rdub's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 16 May 2022 13:01:41 -0700 60 rdub's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math]]> 7901962
Bellos has traveled all around the globe and has plunged into history to uncover fascinating stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest areas of mathematical work today. Taking us into the wilds of the Amazon, he tells the story of a tribe there who can count only to five and reports on the latest findings about the math instinct—including the revelation that ants can actually count how many steps they’ve taken. Journeying to the Bay of Bengal, he interviews a Hindu sage about the brilliant mathematical insights of the Buddha, while in Japan he visits the godfather of Sudoku and introduces the brainteasing delights of mathematical games.

Exploring the mysteries of randomness, he explains why it is impossible for our iPods to truly randomly select songs. In probing the many intrigues of that most beloved of numbers, pi, he visits with two brothers so obsessed with the elusive number that they built a supercomputer in their Manhattan apartment to study it. Throughout, the journey is enhanced with a wealth of intriguing illustrations, such as of the clever puzzles known as tangrams and the crochet creation of an American math professor who suddenly realized one day that she could knit a representation of higher dimensional space that no one had been able to visualize.

Whether writing about how algebra solved Swedish traffic problems, visiting the Mental Calculation World Cup to disclose the secrets of lightning calculation, or exploring the links between pineapples and beautiful teeth, Bellos is a wonderfully engaging guide who never fails to delight even as he edifies. Here’s Looking at Euclid is a rare gem that brings the beauty of math to life.]]> 319 Alex Bellos 1416588256 rdub 0 to-read 4.07 2010 Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math
author: Alex Bellos
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average rating: 4.07
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]]> <![CDATA[Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln]]> 5572634 Winner of the Lincoln Prize

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.]]> 945 Doris Kearns Goodwin rdub 0 to-read 4.54 2005 Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: rdub
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2005
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]]> Ethics 5488559 271 Aristotle rdub 0 to-read 4.00 -350 Ethics
author: Aristotle
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average rating: 4.00
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]]> A Long Way Gone 8315374 In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life."Why did you leave Sierra Leone?""Because there is a war.""You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?""Yes, all the time.""Cool."I smile a little."You should tell us about it sometime.""Yes, sometime."This is how wars are fought by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.]]> 244 Ishmael Beah rdub 0 to-read 4.29 2007 A Long Way Gone
author: Ishmael Beah
name: rdub
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2007
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]]> A Theory of Justice 129237
Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.]]> 824 John Rawls 0674017722 rdub 0 to-read 3.95 1971 A Theory of Justice
author: John Rawls
name: rdub
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1971
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]]> Anarchy, State, and Utopia 479572 It won the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" (1945�1995) by the U.K. Times Literary Supplement.]]> 367 Robert Nozick 0465097200 rdub 0 to-read 3.75 1974 Anarchy, State, and Utopia
author: Robert Nozick
name: rdub
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1974
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]]> Little Bee 6948436
Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it so we will just say this:

This is the story of two women.

Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice.

Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.]]> 271 Chris Cleave 1416589643 rdub 0 3.76 2008 Little Bee
author: Chris Cleave
name: rdub
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
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]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man]]> 6215089 118 James Weldon Johnson rdub 0 4.23 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
author: James Weldon Johnson
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average rating: 4.23
book published: 1912
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]]> <![CDATA[Discourse on the Origin of Inequality]]> 6392034 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, a strikingly original inquiry into much-explored issues of 18th-century (and subsequent) philosophy: human nature and the best form of government.

Rousseau takes an innovative approach by introducing a "hypothetical history" that presents a theoretical view of people in a pre-social condition and the ensuing effects of civilization. In his sweeping account of humanity's social and political development, the author develops a theory of human evolution that prefigures Darwinian thought and encompasses aspects of ethics, sociology, and epistemology. He concludes that people are inevitably corrupt as a result of both natural (or physical) inequalities and moral (or political) inequalities.

