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The hype machine : how social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health - and how we must adapt / by Aral, Sinan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Social media connected the world--and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. Now a leading researcher at MIT draws on 20 years of research to show how these trends threaten our political, economic, and emotional health in this eye-opening exploration of the dark side of technological progress. Today we have the ability, unprecedented in human history, to amplify our interactions with each other through social media. It is paramount, MIT social media expert Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsized impact social media has on our culture, our democracy, and our lives in order to steer today's social technology toward good, while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart. Otherwise, we could fall victim to what Aral calls "The Hype Machine." As a senior researcher of the longest-running study of fake news ever conducted, Aral found that lies spread online farther and faster than the truth--a harrowing conclusion that was featured on the cover of Science magazine. Among the questions Aral explores following twenty years of field research: Did Russian interference change the 2016 election? And how is it affecting the vote in 2020? Why does fake news travel faster than the truth online? How do social ratings and automated sharing determine which products succeed and fail? How does social media affect our kids? First, Aral links alarming data and statistics to three accelerating social media shifts: hyper-socialization, personalized mass persuasion, and the tyranny of trends. Next, he grapples with the consequences of the Hype Machine for elections, businesses, dating, and health. Finally, he maps out strategies for navigating the Hype Machine, offering his singular guidance for managing social media to fulfill its promise going forward. Rarely has a book so directly wrestled with the secret forces that drive the news cycle every day"--
Subjects: Information society.; Common fallacies.; Propaganda.; Social interaction.; Social media;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Build your house around my body : a novel / by Kupersmith, Violet,author.;
"In 1986, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed by the experience. In 2009, pressed into a dangerous scheme by a former lover, a woman captures a rare two-headed cobra. And in 2011, a young, unhappy American living in Saigon with her sort-of boyfriend, disappears without a trace. Over the course of the novel, the fates of these three women will lock together in an exhilarating series of nested narratives. Along the way, we meet a young boy sent to a boarding school in the mountains for the métis children of French expatriates just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule in 1945; two Frenchmen trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co., called to investigate strange occurrences in a farmhouse on the edge of a forest. Each new character and timeline brings us one step closer to understanding what binds the three women together, and what happened to Winnie. Written with wit, ambition, and playfulness, this book takes us from sweaty nightclubs to ramshackle zoos, colonial mansions to ex-pat flats, sizzling back-alley street carts to the noisy seats of motorbikes. Spanning over fifty years and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a fever dream about possessed bodies and possessed lands, a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing marvel of a novel"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Magic realist fiction.; Missing persons; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Adventures of the Yorkshire shepherdess / by Owen, Amanda(Shepherd),author.;
Amanda Owen loves her traditional life on her hill farm alongside her nine children and husband Clive. And, as readers of her previous bestsellers will know, every day at Ravenseat brings surprises. In Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda takes us from her family's desperate race to save a missing calf to finding her bra has been repurposed as a house martin's nest, through to the brutal winter of 2018 that almost brought her to her knees. As busy as she is with her family and flock though, an exciting new project soon catches her eye ... Ravenseat is a tenant farm and may not stay in the family, so when Amanda discovers a nearby farmhouse up for sale, she knows it is her chance to create roots. The old house needs a lot of renovation and money is tight, so Amanda sets about the work herself, with some help from a travelling monk, a visiting plumber and Clive. It's fair to say things do not go according to plan!
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Owen, Amanda (Shepherd); Owen, Amanda (Shepherd); Women shepherds; Farm life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sophie [videorecording] / by Bristow, Brittany.; Bristow, Leif.; Durance, Erica.; Prew, Augustus,1987-; Radford, Natalie.; Rhys-Davies, John.; Riefenstein, Thure.; Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.; Alliance Films.;
Director of photography, David Perrault ; edited by Stephen Lawrence.Brittany Bristow, Erica Durance, Thure Riefenstein, Augustus Prew, John Rhys-Davies, Natalie Radford.A teenage girl abandons her dreams of becoming a world-renowned ballet dancer in favor of rescuing her best friend - a 5 ton elephant named Sheba - from the circus in this charming tale for the entire family. Sophie's (Brittany Bristow) parents own a small family-operated zoo. As a result, as Sophie grew up she developed an unusual rapport with all creatures great and small. But her closest friend was also her biggest; from the first time they met, Sophie and Sheba the elephant were inseparable. When her parents sell Sheba to a traveling circus in order to pay for Sophie's tuition fees at the American Ballet, the young girl joins the show in order to protect her friend from his new, heavy-handed trainer Magnus. Before long, however, Sophie has struck a deal with circus owner Alistair Winston (John Rhys-Davies) that will allow her to earn Sheba back by performing with her. Yet despite Sophie's determination to get Sheba back home to the family zoo, the teen begins having second thoughts about her plan when a reporter points out that the elephant might be happier back in Africa. Later, after striking up a romance with a kindhearted young trapeze artist named Blake, Sophie begins to realize that sometimes doing what is best for the ones we love requires making a substantial personal sacrifice.Canadian Home Video Rating: G.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby digital 5.1.
