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Nexus : a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI / by Harari, Yuval N.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI-a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth, nor is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity."--
Subjects: Information behavior; Information networks; Information technology;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The ground breaking : an American city and its search for justice / by Ellsworth, Scott(Historian),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The definitive, newsbreaking account of the ongoing investigation into the Tulsa race massacre In the late spring of 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, erupted into the worst single incident of racial violence in American history. Over the course of sixteen hours, mobs of white men and women looted and burned to the ground a prosperous African American community, known today as Black Wall Street. More than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, and scores, possibly hundreds, of people lost their lives. Then, for nearly a half century, the story of the massacre was actively suppressed. Official records disappeared, history textbooks ignored the tragedy, and citizens were warned to keep silent. Now nearly one hundred years after that horrible day, historian Scott Ellsworth returns to his hometown to tell the untold story of how America's foremost hidden racial tragedy was finally brought to light, and the unlikely cast of characters that made it happen. Part true-crime saga, part archaeological puzzle, and part investigative journalism, The Ground Breaking weaves in and out of recent history, the distant past, and the modern day to tell a compelling story of a city-and a nation-struggling to come to terms with the dark corners of its past."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: African Americans; African Americans; Exhumation; Forensic archaeology; Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Okla., 1921.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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10/7 : 100 human stories / by Yaron, Lee,author.; Cohen, Joshua,writer of afterword.;
"The definitive account of the 10/7 attacks through the stories of its victims and the communities they called home. On October 7, 2023 -- the Sabbath and the final day of the holiday of Sukkot-the Gaza -- based terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on the people of Israel. Crashing through the border, attacking from the sea and air, militants indiscriminately massacred civilians in what became one of the worst terror attacks in modern history, and the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. A radically passionate work of investigative journalism and political critique by acclaimed Haaretz reporter Lee Yaron, 10/7 chronicles the massacre that ignited a war through the stories of more than 100 civilians. These stories are the products of extensive interviews with survivors, the bereaved, and first responders in Israel and beyond. The victims run the gamut from left-wing kibbutzniks and Burning Man-esque partiers to radical right-wingers, from Bedouins and Israeli Arabs to Thai and Nepalese guest workers, peace activists, elderly Holocaust survivors, refugees from Ukraine and Russia, pregnant women, and babies. At a time when people are seeking a deeper understanding of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how internal political turmoil in Israel has affected it, they predominantly encounter perspectives from the powerful-from politicians and military officers. 10/7 takes a fresh approach, offering answers through the stories of everyday people, those who lived tenuously on the border with Gaza. Yaron profiles victims from a wide range of communities-depicting the fullness of their lives, not just their final moments-to honor their memories and reveal the way the attack ripped open Israeli society and put the entire Middle East on the precipice of disaster. Each chapter begins with a portrait of a community, interweaving history with broader political analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to provide context for the narratives that follow. Ultimately, 10/7 shows that the tragedy is much greater than the violence of the attacks, and in fact extends back through the entire Netanyahu era, which propagated a false image of Israel as a technologically advanced, militarily formidable powerhouse so essential to the region that it could continue to ignore and undermine Palestinian statehood indefinitely"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmīyah.; Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmīyah.; Arab-Israeli conflict; Israelis; Jews; October 7 Hamas Attack, Israel, 2023.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dominion The Railway and the Rise of Canada [electronic resource] : by Bown, Stephen.aut; Ward, Wayne.nrt; cloudLibrary;
A thrilling new account of the engineering triumph that created a nation In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen R. 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 gripping 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 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway 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. Stephen R. 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 moulding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Canada; North America; History;
© 2023., Penguin Random House,
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The invisible siege : the rise of coronaviruses and the search for a cure / by Werb, Dan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An engrossing family history of coronaviruses and the modern-day scientific quest to conquer viral epidemics forever. The urgency of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic has fixed humanity's gaze on the present crisis. But the story of this pandemic extends far further back than many realize. In this engrossing narrative, epidemiologist Dan Werb traces the rising threat of the coronavirus family and the attempts by a small group of scientists who worked for decades to stop a looming viral pandemic. When virologist Ralph Baric began researching coronaviruses in the 1980s, the field was a scientific backwater-the few variants that infected humans caused little more than the common cold. But when a novel coronavirus sparked the 2003 SARS epidemic, and then the MERS epidemic a decade later, Baric and his allies realized that time was running out before a pandemic strain would make the inevitable jump from animals to human hosts. In The Invisible Siege, Werb unpacks the dynamic history and microscopic complexity of an organism that has wreaked cycles of havoc upon the world for millennia. Elegantly tracing decades of scientific