One of the most influential works of the Enlightenment, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality offers a thought-provoking account of society's origins and a keen criticism of unequal modern political institutions.]]> 142 Jean-Jacques Rousseau rdub 0 to-read 3.90 1755 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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average rating: 3.90
book published: 1755
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]]> Emancipation Proclamation 8454621 28 Abraham Lincoln rdub 0 4.47 1863 Emancipation Proclamation
author: Abraham Lincoln
name: rdub
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1863
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]]> Leviathan 6416766 836 Thomas Hobbes rdub 0 to-read 3.78 1651 Leviathan
author: Thomas Hobbes
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average rating: 3.78
book published: 1651
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]]> The Souls of Black Folk 8159728 Enduring Liturature Illuminated by Practical Scholarship

A revolutionary collection of essays about the African-American experience at the turn of the twentieth century.

This Enriched Classic Edition includes:

• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information

• A chronology of the author's life and work

• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations

• Detailed explanatory notes

• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson

]]> 127 W.E.B. Du Bois rdub 0 4.41 1903 The Souls of Black Folk
author: W.E.B. Du Bois
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average rating: 4.41
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]]> Utopia 6463164 130 Thomas More rdub 0 to-read 3.86 1516 Utopia
author: Thomas More
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average rating: 3.86
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]]> The Republic 8296331 709 Plato rdub 0 to-read 4.14 -400 The Republic
author: Plato
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]]> Civil Disobedience 18626866 33 Henry David Thoreau rdub 0 to-read 3.96 1849 Civil Disobedience
author: Henry David Thoreau
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average rating: 3.96
book published: 1849
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]]> Apology 8340956
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.]]> 44 Plato rdub 0 to-read 4.19 -399 Apology
author: Plato
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average rating: 4.19
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]]> Politics 6266990 286 Aristotle rdub 0 to-read 4.02 -350 Politics
author: Aristotle
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]]> <![CDATA[Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Texts in the History of Philosophy)]]> 6394975 The finest single-volume introduction to Kant's ethics available in English. --PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, on the H. J. Paton translation

Considered one of the most profound, influential, and important works of world philosophy, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals introduces his famous Categorical Imperative and lays down a foundation for all of Immanuel Kant's writings. In it, Kant illuminates the basic concept that is central to his moral philosophy and, in fact, to the entire field of modern ethical thought: the Categorical Imperative, the supreme principle of morality, stating that all decisions should be made based on what is universally acceptable. Featuring the renowned translation and commentary of Oxford's H. J. Paton, this volume has long been considered the definitive English edition of Kant's classic text. Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Paton writes in his preface, is one of the small books which is truly great: it has exercised on human thought an influence almost ludicrously disproportionate to its size.]]> Immanuel Kant rdub 0 to-read 3.95 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Texts in the History of Philosophy)
author: Immanuel Kant
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book published: 1785
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]]> 18626857 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the Strand magazine, in which they were first published, and won immense popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The detective is at the height of his powers and the volume is full of famous cases, including 'The Red-Headed League', 'The Blue Carbuncle', and 'The Speckled Band'.
The editor of this volume, Richard Lancelyn Green is editor of The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes and The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. With John Michael Gibson, he compiled the Soho Series Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle.
1. A Scandal In Bohemia
2. The Red-Headed League
3. A Case Of Identity
4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
5. The Five Orange Pips
6. The Man With The Twisted Lip
7. The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle
8. The Adventure Of The Speckled Band
9. The Adventure Of The Engineer's Thumb
10. The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor
11. The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet
12. The Adventure Of The Copper Beaches]]> 104 Arthur Conan Doyle rdub 0 4.35 1892 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: rdub
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1892
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]]> Utilitarianism 6416765 Utilitarianism includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.]]> John Stuart Mill rdub 0 to-read 3.83 1861 Utilitarianism
author: John Stuart Mill
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average rating: 3.83
book published: 1861
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]]> <![CDATA[The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigrationâ€� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 rdub 0 currently-reading 4.45 2010 The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: rdub
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
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]]> The Help 6588662 Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step . . .
Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back. Her friend Minny has certainly never held her tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. And white socialite Skeeter has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother's lament, no husband. Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared.

Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town—to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women unite with one intention: hope for a better day.

Includes an essay by Katherine Stockett and a Reading Group Guide]]> 534 Kathryn Stockett 0425232204 rdub 0 currently-reading 4.47 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
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average rating: 4.47
book published: 2009
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession]]> 20012264 376 Stephen M. Best 0226241114 rdub 0 currently-reading 0.0 2004 The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession
author: Stephen M. Best
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average rating: 0.0
book published: 2004
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]]> <![CDATA[Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America]]> 17860697 Devil in the Grove is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.â€�

And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,â€� into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terrorâ€� at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”]]> 464 Gilbert King rdub 0 currently-reading 4.47 2012 Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
author: Gilbert King
name: rdub
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
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]]> The Kite Runner 6066095 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B000OCXGZA

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, bringing to mind the large canvases of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century. But just as it is old-fashioned in its narration, it is contemporary in its subject—the devastating history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years. As emotionally gripping as it is tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini rdub 0 to-read 4.46 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: rdub
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2003
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]]> The King of Colored Town 13163076 Winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction (2007)

There are good people and bad on both sides of the tracks that divide Laureate from ‘Colored Townâ€�. Our instruction in that hard truth comes as we follow two African American teens, Cilla Handsom and Joe Billy King, as they endure the backlash resulting from the integration of their segregated school with the all-white school run by Lafayette County’s all-white school board. The issue of the education of Laureate’s children will expose hatreds on both sides of the color divide. Cilla will emerge from her ordeal carrying scars and grace to become a widely traveled classical musician. Joe Billy will be found hanging from the bars of his cell in a Florida penitentiary. Their moving, intertwined dramas put courage, cowardice, loyalty and betrayal side by side in an eloquent, evocative narrative where the demons and angels of a time and place are portrayed in black and white.]]> 367 Darryl Wimberley 1612189148 rdub 0 to-read 4.09 2007 The King of Colored Town
author: Darryl Wimberley
name: rdub
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2007
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]]> Doc: A Memoir 17598999
With fresh and sober eyes, Dwight Gooden shares the most intimate moments of his successes and failures, from endless self-destructive drug binges to three World Series rings. Known for his triumphs on the baseball field and his excesses off of it, Gooden was a soft-spoken, dominating wunderkind who tallied a mountain of strikeouts while leading the 1986 bad-boy New York Mets to a World Series win. Even at that pinnacle, Gooden had already succumbed to a cocaine addiction that would short-circuit his career and personal life.

Gooden’s story transcends baseball, from his childhood in Tampa raised by a father who was an alcoholic womanizer, to the recent experience of overcoming his own demons on the show Celebrity Rehab. Along the way, Gooden offers a unique perspective on Yankees owner and stalwart supporter George Steinbrenner and some of the greatest baseball players of all time. Doc is the definitive look at a life equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking.]]> 285 Dwight Gooden 1477850473 rdub 0 to-read 4.03 2013 Doc: A Memoir
author: Dwight Gooden
name: rdub
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
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]]> Black Boy 6582864
Black Boy is Richard Wright's powerful account of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. It is at once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment—a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering.]]> 274 Richard Wright rdub 0 4.21 1945 Black Boy
author: Richard Wright
name: rdub
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1945
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]]> <![CDATA[Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking]]> 10313931 The book that started the Quiet Revolution

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content]]> 370 Susan Cain rdub 0 currently-reading 4.15 2012 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
author: Susan Cain
name: rdub
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
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]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks]]> 8114303 Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley

 ]]> 310 Rebecca Skloot rdub 0 4.24 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: rdub
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2010
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]]> Their Eyes Were Watching God 6522048
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.]]> 256 Zora Neale Hurston rdub 0 4.20 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: rdub
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1937
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]]> War and Peace 9938317 1852 Leo Tolstoy rdub 0 to-read 4.44 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: rdub
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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]]>