Subjects: Children's films.; Circus performers; Elephants; Family-owned business enterprise; Feature films.; Human-animal relationships; Video recordings for children.; Zoos;
© c2010., Alliance Films,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Our crumbling foundation : how we solve Canada's housing crisis / by Craigie, Gregor,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Canada is experiencing a housing shortage. Although house prices in major Canadian cities appear to have topped out in early 2023, new housing isn't coming onto the market quickly enough. Rising interest rates have only tightened the pressure on buyers, and renters, too, as rising mortgage rates cost landlords more, which are passed along to tenants in rent increases. Even with the recent federal budget commitment to bring more housing online by 2030, there will still be a shortfall of 3.5 million homes by 2030. Gregor Craigie is a CBC journalist in Victoria, one of the highest-priced housing markets in the country. On his daily radio show On the Island he's been talking for over 15 years to local experts and to those across the country about housing. Craigie has travelled to many of the places he profiles in the book, and in his interviews with Canadians he presents the human face of the shortfall as he speaks with renters, owners and homeless people, exploring their varying predicaments and perspectives. He then shows, through comparable profiles of people across the globe, how other North American and international jurisdictions (Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, Singapore, Ireland, Mexico, to name a few) are housing their citizens better, faster and with determination--solutions that could be put into practice here. With passion, knowledge and vigour, Craigie explains how Canada reached this critical impasse and will convince those who may not yet recognize how badly our entire country is in need of change. A Crumbling Foundation provides hope for finding our way out of the crisis by recommending a number of approaches at all levels of government. The prescription for how we're going to house ourselves and do so equitably, requires not just a business solution, nor simply a social solution."--
Subjects: Housing policy; Housing;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Firebrand : a tobacco lawyer's journey / by Knelman, Joshua,author.;
"Mad Men meets Bad Blood in this addictive, behind-the-scenes globe-trotting narrative of moral ambiguity, law, public policy, and big tobacco. "Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking, as far as he could tell, cigarettes shouldn't even have been available as a mass market product ..." It's the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company. It isn't until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him: cigarettes. Possibly the most controversial consumer product in human history: seductive, addictive, and deadly--yet completely legal. Over the next decade, he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries. Firebrand ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism, each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companies, the target of anti-smoking campaigns by health authorities, pivoted and recovered after the seismic 1964 Surgeon General's Report and 200-billion-dollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement--and are now thriving, drenched in profits from their one billion smokers worldwide. As Mad Men did for the alcohol-fuelled, oversexed, corrupt world of New York advertising, Firebrand does for the even more despised world of big tobacco, in an addictive piece of storytelling that spans the globe. The lawyer's work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking "sticks" at UK corner store counters; from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate city-states to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian cities. A contemporary tale of our ambiguous times, told through the eyes of an anti-hero created by our corporate age. Written with the character-based gusto and narrative flare akin to Michael Lewis, and the behind-the-scenes intrigue of Bad Blood and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Firebrand is a compelling paradox of corporate responsibility, public health, and an engrossing tale of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Knelman, Joshua.; Cigarette industry.; Cigarette industry; Corporate lawyers; Social responsibility of business.; Tobacco industry.; Tobacco industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The glass ocean : a novel / by Williams, Beatriz,author.; White, Karen(Karen S.),author.; Willig, Lauren,author.;
"From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century--two deep in the past, one in the present--to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania. May 2013. Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer's-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. April 1915. Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter's marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business, and something else that she can't quite put a finger on. She's hoping a trip to London in Lusitania's lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect--but she can't ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that's her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She's really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she's had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they'll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there's something about this job that isn't as it seems. As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives. and history itself"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Lusitania (Steamship); Man-woman relationships; Shipwrecks;
Available copies: 3 / Total copies: 4