investigation, Werb reveals how Baric's team of scientists hatched an audacious plan not merely to battle COVID-19 but to end pandemics forever. Yet as they raced to find a cure, they ran into a complicated nexus of science, ethics, industry, and politics that threatened to derail their efforts just as COVID-19 loomed ever larger. The Invisible Siege is an urgent and moving testament to the unprecedented scientific movement to stop COVID-19-and a powerful look at the infuriating factors that threaten to derail discovery and leave the world vulnerable to the inevitable coronaviruses to come"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Virus diseases;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The folly and the glory : America, Russia, and political warfare, 1945-2020 / by Weiner, Tim,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."With vivid storytelling and access to insider accounts, Weiner sets out to trace the roots of Russian-American political warfare--conflict waged without weapons--over the last seven decades to understand how a president landed in the White House with the help of an expansive, covert Russian campaign. Russia's modern revival of Soviet-era intelligence operations constitutes one of the most significant threats to democracy in the United States and around the world, and yet the US has not engaged its own political warfare methods in defense, even as our own justice department has concluded unequivocally that Russia influenced the 2016 election. To get to the heart of what's at stake and find potential solutions, Weiner examines long-running twentieth century CIA operations, political machinations by the Soviet KGB around the world, the erosion of American political warfare after the Cold War, and why twenty-first century Russia has returned to the practice while the US has not. Weiner takes us behind closed doors and into the deliberation rooms of past and present Russian and American intelligence operations that directly led to-and help illuminate-the current administration and the future of American democracy"--
Subjects: Trump, Donald, 1946-; Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1952-; Cold War.; Intelligence service; Intelligence service; Intelligence service; Presidents; Elections;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow / by Gates, Henry Louis,Jr,author.;
Includes bibliographical reference and index."A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of freedom' in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the 'nadir' of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The book will be accompanied by a new PBS documentary series on the same topic, with full promotional support from PBS"--
Subjects: African Americans; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); African Americans; African Americans; White supremacy movements; Racism in popular culture; Visual communication;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How the West stole democracy from the Arabs : the Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the destruction of its historic liberal-Islamic alliance / by Thompson, Elizabeth F.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."When Europe's Great War engulfed the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalists rose in revolt against their Turkish rulers and allied with the British on the promise of an independent Arab state. In October 1918, the Arabs' military leader, Prince Faisal, victoriously entered Damascus and proclaimed a constitutional government in an independent Greater Syria. Faisal won American support for self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference, but other Entente powers plotted to protect their colonial interests. Under threat of European occupation, the Syrian-Arab Congress declared independence on March 8, 1920 and crowned Faisal king of a "civil representative monarchy." Sheikh Rashid Rida, the most prominent Islamic thinker of the day, became Congress president and supervised the drafting of a constitution that established the world's first Arab democracy and guaranteed equal rights for all citizens, including non-Muslims. But France and Britain refused to recognize the Damascus government and instead imposed a system of mandates on the pretext that Arabs were not yet ready for self-government. In July 1920, the French invaded and crushed the Syrian state. The fragile coalition of secular modernizers and Islamic reformers that had established democracy was destroyed, with profound consequences that reverberate still. Using previously untapped primary sources, including contemporary newspaper accounts, reports of the Syrian-Arab Congress, and letters and diaries from participants, How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs is a groundbreaking account of an extraordinary, brief moment of unity and hope-and of its destruction"--
Subjects: Muʼtamar al-Sūrī al-ʻĀmm (1919-1920); Arab nationalism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The sandcastle girls : a novel / by Bohjalian, Chris,1960-;
Includes bibliographical references."Parallel stories of a woman who falls in love with an Armenian soldier during the Armenian Genocide and a modern-day New Yorker prompted to rediscover her Armenian past"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Armenian Americans; Armenian massacres, 1915-1923; Armenians;
© c2012., Doubleday,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In praise of retreat : finding sanctuary in the modern world / by MacLeod, Kirsteen,author.;
"For readers of Walden, Wild, Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek, A Book of Silence, A Gift from the Sea and other celebrations of the inner adventure. An utterly engaging dive into our modern ways of retreat -- where we go, why we're drawn, and how it's urgent. From pilgrim paths to forest cabins, and from rented hermitages to arts temples and quiet havens for yoga and meditation, In Praise of Retreat explores the pleasures and powers of this ancient practice for modern people. Kirsteen MacLeod draws on the history of retreat and personal experiences to reveal the many ways readers can step back from society to reconnect with their deepest selves -- and to their loftiest aspirations in life. In the 21st century, disengaging, even briefly, is seen by many as self-indulgent, unproductive, and antisocial. Yet to retreat is as basic a human need as being social, and everyone can benefit, whether it's for a weekend, a month, or a lifetime. Retreat is an uncertain adventure with as many peaks and valleys as any mountain expedition, except we head inward, to recharge and find fresh energy and brave new ideas to bring back into our everyday lives."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Solitude; Solitude.; Spiritual retreats.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 291 to 300 of 544 | « previous |