Michael's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:57:15 -0700 60 Michael's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself]]> 11710522 An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog, youarenotsosmart.com.

You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. But that's OK-delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework. Collecting more than sixty of the lies we tell ourselves every day, McRaney has produced a fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge psychology research to turn our minds inside out.

You Are Not So Smart covers a wide range of topics drawn from all aspects of life, such as coffee (it doesn't stimulate you; it's just a cure for caffeine withdrawal), placebo buttons (those fake thermostats and crosswalk knobs that give us the illusion of control), hindsight bias (when we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along), confirmation bias (our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions), and brand loyalty (we reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it). Packed with interesting sidebars and quick guides on cognition and common fallacies, You Are Not So Smart is infused with humor and wit.



]]> 320 David McRaney 1101545356 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2011 You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
author: David McRaney
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Death's End (Remembrance of Earth's Past)]]> 126115440
Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early twenty-first century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> Cixin Liu Michael 0 4.41 2010 Death's End (Remembrance of Earth's Past)
author: Cixin Liu
name: Michael
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Michael 0 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Michael 0 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Michael
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation]]> 818517
Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period.

The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie — and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.]]> 352 Alexei Yurchak 0691121176 Michael 0 to-read 4.13 2005 Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation
author: Alexei Yurchak
name: Michael
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State]]> 52198 An eternal being created human society as it is today, and submission to superiors and authority is imposed on the lower classes by divine will. This suggestion, coming from the pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation.

The history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication of Bachofen's Mutterrecht (maternal law) Engles makes the following propositions:

1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism.

2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law; and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity.

3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), according to Bachofen's idea.

4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of the primeval religious law (i.e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time.

]]> 220 Friedrich Engels 0898754690 Michael 0 to-read 4.15 1884 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Michael
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1884
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Michael 1 dogshit
Over a decade on, and I resent this book for the hours it stole and the reflexive praise it still draws.]]> 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Michael
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 1
read at: 2009/12/13
date added: 2021/01/13
shelves: dogshit
review:
I powered through tangles of self-satisfied prose, rushed the exit, and found only a firmer skepticism of "essential works." It reads like an inescapable conversation about wine tasting.

Over a decade on, and I resent this book for the hours it stole and the reflexive praise it still draws.
]]> <![CDATA[The True “Drama of the Gifted Child�: The Phantom Alice Miller � The Real Person]]> 39926924
It's also my history because I describe, how it is when you are faced, as a child and in second generation, with the not coped post-war trauma of your parents.

Alice Miller created a mother image in her books she never complied. My book shows what happens when you do not overcome your traumas and you pass them on the next generation.

The book is also a concrete application of Alice Miller’s theory. It shows how you can overcome the terrible legacy of your parents in a therapeutical way.

I can release myself of the filial involvement with my parents by having elaborated my own biography.]]> 202 Martin Miller Michael 0 to-read 4.34 2013 The True “Drama of the Gifted Child”: The Phantom Alice Miller — The Real Person
author: Martin Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting]]> 386697 240 Alice Miller 0393328635 Michael 0 to-read 3.96 2004 The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
author: Alice Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C.]]> 701704 Lunsford Lane 1429729414 Michael 0 to-read 3.00 1842 The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C.
author: Lunsford Lane
name: Michael
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1842
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,� written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,� The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.]]> 106 James Baldwin 067974472X Michael 5 4.55 1963 The Fire Next Time
author: James Baldwin
name: Michael
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/07/18
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]]> Bartleby the Scrivener 114230 Moby-Dick�Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?

The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.]]> 64 Herman Melville 0974607800 Michael 4 3.91 1853 Bartleby the Scrivener
author: Herman Melville
name: Michael
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1853
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays]]> 11987 212 Albert Camus Michael 0 4.23 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
author: Albert Camus
name: Michael
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo]]> 197451
Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.]]> 208 Oscar Zeta Acosta 0679722130 Michael 5 3.94 1972 The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
author: Oscar Zeta Acosta
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/06/23
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review:

]]> Are Prisons Obsolete? 108428
In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.]]> 128 Angela Y. Davis 1583225811 Michael 5 class-war 4.53 2003 Are Prisons Obsolete?
author: Angela Y. Davis
name: Michael
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/06/13
shelves: class-war
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers, #1)]]> 10878 Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers� is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.

Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,� which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful �60s and �70s.]]> 624 Hunter S. Thompson 0743250451 Michael 4 4.09 1979 The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers, #1)
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/13
date added: 2020/01/13
shelves:
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]]> Exiting the Vampire Castle 39682816
‘Left-wing� Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out� and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear. The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to attract their attention to me.]]> 10 Mark Fisher Michael 0 4.06 2013 Exiting the Vampire Castle
author: Mark Fisher
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/08
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades]]> 1788406 330 Nega Mezlekia 014305306X Michael 0 to-read 3.59 2006 The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades
author: Nega Mezlekia
name: Michael
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The God Who Begat a Jackal: A Novel]]> 1517308
Nega Mezlekia's memoir Notes from the Hyena's Belly was described in the New York Times Book Review as "the most riveting book about Ethiopia since Ryszard Kapuscinski's literary allegory The Emperor and the most distinguished African literary memoir since Soyinka's Aké appeared 20 years ago." Mezlekia now offers a first novel steeped in African folklore and teeming with the class, ethnic and religious struggles of pre-colonial Africa. In The God Who Begat a Jackal, the 17th-century feudal system, vassal uprisings, religious mythology, and the Crusades are intertwined with the love between Aster, the daughter of a feudal lord, and Gudu, the court jester and family slave. Aster and Gudu's relationship is the ultimate taboo, but supernatural elements presage a destiny more powerful than the rule of man. With Mezlekia's enchanting storytelling and ironic humor, readers glimpse African deities that have long since weathered away and the social cleavages that have endured through time.]]> 256 Nega Mezlekia 0312287011 Michael 0 to-read 3.52 2001 The God Who Begat a Jackal: A Novel
author: Nega Mezlekia
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bell Jar 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Michael 2
"She must be a fucking dyke!" he might mumble bitterly in a parallel universe version of the show that wasn't as sanitized as a freshly minted Q-Tip.

Ultimately, Sally learns her lesson, and sabotages her own car so the random-ass dude can fumble his way to her rescue -- an indictment of the culture itself the writers were probably too stupid to recognize. The moral of the story, oh this enlightened second half of the century, was that while women could very well be seen as persons unto themselves, they'd really rather not be. As stupid as using one pop reference for contrast makes me sound, it does illustrate the image of the world I imagine (at least in mainstream middlebrow culture) the author beating her head against.

The attention to tone is meticulous. The arrogance of the first chapters, that nearly put me off bothering to finish the book, seems completely essential to what follows. The world itself is, if not openly hostile, indifferent to what she wants to do with her life. Her disappointment then turns inward, and one by one she loses hold of the youthful certainties that defined her. What remains?

Insidiously, what drives the heroine to madness and withdrawal can be recognized, if faintly, in any of the roles to which we're passively lead -- if we find we don't want them. Even worse if we can't think of an alternative.]]> 4.05 1963 The Bell Jar
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at: 2009/04/27
date added: 2019/06/19
shelves:
review:
For some reason, I'm reminded of an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show called "Sally is a Girl." Loud, husky-voiced comedy writer, Sally Rogers, has dinner at Rob and Laura Petrie's house for another hapless match up with some random-ass dude. Her co-workers, Rob and Buddy don't, by the writer's standard, "know better" than to regard Sally as they do at work: someone who can hold her own in a verbal sparring match. Their jokes egg Sally on, and once she gets into it, making fun of herself and laughing without reservation, the random-ass dude gets all weirded out and butt-hurt because she's not instinctively cowing to the dimensionless caricatures he keeps as social ideals.

"She must be a fucking dyke!" he might mumble bitterly in a parallel universe version of the show that wasn't as sanitized as a freshly minted Q-Tip.

Ultimately, Sally learns her lesson, and sabotages her own car so the random-ass dude can fumble his way to her rescue -- an indictment of the culture itself the writers were probably too stupid to recognize. The moral of the story, oh this enlightened second half of the century, was that while women could very well be seen as persons unto themselves, they'd really rather not be. As stupid as using one pop reference for contrast makes me sound, it does illustrate the image of the world I imagine (at least in mainstream middlebrow culture) the author beating her head against.

The attention to tone is meticulous. The arrogance of the first chapters, that nearly put me off bothering to finish the book, seems completely essential to what follows. The world itself is, if not openly hostile, indifferent to what she wants to do with her life. Her disappointment then turns inward, and one by one she loses hold of the youthful certainties that defined her. What remains?

Insidiously, what drives the heroine to madness and withdrawal can be recognized, if faintly, in any of the roles to which we're passively lead -- if we find we don't want them. Even worse if we can't think of an alternative.
]]> The Myth of Sisyphus 42113389 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.]]> 155 Albert Camus 0525567003 Michael 0 4.12 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus
author: Albert Camus
name: Michael
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at: 2018/10/27
date added: 2018/11/30
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.

His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]> 419 Jonathan Haidt Michael 0 4.18 2012 The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Michael
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble]]> 26030703 Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?

HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

Mixed in with Lyons's uproarious tale of his rise and fall at Hubspot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out.

With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and "wantrapreneurs," bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.]]> 272 Dan Lyons 0316306088 Michael 0 3.84 2016 Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
author: Dan Lyons
name: Michael
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker]]> 10256723 If they were a hall of fame or shame for computer hackers, a Kevin Mitnick plaque would be mounted the near the entrance. While other nerds were fumbling with password possibilities, this adept break-artist was penetrating the digital secrets of Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation, Nokia, Motorola, Pacific Bell, and other mammoth enterprises. His Ghost in the Wires memoir paints an action portrait of a plucky loner motivated by a passion for trickery, not material game. (P.S. Mitnick's capers have already been the subject of two books and a movie. This first-person account is the most comprehensive to date.)

