Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island. Though the two came from different backgrounds, their all-consuming passion for hip-hop brought them together. Soon they would revolutionize the music industry with their groundbreaking label, Def Jam Records. Def Jam, Inc. traces the company's incredible rise from the NYU dorm room of nineteen-year-old Rubin (where LL Cool J was discovered on a demo tape) to the powerhouse it is today; from financial struggles and scandals-including The Beastie Boys's departure from the label and Rubin's and Simmons's eventual parting-to revealing anecdotes about artists like Slick Rick, Public Enemy, Foxy Brown, Jay-Z, and DMX. Stacy Gueraseva, former editor in chief of Russell Simmons's magazine, Oneworld, had access to the biggest players on the scene, and brings you real conversations and a behind-the-scenes look from a decade-and a company-that turned the music world upside down. She takes you back to New York in the '80s, when late-night spots such as Danceteria and Nell's were burning with young, fresh rappers, and Simmons and Rubin had nothing but a hunch that they were on to something huge. Far more than just a biography of the two men who made it happen, Def Jam, Inc. is a journey into the world of rap itself. Both an intriguing business history as well as a gritty narrative, here is the definitive book on Def Jam-a must read for any fan of hip-hop as well as all popular-culture junkies.

    Now, business journalist Robert Levine shows how they can get back on track. On the Internet, “information wants to be free.” This memorable phrase shaped the online business model, but it is now driving the media companies on whom the digital industry feeds out of business. Today, newspaper stocks have fallen to all-time lows as papers are pressured to give away content, music sales have fallen by more than half since file sharing became common, TV ratings are plum­meting as viewership migrates online, and publishers face off against Amazon over the price of digital books. In Free Ride, Robert Levine narrates an epic tale of value destruction that moves from the corridors of Congress, where the law was passed that legalized YouTube, to the dorm room of Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster; from the bargain-pricing dramas involving iTunes and Kindle to Google’s fateful decision to digitize first and ask questions later. Levine charts how the media industry lost control of its destiny and suggests innovative ways it can resist the pull of zero. Fearless in its reporting and analysis, Free Ride is the busi­ness history of the decade and a much-needed call to action.

    In this iconoclastic book Stuart Sutherland analyses causes of irrationality and examines why we are irrational, the different kinds of irrationality, the damage it does us and the possible cures.

    Russ Roberts argues that the true underlying cause of the mess was the past bailouts of large financial institutions that allowed these institutions to gamble carelessly because they were effectively using other people’s money. The author warns that despite the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is widely believed that we have done nothing to eliminate ‘Too Big to Fail.’ That perception allows the largest financial institutions to continue to gamble with taxpayer money.

    Along the way, we encounter black holes, turtles, snakes, dragons, axe-sharpening, and yak-shaving—and take a guided tour through the theories and methods, both brilliant and misguided, that litter the history of software development, from the famous ‘mythical man-month’ to Extreme Programming. Not just for technophiles but for anyone captivated by the drama of invention, Dreaming in Code offers a window into both the information age and the workings of the human mind.

    His work has successfully shaped the Left, increased government accountability, made possible new laws, and served as a powerful check against abuses of corporate power. In this landmark collection, the essays that reveal the intellectual, social, and political underpinnings of this legendary citizen advocate are brought together for the first time.In The Ralph Nader Reader, we follow the trajectory of Nader's concerns from 1956 to the present and his personal evolution from consumer advocate to presidential candidate. The result is a monumental book, an invaluable resource for anyone interested in a unique vision of democracy that places citizenship over consumerism, communities over corporations, and public interest over private power.

    Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental--it had been masterminded by Thiel.For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem." When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of pageviews and to say the things that others were afraid to say. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit--until it was too late. The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean--for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture?In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious--and successful--secret plots in recent memory.Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after reading these pages--and seeing the access the author was given--no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.

    Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States reveals how entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 CEOs, world-class scientists, a new class of political leaders, and, most important, consumers are driving the burgeoning, unstoppable growth of the "humane economy." Every business grounded on animal exploitation, Pacelle argues, is ripe for disruption. Indeed each one of us is, and will be, touched by this far-reaching transformation in food and agriculture; in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and cosmetics industries; in film, television, and live entertainment; in tourism and wildlife management; in the pet trade for dogs and cats and exotic wildlife; and in fur and leather fashions. Collectively it promises to relieve or end the suffering of billions of creatures, while allowing businesses aligned with the best instincts and values of their customers to flourish. Pacelle shows, for instance, how the cruelties of industrial chicken farming are quickly becoming obsolete with a visit to Hampton Creek, the makers of a plant-based egg substitute and the world's fastest-growing food startup ever. Pacelle also recounts the stories of how established companies are joining in this economic transformation: from Petco and PetSmart, which have turned the conventional pet store model on its head by forswearing puppy mill suppliers in favor of shelter dogs; to John Paul Mitchell Systems, the Body Shop, and Lush, which use safe ingredients instead of animal tests for their cosmetics; to major food retailers like Whole Foods, and even Costco and Walmart, which are embracing animal welfare standards that are one by one unwinding the horrors of the factory farm.

