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All the worst humans : how I made news for dictators, tycoons, and politicians / by Elwood, Phil(Philip),author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A bridge-burning, riotous memoir by a top PR operative in Washington who exposes the secrets of the 129-billion-dollar industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the media -- from a man who used to pull the strings, and who is now pulling back the curtain. After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that's made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he's been up to for the past twenty years -- and it isn't pretty. Elwood has worked for a murderer's row of clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar -- namely, the bad guys. In All the Worst Humans, Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public -- not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career. This is a piercing look into the corridors of money, power, politics, and control, all told in Elwood's disarmingly funny and entertaining voice. He recounts a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictator's son, plotting communications strategies against a terrorist organization in Western Africa, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictator's wife a glowing profile in Vogue on the same time the Arab Spring broke out. And he reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and ultimately cover for politicians, dictators, and spies -- the industry-secret tactics that led to his rise as a political PR pro. Along the way, Phil walks the halls of the Capitol, rides in armored cars through Abuja, and watches his client lose his annual income at the roulette table. But as he moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it all -- until Elwood receives a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Elwood his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, Elwood decides to change his ways, and his clients, and to tell the full truth about who is the worst human"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Elwood, Phil (Philip); Communication in politics.; Political consultants; Public relations and politics.; Public relations consultants;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The outfit [videorecording] / by Amuka-Bird, Nikki,1976-actor.; Beale, Simon Russell,actor.; Deutch, Zoey,1994-actor.; Flynn, Johnny,actor.; Mehdizadeh, Alan,actor.; Moore, Graham,1981-film director,screenwriter.; O'Brien, Dylan,1991-actor.; Rylance, Mark,actor.; Universal Studios, Inc.,film distributor.;
Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Simon Russell Beale, Alan Mehdizadeh.From the Academy Award®-winning writer of The Imitation Game (Graham Moore) comes The Outfit, a gripping and masterful thriller in which an expert tailor (Academy Award® winner Mark Rylance) must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters in order to survive a fateful night.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.Described video for the blind and visually impaired.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0.
Subjects: Crime films.; Feature films.; Gangster films.; Thrillers (Motion pictures); Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Gangsters; Murder; Organized crime; Tailors;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Such big dreams / by Patel, Reema,author.;
"Rakhi is a twenty-three-year-old former street child haunted by the grisly aftermath of an incident that led her to lose her best friend eleven years ago. Constantly reminded she doesn't belong, Rakhi lives alone in a Mumbai slum, working as a lowly office assistant at Justice For All, a struggling human rights law office headed by the renowned lawyer who gave her a fresh start. Fiercely intelligent and in possession of a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, Rakhi is nobody's fool, even if she is underestimated by everyone around her. Rakhi's life isn't much, but she's managing. That is until a fading former Bollywood starlet tries to edge her way back into the spotlight by becoming a celebrity ambassador for Justice For All. Steering the organization into uncharted territories, she demands an internship for her young Canadian family friend, Alex, a Harvard-bound graduate student. Ambitious, persistent, and naive, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him "the real" India. In exchange, he'll do something to further Rakhi's dreams in a transaction that seems harmless, at first. As old guilt and new aspirations collide, everything Rakhi once knew to be true is set ablaze. And as the stakes mount, she will come face to face with the difficult choices and moral compromises that people are prepared to make in order to survive, no matter the costs. Reema Patel's transportive debut novel offers a moving, smart, and arrestingly funny look at the cost of ambition and power in reclaiming one's story."