]]> 413 Kevin D. Mitnick 0316037702 Michael 0 3.94 2011 Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker
author: Kevin D. Mitnick
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Universe in a Nutshell 2095
Now, in a major publishing event, Hawking returns with a lavishly illustrated sequel that unravels the mysteries of the major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his acclaimed first book.]]> 216 Stephen Hawking 055380202X Michael 0 4.20 2001 The Universe in a Nutshell
author: Stephen Hawking
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at: 2018/10/26
date added: 2018/10/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Man's Search for Meaning 1044863 (back cover)]]> 221 Viktor E. Frankl 067166736X Michael 0 4.31 1946 Man's Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Michael
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at: 2018/10/28
date added: 2018/10/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything]]> 1202
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)]]> 268 Steven D. Levitt 0061234001 Michael 0 4.01 2005 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Michael
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/26
shelves: to-read, wanted-to-read-probably-won-t
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Michael 0 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Michael
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/26
shelves: to-read, wanted-to-read-probably-won-t
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch]]> 14185
Cover illustration: Chris Moore]]> 231 Philip K. Dick 1407247425 Michael 0 4.02 1965 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Michael
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer]]> 827 The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence.]]> 499 Neal Stephenson 0553380966 Michael 0 4.17 1995 The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason]]> 38531606 Instant New York Times bestseller “Howard Zinn on acid or some bullsh*t like that.� —Tim Heidecker The creators of the cult-hit podcast Chapo Trap House deliver a manifesto for everyone who feels orphaned and alienated—politically, culturally, and economically—by the lanyard-wearing Wall Street centrism of the left and the lizard-brained atavism of the there is a better way, the Chapo Way.In a guide that reads like “a weirder, smarter, and deliciously meaner version of The Daily Show’s 2004 America (The Book)� (Paste), Chapo Trap House shows you that you don’t have to side with either sinking ships. These self-described “assholes from the internet� offer a fully ironic ideology for all who feel politically hopeless and prefer broadsides and tirades to reasoned debate. Learn the “secret� history of the world, politics, media, and everything in-between that THEY don’t want you to know and chart a course from our wretched present to a utopian future where one can post in the morning, game in the afternoon, and podcast after dinner without ever becoming a poster, gamer, or podcaster. A book that’s “as intellectually serious and analytically original as it is irreverent and funny� (Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author of No Place to Hide) The Chapo Guide to Revolution features illustrated taxonomies of contemporary liberal and conservative characters, biographies of important thought leaders, “never before seen� drafts of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom manga, and the ten new laws that govern Chapo Year Zero (everyone gets a dog, billionaires are turned into Soylent, and logic is outlawed). If you’re a fan of sacred cows, prisoners being taken, and holds being barred, then this book is NOT for you. However, if you feel disenfranchised from the political and cultural nightmare we’re in, then Chapo, let’s go…]]> 322 Chapo Trap House Michael 0 to-read 3.91 2018 The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason
author: Chapo Trap House
name: Michael
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/04/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures]]> 20863042 232 Mark Fisher Michael 0 to-read 3.98 2014 Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
author: Mark Fisher
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/04/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex]]> 34220713 The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built.
In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project.
A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.
But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.
With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.]]> 384 Yasha Levine 1610398025 Michael 0 to-read 4.26 2018 Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex
author: Yasha Levine
name: Michael
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/01/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad]]> 222255 214 Renny Golden 0883444402 Michael 0 currently-reading 4.14 1986 Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad
author: Renny Golden
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]]> 36529
An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.]]> 158 Frederick Douglass 1580495761 Michael 5 4.08 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
author: Frederick Douglass
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1845
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/08
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]]> Running Wild 70236 112 J.G. Ballard 0374525463 Michael 3 3.61 1988 Running Wild
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Michael
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/11/07
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]]> <![CDATA[A Child Called "It" (Dave Pelzer, #1)]]> 60748 Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1

This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games—games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it." Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive—dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.]]> 184 Dave Pelzer Michael 5 4.14 1995 A Child Called "It" (Dave Pelzer, #1)
author: Dave Pelzer
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2017/11/01
date added: 2017/11/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism (Anarchist Classics)]]> 136366 48 Rudolf Rocker 090038445X Michael 0 to-read 3.78 1938 Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism (Anarchist Classics)
author: Rudolf Rocker
name: Michael
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Paarungen 7854340 (Fiction, Poetry &amp; Drama) 0 Peter Schneider 3499134934 Michael 0 to-read 3.82 1992 Paarungen
author: Peter Schneider
name: Michael
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> Rasputin: A Short Life 18870136
Grigory Rasputin, a Siberian peasant turned mystic and court sage, was as fascinating as he was unfathomable. He played the role of the simple man, eating with his fingers and boasting, “I don’t even know the ABC.� But, as the only person able to relieve the symptoms of hemophilia in the Tsar’s heir Alexei, he gained almost hallowed status within the Imperial court.

