7 Billion: How Your World Will Change


National Geographic Society - 2011
    To mark the event, National Geographic magazine commissioned seven articles that explore the fascinating issues—including demographics, food security, climate change, fertility trends, managing biodiversity—surrounding this topic, which are collected for the first time in this special ebook.   Envi­ronment editor Robert Kunzig starts by sketching out a natural history of population. The issues associated with population growth seem endless: poverty, food and water supply, world health, climate change, deforestation, fertility rates, and more. In additional chapters Elizabeth Kolbert explores a new era—the “Anthropocene,” or the age of man—defined by our massive impact on the planet, which will endure long after our cities have crumbled; and takes us to the Mediterranean, where she delves into issues associated with increasing ocean acidification. In Bangladesh, Don Belt explores how the people of this crowded region can teach us about adapting to rising sea levels. In “Food Ark” we travel deep within the earth and around the globe to explore the seed banks that are preserving the variety of food species we may need to increase food production on an increasingly crowded planet. In Brazil, Cynthia Gournay explores the phenomenon of “Machisma” and shows how a mix of female empowerment and steamy soap operas helped bring down Brazil’s fertility rate and stoke its vibrant economy. Additionally we explore threats to biodiversity, and the return of cities—which may be the solution to many of our population woes. Join National Geographic on this incredible journey to explore our rapidly growing planet.

Front Row at the Trump Show


Jonathan Karl - 2020
    We have never seen a president like this...norm-breaking, rule-busting, dangerously reckless to some and an overdue force for change to others. One thing is clear: We are witnessing the reshaping of the presidency. Jonathan Karl brings us into the White House in a powerful book unlike any other on the Trump administration. He’s known and covered Donald Trump longer than any other White House reporter.  With extraordinary access to Trump during the campaign and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Karl delivers essential new reporting and surprising insights.  These are the behind-the-scenes moments that define Trump’s presidency--an extraordinary look at the president, the person, and those closest to him. This is the real story of Trump’s unlikely rise; of the struggles and battles of those who work in the administration and those who report on it; of the plots and schemes of a senior staff enduring stunning and unprecedented unpredictability. Karl takes us from a TV set turned campaign office to the strange quiet of Trump’s White House on Inauguration Day to a high-powered reelection campaign set to change the country’s course. He shows us an administration rewriting the role of the president on the fly and a press corps that has never been more vital. Above all, this book is only possible because of the surprisingly open relationship Donald Trump has had with Jonathan Karl, a reporter he has praised, fought, and branded an enemy of the people. This is Front Row at the Trump Show.

Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past


James S. Robbins - 2018
     There will be no monuments to American heroes, no stories that will praise them. The United States will have become a dark chapter in human history, best forgotten. In Erasing America: Destroying Our Future by Erasing Our Past (releasing August 21st), James Robbins reveals that the radical Left controls education, the media, and the Democratic party…. and they seek to demean, demolish, and relentlessly attack America’s past in order to control America’s present. This toxic movement has already brainwashed an entire generation and is rapidly changing the cultural, historical, and spiritual bonds of our nation.  American exceptionalism, history, and patriotism are a magnificent legacy, Robbins warns, but to pass it on to our children, we must view the past with understanding, the present with gratitude, and the future with hope. Wondering if it’s really that bad? Here are some facts you’ll learn in Erasing America:   At Yale, residential Calhoun College is being renamed after students complained about the pro-slavery sentiments of John C. Calhoun. In Massachusetts, Simmons College claims saying, “God bless you” is an “Islamophobic microaggression.”  In Virginia, school districts seek to ban To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because parents complained about the racial slurs in the books. Across the country, Christmas songs and movies are labelled as racist and sexist – and banned. In California, a San Francisco school district wants to rename George Washington High School because our first president owned slaves. In Arkansas, a monument engraved with the Ten Commandments was smashed to smithereens by a protester in a Dodge Dart. And in parks and squares across the South, statues of confederate generals and soldiers are disappearing.   Robbins wants you to understand the critical situation in America, and to use Erasing America to equip your fellow Americans against this Leftist propaganda – before it’s too late!

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead


Jim Mattis - 2019
    Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas--and short-sighted thinking--now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars.Mattis divides his book into three parts: Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership. In the first part, Mattis recalls his early experiences leading Marines into battle, when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so that they can own their mission. In the third part, Mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level, where military leaders reconcile war's grim realities with political leaders' human aspirations, where complexity reigns and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic.Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America


Bertram M. Gross - 1980
    The author shows how the chronic problems faced by the U.S. in the late twentieth century require increasing collusions between Big Business and Big Government in order to 'manage' society in the interests of the rich and powerful.This "friendly fascism," Gross argues, will probably lack the dictatorships, public spectacles and overt brutality of the classic varieties of Germany, Italy and Japan, but has at its root the same denial of individual freedoms and democratic rights. No one who cares about the future of democracy can afford to ignore the frightening possibilities of Friendly Fascism.This is certainly a strikingly prescient book for a Trump era.