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Human rights workers; Interpersonal relations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Futureproof : 9 rules for humans in the age of automation / by Roose, Kevin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi doomsaying and marketing hype, advanced A.I. and automation technologies have leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the center of our lives. Robots once primarily threatened blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but today's machines are being trained to do the work of lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, and other white-collar jobs previously considered safe from automation's reach. The world's biggest corporations are racing to automate jobs, and some experts predict that A.I could put millions of people out of work. Meanwhile, runaway algorithms have already changed the news we see, the politicians we elect, and the ways we interact with each other. But all is not lost. With a little effort, we can become futureproof. In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Machine-Age Humans, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose lays out an optimistic vision of how people can thrive in the machine age by rethinking their relationship with technology, and making themselves irreplaceably human. In nine pragmatic, accessible lessons, Roose draws on interviews with leading technologists, trips to the A.I. frontier, and centuries' worth of history to prepare readers to live, work, and thrive in the coming age of intelligent machines. He shares the secrets of people and organizations that have successfully survived technological change, including a 19th-century rope-maker and a Japanese auto worker, and explains how people, organizations, and communities can apply their lessons to safeguard their own futures. The lessons include : Do work that is surprising, social, and scarce (the types of work machines can't do), break your phone addiction with the help of a rubber band, work in an office, treat A.I. like the office gorilla, resist "hustle porn" and efficiency culture and do less, slower Roose's examination of the future rejects the conventional wisdom that in order to compete with machines, we have to become more like them--hyper-efficient, data-driven, code-writing workhorses. Instead, he says, we should let machines be machines, and focus on doing the kinds of creative, inspiring, and meaningful work only humans can do"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Computers and civilization.; Success in business.; Automation;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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No going back : a novel / by Kamal, Sheena,author.;
Nora Watts has a talent for seeing what lies beneath strangers' surfaces, and for knowing what they're working hard to keep hidden. Somehow, it's the people closest to her she has trouble truly connecting with. In the case of Bonnie, the teenage daughter Nora gave up for adoption, she has to keep trying. For Bonnie has a target on her back--and it's all because of Nora. Two years ago, Bonnie was kidnapped by the wealthy Zhang family. Though Nora rescued her, she made a powerful enemy in Dao, a mysterious triad enforcer and former head of the Zhangs' private security. Now Dao is out for revenge, and she needs to track him down in order to keep herself--and Bonnie--safe. On Dao's trail, Nora forms an unlikely partnership with Bernard Lam, an eccentric playboy billionaire with his own mysterious grudge to bear, and reunites with Jon Brazuca, ex-cop turned private investigator and Nora's occasional ally. From Canada to southeast Asia they pursue Dao, uncovering a shadowy criminal cabal. But soon, the trail will lead full circle to Vancouver, the only home Nora's ever known, and right to the heart of her brutal past.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Women private investigators; Triads (Organized crime); Revenge; Mothers and daughters;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Near abroad : Putin, the West, and the contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus / by Toal, Gerard,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Vladimir Putin's intervention into the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict in summer 2008 was quickly recognized by Western critics as an attempt by Russia to increase its presence and power in the "near abroad", or the independent states of the former Soviet Union that Russia still regards as its wards. Though the global economic recession that began in 2008 moved the incident to the back of the world's mind, Russia surged to the forefront again six years later when they invaded the heavily Russian Crimea in Ukraine and annexed it. In contrast to the earlier Georgia episode, this new conflict has generated a crisis of global proportions, forcing European countries to rethink their relationship with Russia and their reliance on it for energy supplies, as Russia was now squeezing natural gas from what is technically Ukraine. In Near Abroad, the eminent political geographer Gerard Toal analyzes Russia's recent offensive actions in the near abroad, focusing in particular on the ways in which both the West and Russia have relied on Cold War-era rhetorical and emotional tropes that distort as much as they clarify. In response to Russian aggression, US critics quickly turned to tried-and-true concepts like "spheres of influence" to condemn the Kremlin. Russia in turn has brought back its long tradition of criticizing western liberalism and degeneracy to grandly rationalize its behavior in what are essentially local border skirmishes. It is this tendency to resort to the frames of earlier eras that has led the conflicts to "jump scales," moving from the regional to the global level in short order. The ambiguities and contradictions that result when nations marshal traditional geopolitical arguments-rooted in geography, territory, and old understandings of distance-further contributes to the escalation of these conflicts. Indeed, Russia's belligerence toward Georgia stemmed from concern about its possible entry into NATO, an organization of states thousands of miles away. American hawks also strained credulity by portraying Georgia as a nearby ally in need of assistance. Similarly, the threat of NATO to the Ukraine looms large in the Kremlin's thinking, and many Ukrainians themselves self-identify with the West despite their location in Eastern Europe."--