During the last decade of his life, Rasputin and his band of “little ladies� came to symbolize all that was decadent, corrupt, and remote about the Imperial Family, especially when it was rumored that he was not only shaping Russian policy during the First World War, but also enjoying an intimate relationship with the Empress�

Rasputin’s role in the downfall of the tsarist regime is beyond dispute. But who was he really? Prophet or rascal? A “breath of rank air...who blew away the cobwebs of the Imperial Palace,� as Beryl Bainbridge put it, or a dangerous deviant?

Writing for historical aficionados and curious readers alike, Frances Welch turns her inimitable wry gaze on one of the great mysteries of Russian history.]]> 210 Frances Welch 1476755515 Michael 0 to-read 3.39 2014 Rasputin: A Short Life
author: Frances Welch
name: Michael
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved]]> 18135113
The article's focus is less on the actual race itself—indeed, Thompson and Steadman could not actually see the race from their standpoint—and more on the celebration and depravity that surrounds the event, as well as other events in Louisville (Thompson's home town) in the surrounding days.]]> 222 Hunter S. Thompson Michael 0 to-read 4.47 1970 The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/02/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade]]> 250927 386 Warren Hinckle 0393306364 Michael 0 to-read 4.05 If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade
author: Warren Hinckle
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization]]> 804860 656 James Bamford 0140067485 Michael 0 to-read 3.92 1982 The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization
author: James Bamford
name: Michael
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Octopus: A Story of California]]> 876843 The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings they resorted to the same tactics used by the subversion, coercion and outright violence. In his introduction, Kevin Starr discusses Norris's debt to Zola for the novel's extraordinary sweep, scale and abundance of characters and details.]]> 688 Frank Norris Michael 0 to-read 3.81 1901 The Octopus: A Story of California
author: Frank Norris
name: Michael
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1901
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Of, By, For: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy]]> 15861308 186 Joseph Costello 061564872X Michael 0 to-read 0.0 2012 Of, By, For: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy
author: Joseph Costello
name: Michael
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/13
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]]> Slave: My True Story 178460
Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of enslavement. Her Arab owners called her "Yebit," or "black slave." She called them "master." She was subjected to appalling physical, sexual, and mental abuse. She slept in a shed and ate the family leftovers like a dog. She had no rights, no freedom, and no life of her own.

Normally, Mende's story never would have come to light. But seven years after she was seized and sold into slavery, she was sent to work for another master—a diplomat working in the United Kingdom. In London, she managed to make contact with other Sudanese, who took pity on her. In September 2000, she made a dramatic break for freedom.

Slave is a story almost beyond belief. It depicts the strength and dignity of the Nuba tribe. It recounts the savage way in which the Nuba and their ancient culture are being destroyed by a secret modern-day trade in slaves. Most of all, it is a remarkable testimony to one young woman's unbreakable spirit and tremendous courage.
]]> 367 Mende Nazer 1586483188 Michael 0 to-read 4.24 2002 Slave: My True Story
author: Mende Nazer
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl]]> 152519 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813�1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.

Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like "garret" attached to her grandmother's porch.

A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman's determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family.]]> 176 Harriet Ann Jacobs 0486419312 Michael 0 to-read 4.15 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
author: Harriet Ann Jacobs
name: Michael
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1861
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850�1896]]> 168231 492 Sven Beckert 0521524105 Michael 0 to-read 3.98 2001 The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896
author: Sven Beckert
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia)]]> 6159433
In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive economy featured many slaves who earned wages and white workers who performed backbreaking labor. By focusing his study on this boomtown, Rockman reassesses the roles of race and region and rewrites the history of class and capitalism in the United States during this time.

Rockman describes the material experiences of low-wage workers—how they found work, translated labor into food, fuel, and rent, and navigated underground economies and social welfare systems. He also explores what happened if they failed to find work or lost their jobs. Rockman argues that the American working class emerged from the everyday struggles of these low-wage workers. Their labor was indispensable to the early republic’s market revolution, and it was central to the transformation of the United States into the wealthiest society in the Western world.

Rockman’s research includes construction site payrolls, employment advertisements, almshouse records, court petitions, and the nation’s first "living wage" campaign. These rich accounts of day laborers and domestic servants illuminate the history of early republic capitalism and its consequences for working families.]]> 368 Seth Rockman 0801890071 Michael 0 to-read 4.10 2008 Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia)
author: Seth Rockman
name: Michael
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder]]> 13530973
In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile" is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension.

Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, and proposing that things be built in an antifragile manner. Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave—and thrive—in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. He who is not antifragile will perish. Why is the city state better than the nation state, why is debt bad for you, and why is almost everything modern bound to fail? The book covers innovation, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. Throughout, the voice and recipes of the ancient wisdom from Phoenician, Roman, Greek, and Medieval sources are heard loud and clear.]]> 426 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 1400067820 Michael 4 class-war 4.08 2012 Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/02/05
date added: 2014/02/06
shelves: class-war
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]]> <![CDATA[The Death of the Liberal Class]]> 8607391 The liberal class plays a vital role in a democracy. It gives moral legitimacy to the state. It makes limited forms of dissent and incremental change possible. The liberal class posits itself as the conscience of the nation. It permits us, through its appeal to public virtues and the public good, to define ourselves as a good and noble people. Most importantly, on behalf of the power elite the liberal class serves as bulwarks against radical movements by offering a safety valve for popular frustrations and discontentment by discrediting those who talk of profound structural change. Once this class loses its social and political role then the delicate fabric of a democracy breaks down and the liberal class, along with the values it espouses, becomes an object of ridicule and hatred. The door that has been opened to proto-fascists has been opened by a bankrupt liberalism

The Death of the Liberal Class examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues there are five pillars of the liberal establishment � the press, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, universities and the Democratic Party� and that each of these institutions, more concerned with status and privilege than justice and progress, sold out the constituents they represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
]]> 248 Chris Hedges 1568586442 Michael 0 4.06 2010 The Death of the Liberal Class
author: Chris Hedges
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/01
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]]> I Don't Believe in Atheists 1888742 224 Chris Hedges 141656795X Michael 4 3.50 2008 I Don't Believe in Atheists
author: Chris Hedges
name: Michael
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/01
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]]> You Are Not a Gadget 6683549
The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,� a permanent part of the web’s very structure.

Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom� of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

Lanier also shows:
How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourse
How file sharing is killing the artistic middle class;
How a belief in a technological “rapture� motivates some of the most influential technologists
Why a new humanistic technology is necessary.

Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.]]> 221 Jaron Lanier 0307269647 Michael 0 to-read 3.56 2010 You Are Not a Gadget
author: Jaron Lanier
name: Michael
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Open Society and Its Enemies]]> 240592 920 Karl Popper 0415282365 Michael 0 to-read 4.21 1956 The Open Society and Its Enemies
author: Karl Popper
name: Michael
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism]]> 1105921 In The Nazi Connection , Stefan Kühl uncovers the ties between the American eugenics movement and the Nazi program of racial hygiene, showing that many American scientists actively supported Hitler's policies. After introducing us to the recently resurgent problem of scientific racism, Kühl carefully recounts the history of the eugenics movement, both in the United States and internationally, demonstrating how widely the idea of sterilization as a genetic control had become accepted by the early twentieth century. From the first, the American eugenicists led the way with radical ideas. Their influence led to sterilization laws in dozens of states--laws which were studied, and praised, by the German racial hygienists. With the rise of Hitler, the Germans enacted compulsory sterilization laws partly based on the U.S. experience, and American eugenists took pride in their influence on Nazi policies. Kühl recreates astonishing scenes of American eugenicists travelling to Germany to
study the new laws, publishing scholarly articles lionizing the Nazi eugenics program, and proudly comparing personal notes from Hitler thanking them for their books. Even after the outbreak of war, he writes, the American eugenicists frowned upon Hitler's totalitarian government, but not his sterilization laws. So deep was the failure to recognize the connection between eugenics and Hitler's genocidal policies, that a prominent liberal Jewish eugenicist who had been forced to flee Germany found it fit to grumble that the Nazis "took over our entire plan of eugenic measures."
By 1945, when the murderous nature of the Nazi government was made perfectly clear, the American eugenicists sought to downplay the close connections between themselves and the German program. Some of them, in fact, had sought to distance themselves from Hitler even before the war. But Stefan Kühl's deeply documented book provides a devastating indictment of the influence--and aid--provided by American scientists for the most comprehensive attempt to enforce racial purity in world history.]]> 192 Stefan Kühl 0195149785 Michael 0 to-read 3.77 1994 The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism
author: Stefan Kühl
name: Michael
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[It's Me, Eddie: A Fictional Memoir]]> 1060818 264 Eduard Limonov 0394530640 Michael 0 to-read 3.89 1978 It's Me, Eddie: A Fictional Memoir
author: Eduard Limonov
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center]]> 51378 174 bell hooks 0896082210 Michael 0 to-read 4.44 1984 Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
author: bell hooks
name: Michael
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/03/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)]]> 246853
"Buy Williams's book. And dig out from storage your dog-eared old copy of The Elements of Style. Set them side by side on your reference shelf."—Barbara Walraff, Atlantic

"Let newcoming writers discover this, and let their teachers and readers rejoice. It is a practical, disciplined text that is also a pleasure to read."� Christian Century

"An excellent book....It provides a sensible, well-balanced approach, featuring prescriptions that work."—Donald Karzenski, Journal of Business Communication