    With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.Part industrial exposé, part meditation on what freedom requires in the information age, The Master Switch is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future.

    With the logic which is the great instrument of French thought, [Ellul] explores and attempts to prove the thesis that propaganda, whether its ends are demonstrably good or bad, is not only destructive to democracy, it is perhaps the most serious threat to humanity operating in the modern world."--Los Angeles Times"The theme of Propaganda is quite simply...that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda... Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book."--Book Week"An exhaustive catalog of horrors. It shows how modern, committed man, surrounded and seized by propaganda, more often than not surrenders himself to it only too willingly, especially in democracies--because he is educated for his rule as dupe. 'The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him,' Ellul writes, 'is when he is alone in the mass; it is at this point that propaganda can be most effective. This is the situation of the 'lonely crowd,' or of isolation in the mass, which is a natural product of modern-day society, which is both used and deepened by the mass media.' "--Los Angeles Free Press

    With humor, compassion, and lots of love, Jill Angie delivers the goods: overcoming the challenges of running with an overweight body and giving individuals’ self-esteem an enormous boost in the process. This isn't a guide to running for weight loss, or a simple running plan. It shows readers how a woman carrying a few (or many) extra pounds can successfully become a runner in the body she has right now. Jill Angie is a certified running coach and personal trainer who wants to live in a world where everyone is free to feel fit and fabulous at any size. She started the Not Your Average Runner movement in 2013 to show that runners come in all shapes, sizes and speeds, and, since then, has assembled a global community of revolutionaries that are taking the running world by storm. If you would like to be part of the revolution, flip to the inside and find out more!

    It draws our attention away from the bright shiny objects of the new colonialism through elucidating the social, material and political dimensions of Artificial Intelligence.”—Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of California, Irvine What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased racial, gender, and economic inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us.    Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

    In this eye-opening exposé, Davies uncovers an industry awash in corruption and bias. His findings include the story of a prestigious Sunday newspaper that allowed the CIA to plant fiction in its columns; the newsroom that routinely rejects stories about black people; the respected paper that hired a professional fraudster to set up a front company to entrap senior political figures; as well as a number of newspapers that pay cash bribes to bent detectives. His research also exposes a range of national stories that were in fact pseudo events manufactured by the public relations industry and global news stories that were fiction generated by a machinery of international propaganda. The degree to which the media industry has affected government policy and perverted popular belief is also addressed. Gripping and thought-provoking, this is an insider’s look at one of the world’s most tainted professions.

    P. Putnam--a feat that would not be duplicated for another forty years. Likewise, while many remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, few are aware that it led to a corresponding explosion in green-technology research that was only derailed when energy prices later dropped.In other words: We've been here before. Although we may have failed, America has had the chance to put our world on a more sustainable path. Americans have, in fact, been inventing green for more than a century.Half compendium of lost opportunities, half hopeful look toward the future, Powering the Dream tells the stories of the brilliant, often irascible inventors who foresaw our current problems, tried to invent cheap and energy renewable solutions, and drew the blueprint for a green future.

    In it you will learn: What is a memory palace? How to build your first couple of memory palace. Learn the one secret to why some information stick to your mind, and other types don't How to easily build up to 15 memory palaces, based on the first two. Building memory palaces based on walks/journeys. How to build virtual memory palaces. How to memorize any fact or information using memory palaces. Unlike other popular books on the subject, like "Moonwalking with Einstein", the book "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" focuses on practical, hands on advice. Information that will get you started making your own memory palaces from day one.  This short, but informative book is virtually packed with information. Tips that simply work. Memory palaces are an ancient, yet somehow forgotten method of memorizing all kinds of information. Before the printing press was invented, content was passed on verbally from person to person. And using the Greek tradition of memory palaces, scholars could store vast amounts of information.  These techniques have seen an increased interest lately, and many people who have been inspired by memory palaces from TV-series like "Sherlock" or books like "Hannibal", want to find a way to easily get started making memory palaces. "How to Build a Mnemonic Memory Palace" literally takes you by the hand and walks you through the process, step by step. And thanks to the many examples, these ancient methods become very clear. In many ways, this book starts where others, like "Moonwalking With Einstein" stop.  Download a sample, or get the set of two books today. Learn how you can use the powerful techniques of memory palaces in order to memorize vitually anything.  A full, practical guide to getting started memorizing all types of information using memory palaces Equally useful for students, as adults Find out the perfect method for memorizing speeches Never forget another keyword