> 162120 Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it.

In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written.

For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.]]> 96 Charles Mackay 1897597320 Dan 0 to-read 3.86 1841 Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
author: Charles Mackay
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1841
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire]]> 3004197 A People's History of the British Empire challenges the claim that the British Empire was a kinder, gentler empire and suggests that the description of 'Rogue State' is more fitting. How many people today know about Britain's deep involvement in the opium drug trade in China, or that Tony Blair's hero Gladstone devoted his maiden parliamentary speech to defending his family's slave plantation in Jamaica?

John Newsinger has written a wonderful popular history of key episodes in British imperial history. He pays particular attention to the battles of the colonised to free themselves of its baleful rule, including Rebellion in Jamaica; The Irish Famine; The Opium Wars; The Great Indian Rebellion; The Conquest of Egypt; Palestine in Revolt; 'Quit India' and the struggle for Independence; Suez; Malaya; Kenya and Rhodesia; and, Britain and American Imperialism.]]> 256 John Newsinger 1905192126 Dan 0 to-read 4.27 2006 The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire
author: John Newsinger
name: Dan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2006
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]]> <![CDATA[Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools]]> 25078
"An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children." -- New York Times Book Review]]> 262 Jonathan Kozol 0060974990 Dan 0 to-read 4.26 1991 Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
author: Jonathan Kozol
name: Dan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> The Wind in the Willows 5659 “All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.”

For more than a century, The Wind in the Willows and its endearing protagonists—Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and, of course, the incorrigible Toad—have enchanted children of all ages. Whether the four friends are setting forth on an exciting adventure, engaging in a comic caper, or simply relaxing by the River Thames, their stories will surprise and captivate you.

Hailed as one of the most enduringly popular works of the twentieth century, this story is a classic of magical fancy and enchanting wit. Penned in lyrical prose, the adventures and misadventures of the book’s intrepid quartet of heroes raise fantasy to the level of myth. Reflecting the freshness of childhood wonder, it still offers adults endless sophistication, substance, and depth.

The animals’ world embodies the author’s wry, whimsical, and unfailingly inventive imagination. It is a world that succeeding generations of both adult and young readers have found irresistible. But why say more? To use the words of the estimable Mr. Toad himself: “Travel, change, interest, excitement!...Come inside.”]]> 197 Kenneth Grahame 0143039091 Dan 0 to-read 4.02 1908 The Wind in the Willows
author: Kenneth Grahame
name: Dan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1908
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]]> <![CDATA[Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]]> 6572270
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

From Booklist
If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.]]> 524 Timothy Snyder 0465002390 Dan 0 to-read 4.38 2010 Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Dan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
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]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,” recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist – an informational topologist with half his mind gone – as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Dan 0 to-read 4.00 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]> 208 Aldous Huxley Dan 0 to-read 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Dan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Official Dsa Theory Test for Car Drivers]]> 15924457 504 Driving Standards Agency 0115532315 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.85 2012 Official Dsa Theory Test for Car Drivers
author: Driving Standards Agency
name: Dan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/24
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]]> <![CDATA[God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan]]> 281062 God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.]]> 448 Jonathan D. Spence 0393315568 Dan 0 to-read 3.95 1996 God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
author: Jonathan D. Spence
name: Dan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Collapse Feminism: The Online Battle for Feminism's Future]]> 122825014 We're doomed. We hear this phrase more and more frequently. Collapse has become the framework through which we write, debate, theorise, and therefore make society.

In such times of crisis, women are more likely to see their rights attacked, their sexuality scrutinised. On social media, it is claimed that women are responsible for the downfall of Western society. To make matters worse, this anti-feminist discourse has merged with internet culture and is being pushed by the algorithm into users' social media feeds.