"Intensive fitness training for the expressive mind."� Booklist


(The college textbook version, Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace , 9th edition, is available fromLongman. ISBN 9780321479358.)]]> 226 Joseph M. Williams 0226899152 Michael 0 4.23 1981 Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
author: Joseph M. Williams
name: Michael
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at: 2013/03/24
date added: 2013/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap]]> 43164 320 Stu Maschwitz 0321413644 Michael 0 4.21 2006 The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap
author: Stu Maschwitz
name: Michael
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2013/03/24
date added: 2013/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #4)]]> 194373 Silver Blaze
The Cardboard Box
The Yellow Face
The Stockbroker's Clerk
The 'Gloria Scott'
The Musgrave Ritual
The Reigate Squire
The Crooked Man
The Resident Patient
The Greek Interpreter
The Naval Treaty
The Final Problem]]> 378 Arthur Conan Doyle 0192123092 Michael 4 4.31 1893 The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #4)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Michael
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1893
rating: 4
read at: 2013/03/24
date added: 2013/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser]]> 13520189
Some men in the seduction community are sleazy misogynists who want nothing more than power and control. Some are shy wallflowers who don't know how to say hi to a girl. The one thing they all have in common is a driving need to attract women.

Clarisse Thorn, a feminist S&M writer and activist, spent years researching these guys. She observed their discussions, watched them in action, and learned their strategies. By the end of it all, she'd given a lecture at a seduction convention and decided against becoming the next great dating coach. In "Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser," Clarisse tells the story of her time among these Casanovas, as well as her own unorthodox experiences with sex and relationships. She examines the conflicts and harmonies of feminism, pickup artistry, and the S&M community. Most of all, she deconstructs and reconstructs our views on sex, love, and ethics� and develops her own grand theory of the game.

]]> 324 Clarisse Thorn Michael 0 currently-reading 3.75 2012 Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser
author: Clarisse Thorn
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/03/24
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Debt: The First 5,000 Years 6617037 Before there was money, there was debt.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion(words like “guilt,� “sin,� and “redemption�) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.]]> 534 David Graeber 1933633867 Michael 5 class-war 4.21 2011 Debt: The First 5,000 Years
author: David Graeber
name: Michael
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/03/24
shelves: class-war
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]]> <![CDATA[Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters]]> 128457 enfant terrible of French letters, Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91)was a defiant and precocious youth who wrote some of the most remarkable prose and poetry of the nineteenth century, all before leaving the world of verse by the age of twenty-one. More than a century after his death, the young rebel-poet continues to appeal to modern readers as much for his turbulent life as for his poetry; his stormy affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine and his nomadic adventures in eastern Africa are as iconic as his hallucinatory poems and symbolist prose.

The first translation of the poet's complete works when it was published in 1966, Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters introduced a new generation of Americans to the alienated genius—among them the Doors's lead singer Jim Morrison, who wrote to translator Wallace Fowlie to thank him for rendering the poems accessible to those who "don't read French that easily." Forty years later, the book remains the only side-by-side bilingual edition of Rimbaud's complete poetic works.

Thoroughly revising Fowlie's edition, Seth Whidden has made changes on virtually every page, correcting errors, reordering poems, adding previously omitted versions of poems and some letters, and updating the text to reflect current scholarship; left in place are Fowlie's literal and respectful translations of Rimbaud's complex and nontraditional verse. Whidden also provides a foreword that considers the heritage of Fowlie's edition and adds a bibliography that acknowledges relevant books that have appeared since the original publication. On its fortieth anniversary, Rimbaud remains the most authoritative—and now, completely up-to-date—edition of the young master's entire poetic ouvre.]]> 370 Arthur Rimbaud 0226719731 Michael 0 to-read 4.40 1966 Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters
author: Arthur Rimbaud
name: Michael
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/03/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Dexter, #1)]]> 550853 288 Jeff Lindsay 038551123X Michael 3 3.63 2004 Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Dexter, #1)
author: Jeff Lindsay
name: Michael
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood]]> 108593 319 Edward M. Hallowell 0684801280 Michael 4 4.09 1992 Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood
author: Edward M. Hallowell
name: Michael
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/12/31
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]]> The 4-Hour Workweek 368593
Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:
- How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want?
- How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs?
- How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist?
- How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent "mini-retirements"?
- What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income?
- How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it's beyond repair?
- What automated cash-flow "muses" are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks?
- How to cultivate selective ignorance-and create time-with a low-information diet?
- What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are?
- How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50-80% off?
- How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office]]> 308 Timothy Ferriss 0307353133 Michael 2 3.93 2007 The 4-Hour Workweek
author: Timothy Ferriss
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking]]> 8520610 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.]]> 333 Susan Cain 0307352145 Michael 2 4.07 2012 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
author: Susan Cain
name: Michael
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/12/31
date added: 2012/12/31
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]]> Anarcho-Syndicalism 967319 192 Rudolf Rocker 0745313876 Michael 0 to-read 3.79 1938 Anarcho-Syndicalism
author: Rudolf Rocker
name: Michael
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/10/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Clansman an Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]> 443209 356 Thomas Dixon Jr. 1432615475 Michael 0 to-read 2.56 1905 The Clansman an Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
author: Thomas Dixon Jr.
name: Michael
average rating: 2.56
book published: 1905
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/09/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (The History of Media and Communication)]]> 1120159 240 Alex Carey 0252066162 Michael 0 to-read 4.34 1995 Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (The History of Media and Communication)
author: Alex Carey
name: Michael
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> Selected Poems 119239 864 Lord Byron 0140424504 Michael 0 to-read 4.07 1848 Selected Poems
author: Lord Byron
name: Michael
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1848
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/07/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection]]> 1027539 320 Deborah Blum 0738202789 Michael 0 to-read 4.22 2002 Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection
author: Deborah Blum
name: Michael
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/06/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Whatever 58372
Houellebecq's debut novel is painfully realistic portrayal of the vanishing freedom of a world governed by science and by the empty rituals of daily life.]]> 160 Michel Houellebecq 1852425849 Michael 0 to-read 3.59 1994 Whatever
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Michael
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/06/07
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]]> Twilight of the Idols 851994 Twilight of the Idols presents a vivid, compressed overview of many of Nietzsche’s mature ideas, including his attack on Plato’s Socrates and on the Platonic legacy in Western philosophy and culture. Polt provides a trustworthy rendering of Nietzsche’s text in contemporary American English, complete with notes prepared by the translator and Tracy Strong. An authoritative Introduction by Strong makes this an outstanding edition.]]> 128 Friedrich Nietzsche 0872203549 Michael 4 4.03 1889 Twilight of the Idols
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Michael
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1889
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/04/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)]]> 6477876
In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.� This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.]]> 464 James C. Scott 0300152280 Michael 0 to-read 4.14 2009 The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)
author: James C. Scott
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Making of the English Working Class]]> 947848 "Thompson's book has been called controversial, but perhaps only because so many have forgotten how explosive England was during the Regency & the early reign of Victoria. Without any reservation, The Making of the English Working Class is the most important study of those days since the classic work of the Hammonds."--Commentary
"Mr Thompson's deeply human imagination & controlled passion help us to recapture the agonies, heroisms & illusions of the working class as it made itself. No one interested in the history of the English people should fail to read his book."--Times Literary Supplement]]> 848 E.P. Thompson 0394703227 Michael 0 to-read 4.20 1963 The Making of the English Working Class
author: E.P. Thompson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/06
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]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Michael 0 to-read 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/04
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]]> A Confederacy of Dunces 310612
His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.

