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Notable Non-fiction April 2018
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New and Recently Released
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Enlightenment Now : The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven PinkerIf you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. A follow-up to The Better Angels of Our Nature challenges the doom-and-gloom outlooks of today's media to present dozens of graphs and charts demonstrating that life quality, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge and happiness are actually on the rise throughout the world as a result of the philosophies about an Enlightenment era that uses science to improve human existence.
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Happiness Is a Choice You Make : Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland In 2015, when the award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America’s fastest-growing age group, he anticipated learning of challenges, of loneliness, and of the deterioration of body, mind, and quality of life. But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction. Despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances, they each lived with a surprising lightness and contentment. The reality Leland encountered upended contemporary notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably wise. Happiness Is a Choice You Make is an enduring collection of lessons that emphasizes, above all, the extraordinary influence we wield over the quality of our lives.
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How Democracies Die by Steven LevitskyDonald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy ends with the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.
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The Hacked World Order : How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age by Adam Segal2012 marked a transformation in geopolitics and the tactics of both the established powers and smaller entities looking to challenge the international community. That year, the US government revealed its involvement in Operation “Olympic Games,” a mission aimed at disrupting the Iranian nuclear program through cyberattacks; Russia and China conducted massive cyber-espionage operations; and the world split over the governance of the Internet. Cyberspace became a battlefield. Cyber conflict is hard to track, often delivered by proxies, and has outcomes that are hard to gauge. It demands that the rules of engagement be completely reworked and all the old niceties of diplomacy be recast. Many of the critical resources of statecraft are now in the hands of the private sector, giant technology companies in particular. In this new world order, cybersecurity expert Adam Segal reveals, power has been well and truly hacked.
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Garden State Gangland : The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey by Scott M DeitcheThe Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wiseguys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that’s over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California. And many of the stories have never been told. Deitche weaves his narrative through significant, as well as some lesser-known, mob figures who were vital components in the underworld machine.
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The Evolved Eater : A Quest to Eat Better, Live Better, and Change the World by Nick Taranto The Evolved Eater chronicles Nick Taranto's quest to change how we eat, and what this means for the future of food. As the co-founder of Plated, which has delivered tens of millions of meals across the country in its first five years, Taranto cares about the food we eat. As Evolved Eaters, we strive to continually improve and evolve as we grow through life. And eating – and being close to the food you cook and consume – is an inseparable part of this evolution. Americans throw away over 300 billion pounds of food each year, while millions of children are food insecure or poorly nourished. How did the most food abundant nation in history get this vital issue so wrong? Taranto provides eye-opening facts about how we acquire and eat food and easy and practical things that you can do to improve the way you eat (and live) starting today. Eating doesn’t need to be complicated or painful or over-thought.
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Blue Dreams : The Science and the Story of the Drugs That Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater Lauren Slater's revelatory account charts psychiatry's journey from its earliest drugs, Thorazine and lithium, up through Prozac and other major antidepressants of the present. Blue Dreams also chronicles experimental treatments involving Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, the most cutting-edge memory drugs, placebos, and even neural implants. In her thorough analysis of each treatment, Slater asks three fundamental questions: how was the drug born, how does it work (or fail to work), and what does it reveal about the ailments it is meant to treat? Fearlessly weaving her own intimate experiences into comprehensive and wide-ranging research, Slater narrates a personal history of psychiatry itself. In the process, her exploration casts modern psychiatry's ubiquitous wonder drugs in a new light, revealing their ability to heal us or hurt us, and proving an indispensable resource for anyone who hopes to understand the limits of what we know about the human brain and the possibilities for future treatments.
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The Future of Humanity : Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio KakuWorld-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in rich, intimate detail the process by which humanity may gradually move away from the planet and develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals how cutting-edge developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars. He then takes us beyond the solar system to nearby stars, which may soon be reached by nanoships traveling on laser beams at near the speed of light. With irrepressible enthusiasm and wonder, Dr. Kaku takes readers on a fascinating journey to a future in which humanity may finally fulfill its long-awaited destiny among the stars.
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Friday, April 13 New Resident Reception 7:00 p.m. Stop in to welcome new Cranbury residents! Saturday, April 14 Escape Room! 10:00 a.m. & 11:30 a.m. Solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues, hints, and strategy to escape the room! Space is very limited, so enroll early! Recommended for ages 8 to adult. Enroll here for the 10:00 a.m. session, enroll here for the 11:30 a.m. session.
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Wednesday, April 25 Learn to Preserve Your Family's History with iBiographer 7:00 p.m. Created and presented by Cranbury resident Sofia Milner, iBiographer is designed for you to preserve your family's history, stories, memories and documents all in one safe place for you to share with the whole family. You write their stories, record their lives, preserve information, and share updates from all over the country and globe. And it's free! Enroll online or at the library! Friday, May 4 The Chopsticks-Fork Principle 7:00 p.m. Cathy Bao Bean wrote a memoir and manual of how she and her husband, artist Bennett Bean, raised their son to be bicultural. Cathy will speak about her experience as an immigrant from China figuring out how to be herself as well as raise a son. As she attempts to satisfy disparate cultural norms, she provides us with a unique window into the experience of a bicultural family. Enroll online or at the library!
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Cranbury Public Library
23 North Main Street ~
Cranbury, NJ 08512 ~ Phone: 609-655-0555 ~ Contact Us
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