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Health for all : a doctor's prescription for a healthier Canada / by Philpott, Jane,1960-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From one of Canada's most respected and high-profile health professionals (and former federal Minister of Health), a timely, practical, ambitious, and deeply personal call for action on health that sets out the roadmap to our future well-being. Jane Philpott has spent her life learning what makes people sick and what keeps people well. She has witnessed miracles in modern medicine. She has also watched children die of starvation in a world that has plenty of food. With Health for All, she sounds a clarion call for a radical disruption in a health care system that is broken--but not beyond repair. The vision is rooted in a deep-seated commitment to health equity. Decades ago, a few visionary Canadian leaders put laws in place to ensure health care insurance for all. But the structures to deliver that care were never fully developed as envisioned. As a result, our health systems are not comprehensive or well-coordinated. In the wake of a pandemic, we risk it all falling apart. More than six million people have no family doctor, nor any other access to primary care. Emergency rooms are routinely closed. Exhausted health workers wonder if it will ever get better. Some say we should hand health care over to the private sector. But to abandon our commitment to publicly funded health care now would only lead to more expensive and less equitable care. Philpott outlines a different solution--an ambitious, once-in-a-generation reset of health systems with universal access to primary care teams. What sets this book apart is that it's more than a prescription for better medical care. Philpott looks at the big picture of health for all. This includes an intimate look at the personal roots of well-being: hope, belonging, meaning, and purpose. Then, through real-life stories, she examines the impact of the social determinants of health. Finally, she explains that none of this will happen without the political will to do the hard work of rebuilding a healthy society. The remedy we await is serious leadership to implement what we already know and to put the well-being of Canadians at the top of the agenda"--
Subjects: Medical policy; Public health;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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This is your mind on plants / by Pollan, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: people around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. We don't usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So then what is a "drug?" And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs -- opium, caffeine, and mescaline -- and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and such fraught feelings? A unique blend of history, science, memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively -- as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that's one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay written more than 25 years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world"--
Subjects: Psychotropic plants.; Opium.; Mescaline.; Caffeine.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Health for All A Doctor's Prescription for a Healthier Canada [electronic resource] : by Philpott, Jane.aut; cloudLibrary;
From one of Canada's most respected and high-profile health professionals (and former federal Minister of Health), a timely, practical, ambitious, and deeply personal call for action on health that sets out the roadmap to our future well-being. Jane Philpott has spent her life learning what makes people sick and what keeps people well. She has witnessed miracles in modern medicine. She has also watched children die of starvation in a world that has plenty of food. With Health for All, she sounds a clarion call for a radical disruption in a health care system that is broken—but not beyond repair. The vision is rooted in a deep-seated commitment to health equity. Decades ago, a few visionary Canadian leaders put laws in place to ensure health care insurance for all. But the structures to deliver that care were never fully developed as envisioned. As a result, our health systems are not comprehensive or well-coordinated. In the wake of a pandemic, we risk it all falling apart. More than six million people have no family doctor, nor any other access to primary care. Emergency rooms are routinely closed. Exhausted health workers wonder if it will ever get better. Some say we should hand health care over to the private sector. But to abandon our commitment to publicly funded health care now would only lead to more expensive and less equitable care. Philpott outlines a different solution—an ambitious, once-in-a-generation reset of health systems with universal access to primary care teams. What sets this book apart is that it’s more than a prescription for better medical care. Philpott looks at the big picture of health for all. This includes an intimate look at the personal roots of well-being: hope, belonging, meaning, and purpose. Then, through real-life stories, she examines the impact of the social determinants of health. Finally, she explains that none of this will happen without the political will to do the hard work of rebuilding a healthy society. The remedy we await is serious leadership to implement what we already know and to put the well-being of Canadians at the top of the agenda.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Canadian; Health Care Delivery; Health Policy;
© 2024., McClelland & Stewart,
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The message / by Coates, Ta-Nehisi,author.;
"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories - our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking - expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist - and named for Nubian pharaoh - Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains - and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the "racial reckoning" of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community - a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians - the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him - and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Coates, Ta-Nehisi; African American journalists; Journalists;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The Demon of Unrest A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War [electronic resource] : by Larson, Erik.aut; cloudLibrary;
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People, Time, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Health, New York Post, Lit Hub, Book Riot, Screenrant On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.” At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.