The Way of Men


Jack Donovan - 2012
    They tell just-so stories to protect their ideology, their religion, their way of life. They look to women for a nod of approval before speaking. They give socially acceptable answers and half-truths.If what they have to say resonates with men, it is only because they manage to hint at the real answer.The real answer is that The Way of Men is The Way of The Gang.Manliness — being good at being a man — isn’t about impressing women. That’s a side effect of manliness.Manliness isn’t about being a good man. There are plenty of bad guys – real jerks –who are manlier than you are, and you know it.Manliness is about demonstrating to other men that you have what it takes to survive tough times.Manliness is about our primal nature. It’s about what men have always needed from each other if they wanted to win struggles against nature, and against other men.The Way of Men describes the four tactical virtues of the survival gang.The Way of Men explains what men want, and why they are rapidly disengaging from our child-proofed modern world.The Way of Men examines the alternatives, and sketches a path out of our “bonobo masturbation society” through a new Dark Age.

Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989


Michael R. Beschloss - 2007
    of full-color photos.

Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300


John Coleman - 1992
    If that is what you believe, then you are in the majority. The conception of a secret, elite group exercising control of every aspect of our lives is beyond our comprehension. Americans are prone to say, "It can't happen here, our Constitution forbids it." That there is such a body, called "The committee of 300," is graphically told in this book. When most people attempt to address our problems, they speak or write about "they"; this book tells precisely who "they" are, and what "TheY" have planned for our future, how "they" have been at war with the American nation for 50 years, a war which we are on the brink of losing, what methods "They" use and exactly how "they" have brainwashed us. If you are Puzzled and perplexed as to why things are occurring that we as a nation don't like yet seem powerless to prevent, why it is that the United States always seems to back the wrong horse, Why the united states is in a depression from which it will not emerge, why our former social and moral values have been turned aside and seemingly buried; if you are confused by the many conspiracy theories, the conSPirators' hierarchy: the committee of 300 will clearly establish that these conditions have been deliberately created to bring us to our knees. Once you have read the applying truths contained in this book, understanding past and present political, economic, social and religious events will no longer be a problem. This powerful account of the forces ranged against the United States, and indeed the entire free world, cannot be ignored.

In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir


Dick Cheney - 2011
    He has been viewed as one of the most powerful vice presidents—secretive, even mysterious, and at the same time opinionated and unflinchingly outspoken. He has been both praised and attacked by his peers, the press, and the public. Through it all, courting only the ideals that define him, he has remained true to himself, his principles, his family, and his country. Now in an enlightening and provocative memoir, a stately page-turner with flashes of surprising humor and remarkable candor, Dick Cheney takes readers through his experiences as family man, policymaker, businessman, and politician during years that shaped our collective history. Born into a family of New Deal Democrats in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney was the son of a father at war and a high-spirited and resilient mother. He came of age in Casper, Wyoming, playing baseball and football and, as senior class president, courting homecoming queen Lynne Vincent, whom he later married. This all-American story took an abrupt turn when he flunked out of Yale University, signed on to build power line in the West, and started living as hard as he worked. Cheney tells the story of how he got himself back on track and began an extraordinary ascent to the heights of American public life, where he would remain for nearly four decades: * He was the youngest White House Chief of Staff, working for President Gerald Ford—the first of four chief executives he would come to know well. * He became Congressman from Wyoming and was soon a member of the congressional leadership working closely with President Ronald Reagan. * He became secretary of defense in the George H. W. Bush administration, overseeing America’s military during Operation Desert Storm and in the historic transition at the end of the Cold War. * He was CEO of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company with projects and personnel around the globe. * He became the first vice president of the United States to serve out his term of office in the twenty-first century. Working with George W. Bush from the beginning of the global war on terror, he was—and remains—an outspoken defender of taking every step necessary to defend the nation. Eyewitness to history at the highest levels, Cheney brings to life scenes from past and present. He describes driving through the White House gates on August 9, 1974, just hours after Richard Nixon resigned, to begin work on the Ford transition; and he portrays a time of national crisis a quarter century later when, on September 11, 2001, he was in the White House bunker and conveyed orders to shoot down a hijacked airliner if it would not divert. With its unique perspective on a remarkable span of American history, In My Time will enlighten. As an intimate and personal chronicle, it will surprise, move, and inspire. Dick Cheney’s is an enduring political vision to be reckoned with and admired for its honesty, its wisdom, and its resonance. In My Time is truly the last word about an incredible political era, by a man who lived it and helped define it—with courage and without compromise.

