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Advika and the Hollywood wives / by Ramisetti, Kirthana,author.;
"At age 26, Advika Srinivasan considers herself a failed screenwriter. To pay the bills and keep her mind off of the recent death of her twin sister, she's taken to bartending A-list events, including the 2015 Governors Ball, the official afterparty of the Oscars. There, in a cinematic dream come true, she meets the legendary Julian Zelding--a film producer as handsome as Paul Newman and ten times as powerful--fresh off his fifth best picture win. Despite their 41-year age difference, Advika falls helplessly under his spell, and their evening flirtation ignites into a whirlwind courtship and elopement. Advika is enthralled by Julian's charm and luxurious lifestyle, but while Julian loves to talk about his famous friends and achievements, he smoothly changes the subject whenever his previous relationships come up. Then, a month into their marriage, Julian's first wife--the famous actress Evie Lockhart--dies, and a tabloid reports a shocking stipulation in her will. A single film reel and $1,000,000 will be bequeathed to "Julian's latest child bride" on one condition: Advika must divorce him first. Shaken out of her love fog and still-simmering grief over the loss of her sister--and uneasy about Julian's sudden, inexplicable urge to start a family--Advika decides to investigate him through the eyes and experiences of his exes. From reading his first wife's biography, to listening to his second wife's confessional albums, to watching his third wife's Real Housewives-esque reality show, Advika starts to realize how little she knows about her husband. Realizing she rushed into the marriage for all the wrong reasons, Advika uses the info gleaned from the lives of her husband's exes to concoct a plan to extricate herself from Julian once and for all"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Divorced women; Marriage; May-December romances; Motion picture producers and directors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The idiot / by Batuman, Elif,1977-author.;
"A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself.The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Coming of age; Identity (Psychology); Turkish Americans; Women college students;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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On sex and gender : a commonsense approach / by Coleman, Doriane Lambelet,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."On Sex and Gender focuses on three sequential and consequential questions: What is sex -- as opposed to gender? How does sex matter in our everyday lives? And how should it be reflected in law and policy? All three are front-and-center in American politics: They are included in both of the major parties' political platforms. They are the subject of ongoing litigation in the federal courts and of highly contentious legislation on Capitol Hill. And they are a pivotal issue in the culture war between left and right playing out on battlegrounds from campuses and school boards to op-ed pages and corporate handbooks. Doriane Coleman challenges both sides to chart a new way forward. She argues that denying biological sex would have profound and detrimental effects on women's equal opportunity and on the health and welfare of society generally. Structural sexism needed to be dismantled -- a true achievement of feminism and an ongoing fight -- but sex blindness is not the next step forward. This book is a clear guide for reasonable Americans on the issue of gender and sex -- something everyone is terrified to discuss. Coleman shows equally that the science is settled but there is a middle ground on protecting both women's rights and trans rights. She livens her narrative with a sequence of portraits of exceptional human beings who have fought to advance the cause of equality from legal pioneers like Myra Bradwell and Ketanji Brown Jackson to champion athletes like Caster Semenya and Cate Campbell to civil rights giants like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Pauli Murray. Above all, Coleman reminds us that sex -- the male and the female body -- is good for three reasons. Sex is good for procreation, it's good for sexual pleasure, and it's good for something in our natural lives to be beautiful"--
Subjects: Feminism; Gender identity; Sex (Biology); Sex and law; Women's rights;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Money for nothing : the scientists, fraudsters, and corrupt politicians, who reinvented money, panicked a nation, and made the world rich / by Levenson, Thomas,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Money for Nothing chronicles the moment when the needs of war, discoveries of natural philosophy, and ambitions of investors collided. It's about how the Scientific Revolution intertwined with finance to set England--and the world--off in an entirely new direction. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, England was running out of money due to a prolonged war with France. Parliament tried raising additional funds by selling debt to its citizens, taking in money now with the promise of interest later. It was the first permanent national debt, but still they needed more. They turned to the stock market--a relatively new invention itself--where Isaac Newton's new mathematics of change of time, which he applied to the motions of the planets and the natural world, were fast being applied to the world of money. What kind of future returns could a person expect on an investment today? The Scientific Revolution could help. In the hub of London's stock market--Exchange Alley--the South Sea Company hatched a scheme to turn pieces of the national debt into shares of company stock, and over the spring of 1720 the plan worked brilliantly. Stock prices doubled, doubled again, and then doubled once more, getting everyone in London from tradespeople to the Prince of Wales involved in a money mania that consumed the people, press, and pocketbooks of the empire. Unlike science, though, with its tightly controlled experiments, the financial revolution was subject to trial and error on a grand scale, with dramatic, sometimes devastating consequences for people's lives. With England at war and in need of funds and "stock-jobbers" looking for any opportunity to get in on the action, this new world of finance had the potential to save the nation-- but only if it didn't bankrupt it first"--
