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"One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition."--
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"Scientific methods, tools, and discoveries have shaped modern civilization and created the landscape we've built for ourselves on which to live, work, and play. Tyson shows how an infusion of science and rational thinking renders worldviews deeper and more informed than ever before-and exposes unfounded perspectives and unjustified emotions. With crystalline prose and an abundance of evidence, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution-from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality-and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. 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,...
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English
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Friedman discusses how the key to understanding the 21st century is understanding that the planet's three largest forces -- Moore's law (technology), the market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loos) -- are accelerating all at once. And these accelerations are transforming the five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Friedman posits that we should purposely "be late" -- we should...
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Language
English
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"An epic reappraisal of the medieval world--and the rich and complicated legacy left to us by the rise of the West--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars. When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era--and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. In a gripping narrative bursting with big names--from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Vaclav Smil is my favorite author." Bill Gates "How the World Really Works represents the highly readable distillation of this lifetime of scholarship Mr. Smil looks over the horizon of the future with humility and calmness, foreseeing 'a mixture of progress and setbacks, of seemingly insurmountable difficulties and near-miraculous advances.' Wall Street Journal An essential analysis of the modern science and technology...
7) Severance
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
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English
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Description
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she's had her fill of uncertainty. She's content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads....
8) Candide
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Language
English
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Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous,...
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A breakout writer at The New Yorker examines the fractures at the center of contemporary culture with verve, deftness, and intellectual ferocity--for readers who've wondered what Susan Sontag would have been like if she had brain damage from the internet.
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English
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Is the world falling apart? Is progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to stop back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the...
12) Ready player one
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English
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"In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the Oasis. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines -- puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first...
13) Wool
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English
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"The first book in the acclaimed, New York Times best-selling trilogy, Wool is the story of a community living in an underground silo completely unaware of the fate of the outside world. When the silo's sheriff asks to leave the silo, a series of events unravels the very fabric of their fragile lives. In a world where all commodities are precious and running out, truth and hope may be the most rare...and the most needed"--
In a ruined and toxic landscape,...
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English
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From one of the world's leading experts on the history of energy, a rigorous examination of the transitions that structure our modern world—and the environmental reckoning that will mark its success or failure. What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization—in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics—which have transformed the...
Author
Series
Vintage Book volume 317
Language
English
Description
A book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.
Author
Series
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English
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In the tenth year of The Change, the survivors in western Oregon have learned how to live in a world without technology--but there are those who would exploit the new world order. On one side stands Michael Havel's Bearkillers and their allies, Clan MacKenzie under the leadership of Juniper MacKenzie. On the other is the Lord Protector, Norman Arminger, the Warlord of Portland, whose neo-feudal empire rules over much of the Pacific Northwest. The...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 656
Language
English
Description
The Maya have lived in parts of Mexico and Central America for thousands of years, forging one of the greatest societies in the history of the Americas -- indeed, of humankind. Long before European contact, Mayas built spectacular cities, created complex agricultural systems, mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded calendrical, mathematical, and astronomical knowledge. Yet there was never a Maya empire...
19) The road
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English
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In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
National Bestseller • New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year" • NPR "Favorite Books of 2019" • Guardian "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award
"Mesmerizing...Underland is a portal of light in dark times." —Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review
In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds
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