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama


David Remnick - 2010
    Those familiar with Obama’s own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but now—from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfolding events is without peer—we have a portrait, at once masterly and fresh, nuanced and unexpected, of a young man in search of himself, and of a rising politician determined to become the first African-American president.The Bridge offers the most complete account yet of Obama’s tragic father, a brilliant economist who abandoned his family and ended his life as a beaten man; of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who had a child as a teenager and then built her career as an anthropologist living and studying in Indonesia; and of the succession of elite institutions that first exposed Obama to the social tensions and intellectual currents that would force him to imagine and fashion an identity for himself. Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, David Remnick allows us to see how a rootless, unaccomplished, and confused young man created himself first as a community organizer in Chicago, an experience that would not only shape his urge to work in politics but give him a home and a community, and that would propel him to Harvard Law School, where his sense of a greater mission emerged.Deftly setting Obama’s political career against the galvanizing intersection of race and politics in Chicago’s history, Remnick shows us how that city’s complex racial legacy would make Obama’s forays into politics a source of controversy and bare-knuckle tactics: his clashes with older black politicians in the Illinois State Senate, his disastrous decision to challenge the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000, the sex scandals that would decimate his more experienced opponents in the 2004 Senate race, and the story—from both sides—of his confrontation with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. By looking at Obama’s political rise through the prism of our racial history, Remnick gives us the conflicting agendas of black politicians: the dilemmas of men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and Joseph Lowery, heroes of the civil rights movement, who are forced to reassess old loyalties and understand the priorities of a new generation of African-American leaders.The Bridge revisits the American drama of race, from slavery to civil rights, and makes clear how Obama’s quest is not just his own but is emblematic of a nation where destiny is defined by individuals keen to imagine a future that is different from the reality of their current lives.

Power, Politics And Culture


Edward W. Said - 2001
    In these twenty-nine interviews, Said addresses everything from Palestine to Pavarotti, from his nomadic upbringing under colonial rule to his politically active and often controversial life in America, and reflects on Austen, Beckett, Conrad, Naipaul, Mahfouz and Rushdie as well as fellow critics Bloom, Derrida and Foucault. Said speaks here with his usual candour, acuity and eloquence - confirming that he was in his lifetime among the truly most important intellects of our century.

The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to George W. Bush


Fred I. Greenstein - 2000
    Greenstein has been one of our keenest observers of the modern presidency. Here, he provides a fascinating and instructive account of the qualities that have served well and poorly in the Oval Office, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's first hundred days. Newly expanded, this second edition now covers the momentous events of George W. Bush's administration--from his handling of the events of September 11 to the war with Iraq.Throughout, Greenstein offers a series of bottom-line judgments on each of his twelve subjects and a bold new explanation of why presidents succeed or fail. He surveys each president's record in public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence--and argues that the last is the most important in predicting presidential success.

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America


Cullen Murphy - 2007
    Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warming of imminent collapse.The esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how America might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military, Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of venality in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic though various forms of privatization. He persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside -- two things that are in our power to change.In lively, richly detailed historical stories based on the latest scholarship, the ancient world leaps to life and casts our own contemporary world in a provocative new light.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage


Nicholas Wapshott - 2007
    During their eight overlapping years in office, the U.S. president and the U.K. prime minister worked together to promote lower taxes, deregulation, free trade, and an aggressive stance against the Soviet Union. But according to Nicholas Wapshott, the Reagan/Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Drawing on interviews with those closest to them, as well as on hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, Wapshott depicts a more complex, personal, and sometimes argumentative relationship than has previously been revealed. On the surface they had little in common, in either background or personality. Reagan, the son of the town drunk, used his genial charm to win over his enemies and always focused on the big picture rather than details. Thatcher, the daughter of a strict middle-class shopkeeper, was a hard worker and master of details who would rather be respected than liked. Yet from their very first meeting in 1975, they recognized each other as political soulmates, committed not just to conservative principles but to getting things done. Over the years, they discussed and debated strategies, took strength from each other, celebrated each other�s triumphs, and commiserated with each other�s failures. Wapshott shines new light on this unique friendship and how it changed the world.

Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland


Scott Adams - 2007
    Laugh as Dilbert, a thirty-something electrical engineer and poster boy for the "corporately disenfranchised", battles his blockhead boss, pinhead coworkers, and his cynical, cunning pet, Dogbert. You'll also meet the Boss, every employee's worst nightmare; coworker Wally, who is forever trying to avoid work; Alice, the solo female engineer in Dilbert's department who has been known to rip people's hearts out; and Catbert, the Human Resources Director who likes to tease employees before downsizing them. Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life contains the best of seven years worth of Dilbert comics, organized around familiar workday themes. It's a great gift for graduates who are new to corporate culture, as well as diehard fans who read Dilbert to survive.