War
Sebastian Junger - 2010
Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.
The Assassination of Orange: A Foreworld SideQuest
Joseph Brassey - 2013
They can be read in any order with or without prior knowledge of The Foreworld Saga.There’s a bounty out for Prince William of Orange…and “alive” is not an option.The Dutch are trying to free themselves from the Spanish yoke, and the dynamic and charismatic revolutionary, William of Orange, is risking life and limb for the nation he so desperately loves. But when the Spanish monarch offers glory, titles, and twenty thousand crowns for the man who can silence William, the battle for the Netherlands becomes an assassin's game.Celebrated Welsh mercenary Roger Williams is ordered by the crown of England to protect the prince at all costs, and while the Welsh mercenary has many years of battlefield experience, the cat and mouse of political assassination is a much different fight. The enemy is faceless, its tactics are unknown, and there will be little or no warning before the attempt is made. Roger's skills are drawn from the legacy of the Shield-Brethren--the one true art of the sword--and he may be unprepared for the dawning of the age of the gun.A thrilling new tale set in the Renaissance Era of the Foreworld Saga, The Assassination of Orange is an exciting addition written by one of The Mongoliad authors, Joseph Brassey.
The New Geography of Jobs
Enrico Moretti - 2012
An unprecedented redistribution of jobs, population, and wealth is under way in America, and it is likely to accelerate in the years to come. America’s new economic map shows growing differences, not just between people but especially between communities. In this important and persuasive book, U.C. Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti provides a fresh perspective on the tectonic shifts that are reshaping America’s labor market—from globalization and income inequality to immigration and technological progress—and how these shifts are affecting our communities. Drawing on a wealth of stimulating new studies, Moretti uncovers what smart policies may be appropriate to address the social challenges that are arising. We’re used to thinking of the United States in dichotomous terms: red versus blue, black versus white, haves versus have-nots. But today there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs—cities like San Francisco, Boston, Austin, and Durham—with a well-educated labor force and a strong innovation sector. Their workers are among the most productive, creative, and best paid on the planet. At the other extreme are cities once dominated by traditional manufacturing, which are declining rapidly, losing jobs and residents. In the middle are a number of cities that could go either way. For the past thirty years, the three Americas have been growing apart at an accelerating rate. This divergence is one the most important recent developments in the United States and is causing growing geographic disparities is all other aspects of our lives, from health and longevity to family stability and political engagement. But the winners and losers aren’t necessarily who you’d expect. Moretti’s groundbreaking research shows that you don’t have to be a scientist or an engineer to thrive in one of these brain hubs. Among the beneficiaries are the workers who support the "idea-creators"—the carpenters, hair stylists, personal trainers, lawyers, doctors, teachers and the like. In fact, Moretti has shown that for every new innovation job in a city, five additional non-innovation jobs are created, and those workers earn higher salaries than their counterparts in other cities. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. As the global economy shifted from manufacturing to innovation, geography was supposed to matter less. But the pundits were wrong. A new map is being drawn—the inevitable result of deep-seated but rarely discussed economic forces. These trends are reshaping the very fabric of our society. Dealing with this split—supporting growth in the hubs while arresting the decline elsewhere—will be the challenge of the century, and The New Geography of Jobs lights the way.
Empire Games
Charles Stross - 2017
It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence—the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward--has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis—the leader of the American Commonwealth is dying and the vultures are circling. In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Rita, Miriam's estranged daughter, to spy across timelines and bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security. But her handlers are keeping information from her.Two nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies are fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women—a mother and her long-lost, adopted daughter—are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.
The Falsification of History: Our Distorted Reality
John Hamer - 2012
This has been perpetrated by the systematic, ongoing falsification of history in much the same way as perpetrated by the powers that be in the suspiciously prophetic novel ‘1984’, by George Orwell. We have all been deceived on a monumental scale by a tiny clique of people who by their own birthright and bloodlines absolutely believe that they have the divine right to rule over us by whatever method best suits their purposes. In order to achieve this they have lied, deceived, murdered and even committed genocide down the millennia in an attempt to bring their ultimate goal to fruition. Find out about the use of drugs, vaccinations, micro-chipping, mind control, trans-humanism and 24/7 distractions such as non-stop sports, entertainments and the invasive ‘celebrity culture’ that attempts to pervade our whole lives.
The Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33
Hector C. Bywater - 1925
Written 16 years before Pearl Harbor, Bywater, a leading naval authority during the period between the two world wars, prophesied: A Japanese surprise-attack attacks U.S. naval forces in the Pacific while negotiations between the two countries are still in progress. Japanese troops simultaneously invade the Philippines and Guam. Recognizing their limits, the Japanese hold off from any attempt to capture Hawaii. Instead, they retire the main body of their battle fleet and establish a nearly invulnerable web of iron in the Western Pacific!Author Biography: Hector C. Bywater was murdered in 1941
Humanist Manifestos I and II
Paul Kurtz - 1973
Signed by Andrei Sakharov, B.F. Skinner, Corliss Lamont, Betty Friedan, Sir Julian Huxley, Sidney Hook, Jacques Monod, Gunnar Myrdal, and 275 other distinguished leaders of thought and action, it has been hailed as a classic.
Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution
Ken MacLeod - 2008
Against this background, men and women struggle for a better future against the betrayals that went before. Death is sometimes the end, and sometimes something altogether different…This volume comprises The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal.
A Wish a Day for a Week
Amartya Sen - 2014
As he spars with the goddess who is often bemused by his demands, Sen writes of the seven changes he thinks India needs most, from improving the teaching of humanities to abolishing Article 377. Humorous in tone, yet deeply serious in intent, A Wish a Day for a Week is a marvellous essay and an important blueprint for India’s development from one of our great thinkers.
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
Sam Quinones - 2021
to create Dreamland, a groundbreaking portrait of the opioid epidemic that awakened the nation. As the nation struggled to put back the pieces, Quinones was among the first to see the dangers that lay ahead: synthetic drugs and a new generation of kingpins whose product could be made in Magic Bullet blenders. In fentanyl, traffickers landed a painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. They laced it into cocaine, meth, and counterfeit pills to cause tens of thousands of deaths—at the same time as Mexican traffickers made methamphetamine cheaper and more potent than ever, creating, Sam argues, swaths of mental illness and a surge in homelessness across the United States.Quinones hit the road to investigate these new threats, discovering how addiction is exacerbated by consumer-product corporations. “In a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers,” he writes, “our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community.” Amid a landscape of despair, Quinones found hope in those embracing the forgotten and ignored, illuminating the striking truth that we are only as strong as our most vulnerable.Weaving analysis of the drug trade into stories of humble communities, The Least of Us delivers an unexpected and awe-inspiring response to the call that shocked the nation in Sam Quinones’s award-winning Dreamland.
Methodical Illusion
Rebekah Roth - 2014
That morning began to put into focus some of the experiences of Vera’s thirty year airline career, which she had purposely been avoiding. It caused her to look more deeply into the questions surrounding 9/11 that never made sense to a flight attendant, but that no one had seriously investigated.With the help of her pilot friend Jim Bowman, they embark on a cross country journey employing their wisdom, experience and intense research to uncover the mysteries of what really happened to the four airplanes and the people on them that fateful day. Written as a novel, Methodical Illusion has been excruciatingly researched from an insider’s perspective, utilizing proprietary knowledge of airplanes, universal FAA protocols, standardized flight crew procedures and all hijacking policies. The results are the never before revealed answers to the daunting questions everyone has had, but few have dared ask aloud for fear of the repercussions that undoubtedly follow. Rebekah Roth is right on target with her mind blowing research which is guaranteed to open your eyes.
The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe - 1979
Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero." Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne. Chuck Yeager was certainly among the fastest, and his determination to push through Mach 1--a feat that some had predicted would cause the destruction of any aircraft--makes him the book's guiding spirit. Yet soon the focus shifts to the seven initial astronauts. Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley
A Century Of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
F. William Engdahl - 1992
Scandals about oil are familiar to most of us. From George W. Bush's election victory to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US politics and oil enjoy a controversially close relationship. The US economy relies upon the cheap and unlimited supply of this single fuel. William Engdahl takes the reader through a history of the oil industry's grip on the world economy. His revelations are startling.
The Ascent of Everest
John Hunt - 1953
Expedition leader John Hunt's account of the first ascent of Mount Everest's summit in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
South Pole Station
Ashley Shelby - 2017
Cooper Gosling has just answered five hundred of them. Her results indicate she is sufficiently resilient for Polar life. Cooper’s not sure if this is an achievement, but she knows she has nothing to lose. Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, she’s adrift at thirty and—despite her early promise as a painter—on the verge of sinking her career. So she accepts her place in the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program and flees to Antarctica—where she encounters a group of misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. There’s Pearl, the Machiavellian cook with the Pollyanna attitude; Sal, an enigmatic astrophysicist whose experiment might change the world; and Tucker, the only uncloseted man on the continent, who, as station manager, casts a weary eye on all. The only thing the Polies have in common is the conviction that they don’t belong anywhere else. Then a fringe scientist arrives, claiming climate change is a hoax. His presence will rattle this already imbalanced community, bringing Cooper and the Polies to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.A winning comedy of errors set in the world’s harshest place, Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station is a wry and witty debut novel about the courage it takes to band together, even as everything around you falls apart.