Subjects: Geopolitics; Geopolitics; Geopolitics; South Ossetia War, 2008.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Boxcar Librarian A Novel [electronic resource] : by Labuskes, Brianna.aut; CloudLibrary;
Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana. When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.  Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned. The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to hide: what happened to Colette Durand. Inspired by the fascinating, true history of Missoula’s Boxcar Library, the novel blends the story of the strong, courageous women who survived and thrived in the rough and rowdy West with that of the power of standing together to fight for workers’ lives. And through it all shines the capacity of books to provide connection and light to those who need it most.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Small Town & Rural; Lesbian; Historical; Historical;
© 2025., HarperCollins,
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A (very) short history of life on Earth : 4.6 billion years in 12 pithy chapters / by Gee, Henry,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In the tradition of E.H. Gombrich, Stephen Hawking, and Alan Weisman-an entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place-in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents-a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed"--
Subjects: Evolution (Biology); Life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Counting lost stars : a novel / by Alkemade, Kim van,author.;
"1960, New York City: College student Rita Klein is a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming--until she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. At the Hudson Home for Unwed Mothers, social workers pressure her into surrendering her baby for adoption. Rita is struggling to get on with her life when she meets Jacob Nassy, a charming yet troubled man from the Netherlands who is traumatized by his childhood experience of being separated from his mother during the Holocaust. When Rita learns that Hitler's Final Solution was organized using Hollerith punch-card computers, she sets out to find the answers that will help Jacob heal. 1941, The Hague: Cornelia Vogel is working as a punch-card operator at the Ministry of Information when a census of Holland's population is ordered by the Germans. After the Ministry acquires a Hollerith computer made in America, Cornelia is tasked with translating its instructions from English into Dutch. She seeks help from her fascinating Jewish neighbor, Leah Blom, an unconventional young woman whose mother was born in New York. When Cornelia learns the census is being used to persecute Holland's Jews, she risks everything to help Leah escape. After Rita uncovers a connection between Cornelia Vogel and Jacob's mother, long-buried secrets come to light. Will shocking revelations tear them apart, or will learning the truth about the past enable Rita and Jacob to face the future together?"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Dutch; Holocaust survivors; Jews; Mothers and sons; Unplanned pregnancy; Women college students; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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A Newfoundlander in Canada / by Doyle, Alan,1969-author.;
"Following the fantastic success of his bestselling memoir, Where I belong, Great Big Sea front man Alan Doyle returns with a hilarious, heartwarming account of leaving Newfoundland and discovering Canada for the first time. Armed with the same personable, candid style found in his first book, Alan Doyle turns his perspective outward from Petty Harbour toward mainland Canada, reflecting on what it was like to venture away from the comforts of home and the familiarity of the island. Often in a van, sometimes in a bus, occasionally in a car with broken wipers "using Bob's belt and a rope found by Paddy's Pond" to pull them back and forth, Alan and his bandmates charted new territory, and he constantly measured what he saw of the vast country against what his forefathers once called the Daemon Canada. In a period punctuated by triumphant leaps forward for the band, deflating steps backward and everything in between--opening for Barney the Dinosaur at an outdoor music festival, being propositioned at a gas station mail-order bride service in Alberta, drinking moonshine with an elderly church-goer on a Sunday morning in PEI--Alan's few established notions about Canada were often debunked and his own identity as a Newfoundlander was constantly challenged. Touring the country, he also discovered how others view Newfoundlanders and how skewed these images can sometimes be. Asked to play in front of the Queen at a massive Canada Day festival on Parliament Hill, the concert organizers assured Alan and his bandmates that the best way to showcase Newfoundland culture was for them to be towed onto stage in a dory and introduced not as Newfoundlanders but as "Newfies." The boys were not amused. Heartfelt, funny and always insightful, these stories tap into the complexities of community and Canadianness, forming the portrait of a young man from a tiny fishing village trying to define and hold on to his sense of home while navigating a vast and diverse and wonder-filled country."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Doyle, Alan, 1969-; Great Big Sea (Musical group); Musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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