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The Bill Gates problem : reckoning with the myth of the good billionaire / by Schwab, Tim(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A powerful investigation of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, showing how he uses philanthropy to exercise enormous political power without accountability"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Gates, Bill, 1955-; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Billionaires; Charities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Truly, madly : Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the romance of the century / by Galloway, Stephen(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In 1934, a friend brought fledgling actress Vivien Leigh to see Theatre Royal, where she would first lay eyes on Laurence Olivier in his brilliant performance as Anthony Cavendish. That night, she confided, he was the man she was going to marry. There was just one problem: she was already married-and so was he. TRULY, MADLY is the biography of a marriage, a love affair that still captivates millions, even decades after both actors' deaths. Vivien and Laurence were two of the first truly global celebrities-their fame fueled by the explosive growth of tabloids and television, which helped and hurt them in equal measure. They seemed to have it all and yet, in their own minds, they were doomed, blighted by a long-undiagnosed mental illness that transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare. Author Stephen Galloway takes readers on a bewitching journey as he studies their tempestuous relationship, one that took place against the backdrop of two world wars, the Golden Age of Hollywood and the upheavals of the 1960s-as they struggled with love, loss and the ultimate agony of their parting"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Leigh, Vivien, 1913-1967; Leigh, Vivien, 1913-1967.; Olivier, Laurence, 1907-1989; Olivier, Laurence, 1907-1989.; Actors; Motion picture actors and actresses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The NRA : the unauthorized history / by Smyth, Frank(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The National Rifle Association is unique in American life. Few other civic organizations are as old or as large. None is as controversial. It is largely due to the NRA that the U.S. gun policy differs so extremely--some would say so tragically--from that of every other developed nation. But, as Frank Smyth shows, the NRA has evolved from an organization concerned above all with marksmanship--not to mention one that supported most government efforts around gun control for a hundred years--to one that resists all attempts to restrict guns in any way. At the same time, the organization has also buried its own remarkable history. Here is that story, from the NRA's surprising roots in post-Civil War New York City to the defining event that changed its culture forever--the so-called Cincinnati Revolt of 1977--to the present day, where President Donald Trump is the most ardent champion in the White House the NRA has ever had. For anyone who has looked at access to guns in our society and asked "Why?", this is an unmatched account of how we got here, and who got us here."--Jacket flap.
Subjects: National Rifle Association of America; Gun control; Lobbying; Firearms ownership;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dark wire : the incredible true story of the largest sting operation ever / by Cox, Joseph(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes -- the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement. Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld. They watched drug deals and hits being planned in real time, making arrests where they could without blowing their cover. For a period of years, some one hundred thousand criminals worldwide, including members of South American drug cartels, the Calabrian mafia, and the Chinese Triad, did their business in full view of the officers they were trying to evade. It was a sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one. But a surveillance operation like this couldn't last. It was too dangerous, too ethically fraught, too large. And it all ended in spectacular fashion. Dark Wire is more than the story of this enormous sting operation -- it shows the fundamental problems of policing in such a vast and high-speed economy. This is a caper for our modern world, where everyone is connected and no one is completely free"--
Subjects: Electronic surveillance; Organized crime investigation.; Text messaging (Cell phone systems); Undercover operations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Free, Melania : the unauthorized biography / by Bennett, Kate(Journalist),author.;
Melania Trump is an enigma. Regardless of your political leanings, she is fascinating--a First Lady who, in many ways, is the most modern and groundbreaking in recent history. A former model whose beauty in person leaves people breathless, a woman whose upbringing in a communist country spurred a relentless drive for stability, both for herself and for her family. A reluctant pillar in a controversial presidential administration who speaks five languages and runs the East Wing like none of her predecessors ever could--underestimate her at your own peril (as a former government official did and was summarily fired). But who is she really? In Free, Melania we get an insider's look at Melania Trump, from her childhood in Slovenia to her days in the White House, and everything in between. We see the Trump family dynamics that Melania has had to navigate, including her strained relationship with Ivanka. We get a rare glimpse into what goes into her famous and sometimes infamous clothing choices (including perhaps the real message behind Melania's controversial jacket, "I Really Don't Care, Do U?", which she wore while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border), and how a publicly quiet Melania actually speaks very loudly--if you just know where, and how, to listen. And we get a behind-the-scenes look at her often eyebrow-raising relationship with Donald Trump, from their beginnings to becoming the most unusual First Family in modern history. Looking at Melania in the pantheon of historic First Ladies, Kate Bennett shows just how different Melania Trump is and why she matters. Bennett, an expert on First Ladies, has unparalleled access to Melania's very small and loyal inner circle. As she shows in this page-turning book, the seemingly most reluctant First Lady is, in many ways, the most compelling and complex First Lady, ever.