Subjects: Electronic books.; 19th Century; Civil War Period (1850-1877); Presidents & Heads of State;
© 2024., Crown,
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The coming wave : technology, power, and the twenty-first century's greatest dilemma / by Suleyman, Mustafa,author.; Bhaskar, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A stark and urgent warning on the unprecedented risks that a wave of fast-developing technologies poses to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance--from a cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind. Imagine a world in which anyone with a $20,000 desktop DNA synthesizer could develop and unleash a deadly virus. Imagine an undetectable deepfake video of a U.S. president making a racial slur racing across the internet on the eve of an election. Imagine terrorists or paramilitaries stockpiling autonomous weapons designed to make their own decisions about when to engage. As cofounder of DeepMind, the pioneering AI company now owned by Google, Mustafa Suleyman has witnessed firsthand just how rapidly our technology is advancing--and how flawed our approaches to grappling with these changes are. The coming decades, he argues, will be defined by a burst of innovation, an inevitable wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies across fields like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Driven forward by immense strategic and financial incentives, these breakthroughs will solve huge challenges and create vast wealth--but upheaval, too, on a once unimaginable scale. Will humankind make it through the narrow corridor between dystopia and catastrophe? In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how this new technological super-wave fits a historical pattern of innovation and proliferation, while departing from it in key ways: namely, the speed of change, the breadth of risks, and the wave's potential to democratize access to dangerous, world-altering power. The cumulative risks threaten the very nation state, humanity's centuries' old "grand bargain" of living under centralized authority in exchange for security. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into catastrophe, humanity is left in an existential bind, with techno-authoritarianism on one side and even more catastrophic outcomes, like societal collapse, on the other. We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. In this groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider, Suleyman firmly establishes "the containment problem"--or the challenge of maintaining human control over dangerous technologies--as the essential dilemma of our age, showing that radical steps must be taken if we are to live alongside technology of once unimaginable power"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Information technology;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Personality isn't permanent : break free from self-limiting beliefs and rewrite your story / by Hardy, Benjamin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."If you have ever taken a test to identify your "personality type", like the Myers-Briggs or Enneagram, you might be surprised to learn that such tests are not only unscientific, but are holding you back. The truth is, there's no such thing as a personality "type", or a "real you" that can only be unearthed through some process of self-discovery. Instead, your personality is something you can intentionally choose and create. Rather than being defined by the past and trapped in unresolved traumas, you can build your identity and internal narrative to serve the future you desire. In Personality Isn't Permanent, Dr. Hardy draws on psychological research to demolish the popular misconception that personality-a person's consistent attitudes and behaviors-is innate and unchanging. He offers practical, motivational advice to help you cultivate the traits and achieve the goals you always dreamed of. In Personality Isn't Permanent, you'll learn: · Why you should never be the "former anything". Defining yourself by your past successes can be just as damaging to your potential to grow as being haunted by past failures. · How to flip the script on negative memories and view them as something that happened for you, not to you. · How to design a desired vision of your "future self," and make decisions based on what "they" would want. · How to tap into what psychologists' call "pull motivation" by narrowing your focus on a single, definable, and compelling outcome. · Why you should consistently put yourself in new situations that can initially be emotionally uncomfortable. · Why you should measure your progress by how much you've grown, rather than what you lack. Along the way, you'll hear fascinating true stories of radical self-transformation, like Vanessa O'Brien, who quit her corporate job and went on to obtain Guinness World Records for climbing the tallest mountains in the world; Andre Norman, who became a Harvard fellow after serving a fourteen-year prison sentence; Ken Arlen, who instantly quit smoking by changing his backstory; and Hardy himself, who transcended his childhood in a broken home, surrounded by issues of addiction and mental illness, to get his PhD and build a happy family. Filled with scientific strategies for reframing your past and designing your future, Personality Isn't Permanent is your practical guide to transcending your limitations and becoming the person you always wanted to be"--
Subjects: Self-help publications.; Personality.; Motivation (Psychology); Self-actualization (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Last House A Novel [electronic resource] : by Shattuck, Jessica.aut; cloudLibrary;
"An ambitious historical epic that doubles as an intimate family saga. Jessica Shattuck captures and connects it all—the imperial ambitions of the postwar generation, the rebellion of their offspring in the Sixties, and the fallout we’re still sifting through today. . . . This is a wide-ranging novel to savor.” — TOM PERROTTA From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle comes a sweeping story of a nation on the rise, and one family’s deeply complicated relationship to the resource that built their fortune and fueled their greatest tragedy, perfect for fans of The Dutch House and Great Circle. It’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, WWII veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. He takes the train into the city for work and returns to the peaceful streets of the suburbs and to his wife, Bet, former codebreaker now housewife, and their two children, Katherine and Harry. Nick comes from humble origins but thanks to his work for American Oil, he can provide every comfort for