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Navola : a novel / by Bacigalupi, Paolo,author.;
"In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family-merchant bankers with a vast empire-has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese diplomacy: knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur-like the fossilized dragon eye in the family's possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act. As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova's twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will"--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; City-states; Imaginary places; Intrigue; Merchant banks; Political corruption; Power (Social sciences); Upper class families; Young men;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The great wave : the era of radical disruption and the rise of the outsider / by Kakutani, Michiko,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change breaking over today's world, creating both opportunity and peril-from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Truth. The twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment defined by chaos and uncertainty, as one emergency cascades into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices-once regarded as radical, unorthodox or marginal-are disrupting the status quo in politics, business and culture. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation. Writing with a critic's understanding of cultural trends and a journalist's eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders-those who have sown anger and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky). At the same time, she situates today's multiplying crises in context with those that defined earlier hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages, to the transition between the Gilded Age and Progressive era at the end of the nineteenth century. Kakutani argues that today's crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe's profound vulnerabilities, but stress tests pointing to the essential changes needed to survive this tumultuous era and build a more sustainable future"--
Subjects: Civilization, Modern; Elite (Social sciences); Globalization.; Political culture.; Power (Social sciences); Uncertainty.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dominion : the railway and the rise of Canada / by Bown, Stephen R.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling account of the engineering triumph that created a nation. In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally thrilling and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railroad in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state."--
Subjects: Canadian Pacific Railway Company; Railroads; Railroads;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Red roulette : an insider's story of wealth, power, corruption and vengeance in today's China / by Shum, Desmond,author.;
Includes bibliographical resources and index."After the Communist Revolution, Desmond Shum's grandfather was marked as belonging to a "black category" that included former landlords and rich peasants--meaning the Shums would be stigmatized and impoverished. As Desmond was growing up, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity Shum earned an American college degree and returned to China to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of the red aristocracy, vaulted into China's billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she cannot tell it herself."---Amazon.
Subjects: Shum, Desmond.; Duan, Whitney.; Businesspeople; Political corruption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Truth : a brief history of total bullsh*t / by Phillips, Tom(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.This is a book about TRUTH--and all the ways we try to avoid it--from the bestselling author of Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up. We live in a "post-truth" world, we're told. But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling? Or have people been lying, fibbing and just plain bullsh*tting since the beginning of time? Tom Phillips, editor of a leading independent fact-checking organization, deals with this question every day. In Truth, he tells the story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other--and ourselves--about everything from business to politics to plain old geography. Along the way, he chronicles the world's oldest customer service complaint, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 and the surprisingly dishonest career of Benjamin Franklin. Sharp, witty and with a clear-eyed view of humanity's checkered past, Truth reveals why people lie--and how we can cut through the bullsh*t.
Subjects: Truthfulness and falsehood.; Disinformation.; Fake news.; Disclosure of information.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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On belonging : finding connection in an age of isolation / by Samuel, Kim,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Humanity is at an inflection point. Stress, disconnection, and increasing environmental degradation have people yearning for more than just material progress, personal freedom, or political stability. We are searching for deeper connection. We are longing to belong. On Belonging is an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and of the fundamental human need to belong. It considers belonging across four core dimensions: in our relationships with other people, in our rootedness in nature, in our ability to influence political and economic decision-making, and in our finding of meaning and purpose in our lives, with lessons on how to create communities centered on human connection. A trailblazing advocate and thought leader on questions of social connectedness, Kim Samuel introduces readers to leaders around the world who are doing the work to cultivate belonging. Whether through sports, medicine, music, business, culture, or advocacy, the people and programs in this book offer us meaningful lessons on building a world where we all feel at home"--
Subjects: Alienation (Social psychology); Belonging (Social psychology); Social integration.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Disloyal : a memoir : the true story of the former personal attorney to the president of the United States / by Cohen, Michael(Lawyer),author.;
Once Donald Trump's fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried. This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump's lawyer and "fixer," Cohen not only witnessed firsthand but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump's business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration. This is a story that you have not read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television. These are accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for over a decade--not a few months or even a couple of years--could know. Cohen describes Trump's racist rants against President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Black and Hispanic people in general, as well as the cruelty, humiliation, and abuse he leveled at family and staff. Whether he's exposing the fact that Trump engaged in tax fraud by inflating his wealth or electronic fraud by rigging an online survey, or outing Trump's Neanderthal views towards women or his hush-money payments to clandestine lovers, Cohen pulls no punches. He shows Trump's relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, or manipulate. Trump emerges as a man without a soul--a man who courts evangelicals and then trashes them, panders to the common man, but then rips off small business owners, a con man who will do or say absolutely anything to win, regardless of the cost to his family, his associates, or his country. At the heart of Disloyal, we see how Cohen came under the spell of his charismatic "Boss" and, as a result, lost all sense of his moral compass. The real "real" Donald Trump who permeates these pages--the racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, cheating President--will be discussed, written about, and analyzed for years to come.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Cohen, Michael (Lawyer); Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Lawyers; Political corruption; Misconduct in office; Presidents;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The age of surveillance capitalism : the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power / by Zuboff, Shoshana,1951-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of "surveillance capitalism" as an unprecedented new market form. It is not simply about tracking us and selling ads, it is the business model for an ominous new marketplace that aims at nothing less than predicting and modifying our everyday behavior--where we go, what we do, what we say, how we feel, who we're with. The consequences of surveillance capitalism for us as individuals and as a society vividly come to life in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism's pathbreaking analysis of power. The threat has shifted from a totalitarian "big brother" state to a universal global architecture of automatic sensors and smart capabilities: A "big other" that imposes a fundamentally new form of power and unprecedented concentrations of knowledge in private companies--free from democratic oversight and control"--
Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer profiling; Information technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Waste Wars : The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash. by Clapp, Alexander.;
'Waste Wars' is a jaw-dropping expose of how and why, for the last 40 years, our garbage has spawned a massive, globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar economy, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents. If the handling of our trash reveals deeper truths about our Western society, what does the globalized business of garbage say about our world today? And what does it say about us?Library Bound Incorporated
Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Geopolitics; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization; SCIENCE / Environmental Science; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Environmental / Waste Management;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The sultan of Sarawak / by Hamilton, Ian,1946-author.;
Ava Lee travels to Sarawak, Malaysia, after a business affiliated with the Three Sisters is bombed in Kuching. She quickly discovers that the powerful Chong family has a political and economic stranglehold on the province and is likely responsible for the bombing. As Ava investigates the Chongs, she is shocked to learn of their billion-dollar illegal logging operation in Sarawak, which has decimated the Malaysian rainforest and threatens the existence of the Penan -- a nomadic Indigenous people who have lived in the region for centuries. Determined to put an end to the Chongs' dominion over Sarawak, Ava follows a money trail that leads back to the Hong Kong real estate market. There, Ava and Sonny Kwon embark on a campaign of terror against the Chong family -- attacking their holdings and bank accounts. Can Ava attain the vengeance she seeks? Or will the powerful Chong family triumph once again?
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Corruption; Investigations; Lee, Ava (Fictitious character); Logging; Revenge;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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