Even in this nondescript settlement, people receive money via mobile transfer from family members working in distant cities. There are computer training centres offering diploma courses in Bhojpuri, Hindi and English. Here is an example of India's numerous remote towns that have skipped the stage of basic learning and landed straight into digital literacy as they strive to keep up with the times.In his last book, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, writing with Srijan Pal Singh, draws upon examples ranging from entrepreneurship in places like Badshahpur to a sophisticated missile programme like Agni to show how it can be 'Advantage India' in the final lap of the journey to 2020--the landmark year by which he had envisioned the country could transform into an economic power. How can the new initiatives--such as Make in India, Swachh Bharat, smart cities and skill development for the youth--be used to unleash the country's vast potential?Advantage India offers the answer--a movement driven by every home and school to educate the new generation and give a fresh meaning to citizenship.

    Investigating everything from jails to ad campaigns, philanthropy to schools, the randomistas are building evidence and busting myths.Randomised tests are carried out on us every day: by supermarkets, search engines, online dating sites and direct marketers. Political parties use randomised trials to win elections. But how do these tests work? Are there any ethical issues? And what do they reveal about our choices?In Randomistas, Andrew Leigh tells the stories of radical researchers who overturned conventional wisdom in medicine, politics, economics, law enforcement and more. From finding the cure to scurvy to discovering what policies really improve literacy rates, randomistas have shaped life as we know it – but they often had to fight to conduct their trials and have their findings implemented.In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Randomistas is a brilliant and entertaining exploration of a hidden but vital foundation of modern life.

    One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine).For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world's dominant hoarder of zero days. U.S. government agents paid top dollar-first thousands, and later millions of dollars- to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence. Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market. Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down.Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.

    In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

    Renaming the country Democratic Kampuchea, they cut the nation off from the world and began systematically killing and starving two million of their people.Thirty years after their fall, a man named Duch (pronounced "Doïk"), who had served as Chief Prison officer of S21, the regime's central prison complex, stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Unlike any other tribunal defendant, Duch acknowledged his personal responsibility, pleaded guilty, and asked for forgiveness from his victims. In The Master of Confessions, Thierry Cruvellier uses the trial to tell the horrifying story of this terrible chapter in history.Cruvellier offers a psychologically penetrating, devastating look at the victims, the torturers, and the regime itself, searching to answer crucial questions about culpability. Self-drawing on his knowledge, and experience, Cruvellier delivers a startling work of journalistic history—by turns deeply moving, horrifying, and darkly funny.

    In that moment, she understood the nature of her life: an outlier."In 1883, a young Chinese woman is sold by her father to human traffickers and forcibly taken from her family and home in the mountains of Hunan. Facing brutality and deprivation, Ya Zhen must forge within herself a core of strength that will allow her to survive. Her journey ends thousands of miles and a continent away when she’s purchased in San Francisco as an indentured prostitute and taken to Eureka, a rugged and remote area of coastal California. This fledgling outpost—a coarse place filled with lumber mills, brothels, churches, and saloons—is bounded by ocean on one side and heavy redwood forests everywhere else.In Eureka, another woman, Rose Allen, doesn’t quite fit in. Big-hearted, but hard-headed and outspoken, Rose struggles against the prejudices and social expectations of her Victorian neighbors and acquaintances—especially after she falls in love with the Chinese shopkeeper, Bai Lum. When she learns that several Chinese women are kept as virtual slaves at Salyer’s Hotel, Rose joins forces with a small group of friends who are determined to help Ya Zhen escape her grim incarceration. But even as they devise a plan to get her free, a terrible accident precipitates the upheaval of the entire town, and tension mounts as the clock begins ticking for everyone.With a rich cast of unforgettable characters both fictional and historical, Chasing Down the Moon is based on true events that tore a community apart. This gripping historical fiction and literary love story will break your heart, give you reason to hope, and ultimately make you believe in the resilience of the human spirit.

    As crack cocaine use surged, dealers claimed territory through intimidation and murder, while families were fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the era’s most notorious gangs, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough and the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence.Drawing on years of research and extraordinary access to gang leaders, law enforcement, and federal prosecutors, Green delivers an engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers a unique perspective on the violence raging in modern-day America and the battle to end it.

    And in the process it provides the outsider with a riveting insight into life as a Member.

    In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to the explosion of the mobile web; from AOL and the invention of email to the attention monopolies of Google and Facebook; from Ed Sullivan to celebritypower brandslike Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your consideration, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Wu describes the revolts that have risen against the relentless siege of our awareness, from the remote control to the creation of public broadcasting to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants are always growing new heads, even as their means of getting inside our heads are changing our very nature--cognitive, social, political and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.

    The story follows her journey from 1978 to '89. She experiences a childhood surrounded by love, death, poverty, and beautiful nature. Vanessa discovers music to express her joy and grief. She puts her soul into the music notes melting her listeners’ hearts. Music brings her into the larger world and on a journey to a surprise discovery. Discover the Taiwanese culture in this heart touching and uplifting story.

    ....The world can be a scary place to navigate when you’re brain damaged. Even scarier when you aren't entirely sure what you might have done during a blackout while your alternate personality is running around in your body. My wife calls him ‘The other one’. If you can’t trust your own eyes or the people around you, sometimes it pays to take a leap of faith. I have, I stopped taking my little pink pill. I wonder what will happen?... Flynn was on a bus in London that was attacked by a suicide bomber. He lost his fingers in the explosion and gained left frontal lobe damage to his brain, leading to violent mood swings, blackouts, suicidal thoughts, and psychopathic tendencies. Flynn’s doctor determines that the left frontal lobe syndrome has left him with symptoms similar to schizophrenia, which develop a secondary personality during times of stress. Flynn and his wife refer to this secondary personality as ‘the other one’. However, after he is given a little pink pill by his doctor, an anti-psychotic pill normally reserved for schizophrenics, his moods level out to the point that he can function almost normally again, apart from the fact that the pink pill leaves him feeling emotionally numb. He is relatively content with his new life, after all, thanks to the pink pill, he can’t feel enough to care anyway. Until he decides to stop taking the pink pill in an effort to feel things again. He wonders if he can fool everyone around him into thinking that he is still taking the little pink pill, whilst in reality starting to live a double life. After a chance meeting with another patient during his hospital appointment, he befriends Sid, who also suffers with schizophrenia. The two embark on a sometimes humorous journey of twists and turns in an effort just to stay in what they believe to be a state of equilibrium. The only problem is, neither of them knows if what they perceive is real or not. Especially when experiments with LSD get thrown into the mix. Flynn also has a worrying eye on the news, as more and more people seem to be going missing, and he can’t be certain if he, Sid or any of their ‘other’ selves may have played a hand in it. Please note this novel contains strong language.

    But the last major nation under Communist rule also has a history of catastrophe and tragedy, tyranny and repression, abject poverty, unfair business practice and inherent corruption under a nebulous system of leadership, and now faces environmental degradation and a demographic time bomb.In this compelling and lucid account based on years of research and first-hand experience, Jonathan Fenby links together the myriad features of today's China. He delivers a unique and coherent picture of its essence and evolution and contemplates its future - both alone and connected to the world around it.

    Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it.The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches.Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He brings his bestseller up-to-date with a new preface covering the latest developments, and then shows us exactly what we can do to reform government surveillance programs, shake up surveillance-based business models, and protect our individual privacy. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

    It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA which later backfired on the United States.Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret U.S. relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and newly updated to include recent developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling but dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries.

    A lively, idiosyncratic, witty look at what is at the heart of our political process by a man who has crossed over from observer to activist, to become one of our newest members of parliament.