Covering everything from the reactionary politics of the "manosphere" to sexual liberation, hookup culture, traditional femininity, the girlboss, and self-help content, Collapse Feminism looks at how this conservative backlash is being orchestrated online and why we must fight against it. Reversing our contemporary catastrophism, Alice Cappelle asks readers to join her and others in building a future that will liberate us all.]]> 222 Alice Cappelle 1915672023 Dan 0 to-read 4.05 2023 Collapse Feminism: The Online Battle for Feminism's Future
author: Alice Cappelle
name: Dan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/12
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]]> Flashbacks 83491 407 Timothy Leary 0874778700 Dan 0 to-read 4.12 1983 Flashbacks
author: Timothy Leary
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/12
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]]> The Stepford Wives 52350
At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.]]> 123 Ira Levin 0060080841 Dan 0 to-read 3.88 1972 The Stepford Wives
author: Ira Levin
name: Dan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rage to Live. The International D.P. Children's Center Kloster Indersdorf 1945-46]]> 21224573 227 Anna Andlauer Dan 0 to-read 4.20 2012 The Rage to Live. The International D.P. Children's Center Kloster Indersdorf 1945-46
author: Anna Andlauer
name: Dan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
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]]> <![CDATA[The Road to Life : An Epic of Education (Vol. 1)]]> 114443 Anton Semyonovich Makarenko, Russian educator and novelist, was born on March 13, 1888, in the town of Belopolye, in Kharkov Gubernia, the Ukraine. Besides being a remarkable teacher, he was a profound theoretician and made a major contribution to Soviet pedagogics.

Makarenko was an innovator. He worked out a new and original approach to the methodological foundations of pedagogy, a new theory of discipline - the "discipline of combating and surmounting difficulties" - and a system for the building of character. He laid great stress on the importance of home upbringing, and gave many valuable instructions in this field. To him we owe the first detailed elaboration of the educational significance of the collective. Another innovation was his remarkably profound "system of perspectives," the essence of which he defined in the following words: "Man must have something joyful ahead of him to live for. The true stimulus in human life is the morrow's joy."

The Road to Life, in which Makarenko describes life in the Gorky Colony (or, more correctly, the building-up of the colony), and his pedagogical system, was begun in 1925 and completed in 1935, Maxim Gorky much admired this book, which he called "one of the best examples of Soviet literature.

The language of the book is vivid, full of imagery, truth and humor, and gives subtle psychological descriptions of the pupils and teachers in the colony. Gorky said that Makarenko "knew how to describe each colonist in a few words, with photographic fidelity."

]]> 452 Anton Makarenko 089875559X Dan 0 to-read 4.13 1931 The Road to Life : An Epic of Education (Vol. 1)
author: Anton Makarenko
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wild Boy of Aveyron (L'enfant sauvage)]]> 503321 104 Jean Marc Gaspard Itard 0139594949 Dan 0 to-read 3.95 1801 The Wild Boy of Aveyron (L'enfant sauvage)
author: Jean Marc Gaspard Itard
name: Dan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1801
rating: 0
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]]> The Policing of Families 24719 242 Jacques Donzelot 0801856493 Dan 0 to-read 4.29 1977 The Policing of Families
author: Jacques Donzelot
name: Dan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[COMMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI, ANNE MOODY, 1969 HARDOVER]]> 206651541 0 Anne Moody Dan 0 to-read 3.40 COMMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI, ANNE MOODY, 1969 HARDOVER
author: Anne Moody
name: Dan
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers]]> 31795
Will Durant chronicles the ideas of the great thinkers, the economic and intellectual environments which influenced them, and the personal traits and adventures out of which each philosophy grew. Durant’s insight and wit never cease to dazzle; The Story of Philosophy is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history and development of philosophical ideas in the Western world.]]> 704 Will Durant 0671739166 Dan 0 to-read 4.16 1926 The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
author: Will Durant
name: Dan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations]]> 15843257 336 Artur Beifuss 1858946018 Dan 0 to-read 4.18 2013 Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations
author: Artur Beifuss
name: Dan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/29
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]]> Corduroy 231850 Corduroy has been on the department store shelf for a long time...

Yet as soon as Lisa sees him, she knows that he's the bear she's always wanted. Her mother, though, thinks he's a little shopworn—he's even missing a button! Still, Corduroy knows that with a bit of work he can tidy himself up and be just the bear for Lisa. And where better to start than with a quick search through the department store for a new button!

Corduroy, with his unaffected simplicity and childlike emotion, is one of the best-loved bears in children's books. His story has become an irresistible childhood classic, as basic and appealing as a small bear's desire for a home and a friend and the perfect fulfillment found in the devotion of a young girl.

