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The Company : the rise and fall of the Hudson's Bay empire / by Bown, Stephen R.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A thrilling new telling of the story of modern Canada's origins. The story of the Hudson's Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada's creation. And yet it hasn't been told in a book for over thirty years, and never in such depth and vivid detail as in Stephen R Bown's exciting new telling. The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people--from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America. When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson--one of the greatest villains in Canadian history--and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson's Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world. Stephen R Bown has a scholar's profound knowledge and understanding of the Company's history, but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling, and rich in well-drawn characters, as a page-turning novel."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Hudson's Bay Company; Fur trade;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Crash landing : the inside story of how the world's biggest companies survived an economy on the brink / by Hoffman, Liz(Wall Street Journal reporter),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A kaleidoscopic account of the financial carnage of the pandemic, revealing the fear, grit, and gambles that drove the economy's winners and losers--from a leading Wall Street Journal reporter. The world's most powerful CEOs never saw it coming. In 2018, after a decade-long bull market, the CEO of American Airlines declared, "I don't think we're ever going to lose money again." The U.S. entered March 2020 riding an eleven-year economic high, with unemployment at record lows, the Dow Jones flirting with 30,000, and the good times certain to continue. By the end of the month, ten million people were out of work, iconic firms were begging for bailouts, and countless small businesses were in freefall. Slick consulting teams and country-club connections were suddenly of little use: CEOs were fumbling in the dark, tossing out long-term strategy and making decisions on the fly that, they hoped, might just save them. In Crash Landing, Liz Hoffman shows how the pandemic set the economy on fire--but if you look closely, the tinder was already there. After 2008, corporate leaders had embraced cheap debt and growth at all costs. Wages went stagnant. Millions were pushed into the gig economy. Companies crammed workers into offices, and airlines did the same with planes. Wall Street cheered on this relentless march toward efficiency, overlooking its collateral damage. Based on access to an astonishing array of business titans, Crash Landing is Liz Hoffman's account of the most remarkable year in modern economic history. She takes readers into the beating heart of the twenty-first-century economy, revealing how the pandemic exposed its pressure points. Bankruptcies decimate retail. Banking and pharma rivals team up. Bleeding cash, airlines like Delta weigh safety against survival. An untested White House fumbles for the 2008 playbook. There's Goldman Sachs's David Solomon blindsided by a virus in the middle of a high-stakes reinvention; American Airlines's Doug Parker, shuttling between K Street and the White House, determined to secure a multi-billion-dollar bailout; and Ford's Jim Hackett, gambling on the switch from cars to ventilators. In Crash Landing, Hoffman probes the pandemic's implications for the future of work, corporate leadership, and capitalism itself, asking: Will this remarkable time give rise to newfound resilience, or become just another costly mistake to be forgotten?"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Humankind : a hopeful history / by Bregman, Rutger,1988-author.; Manton, Elizabeth,translator.; Moore, Erica,translator.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman's thinking, it is that every progressive idea -- whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women's suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality -- was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested. By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect." In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy. The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers"--
Subjects: Human beings.; Philosophical anthropology.; Human behavior.; Civilization; World history.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Russian Revolution : a new history / by McMeekin, Sean,1974-;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In The Russian Revolution, historian Sean McMeekin traces the origins and events of the Russian Revolution, which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and changed the course of world history. Between 1900 and 1920, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation: by the end of these two decades, a new regime was in place, the economy had collapsed, and over 20 million Russians had died during the revolution and what followed. Still, Bolshevik power remained intact due to a remarkable combination of military prowess, violent terror tactics, and the failures of their opposition. And as McMeekin shows, Russia's revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by countries like Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit-politically and economically-from the chaotic changes overtaking the country. The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in a decade, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on a great turning point of the twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.LSC
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Doom : the politics of catastrophe / by Ferguson, Niall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health, and network science, Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible decline"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Political leadership.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The future of capitalism / by Varoufakis, Yanis,panelist.; Brooks, Arthur C.,1964-panelist.; Vanden Heuvel, Katrina,panelist.; Brooks, David,1961-panelist.; Griffiths, Rudyard,editor.;
"In Western societies, the capitalist system is facing a level of distrust not seen in decades. Economic inequality is rampant. Life expectancy is falling. The environment is being destroyed for profit. Political power is wielded by wealthy elites and big business. For capitalism's critics, it is clear that the system is not designed to help average people. Their solution is a top-to-bottom reform of the "free market" along more socialist and democratic lines. For proponents of capitalism, however, this system has been the greatest engine of economic and social progress in history. Not only has capitalism made all of us materially better off, its ideals are responsible for everything from women's rights to a cleaner environment to political freedoms. The answer to society's current ills is more capitalism, more economic freedom, and more free markets. The twenty-fifth semi-annual Munk Debate, held on December 4, 2019, pits editorial director and publisher of the Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis against Harvard professor Arthur Brooks and New York Times columnist David Brooks to debate whether the capitalist system is broken."