Subjects: Debts, Public; Stock exchanges;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The dying citizen : how progressive elites, tribalism, and globalization are destroying the idea of America / by Hanson, Victor Davis,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Most of human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, or tribes. The concept of the "citizen," an idea we take for granted, is historically quite rare-and was, until recently, amongst America's most profoundly cherished ideals. But without shock treatment, warns historian and conservative political commentator Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it for well over two centuries may soon vanish. In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the forces that have brought us to the twilight of American citizenship, and led to the deeply fractured politics of the present era. Over the last half-century, numerous forces from both above and below have conspired to undermine the value we place in the idea of citizenship-and our vigilance in protecting it. To be self-governing, citizens must be economically autonomous, but the evisceration of the middle class and the rise of inequality have made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Citizenship exists within delineated borders-but open borders and the elite concept of "global citizenship" have rendered meaningless the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Citizenship relies on the renunciation of tribal identity in favor of the state, but identity politics have eradicated the idea of a collective civic sense of self. A vastly expanded unelected bureaucracy has overwhelmed the power of elected officials, thereby destroying the sovereign power of the citizen. Progressive academics and activists lay siege to the institutions and traditions of constitutional citizenship. As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 has ripped away our complacency about the future of our most cherished ideals. Americans are forced to confront the fragility of citizenship-indeed, the fragility of our nation. But this calamitous year may also teach Americans to rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours"--
Subjects: Citizenship; Citizenship; Elite (Social sciences); World citizenship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Soot : a novel / by Vyleta, Dan,author.; sequel to:Vyleta, Dan.Smoke.;
The year is 1909. It has been ten years since Thomas Argyle, Charlie Cooper and Livia Naylor set off a revolution by releasing Smoke upon the world. They were raised to think Smoke was a sign of sin manifested, but learned its suppression was really a means of controlling society. Smoke allowed people to mingle their emotions, to truly connect, and the trio thought that freeing the Smoke would bring down the oppressive power structure and create a fair and open society. But the consequences were far greater than they had imagined, and the world has fractured. Erasmus Renfrew, the avowed enemy of Smoke, is now Lord Protector of what remains of the English state. Charlie and Livia live in Minetowns, an egalitarian workers' community in the north of England which lives by Smoke. Thomas Argyle is in India on a clandestine mission to find out the origins of Smoke, and why the still-powerful Company is mounting an expedition in the Himalayas. Mowgli, the native whose body was used to trigger the tempest that unleashed the Smoke, now calls himself Nils and is a chameleon-like thief living in New York. And Eleanor Renfrew, Erasmus' niece who was the subject of his cruel experiments in suppressing Smoke, is in hiding from her uncle in provincial Canada. What she endured has given her a strange power over Smoke, which she fears as much as her uncle. Believing her uncle's agents have found her, she flees to New York with a theater troupe led by Balthazar Black, an impresario with secrets of his own. There they encounter Nils and a Machiavellian Company man named Smith. All these people seek to discover the true nature of Smoke, and thereby control its power. As their destinies entwine, a cataclysmic confrontation looms, and the Smoke will either bind them together or forever rend the world.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Alternative histories (Fiction); Dystopian fiction.; Good and evil; Social conflict; Life change events; Imaginary societies; Aristocracy (Social class);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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One more thing : stories and other stories / by Novak, B. J.,1979-; Novak, B. J.,1979-Short stories.English.;
