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Midnight in Chernobyl : the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster / by Higginbotham, Adam,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand.
Subjects: Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986.; Nuclear power plants;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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We don't know ourselves : a personal history of modern Ireland / by O'Toole, Fintan,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A celebrated Irish writer's magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O'Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government?in despair, because all the young people were leaving?opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don't Know Ourselves, O'Toole, one of the Anglophone world's most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society-perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O'Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of "deliberate unknowing," which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don't Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; O'Toole, Fintan, 1958-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Random Road : introducing Geneva Chase / by Kies, Thomas,author.;
"It's a crime scene worthy of Hieronymus Bosch, so shocking and so senseless it challenges the local law and intrigues veteran reporter Geneva Chase whose career may be dying alongside that of her small town newspaper. The Sheffield Post headline shouts, "Cops Call Murder Scene Slaughterhouse." On the scene, Genie spurs the Deputy Police Chief to tell her quietly, "Six bodies ... all nude ... hacked to pieces." Even tough Geneva shivers. How could such a slaughter happen on Connecticut's moneyed Gold Coast? To privileged couples inside a historic 1898 Queen Anne mansion on the shoreline of Long Island Sound? Where is the protection afforded by the gated community and the security technology in place? For Geneva, battling alcoholism and bad choices, writing this story is the last chance to redeem herself. She's lost every other major news job she's had. Working at her hometown newspaper is the end of the line - there will be nowhere else to go. But ink still flows thick in her veins. Her story on Sheffield's unlikely killing field is the Post's lead, soon picked up by metro papers, and she keeps it there, exposing the turbulence beneath the rich and entitleds' secrets, their ability to buy off embarrassments. She's also tracking community connections, watching a hit-and-run case disappear through a large donation, interviewing dangerous suspects, visiting a swingers' club, joining cops for a burglary bust, and taking a guided tour to spot history's underwater ghost. All this despite the distractions of the married man she can't quite ditch and the sweet-if-shaky love affair she starts with an old high school sweetheart. Can she keep her drinking under control and do her job well enough to keep from getting fired, finish the story, not further screw up her life? And not get killed? Thomas Kies' gripping first novel with its corkscrew of a plot, asks, "Do things happen for a reason, or is everything random?""--Page [4] of cover.
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Women journalists; Murder; Recovering alcoholics; Rich people;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Always human [graphic novel] / by North, Ari,author,artist.; Pumphrey, Paige,letterer.;
"The future is now. People use technology to enhance their health, minda, and appearances. However a person wants to look or feel, there's a mod for that. Sunati is attracted to Austen the first time she sees her at a train station. She admires Austen's apparent bravery and confidence to live life unmodded. But Austen has the rare Egan's Syndrome, a condition that makes her body reject mods. Gradually, their relationship unfolds as they deal with friends, family, and the emotional conflicts that come with every romance. Together, they will learn and grow in a story that reminds us no matter how technology evolves, we remain ... always human." --Back cover.012+.