His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex.

Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times.

A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.]]> 394 John Kennedy Toole 0802130208 Michael 0 to-read 3.89 1980 A Confederacy of Dunces
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination]]> 1912672 352 Bradley R. Schiller 0131889699 Michael 0 to-read 3.65 1989 The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination
author: Bradley R. Schiller
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/19
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]]> <![CDATA[War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning]]> 27502
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.

Listening Length: 6 hours and 27 minutes]]> 224 Chris Hedges 1400034639 Michael 0 to-read 4.12 2002 War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
author: Chris Hedges
name: Michael
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress]]> 8783272 The World As It Is, a panorama of the American empire at home and abroad, from the coarsening effect of America's War on Terror to the front lines in the Middle East and South Asia and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Underlying his reportage is a constant struggle with the nature of war and its impact on human civilization. "War is always about betrayal," Hedges notes. "It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society's institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked."]]> 368 Chris Hedges 156858640X Michael 0 to-read 4.15 2011 The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
author: Chris Hedges
name: Michael
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes]]> 1476637 Political Ponerology was forged in the crucible of the very subject it studies. Scientists living under an oppressive regime decide to study it clinically, to study the founders and supporters of an evil regime to determine what common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to man.
Shocking in its clinically spare descriptions of the true nature of evil, poignant in the more literary passages where the author reveals the suffering experienced by the researchers who were contaminated or destroyed by the disease they were studying, this is a book that should be required reading by every citizen of every country that claims a moral or humanistic foundation. For it is a certainty that morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of Evil. Knowledge of its nature, how it creates its networks and spreads, how insidious is its guileful approach, is the only antidote.]]> 244 Andrew M. Lobaczewski 1897244258 Michael 0 to-read 4.11 2006 Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
author: Andrew M. Lobaczewski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters]]> 6772577
What do the North Koreans really believe? How do they see themselves and the world around them?

Here B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic , presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans� unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.� In a concise but groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled.

What emerges is a regime completely unlike the West’s perception of it. This is neither a bastion of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy, but a paranoid nationalist, “military-first� state on the far right of the ideological spectrum.

Since popular support for the North Korean regime now derives almost exclusively from pride in North Korean military might, Pyongyang can neither be cajoled nor bullied into giving up its nuclear program. The implications for US foreign policy—which has hitherto treated North Korea as the last outpost of the Cold War—are as obvious as they are troubling. With North Korea now calling for a “blood reckoning� with the “Yankee jackals,� Myers’s unprecedented analysis could not be more timely.]]> 208 B.R. Myers 1933633913 Michael 0 to-read 3.89 2010 The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters
author: B.R. Myers
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation]]> 91360
Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed—and not changed—over the last five hundred years?