"Across a range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, Novak's assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving-often at the same time. In One More Thing, a boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes - only to discover that claiming the winnings may unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins - turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A school principal unveils a bold plan to permanently abolish arithmetic. An acclaimed ambulance driver seeks the courage to follow his heart and throw it all away to be a singer-songwriter. Author John Grisham contemplates a monumental typo. A new arrival in heaven, overwhelmed by infinite options, procrastinates over his long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who debate how to stage an intervention in the era of Facebook. We learn why wearing a red t-shirt every day is the key to finding love; how February got its name; and why the stock market is sometimes just ... down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, from the deeply familiar to the intoxicatingly imaginative, One More Thing finds its heart in the most human of phenomena: love, fear, family, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element that might make a person complete. The stories in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Humorous stories.; Short stories.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Bedroom rapper : Cadence Weapon on hip-hop, resistance and surviving the music industry / by Pemberton, Rollie,1986-author.;
Includes bibliographical references.Bedroom Rapper is a book for obsessive music fans who are looking for the definitive take on what's happened in the last two decades of hip hop, from Cadence Weapon, aka Rollie Pemberton: Pitchfork critic, award-winning musician, producer, DJ, and poet laureate. Tracing his roots from recording beats in his mom's attic in Edmonton to performing with some of the most recognizable names in rap and electronic music--De La Soul, Public Enemy, Mos Def, Questlove, Diplo, and more--Polaris Prize winner Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a Cadence Weapon, captures the joy in finding yourself, and how a sense of place and purpose entwines inextricably with a music scene. From competitive basement family karaoke to touring Europe, from fights with an exploitative label to finding his creative voice, from protesting against gentrification to using his music to centre political change, Rollie charts his own development alongside a shifting musical landscape. As Rollie finds his feet, the bottom falls out of the industry, and he captures the way so many artists were able to make a nimble name for themselves while labels floundered. Bedroom Rapper also offers us a wide-ranging and crucial history of hip-hop. With an international perspective that's often missing from rap music journalism, he integrates the gestation of American hip hop with UK grime and niche scenes from the Canadian prairies, bringing his obsessive knowledge of hip-hop to bear on his subject. Rollie takes us into New York in the '70s, Edmonton in the '90s, the legendary Montreal DIY loft scene of the 2000s, and traces the ups and downs of trusting your gut and following your passion, obsessively. With a foreword by Gabriel Szatan, music fans and creators alike will relate to the dedication to craft, obsessive passion for what came before, and desire to shift the future that is embodied in every creative project Rollie takes on.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Cadence Weapon, 1986-; Pemberton, Rollie, 1986-; Rap musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How to change your mind : what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence / by Pollan, Michael,1955-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A brilliant and brave investigation by Michael Pollan, author of five New York Times best sellers, into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences. When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into the experience of various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both struggle and beauty, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Pollan, Michael, 1955-; Hallucinogenic drugs; Psychotherapy patients;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Extremely hardcore : inside Elon Musk's Twitter / by Schiffer, Zoë,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."When Elon Musk took over Twitter, two versions of reality emerged. In one, he was a free-speech crusader, a fearless visionary who could grab back power from Twitter's entitled workforce, motivate them to get "extremely hardcore," and multiply Twitter's profit and potential by orders of magnitude. In the other reality, there was the truth. Pulled from hundreds of hours of inside interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world's online public square into his own personal megaphone. Despite having workers with a decade and a half of experience confronting Twitter's most difficult problems--from massive engineering infrastructure challenges to tricky policy decisions that could sway elections--Musk decided there was only one voice that mattered: his own. You'll hear from those employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace firsthand. There's the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk's inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss's worst instincts, and paid the price. This is the story of Twitter, but it's also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between reckless executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs. Juicy, character-driven, and filled with unbelievable revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It's the next best thing to being there, and you won't have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop"--
Subjects: Musk, Elon.; Twitter (Firm); Internet industry; Online social networks;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 281 to 290 of 316 | « previous |