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"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences....
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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development at the dawn of the 21st century--the attacks of 9/11, or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, and giving them...
3) Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
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An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly “post-racial” era.
Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category...
Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category...
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This book makes recommendations for meeting four major challenges currently facing the United States, including globalization, the information technology revolution, chronic deficits, and unbalanced energy consumption. America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In this book the authors analyze those challenges, globalization, the revolution in information technology, the...
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Tells the true stories of what kids around the world did to help others during the Covid-19 pandemic. From making 3-D printed medical equipment to food bank fundraising, to a neighbourhood joke stand, to creating a semi-automatic hand-washing machine, these kids made a difference in their communities.
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Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next hundred years. He also considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world's top scientists- working in their labs on astonishing...
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The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility, in which the greater forces of progress and change are made visible by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects.
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Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the...
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"For those who witnessed the global collapse of socialism, its resurrection in the twenty-first century comes as a surprise, even a shock. How can socialism work now when it has never worked before? In this pathbreaking book, bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza argues that the socialism advanced today by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren is very different from the socialism of Lenin, Mao and Castro....
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From the author, a New York Times reporter whose beat is culture and ideas, comes a social history of the concept of middle age. For the first time ever, the middle-aged make up the biggest, richest, and most influential segment of the country, yet the history of middle age has remained largely untold. In this book is a biography of the idea of middle age from its invention in the late nineteenth century to its current place at the center of American...
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The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversive information warfare, manipulating the media to destabilize its enemies. The Soviet Union yoked together dreamers and strongmen--reformers who believed that socialism needed only to be freed from Stalin crimes and nationalists who pushed for an ever more powerful state. Ostrovsky sees Gorbachev as the last of the dreamers. When...
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes-caused, enabled, or influenced by food-has helped to shape and transform societies around the world. The first civilizations were built on barley and wheat in the Near East, millet...
15) The internet
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"Engaging images accompany information about the invention of the internet. The combination of high-interest subject matter and narrative text is intended for students in grades 3 through 8" -- Provided by publisher.
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"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers, and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created...
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Muhammad Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, declares that the capitalist engine is broken -- in its current form it inevitably leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a creative force just as powerful as self-interest. In the last decade, thousands of people and...
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In 1960, the FDA approved the oral contraceptive that would come to be known as the pill. Within a few years, millions of women were using it. At a time when the population was surging, many believed that the drug would help eradicate poverty around the globe, ensure happy and stable marriages, and liberate women. In America and the Pill, preeminent social historian Elaine Tyler May reveals the ways in which the pill did and did not fulfill these...
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"This is a book about how materials and technology have evolved us as we have evolved them but it is also much, much more. It is a book written to inspire and the last paragraphs of the book sum it up beautifully. "Discussions about technology must be inclusive, because technology is neither just for the few who are learned, nor is it just for men who are of European descent. Everyone makes something, from a sandwich to a solar cell, so examinations...
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In the compelling popular science tradition of Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel, a groundbreaking and eye-opening exploration that applies evolutionary science to provide a new perspective on human psychology, revealing how major challenges from our past have shaped some of the most fundamental aspects of our being. The most fundamental aspects of our lives-from leadership and innovation to aggression and happiness-were permanently altered by the...