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A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore
by Matthew Davis
Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore, shared those words with author Matthew Davis. From the tragic history of Wounded Knee and the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools, to the Land Back movement of today, Davis traces the Native American story of Mt. Rushmore alongside the narrative of the growing territory and state of South Dakota, and the economic and political forces that shaped the reasons for the Memorial's creation. A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the land’s origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and up to the politicized present-day conflict over the site and its future. Exploring issues related to how we memorialize American history, Davis tells an imperative story for our time.
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Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent's Search for Hope and Justice
by John Edward
In the summer of 1998, FBI agent Bob Hilland reluctantly picked up the phone to call the famous psychic John Edward. Bob was working on an unsolvable cold case and had nowhere else to turn. What Bob never imagined was that the call would lead to a huge break in the case and an unlikely crime-solving partnership that spanned twenty-five years. Centering on the investigation of the gruesome John Smith murders that rocked the nation, Chasing Evil is a heart-stopping story of murder, justice, and finding help in unexpected places.
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A Short History of the Gaza Strip
by Anne Irfan
The Gaza Strip is one of the most widely reported-on regions in the world—yet misinformation about its history and people abound. In this vital book, historian Anne Irfan explains Gaza's outsized political significance through six pivotal moments in its modern history, beginning with Israel's expulsion of the Palestinian people upon its establishment in 1948, when Gaza was truncated to the "strip" we know today. As she takes us through Israel's occupation of Gaza, the Palestinian national struggle and formation of the PLO, the first intifada, the creation of the PA, and the rise of Hamas, she tackles widespread historical ignorance and untangles contradicting narratives. Drawing on a decade of research, Irfan weaves in the voices of everyday Palestinians, from farmers and teachers to poets and activists. Written with remarkable clarity and compassion, A Short History of the Gaza Strip is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to understand Palestine today.
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We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
by Jill Lepore
Challenging both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of “originalism,” Lepore contends in this “gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past” that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process.
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The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
by William Dalrymple
For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it.
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Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
by Stephen Greenblatt
In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler's son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry--a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.
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The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
by Siddharth Kara
In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique. After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves—by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard. What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history—sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.
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I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children, and the Adverts That Helped Them Escape the Holocaust
by Julian Borger
Both profoundly important and absolutely enthralling, Borger's masterful volume traces the lives of a group of Jewish Viennese children who were rescued from the Nazis through an appeal to the Manchester Guardian newspaper - including the author's own father. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
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1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--And How It Shattered a Nation
by Andrew Ross Sorkin
In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster.
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Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
by Dan Wang
In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China—one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad.
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All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now
by Ruby Tandoh
The food landscape is more expansive and dizzying by the day. Recipes, once passed from hand to hand, now flood newspaper supplements, TV and social media. Our tastes are painstakingly engineered in food factories, shaped by supermarkets and hacked by craveable Instagram reels. Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original analysis traces this extraordinary transformation over the past seventy-five years, making sense of this electrifying new era by examining the social, economic, and technological forces shaping the foods we hunger for today. Exploring the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of TikTok critics and absurdities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh's laser-sharp investigation leaves her questioning: how much are our tastes, in fact, our own?
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Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines
by Karine Jean-Pierre
In a country obsessed with blind loyalty to a two-party democratic system, Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House press secretary to the Biden-Harris administration, shares why Americans must step beyond party lines to embrace life as Independents. In an urgent, timely analysis, Independent asks all Americans to vote their values and maintain their individuality within party lines. She presents clear arguments and provocative evidence from her time as an insider about the importance of dismantling the torrent of disinformation and misinformation that has been rampant during recent elections and provides passionate insight for ways to move forward.
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If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
by Eliezer Yudkowsky
In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next. For decades, two signatories of that letter have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn't even be close.
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Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara
by Harriet Malinowitz
From its late 19th-century origins, Zionism sought to unite a fractured Jewish population under a nationalist vision. But achieving this goal required more than political maneuvering—it demanded a compelling narrative. Whether persuading world powers to endorse the state’s creation, rallying Jews to fund and populate the new nation, or branding Israel as a beacon of democracy while suppressing Palestinian resistance, the Zionist project has always depended on carefully crafted messaging. Author Harriet Malinowitz, a retired professor of English specializing in writing, rhetoric, Palestine studies, and gender and sexuality studies, brings a sharp analytical lens to Israel’s powerful public relations apparatus.
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Dear New York
by Brandon Stanton
Creator of the global sensation “Humans of New York” and author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers, Brandon Stanton has shown us a unique side of our communities, our neighbors, and ourselves. Now, he takes us further and deeper than he’s ever gone before. Embracing all five boroughs, Dear New York is a book filled with contradictions, yet brimming with life. It is an unprecedented portrait of the world’s greatest city, and a personal tribute to the people who provide its soul.
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Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds
by John Fugelsang
For more than two centuries, the United States Constitution has given us the right to a society where church and state exist independently. But Christianity has been hijacked by far-right groups and politicians who seek to impose their narrow views on government, often to justify oppressive and unequal policies. The extremists who weaponize the Bible for earthly power aren't actually on the side of Jesus--and historically they never have been. How do we fight back against those acting--literally--in bad faith? Comedian and broadcaster John Fugelsang ... offers the answers. In this ... book, [he] takes readers through common fundamentalist arguments on abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and more--exposing their hypocrisy and inaccuracy through scripture, common sense, and deeply inappropriate humor. It offers practical tips on how to debate your loved one, coworker, or neighbor on the issues that divide us using that Bible they claim to follow--
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