Subjects: Science fiction comics.; Lesbian comics.; Graphic novels.; Young women; Lesbians; Body marking; Technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Data baby : my life in a psychological experiment / by Breslin, Susannah,author.;
"What if your parents turn you into a human lab rat when you're a child? Will that change the story of your life? Will that change who you are? When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of over a hundred children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year study of personality development that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in what she feels is an abusive marriage and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped her identity and life choices. Already a successful journalist, she makes her own curious history the subject of her next investigation. From experiment rooms with one-way mirrors, to children's puzzles with no solutions, to condemned basement laboratories, her life-changing journey uncovers the long-buried secrets hidden behind the renowned study. The question at the gnarled heart of her quest: Did the study know her better than she knew herself? At once bravely honest and sharply witty, Data Baby is a compelling and provocative account of a woman's quest to find her true self, and an unblinking exploration of why we turn out as we do. Few people in all of history have been studied from such a young age and for as long as Susannah Breslin, but the message of her book is universal. In an era when so many of us are looking to technology to tell us who to be, it's up to us to discover who we actually are"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Breslin, Susannah; Breslin, Susannah.; Harold E. Jones Child Study Center.; Breast; Child psychology; Human experimentation in psychology; Personality development; Women journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The perennials : the megatrends creating a postgenerational society / by Guillén, Mauro F.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In today's world, the acceleration of megatrends--increasing longevity and the explosion of technology among many others--are transforming life as we now know it. In The Perennials, bestselling author of 2030 Mauro Guillén unpacks a sweeping societal shift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillén argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories and life stages, artificially preventing people from reaching their full potential. A new postgenerational workforce known as "perennials"--individuals who are not pitted against each other either by their age or experience--makes it possible to liberate scores of people from the constraints of the sequential model of life and level the playing field so that everyone has a chance at living a rewarding life. Guillén unveils how this generational revolution will impact young people just entering the workforce as well as those who are living and working longer. This multigenerational revolution is already happening and Mauro Guillén identifies the specific cultural, organizational and policy changes that need to be made in order to switch to a new template and usher in a new era of innovation powered bythe perennials"--
Subjects: Aging; Generations.; Intergenerational relations.; Technological innovations; Aging; Technological innovations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Killers of a certain age / by Raybourn, Deanna,author.;
"Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon. They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn. Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills. When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death. Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman-and a killer-of a certain age"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Assassins; Older women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The dream hotel : a novel / by Lalami, Laila,1968-author.;
"From Laila Lalami-the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a "maestra of literary fiction" (NPR)-comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance. Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom. Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are"--
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Novels.; Algorithms; Dreams; False imprisonment; Government, Resistance to; Women prisoners; Women; Technology;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Terrestrial history : a novel / by Reed, Joe Mungo,author.;
Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah's help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough--and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed's intricately crafted novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars. Roban lives in the Colony, one of the first generation born to this sterile new outpost, where he is consumed by longing for the lost wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face an uncertain future in a world that is falling apart. Andrew is a politician running to be Scotland's First Minister. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, if only he can persuade people to band together. For his starkly rationalist daughter Kenzie, this idealism doesn't offer the hard tools needed to keep the rising floods at bay. And so, she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond--in contravention of all Andrew stands for. In considering which concerns should guide us in a time of crisis--social, technological, or familial--and reckoning with the question of whether there is meaning to be found in the pursuit of salvation beyond success itself, Joe Mungo Reed has written a novel of elegiac wonder and beauty.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Time-travel fiction.; Novels.; Climatic changes; Families; Interpersonal relations; Space colonies; Time travel; Women scientists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Second life : having a child in the digital age / by Hess, Amanda(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references.""Before I was pregnant, I was a person." The long awaited debut memoir about the convergence of parenthood and technology from the beloved New York Times critic. In 2016, when Amanda arrived at the New York Times to become its correspondent for internet culture, a colleague asked her a question that sounded like a riddle: "On the internet, how do you know what's really real?" He had been looking for a literal answer, but Amanda recognized the question as something more profound, an irresolvable provocation that defines the experience of life in the digital age. For more than a decade, Amanda has been on the reality beat, living the contradictions of the internet even as she has tried to make sense of them. But when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, who later received a prenatal diagnosis of Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome -- a genetic disorder -- she was unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis all her own, vulnerable to the world of apps, gadgets, bloggers, online forums, and advertisers, all closing in, telling her what to do and how to feel. They promised that her new life -- and by extension, her child's -- would be so much better if she bought this or that, tried this or that. As the internet sought to remap her body and her mind, Amanda's guiding question became ever more urgent: what is "real life" when creating a life? Second Life is a trenchant look at parenting in early 21st-century America, when humans stopped being raised by villages or even families but rather by a constant onslaught of information. It is a funny, heartbreaking, and surreal examination of fertility apps, the history of ultrasound technologies, prenatal genetic testing, rare disease Facebook groups, baby memes, cultural representations of parenting, gender reveal videos, trendy sleep gurus, "freebirth" influencers, mommy marketers, culminating in a polemic on how to conceive of a real life in the digital age. Page by page, Amanda reveals the unspoken ways that our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology, all through the exacting lens of her intensely personal story"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Hess, Amanda (Journalist); Information society.; Motherhood.; Internet; Pregnant women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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