his family, including Last House, a secluded country escape. Deep in the Vermont mountains, the Taylors are free from the stresses of modern life. Bet doesn’t have to worry about the Russian H-bombs that haunt her dreams, and the children roam free in the woods. Last House is a place that could survive the end of the world. It’s 1968, and America is on the brink of change. Protestors fill the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War to racism in the wake of MLK’s shooting—to the country's reliance on Big Oil. As Katherine makes her first forays into adult life, she’s caught up in the current of the time and struggles to reconcile her ideals with the stable and privileged childhood her Greatest Generation parents worked so hard to provide. But when the Movement shifts in a more radical direction, each member of the Taylor family will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the choices they’ve made for the causes they believed in. Spanning multiple generations and nearly eighty years, Last House tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and even greater downfalls. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s history, this is an emotional tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance and what we owe each other—and captures to stunning effect the gravity of time, the double edge of progress, and the hubris of empire.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Literary; Family Life; Sagas; Historical;
© 2024., HarperCollins,
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The lonely century : how to restore human connection in a world that's pulling apart / by Hertz, Noreena,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An economist takes on the most urgent social issue of our time, exploring the evolution of the global loneliness crisis, the sweeping impact of social isolation during the coronavirus, and the opportunities a post-Covid world presents to reverse these trends-by finding new ways to reconnect with each other, our communities, and even our democracy. Even before the global pandemic brought terms like "social distancing" into the vernacular, loneliness was well on its way to becoming the defining trait of the twenty-first century. Today, nearly half of adults in the United States report feeling lonely, and more than twenty percent of millennials say they have "no friends at all." All around us, the fabric of community is unraveling. And technology isn't the lone culprit. Rather, the crisis stems from the dismantling of civic institutions, the radical reorganization of the workplace, mass urban migration, and decades of neoliberal policies that placed self-interest above the collective good. On one hand, the prolonged period spent under lockdown has accelerated these trends: from remote work to contactless commerce to the hollowing out of shared public spaces. On the other, it has sharpened our awareness of the toll isolation takes on our families, our communities, and our mental health. This is not merely a mental health crisis. Loneliness increases our risk of heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Statistically, it's as bad for our health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It's also an economic crisis, costing us billions annually. And it's a political crisis, as feelings of marginalization fuel divisiveness and extremism around the world. In The Lonely Century, readers accompany Hertz as she "rents a friend" in Manhattan, attends a "how to read a face" class at an Ivy League university, and meets Japanese nursing home residents who knit bonnets for their robot caregivers. Along the way, she urges us to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to create, post-pandemic: one where we retreat further into our self-isolating bubbles and remain ever-fearful of others, or one where we are more committed to reconnecting with one another, and with the democratic process itself. From compassionate AI to new models for urban living to the ingenuity unleashed in finding new ways to stay connected in the era of social distancing, The Lonely Century offers a hopeful vision for how to heal our fractured communities and restore connection in our lives. In the wake of Covid-19, this is not only more urgent, but more possible than ever"--
Subjects: Interpersonal relations.; Loneliness; Social media; Loneliness;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Southern Man A Novel [electronic resource] : by Iles, Greg.aut; cloudLibrary;
“Greg Iles is one of America’s great storytellers." –Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author "A first-rate political thriller."–John Grisham, #1 New York Times bestselling author The hugely anticipated new Penn Cage novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy and Cemetery Road, about a man—and a town—rocked by anarchy and tragedy, but unbowed in the fight to save those they love Fifteen years after the events of the Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penn’s exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting—one that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie. As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes continue to burn and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic sweeps through the tourist communities, driving them inexorably toward a race war. But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White, a Southern war hero who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. Dubbed “the Tik-Tok Man,” and funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, Bobby White rides the glory of his Special Forces record to an unprecedented run at the White House—one unseen since the campaign of H. Ross Perot. To triumph over the national party machines, Bobby evolves a plan of unimaginable daring. One fateful autumn weekend, with White set to declare his candidacy in all fifty states, the forces polarizing America line up against one another: Black vs. white, states vs. the federal government, democracy vs. Fascism. Teaming with his fearless daughter (now a civil rights lawyer) and a former Black Panther who spent most of his life in Parchman Prison, Penn tears into Bobby White’s pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss. In Southern Man, Greg Iles returns to the riveting style and historic depth that made the Natchez Burning trilogy a searing masterpiece and hurls the narrative fifteen years forward into our current moment—where America itself teeters on the brink of anarchy.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Legal; Literary; Political; Mystery & Detective; Political; Suspense; Crime;
© 2024., HarperCollins,
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