In Devil Take the Hindmost , Edward Chancellortraces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to“stockjobbing”in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.�

Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the “assurance of female chastity�; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.]]> 400 Edward Chancellor 0452281806 Michael 0 to-read 3.98 1996 Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
author: Edward Chancellor
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/11/08
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]]> The Conscience of a Liberal 1169429 296 Paul Krugman 0393060691 Michael 0 to-read 3.97 2007 The Conscience of a Liberal
author: Paul Krugman
name: Michael
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think]]> 19134 ]]> 471 George Lakoff 0226467716 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 1996 Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think
author: George Lakoff
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America]]> 2393575 Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced a second civil war. From its ashes, today's political world was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Humphrey, McGovern, Daley and Wallace; but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay and Jane Fonda. There are glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and Bill Clinton--and an unambitious young man named George W. Bush.
Filled with prodigious research, driven by a powerful narrative, Perlstein's account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.]]> 881 Rick Perlstein 0743243021 Michael 0 to-read 4.24 2008 Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
author: Rick Perlstein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/09/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Prejudices: A Selection (Buncombe Collection)]]> 300843 288 H.L. Mencken 0801885353 Michael 0 to-read 4.50 1927 Prejudices: A Selection (Buncombe Collection)
author: H.L. Mencken
name: Michael
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/08/26
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]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Michael 0 to-read 4.36 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Michael
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/08/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan]]> 116915 382 Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Michael 0 to-read 4.05 2005 Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan
author: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century]]> 1032234 252 Stan Goff 1932360123 Michael 0 to-read 3.88 2004 Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century
author: Stan Goff
name: Michael
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/15
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]]> The Art of Rhetoric 881319 Art of Rhetoric held a far deeper purpose. Here Aristotle establishes the methods of informal reasoning, provides the first aesthetic evaluation of prose style and offers detailed observations on character and the emotions. Hugely influential upon later Western culture, the Art of Rhetoric is a fascinating consideration of the force of persuasion and sophistry, and a compelling guide to the principles behind oratorical skill.]]> 292 Aristotle 0140445102 Michael 0 to-read 3.90 -322 The Art of Rhetoric
author: Aristotle
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: -322
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/14
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]]> Empire of the Sun 56674 The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a deep strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941 � a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.]]> 351 J.G. Ballard 0743265238 Michael 0 to-read 3.98 1984 Empire of the Sun
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/14
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]]> Confessions 27037 Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.]]> 341 Augustine of Hippo 0192833723 Michael 0 to-read 3.95 400 Confessions
author: Augustine of Hippo
name: Michael
average rating: 3.95
book published: 400
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/04
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]]> Soul on Ice 75162
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.]]> 242 Eldridge Cleaver 038533379X Michael 0 to-read 3.98 1968 Soul on Ice
author: Eldridge Cleaver
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/04
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]]> The Mismeasure of Man 54218 The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.

How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it" and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow tests. How did scientists decide that intelligence was unipolar and quantifiable? Why did the standard keep changing over time? Gould's answer is clear and simple: power maintains itself. European men of the 19th century, even before Darwin, saw themselves as the pinnacle of creation and sought to prove this assertion through hard measurement. When one measure was found to place members of some "inferior" group such as women or Southeast Asians over the supposedly rightful champions, it would be discarded and replaced with a new, more comfortable measure. The 20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided--for surely intelligence is multifactorial--but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding the rich and powerful. The revised edition includes a scathing critique of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, taking them to task for rehashing old arguments to exploit a new political wave of uncaring belt tightening. It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly make you think.--Rob Lightner

This edition is revised and expanded, with a new introduction]]> 446 Stephen Jay Gould 0393314251 Michael 0 to-read 4.06 1982 The Mismeasure of Man
author: Stephen Jay Gould
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> It 18342
The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of It was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until the grown-up children were called back, once more to confront It as It stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.]]> 1090 Stephen King 0451169514 Michael 4 4.11 1986 It
author: Stephen King
name: Michael
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1986
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/06/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America]]> 8642913 304 Joshua Holland 0470643927 Michael 0 to-read 3.66 2010 The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America
author: Joshua Holland
name: Michael
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/05/09
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]]> Escape from Freedom 25491 Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape modern society or penetrated so deeply into the causes of authoritarian systems. If the rise of democracy set some people free, at the same time it gave birth to a society in which the individual feels alienated and dehumanized. Using the insights of psychoanalysis as probing agents, Fromm's work analyzes the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule.]]> 301 Erich Fromm 0805031499 Michael 0 to-read 4.29 1941 Escape from Freedom
author: Erich Fromm
name: Michael
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/05/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party]]> 6693566
Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal and sordidness from the dark heart of the forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans-like John McCain-have to bow to if they have any hope of running for President. It shows that Sarah Palin was the logical choice of a party in the control of theocrats. But more that just an expose, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures have more in common than just the power they command within conservative ranks. Their personal lives have been stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, addiction to pornography, serial domestic abuse, and even murder. Inspired by the work of psychologists Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.]]> 432 Max Blumenthal 1568584172 Michael 0 to-read 3.88 2007 Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
author: Max Blumenthal
name: Michael
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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