Subjects: Biographies.; Trump, Melania, 1970-; Presidents' spouses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Blood money : the story of life, death, and profit inside America's blood industry / by McLaughlin, Kathleen(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Bad Blood meets Dreamland in this kaleidoscopic investigation into the shadowy and vampiric blood business and the dangerous limits of demand for the crucial resource that runs through our very veins. Every year, about twenty million Americans sell blood plasma for cash in a barely regulated market dominated by private industry and off-the-grid trafficking. These commercial efforts prey on an insatiable market for medical and scientific innovation fed from the veins of some of the country's most marginalized communities, such as undocumented immigrants and residents of poverty-stricken Flint, Michigan. We are often told that "blood donations" are used to save lives, but blood plasma, a component of whole blood, has become a precious commercial good. Blood plasma is collected and marketed by private industry, with the United States one of just five nations on the planet that have not yet banned the practice of pay-for-plasma giving. This precious resource is used for everything from expensive and unproven age-reversing treatments to costly and experimental cures for novel diseases like COVID-19. Based on a cross-country investigation into the plasma-giving capitals of the country, in-depth research into the blood industry, and her personal experience as a beneficiary of plasma-derived treatment for a rare condition, Kathleen McLaughlin's Blood Money reveals the underhanded machinations and unbalanced power structures of the blood industry. Taking us from China's blood black market to Silicon Valley's shadowy tech startups, this is an unforgettable inside look at an industry many of us had no idea even existed. Blood Money is an electrifying exposé that demonstrates the shadowy overlap between big medicine and big business and paints a searing portrait of the extent to which American industry feeds on the country's most vulnerable"--
Subjects: Blood banks; Blood products;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Cabin fever : the harrowing journey of a cruise ship at the dawn of a pandemic / by Smith, Michael(Journalist),author.; Franklin, Jonathan,1964-author.;
"A harrowing narrative of the Holland America cruise ship Zaandam, which set sail with a deadly and little-understood stowaway-Covid-19-days before the world shut down in March, 2020. In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading on different continents, and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hotspots, the cruise ship Zaandam, owned by Holland America, was preparing to sail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, loaded with 1,200 passengers-Americans, Europeans and South Americans, plus 600 crew. Most passengers were over the age of 65. There was concern about the virus on the news, and it had already killed and sickened passengers on other Holland America ships. But that was oceans away, and escaping to sea at the ends of the earth for a few weeks seemed like it might be a good option. The cruise line had said the voyage (three weeks around the South American coastline to see some of the most world's most stunning natural wonders and ancient ruins) would carry on as scheduled, with no refunds. And it would be safe. Cabin Fever is a riveting narrative thriller, taking readers behind the scenes of the ship's complex workings, and below decks into the personal lives of passengers and crew who were caught unprepared for the deadly ordeal that lay ahead. There is a retired American school superintendent on a dream vacation with his wife of 56 years, on a personal quest to see Machu Picchu. There is an Argentine psychologist taking this trip to celebrate her 64th birthday with her husband, though she finds herself fretting in her cabin on Day One, trying to dismiss her fears of what she's hearing on the news. There is an Indonesian laundry manager who's been toiling on Holland America cruise ships for thirty years, sending his monthly paycheck to his family back home. Within days, people aboard Zaandam begin to fall sick. The world's ports shut down. Zaandam becomes a top story on the news and is denied safe harbor everywhere. With only two doctors aboard and few medical supplies to test for or treat Covid-19, and with dwindling food and water, the ship wanders the oceans on an unthinkable journey"--
Subjects: Zaandam (Cruise ship); COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-; Cruise ships.; Ships; Travel;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Traffic : genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral / by Smith, Ben(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The origin story of the Age of Disinformation: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and Buzzfeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale in the first two decades of the 21st century helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society. If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith's Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000's, in that brief moment after the first dotcom crash and before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become tech's center of gravity. There, within a few square blocks, Nick Denton's merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier crew at HuffPost and Buzzfeed were building the foundations of click-bait media. It was tech's age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. Progressive activists were first to the scene, and for a while it seemed they were the scene. After all, didn't they get Barack Obama elected? Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as Buzzfeed's editor-in-chief, was either there or talked to everyone who was, and in his trademark fashion, he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no one--and certainly not himself. Denton and Gawker were seen at the time as the black hats, but in Smith's hands the story is much more nuanced: yes, Denton's ideology of radical transparency was problematic, but at least he had an ideology. Jonah Peretti survived long after Denton's Gawker perished because his focus on clicks was relentlessly content-agnostic. But as with the proverbial sorcerer's apprentice, unintended consequences began to gain momentum. At the heart of Traffic is one of the great ironies of our time: the internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. As Smith and his colleagues and rivals thought they were inventing digital media, other figures, flickering around the margins of their story, had different designs. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart and Gavin McInnes and Chris Poole, the creator of 4chan, all seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah and crew were the stars. By 2020, any reasonable observer might wonder if the opposite wasn't the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Denton, Nicholas.; Peretti, Jonah.; Digital media; Internet industry; News Web sites;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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As time goes by : a novel / by Clark, Mary Higgins,author.;
"Television journalist Delaney Wright is on the brink of stardom after she begins covering a sensational murder trial for the six p.m. news. She should be thrilled, yet her growing desire to locate her birth mother consumes her thoughts. When Delaney's friends Alvirah Meehan and her husband Willy offer to look into the mystery surrounding her birth, they uncover a shocking secret they do not want to reveal. On trial for murder is Betsy Grant, widow of a wealthy doctor who had been an Alzheimer's victim for eight years. When her once-upon-a-time celebrity lawyer urges her to accept a plea bargain, Betsy refuses: she will go to trial to prove her innocence. Betsy's stepson, Alan Grant, bides his time nervously as the trial begins. His substantial inheritance hangs in the balance--his only means of making good on payments he owes his ex-wife, his children, and increasingly angry creditors. As the trial unfolds, and the damning evidence against Betsy piles up, Delaney is convinced that Betsy is not guilty and frantically tries to prove her innocence. A true classic from Mary Higgins Clark, As Time Goes By is a thrilling read by a master of the genre"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Legal stories.; Suspense fiction.; Mystery fiction.; Journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Insane mode : how Elon Musk's Tesla sparked an electric revolution to end the age of oil / by McKenzie, Hamish(Journalist);
Includes bibliographical references and index.LSC
Subjects: Musk, Elon.; Tesla Motors.; Electric vehicle industry; Alternative fuel vehicle industry; Electric power.; Renewable energy sources.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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