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Leonard Cohen, untold stories. by Posner, Michael,1947-author.;
"The extraordinary life of one of the world's greatest music and literary icons, in the words of those who knew him best. Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon--there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a true giant in contemporary western culture, entertaining and inspiring the world with his work. From his groundbreaking and bestselling novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, to timeless songs such as "Suzanne," "Dance Me to the End of Love," and "Hallelujah," Cohen is one of the world's most cherished artists. His death in 2016 was felt around the world by the many fans and followers who would miss his warmth, humour, intellect, and piercing insights. Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories chronicles the full breadth of his extraordinary life. This third and final volume in biographer Michael Posner's sweeping series of Cohen's life--That's How the Light Gets In--explores the last thirty years of his life, starting with the late 1980s revival of his music career with the successful albums I'm Your Man and The Future. It covers the death of his manager, Marty Machat, and the appointment of another who would ultimately be accused of stealing more than five million dollars from Cohen. Personally, Cohen suffers the traumatic end of his long relationship with French photographer Dominique Issermann and begins a public romance with actress Rebecca De Mornay. When that relationship ends in 1993, as Cohen is about to turn sixty years old, he begins a deeply spiritual phase, entering the Mount Baldy monastery under the tutelage of Zen master Joshu Sasaki Roshi--arguably the most important relationship in Cohen's life. Ever the seeker, he then goes to Mumbai in 1999, the first of half a dozen trips to India to investigate Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, expanding his growing fascination with spirituality. In 2008, Cohen makes his triumphant return to the concert stage, and for five years travels the world in an extraordinary final act of his life, giving almost four hundred performances over three continents. The book provides the first full chronicle of Cohen's final months, fighting debilitating disease, while still creating three new studio albums, adding to his remarkable legacy. Cohen's story is told through the voices of those who knew him best--family and friends, colleagues and contemporaries, business partners and lovers. Bestselling author Michael Posner draws on hundreds of interviews to reveal the unique, complex, and compelling figure of the man The New York Times called "a secular saint." This is a book like no other, about a man like no other."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016.; Composers; Singers; Poets, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Missing. [videorecording] / by Bean, Sean,actor.; Curtis, Cliff,1968-actor.; Eversman, Nick,1986-actor.; Judd, Ashley,actor.; Poirier, Gregory,creator.; ABC Studios,broadcaster.; Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Firm),distributor.;
Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, Cliff Curtis, Nick Eversman, Aunjanue Ellis, Adriano Giannini.Becca Winstone learns that her son, Michael, has disappeared while studying abroad and it's a race against time when she travels to Europe to track him down. It soon becomes clear that Becca is no ordinary woman, but a former CIA agent deactivated after the devastating death of her husband, Paul Winstone. If she wants to find her son alive, Becca will have to rely on old friends, as well as old enemies, ex-lovers, and spies, and will be forced to reopen old wounds. Her resourcefulness, skill, and determination will be put to the test, but a mother's love knows no limits.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Action and adventure television programs.; Spy television programs.; Espionage; Missing persons; Spies;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Time's undoing : a novel / by Head, Cheryl A.,author.;
"A searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist's search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago-inspired by the author's own family history. Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing along his pregnant wife and young daughter. Birmingham is in its heyday, known as the "Magic City" for its booming steel industry, and while Robert and his family find much to enjoy in the city's busy markets and vibrant nightlife, it's also a stronghold for the Klan. And with his beautiful, light-skinned wife and snazzy car, Robert begins to worry that he might be drawing the wrong kind of attention. 2019: Meghan McKenzie, the youngest reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has grown up hearing family lore about her great-grandfather's murder-but no one knows the full story of what really happened back then, and his body was never found. Determined to find answers to her family's long-buried tragedy and spurred by the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, Meghan travels to Birmingham. But as her investigation begins to uncover dark secrets that spider across both the city and time, her life may be in danger. Inspired by true events, Time's Undoing is both a passionate tale of one woman's quest for the truth behind the racially motivated trauma that has haunted her family for generations and, as newfound friends and supporters in Birmingham rally around Meghan's search, the uplifting story of a community coming together to fight for change"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ); African American journalists; Cold cases (Criminal investigation); Murder; Race discrimination; Secrecy;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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