Don Freeman was born in San Diego, California, and moved to New York City to study art, making his living as a jazz trumpeter. With this loss of his trumpet on a subway train, Mr. Freeman turned his talents to art full-time. In the 1940s he began writing and illustrating children's books; his many popular titles include Beady Bear, Dandelion, Mop Top, Norman the Doorman, and his follow-up to Corduroy, A Pocket For Corduroy. At the time of his death in 1978, the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Ingeniousness and humor, theatricality and commonality, humanity and beauty: these elements survive in his picture books."

Edition MSRP: U.S. $16⁹⁹ / CAN. $21⁰⁰ (ISBN 978-0-670-24133-0)
Reinforced Binding. Age Group: 3-8.]]> 32 Don Freeman 0670241334 Dan 0 to-read 4.33 1968 Corduroy
author: Don Freeman
name: Dan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> Love You Forever 310259 An extraordinarily different story by Robert Munsch is a gentle affirmation of the love a parent feels for their child—forever.

"A young woman holds her newborn son and looks at him lovingly. Softly she sings to him: "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

So begins the story that has touched the hearts of millions worldwide. Since publication in l986, "Love You Forever" has sold more than 15 million copies in paperback and the regular hardcover edition (as well as hundreds of thousands of translated copies around the world).

Sheila McGraw's soft and colorful pastels perfectly complement the sentiment of the book—one that will be read repeatedly for years.]]> 32 Robert Munsch 0920668372 Dan 0 4.38 1986 Love You Forever
author: Robert Munsch
name: Dan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1986
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity]]> 56269264
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.]]> 692 David Graeber 0374157359 Dan 0 to-read 4.19 2021 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
author: David Graeber
name: Dan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years]]> 2790378 128 Helen Keller 0717800873 Dan 0 to-read 4.06 1967 Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years
author: Helen Keller
name: Dan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays]]> 1773380 Brooke Foss Westcott 1579106013 Dan 0 to-read 4.00 1966 The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays
author: Brooke Foss Westcott
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World]]> 18085519 249 Benny Lewis 0062282697 Dan 0 to-read 3.63 2014 Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World
author: Benny Lewis
name: Dan
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)]]> 18693655 A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need to get a better grasp of that intimidating but inescapable field. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.
 
In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to effectively learning math and science—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn math. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over. A Mind for Numbers shows us that we all have what it takes to excel in math, and learning it is not as painful as some might think!]]> 336 Barbara Oakley 039916524X Dan 0 currently-reading 4.17 2014 A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
author: Barbara Oakley
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century]]> 60417618
We remember him as a bulldog - squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls - but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history.

Beverly Gage's monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover's life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party.

G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.]]> 837 Beverly Gage 0670025372 Dan 0 to-read 4.32 2022 G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
author: Beverly Gage
name: Dan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
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]]> <![CDATA[24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep]]> 16284965 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep  explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life.

Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable non-time blurs any separation between an intensified, ubiquitous consumerism and emerging strategies of control and surveillance. He describes the ongoing management of individual attentiveness and the impairment of perception within the compulsory routines of contemporary technological culture. At the same time, he shows that human sleep, as a restorative withdrawal that is intrinsically incompatible with 24/7 capitalism, points to other more formidable and collective refusals of world-destroying patterns of growth and accumulation.]]> 144 Jonathan Crary 1781680930 Dan 0 to-read 3.74 2013 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
author: Jonathan Crary
name: Dan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Computer Engineering for Babies]]> 60894257 Did you know computers are made of of ones and zeros? Ones and zeros are just another way to say that something is on or off (just like how the buttons in this book are on or off). Logic gates are used to mix these on/off signals in all sorts of useful ways from sending cars through a stoplight, to keeping your computer whirring, or lighting up an LED in a book.]]> 12 Chase Roberts 1735208701 Dan 0 to-read 4.44 Computer Engineering for Babies
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name: Dan
average rating: 4.44
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]]> <![CDATA[The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA & Mind Control]]> 342573 264 John D. Marks 0393307948 Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.07 The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA & Mind Control
author: John D. Marks
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> Korea's Grievous War 35400598
Su-kyoung Hwang's Korea's Grievous War recounts the civilian experience of anticommunist violence, beginning with the Cheju Uprising in 1948 and continuing through the Korean War until 1953. Wartime declarations of emergency by both the U.S. and Korean governments were issued to contain communism, but a major consequence of their actions was to contribute to the loss of more than two million civilian lives. Hwang inventories the persecutions of left-leaning intellectuals under the South Korean regime of Syngman Rhee and the executions of political prisoners and innocent civilians to "prevent" their collaboration with North Korea. She highlights the role of the United States in observing, documenting, and yet failing to intervene in the massacres and of the U.S. Air Force's three-year firebombing campaign in North and South Korea.