Subjects: Economics.; Capitalism; Capitalism; Capitalism; Capitalism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Policing Black lives : state violence in Canada from slavery to the present / by Maynard, Robyn,1987-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Policing Black Bodies is a timely and much-needed exposure of historical and contemporary practices of state-sanctioned violence against Black lives in Canada. This groundbreaking work dispels many prevailing myths that cast Canada as a land of benevolence and racial equality, and uncovers long-standing state practices that have restricted Black freedom. A first of its kind, Policing Black Bodies creates a framework that makes legible how anti-Blackness has influenced the construction of Canada's carceral landscape, including the development and application of numerous criminal law enforcement and border regulation practices. The book traces the historical and contemporary mobilization of anti-Blackness spanning from slavery, 19th and 20th century segregation practices, and the application of early drug and prostitution laws through to the modern era. Maynard makes visible the ongoing legacy of a demonized and devalued Blackness that is manifest today as racial profiling by police, immigration agents and social services, the over-representation of Black communities in jails and prisons, anti-Black immigration detention and deportation practices, the over-representation of Black youth in state care, the school-to-prison pipeline and gross economic inequality. Following the dictums of the Black Lives Matter movement, Policing Black Bodies adopts an intersectional lens that explores the realities of those whose lives and experiences have historically been marginalized, stigmatized, and made invisible. In addressing how state practices have impacted Black lives, the book brings from margin to centre an analysis of gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, citizenship and criminalization. Beyond exploring systemic racial injustice, Policing Black Bodies pushes the limits of the Black radical imagination: it delves into liberatory Black futures and urges the necessity of transformative alternatives."--
Subjects: Blacks; Blacks; Race discrimination;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Milk! : a 10,000-year food fracas / by Kurlansky, Mark,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk: a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than ten thousand years ago, originally as a source of cheese, yogurt, kefir, and all manner of edible innovations that rendered lactose digestible, and then, when genetic mutation made some of us lactose-tolerant, milk itself. Before the industrial revolution, it was common for families to keep dairy cows and produce their own milk. But during the nineteenth century mass production and urbanization made milk safety a leading issue of the day, with milk-borne illnesses a common cause of death. Pasteurization slowly became a legislative matter. And today milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement, and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurization. Profoundly intertwined with human civilization, milk has a compelling and a surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid's diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.
Subjects: Dairy products; Dairy products industry; Milk;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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We are still here : Afghan women on courage, freedom, and the fight to be heard / by Atwood, Margaret,1939-writer of foreword.; Shahalimi, Nahid,1973-editor.;
Includes bibliographical references."A collection of first-hand accounts from courageous Afghan women who refuse to be silenced in the face of the Taliban. After decades of significant progress, the prospects of women and girls in Afghanistan are once again dependent on radical Islamists who reject gender equality. When the United States announced the end of their twenty-year occupation and the Taliban seized control of the country on August 15th, 2021, so began a steep regression of social, political, and economic freedoms for women in the country. But just because a brutal regime has taken over doesn't mean Afghan women will stand by while their rights are stripped away. In We Are Still Here, artist and activist Nahid Shahalimi compiles the voices of thirteen powerful, insightful, and influential Afghan women who have worked as politicians, journalists, scientists, filmmakers, artists, coders, musicians, and more. As they reflect on their country's past, stories of their own upbringing and the ways they have been able to empower girls and women over the past two decades emerge. They report on the fear and pain caused by the impending loss of their homeland, but above all on what many girls and women in Afghanistan have already lost: freedom, self-determination, and joy. The result is an arresting book that issues an appeal to remember Afghan girls and women and to show solidarity with them. Like us, they have a right to freedom and dignity, and together we must fight for their place in the free world because Afghanistan is only geographically distant. Extremist ideas know no limits."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Women's rights; Women; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The road to ruin : the global elites' secret plan for the next financial crisis / by Rickards, James,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The bestselling author of The Death of Money and Currency Wars reveals the global elites' dark effort to hide a coming catastrophe from investors. A drumbeat is sounding among the global elites. The signs of a worldwide financial meltdown are unmistakable. This time, the elites have an audacious plan to protect themselves from the fallout: hoarding cash now and locking down the global financial system when a crisis hits. Since 2014, international monetary agencies have been issuing warnings to a small group of finance ministers, banks, and private equity funds: the U.S. government's cowardly choices not to prosecute J.P. Morgan and its ilk, and to bloat the economy with a $4 trillion injection of easy credit, are driving us headlong toward a cliff. As Rickards shows in this frightening, meticulously researched book, governments around the world have no compunction about conspiring against their citizens. They will have stockpiled hard assets when stock exchanges are closed, ATMs shut down, money market funds frozen, asset managers instructed not to sell securities, negative interest rates imposed, and cash withdrawals denied. If you want to plan for the risks ahead, you will need Rickards's cutting-edge synthesis of behavioral economics, history, and complexity theory. It's a guidebook to thinking smarter, acting faster, and living with the comforing knowledge that your wealth is secure. The global elites don't want this book to exist. Their plan to herd us like sheep to the slaughter when a global crisis erupts--and, of course, to maintain their wealth--works only if we remain complacent and unaware. Thanks to The Road to Ruin, we don't need to be"--
Subjects: Monetary policy.; Banks and banking.; Financial crises;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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