Hwang draws on archival research and personally conducted interviews to recount vividly the acts of anticommunist violence at the human level and illuminate the sufferings of civilian victims. Korea's Grievous War presents the historical background, political motivations, legal bases, and social consequences of anticommunist violence, tracing the enduring legacy of this destruction in the testimonies of survivors and bereaved families that only now can give voice to the lived experience of this grievous war and its aftermath.]]> 261 Su-Kyoung Hwang 0812293118 Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.14 Korea's Grievous War
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name: Dan
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]]> <![CDATA[Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom]]> 36377600 Patriots, Traitors and Empires recounts modern Korean history from the point of view of those who fought to free Korea from the domination of foreign empires. First Japan, then the United States.

When Kim Il-sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with other patriots, launched a guerrilla war against Japanese colonial domination in 1932, other Koreans joined the side of Japan's Empire. They became officers in the Japanese army or part of the hated colonial police force, thus traitors to the cause of Korean freedom.

After the US engineered partition of their country, Koreans fought a conventional war from 1950-1953. Three million Koreans gave their lives.

This insightful, informative and timely book answers the nagging questions and provides a much-needed antidote to the jingoist clamor spewing from most quarters whenever Korea is discussed.]]> 290 Stephen Gowans 1771861355 Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.54 2018 Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom
author: Stephen Gowans
name: Dan
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
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]]> The Warfare State 11988438 376 Fred J. Cook Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.40 1962 The Warfare State
author: Fred J. Cook
name: Dan
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
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]]> Agents of Apocalypse 1493066
De Bevoise uses the Philippine case study to explore the extent to which humans participate in creating their epidemics. Interpreting the archival record with conceptual guidance from the health sciences, he sets tropical disease in a historical framework that views people as interacting with, rather than acting within, their total environment. The complexity of cause-effect and agency-structure relationships is thereby highlighted. Readers from fields as diverse as Spanish, American, and Philippine history, medical anthropology, colonialism, international relations, Asian studies, and ecology will benefit from De Bevoise's insights into the interdynamics of historical processes that connect humans and their diseases.]]> 328 Ken De Bevoise 0691034869 Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.00 1995 Agents of Apocalypse
author: Ken De Bevoise
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/06
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]]> Speak, Memory 30594 This is an older alternate cover edition for ISBN 0141183225/ 9780141183220. A newer edition may be found here.

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.

One of the 20th century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.]]> 255 Vladimir Nabokov Dan 0 to-read 4.06 1966 Speak, Memory
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Dan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950]]> 17719882 Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, Kim examines the revolutionary events that shaped people’s lives in the development of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. By shifting the historical focus from the state and the Great Leader to how villagers experienced social revolution, Kim offers new insights into why North Korea insists on setting its own course.

Kim’s innovative use of documents seized by U.S. military forces during the Korean War and now stored in the National Archives—personnel files, autobiographies, minutes of organizational meetings, educational materials, women’s magazines, and court documents—together with oral histories allows her to present the first social history of North Korea during its formative years. In an account that makes clear the leading role of women in these efforts, Kim examines how villagers experienced, understood, and later remembered such events as the first land reform and modern elections in Korea’s history, as well as practices in literacy schools, communal halls, mass organizations, and study sessions that transformed daily routine.]]> 328 Suzy Kim 0801452139 Dan 0 to-read, blowback-pod 4.28 2013 Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950
author: Suzy Kim
name: Dan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/03
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